A Fragile Mask

CHAPTER ONE

Fine flakes, still drifting through the air, sparkled in the early morning sun.

The heavy fall in the night had shrouded the countryside in a winter blanket of white, but it would not last; for the air was warm, as the young gentleman visitor discovered immediately upon flinging up the window of the bedchamber allotted to him by his hosts.

Mr Denzell Hawkeridge pulled the nightcap off his head, spilling a profusion of fairish locks over the neck of his nightshirt. He looked out upon a large patch of ground beyond the garden, in which a group of urchin children were engaged, he saw, blinking sleepily upon them, in building a snowman.

A very proper occupation, he conceded, under the circumstances, if a trifle energetic.

For Denzell, lured by his friend Osmond Ruishton into spending some days at Tunbridge Wells before Christmas was well upon them, with the promise of absolutely nothing to do, had every intention of doing precisely nothing.

Filling his lungs with fresh country air, he yawned contentedly.

This was the life. Not that he had not enjoyed the season.

He had. So much so, in fact, that he was quite tired out from the hectic pace one was obliged to maintain in town.

Not to mention the exigencies to which he had been put, cudgelling his ingenuity to steer that fine line between flirtation — for with so many pretty girls about any man must be tempted to it — and the avoidance of matrimonial traps.

He had no desire to settle with just one woman, not yet awhile.

All he wanted now was to lounge about, enjoy a little idle conversation with his hosts, and avoid women.

Especially young women who might wish to marry him.

It was a fine thing to be heir to a worthy barony, but it could be a curst nuisance to be an eligible male.

A nuisance, and extremely exhausting. Yes, this had been an excellent notion of Osmond’s.

The Wells was so dead at this season that the chance of any debutante coming within a hundred miles of the place was too remote to be worthy of consideration.

He could be off guard and laze at his ease.

He was glad, for instance, to think that it was not he, but some unfortunate woman who was obliged to cavort about in the snow in company with these busy youngsters.

For there was a woman with them, her back to him just now as she leaned to help infant fingers pack snow against the rapidly expanding waistline of the snowman. A nursemaid, perhaps. A shout floated up to him.

“Hoy, Charley! Gimme a…”

He could not hear the rest, but the voice told its own tale. And now he came to look at them, the children did not appear to be the offspring of the gentry, their frieze garments rather rougher than those in which Osmond’s elder boy, only recently breeched, was likely to appear.

“Is we done ’ere, missie?”

The woman straightened up, and shifted to the other side of the snowman, and Denzell, a budding connoisseur in the matter of female dress, at once recognised that the brown pelisse she wore was of too fine a cut and material for any servant, edged as it was with a fur trim.

There was a sudden disturbance to one side, a running boy bumping into another.

“Hoy, watch out!”

“Ow!” came clearly as the second boy slipped and went down.

“You donkey!” shouted another.

General laughter and a flurry of calling ensued, and Denzell caught a glimpse of the lady’s face as she dashed to the rescue. Evidently her assistance was not needed, for the boy picked himself up unhurt amid the ribald catcalls and chanting of his companions.

“Lawks, Joey!”

“You look like the snowman.”

“Joey’s covered in snow-oh.”

The shouts faded in Denzell’s ears, for the lady lifted her head as she stood poised, still ready to help, and his gaze became riveted upon her face.

It was, even at this distance, one of the most beautiful countenances he had ever seen: a perfect oval, with eyes set wide apart, a nose classically straight, and a mouth shaped in so pleasing a bow that any artist seeing it must at once beg its owner to sit for him.

A cluster of loose curls escaping from under a close-fitting bonnet, small-brimmed and ornamented with knots of ribbon, whispered a promise of golden treasures within.

Fascinated, Denzell stared. Chaste stars, but not one among the debutantes paraded for inspection in the season just ended could have held a candle to this girl.

She was young, too. Some few years his junior, eighteen or nineteen, he judged. But why in the world was a beautiful girl of marriageable age immured in this rural backwater, unless she was already wed? Was he mistaken in the status of the children? Might one of them even be her own?

Yet he had no eyes to search for this possibility among the urchins.

His attention was all for the lady as he watched the warmth of a smile enter her face while the children, finding Joey’s trip into the snow an enticing lark, began to fake falls so that they might also receive a cargo of snow upon their small persons.

This sport led naturally into a snowball fight, which the lady made no attempt to discourage — definitely not a nursemaid — but watched with laughing enjoyment, brushing an errant snowflake away from that heavenly face with the back of one glove-encased hand.

Denzell’s breath caught. What animation.

Such a glowing vivacity! She was utterly delightful.

All at once two small figures erupted from under Denzell’s window, and he recognised young Felix Ruishton, his godson, all of four years old, running to join the fray; and tottering after in his infant dress, with their nurse Dinah in hot pursuit, little Miles, his brother.

Felix dashed across the garden and hurtled through the back gate, and Denzell saw the girl bend down to greet him with both hands held out, and a warm welcome on her lips, delivered, although he could not hear the words, in a pleasant musical voice.

So she knew Felix and Miles? Capital! Denzell shut the window and crossed to the bell pull to summon his valet.

His determination to abjure the society of young women was forgotten.

There was no time to lose. He must dress at once.

Undoubtedly Osmond and Unice could identify this dazzling beauty, and he must know who she was instantly.

Nevertheless, it was quite half an hour later before he made his belated appearance, suitably attired for the country in a frock-coat of dark blue tabinet for warmth, over a grey cassimere waistcoat and breeches of black corduroy.

He entered upon a scene of contented domesticity in the Ruishtons’ cosy breakfast parlour, a neat apartment with faded yellow paper to the walls and spreading warmth from glowing embers in the grate of a simple marble-framed fireplace.

“Who,” he demanded without preamble as his hosts looked up to welcome him, “is the fairy princess even now blessing your back garden with her entrancing presence? And does she already have a prince on her leading string? If not, be warned that I intend to apply at once for the position.”

Osmond Ruishton, as casually clad as his guest but affecting stronger hues of plum and a salmon waistcoat, was seated to the window-side of the round mahogany table fashioned in the Hepplewhite style.

He lowered the Gazette upon which, as befitted a family man at breakfast, his attention had been engaged, and gazed at his friend over the top of it.

“What the devil are you talking of, Hawk?”

“The girl, dear boy, the girl. And don’t pretend you don’t know her, because Felix and Miles have just been clasped to her bosom.”

Looking at his wife, Osmond shook his head. “Crazy. Stark staring crazy!”

Unice Ruishton, in a plain round gown of cambric, long-sleeved and made high to the throat, had been engaged in plying her spouse with ham and eggs from a central dish, and keeping his coffee cup filled from the steaming pot by her elbow from which emanated a tempting aroma, but she paused in this work, a frown creasing her brow.

“What in the world is the matter with you, Denzell?”

“Unice,” he responded in the tone of one afflicted by anxiety, as he dragged a chair out and took his seat between them both, “have pity on me. My head is reeling, my heart is bursting and I must know her name or I shall go mad!”

“Go mad?” interpolated Osmond. “You are mad!”

“Whose name?” asked Unice, bewildered, her pansy eyes blinking at him out of a pleasant countenance surrounded by dusky locks worn fashionably long just now under a lacy wisp of a cap. “Who is it you mean?”

“The ravishing female who has been building a snowman with a gang of urchins outside my window.”

The puzzlement vanished from Unice’s face. “Oh, I see.”

It was no mean part of Unice’s attraction that she was apt to treat all her husband’s bachelor friends as if they were an extension of her responsibilities to Osmond, and in need of such female care and guidance as she might be able to offer — a trait that rather amused the light-hearted Mr Ruishton than afforded him grounds for jealousy.

Their mutual devotion was, besides, plain for all to see, particularly at a time when Unice’s natural plumpness was exaggerated in the course of her third pregnancy — to which the coming fashion of high waists was admirably suited.

She gave Denzell her full attention. “What does she look like?”

“Look like?” echoed Denzell. “Deuce take it, Unice, there cannot be two such beauties in this town! Who is she?”

“Oh, Lord,” uttered Osmond in disgust, at last grasping the purport of his friend’s conversation. “Don’t tell me you’re at it again.” He threw down the Gazette and addressed his wife. “He hasn’t been here five minutes and already he’s setting up a flirt.”

“Flirt? Nothing of the sort,” objected Denzell. “I’m going to whisk her off to Gretna Green.”

“Ha! I wish I may see it,” snorted his friend.