Free The Unmasking of Lady Loveless by Nicola Cornick Page B

Loveless. He would expose her for the wanton she must surely be.

Chapter 2
    Peacock Oak, Yorkshire—two weeks before Christmas
    Lady Melicent Beaumont put down her pen and rested her chin on the palm of her hand.  It was impossible to concentrate when she could hear her mother’s querulous tones floating down from the room above:
    “I want Melicent! Where is she? And where is the doctor? I told you to send for him hours ago! I feel as sick as a cushion, and if he does not come soon I am like to perish here and now in my bed! No, do not build the fire any higher, you foolish woman! It is far too hot in here and is positively smothering me—”
    Melicent sighed. She could not have blamed Mrs. Lubbock very much if she was tempted to take the pillow and squash it firmly over her mother’s face. Mrs. Durham, a hypochondriac whose imaginary illnesses were always so much worse than anyone else’s, had taken to her bed when Melicent’s father had died and she had made everyone dance attendance on her ever since. It had taken Melicent only a few short weeks to realize that her mother was a tyrant. Unfortunately by then it was too late to turn back. After her last, dreadful quarrel with her husband she would not, could not, creep back to London with her tail between her legs. And so she was trapped here in Peacock Oak, in the little grace-and-favor house provided by a distant cousin, the Duchess of Cole; trapped in this drab existence with her ghastly mother and her idle brother and a very long-suffering servant.
    “Miss Melicent is working, ma’am,” she heard Mrs. Lubbock say with stolid patience.  The housekeeper was a treasure, unflappable and fortunately impervious to insult.  “She has sent for the doctor—”
    “I will not see him!” Mrs. Durham was becoming shrill. Melicent sighed.
    She reread the lines she had just written.
    “‘Borwick Hall is built in late seventeenth-century style with decorative plasterwork in the drawing-room….’”
    She sighed again. The style was very dry. Mr. Foster, the antiquarian for whom she worked, disliked flowery language in his architectural guides, and so her prose was dull enough to send even the most devoted country house visitor to sleep.
    Mrs. Lubbock’s heavy tread sounded on the stair and then the housekeeper knocked softly on the door of the study.
    “Begging your pardon, Miss Melicent, but your mama is refusing to see the physician. I sent for Dr. Abbott, but he is out on a call and his wife said she would send his nephew, who is here to help him over Christmas, it being the time that many people fancy themselves ill, so Mrs. Abbott says…”
    Mrs. Durham’s bell rang sharply, simultaneous with the heavy knocker sounding on the front door. A wail came from upstairs:
    “Lubbock, where are you?”
    Melicent rubbed her eyes. They felt tired and gritty from writing in the afternoon’s gray winter light. She really should have lit a candle, except that candles were expensive and she could not afford the luxury.
    The knocker sounded again. Evidently the doctor’s nephew was an impatient man.
    Mrs. Durham’s wailings intensified.
    “Please go up to Mama, Mrs. Lubbock, and see if you may calm her,” Melicent said wearily. “I shall explain to the new doctor that Mama cannot see him at present. I expect that Dr. Abbott warned him of Mama’s caprices, but I do not doubt that he will still be annoyed, having come all this way for nothing.”
    Mrs. Lubbock lumbered back up the stairs and Melicent stood a little stiffly, wiping her ink-stained fingers on her brown worsted skirts. There was no time to check her appearance in the mirror. The hallway was cold. In winter they kept a fire only in the drawing room for visitors and in Mrs. Durham’s bedroom, which was often unhealthily stuffy. The rest of the house felt like a cold larder in comparison. Mrs. Lubbock’s fingers turned red and chilblained in the kitchen. Melicent kept a hot brick at her feet when she was