Free Beauty in Disguise by Mary Moore Page A

night was not over. “So be it. I deserve whatever you think of me.”
    “What you deserve is little to the point...madame.”
    Kathryn’s heart sank further still, but she would not let him see it. She saw no sympathy, only an angry bitterness that would not rest. Very well, she had known from that first night on the Rother River Bridge that the truth would give him a disgust of her, so it mattered little now.
    “What do you wish to know, sir?” she asked him quite coolly.
    “Great guns, what do you think I wish to know?” The words were ground out between clenched teeth. He soon began pacing from the tree to her and back again. “Why the disguise? Why the Dinsmores? Why deceive me?”
    The last was ground out directly into her face, and the force of his emotions made her step back.
    She could see now how she had hurt him. She always prayed that it would not be so, but God seemed to take her prayers and turn them around until they were the complete opposite of what she asked for.
    “I will explain anything you wish, if you will only calm yourself.” She was once again the practical Miss Montgomery trying to defuse a volatile situation.
    “Get on with it, then,” he growled.
    “When my... When I determined I must make my own way in the world, I offered myself up into the two sacrificial positions allowed a lady—a companion and a governess.” She would not start at the beginning.
    “I tried to find employment in Sussex County, but I was always turned away. No household, they informed me, would hire me because I was too young and too...”
    “Beautiful,” he uttered, sitting down on the divided tree.
    “You may use that word, my lord. I do not. My appearance has been a bane to my existence. I abhor the Society that expects all young women to be decorations for a man’s arm and income to his pockets, yet takes advantage of those same qualities in women of a different class.”
    “You speak in riddles. What do you know of such things? Keep to the subject at hand.”
    Anger began to grow in her. “Of course, my lord. Forgive me for making you feel uncomfortable. A thousand pardons, I assure you. One of my class must remember her station!”
    “What in the blazes are you talking about?” Her words were bringing on the wrong reactions, but she was angry, too. “Now is not the time to discuss the evils of our society. We were speaking of your specific actions.”
    “ Your Society is the point, my lord. I could not look for a position in London because...well, you know why. I was shunned. And I could not get employment in Sussex because the men of your class have no compunctions or morals with the women of mine. And because their wives, who do the hiring, know it!
    “I was fired from several positions, after being turned down for as many, because of my appearance. My qualifications did not matter. My honesty, my integrity, my determination—none of it mattered. Even my need did not matter. The only thing that mattered was that I was young and passable and my person might provide temptation to the males of the household. Not that I might do so, but the way I looked. How do you fight that, my lord? You tell me! ”
    She sensed she was finally getting to him through her outpouring of anger and resentment. “It seems it is common knowledge that young wives did not want young, beautiful servants in their homes, but I did not know it.” She poured out all of her pain on him.
    His sarcasm abated somewhat. “Please continue, Lady Kathryn.”
    “I had to have employment, my lord.” She was quieter now, giving details by rote with little emotion. “I had no choice.” She leaned against the willow tree branch and crossed her arms over her chest as she looked past him to the moon. Should she tell him now why she had run away from London, from him, so long ago? “And having no choice due to my mistake, my big mistake, I determined that if appearance was hindering my options, I would change my