Free Caprice: The Masqueraders Series - Book One by Laura Parker Page A

right to know what he’s being offered on the marriage market. As it stands, one can scarcely keep count of the false bosoms and padded posteriors abroad these days. Not to mention the various disguising creams, pastes, and powders with which the ladies falsify themselves. If they take to the veil as well, I, for one, will publish abroad my refusal to wed.”
    “She wears the yahmak of the harem,” Hadrian said quietly. “It’s the custom of ladies of the East. Perhaps she is one.”
    “How can you be certain she’s not just ill-favored?”
    “It was all in her eyes,” Hadrian replied in a strangely tight voice. “Did you not see them? Dark as the secret stars of the heavens, deep as a pool at dusk. Not Ethiopian black, but more mysterious for their hint of color.”
    “You saw all that, did you?” Emory’s interest in his brother’s behavior became pointed. “Didn’t know you had a poetical bent. Don’t dress the part.” When the jibe didn’t get a response, he added, “I say, are you fixing an interest on the veiled one?”
    “Lord, no!” Hadrian said too quickly and turned away.
    Yet as he walked rapidly in the opposite direction the carriage had taken, Hadrian could not keep from wondering why those eyes had seemed at once familiar and so stimulating. Who was the lady? Lady Arbuthnott had been remarkably vague in her introduction. Why, she had even neglected to give the girl a name.
    “Emory, did you happen to notice which house Lady Arbuthnott was leaving?”
    “The Feathergates’, I believe. Lud! What a dull set.”
    “Hm.” Hadrian paused at the Feathergates’ threshold. “As long as we are in the neighborhood, we should stop by. Maman would be delighted to hear of our civility to her lady friends.”
    “You cannot be serious?” To Emory’s consternation his brother climbed the steps to pull the bell. “She squints,” he imparted under his breath when he reached his brother’s side. “The Feathergate daughter most definitely squints!”
    “My dear, my dear! Just look at these invitations!” Heloise marched in and placed a thick stack of embossed envelopes on the foot of her niece’s bed. “It’s seems our little tête-a-tête with Lord Ramsbury was enough to induce him to inquire, discreetly, after you. That, in turn, has resulted in this positive avalanche of invitations. Running into the earl and his brother was most fortuitous. We could not have done better had we planned our strategy months ahead.”
    Clarissa lifted the ice pack from her throbbing brow and stared determinedly at her aunt down the length of her bed. “I have never, but never, been more mortified in my life. Playing mummery games with a peer of the realm! What could I have been thinking of?”
    “You could be thinking of the roses the earl sent you yesterday.” Heloise’s gaze moved significantly to the cut-crystal bowl at the bedside which contained a half dozen yellow and pink florabunda rosebuds. “Or the ones his brother sent today.” She smiled as she spied the enormous bouquet of pale pinks that had been relegated to the table by the window. “One can’t but admire the restraint shown by the more experienced gentleman. Two dozen upon a meeting in the lane, that is quite overdone. Quite!”
    The entire matter was quite overdone, to Clarissa’s mind. Adventure, indeed. One nefarious outing was enough to convince her that she did not possess one dram of the famed Holton “wild” blood.
    She had nearly tossed her tea when her aunt had explained on their ride home who exactly the earl was. One by one the accomplishments of Hadrian Temple Blackburne, fifth Earl of Ramsbury, had been ticked off. An exalted peer. A pillar of the community. Late a captain of His Majesty’s Light Cavalry. A decorated soldier. A miraculously returned hero of the Napoleonic Wars. Later, a peek at the book of peerage in the Holton library had resulted in a match between the crest on the silver baggage tag in her