THE MASKED HEIR

Chapter One

Davenport Castle

Bath, England

January 11th, 1849

“Come on, Rinnie!” my brother, Daxton, shouted from the foyer. “Father’s carriage is

nearing the gates!”

“One moment!” I hollered back, attempting to wriggle away from Helene as she fussed with my hair. Of all the treasures I’d inherited from my late mother—diamond necklaces, ruby earrings, and ivory brooches—the service of her lady’s maid was my favorite. Helene may have looked like a rhinoceros, but she was the kindest, gentlest woman I knew. She’d seen me through everything from my first steps, to my first crush, and many happenings in between that I would rather forget. To me, she was more precious than any jewel, except for when it came time for me to dress. Lately, she has never found near-perfection good enough. The soft curly tendrils she’d spent the past hour plotting on either side of my head were no exception.

“This thing,” Helene complained in her thick Hungarian accent while tugging on my cowlick. For years, she’d referred to the unruly tuft as an endearing quirk. Now that I was a woman, she branded it a curse. According to her, everything, right down to that unsightly hair, had to reflect my newfound lady status. Anything less had no business in my company.

“Come on, Helene.” I wrung my hands. While tonight my cowlick wouldn’t tarnish my image, waiting for Helene to tame it would throw a spanner in an eighteen-year-old Fairchild custom. “You know Daxton and I always greet Father at the gates after he’s been away. It’s tradition.”

Especially since Father had been gone for three weeks, on a trip to Paris he’d vowed was of great importance. Then again, everything Father did was important. Not only was he an earl, but a senior member of the House of Lords. He often traveled abroad to garner support for various bills in the making. However, this was the first time he’d gone off on private business without us. It was also the first time he’d kept secret the reason behind his venture. Daxton and I had agreed not to make a fuss, but only after Father had promised to return home to us with a host of gifts in celebration of our joint eighteenth birthday. Surely, Father had ordered me a custom-tailored wardrobe in the French fashion. As for Daxton, well, Father had likely purchased him some newfangled weaponry for this year’s Glorious Twelfth, Daxton’s favorite hunting event. I looked forward to the occasion for the lavish dinner parties Father hosted afterward so as not to waste the abundance of game Daxton often brought home. Until now, those gatherings were my only connection to high society.

“Relax, child,” Helene chided as I continued to squirm. She dipped her fingers into a jar of pomade. “No well-mannered aristocrat will take you for his wife if he sees how flippant you are with your appearance. How you present yourself to society will show him how you intend to present his household when you marry.”

Glad as I was to be true lady, I missed the freedom of being a girl. I missed wearing dresses without corsets and hairstyles that didn’t require me to sit for hours on end, staring at the wall while Helene shaped my golden tresses as would a grand sculptor.

“Finished,” she said, wiping the excess pomade on her apron.

“Many thanks!” I kissed her cheek and hurried off before she had the chance to give me her usual once-over, which usually took several minutes.

“Come back here, child!” she shouted, bumbling after me, but I’d already reached the end of the corridor and commenced my descent down the white marble staircase.

I took the steps two at a time, to the center landing, and then raced down the bottom flight, to the foyer.

Try as Helene might, she couldn’t match my stride. Her thickset thighs slowed her down. As usual, when I rushed off like this, she chased me to the stairwell and bowed over the railing to shout out her last-minute warnings. “Mind the puddles in the drive! You won’t have time to change if you soil your dress!”

In but a half an hour, my extended family would arrive for supper—all except for Lucian, Father’s once beloved cousin. Apparently, the two of them had some sort of falling out before Daxton and I were born; although no one in our family dared speak of it, on Father’s orders.

Daxton reckoned a woman had caused their rift. I reckoned money had. Daxton disagreed. He said our kind were too proud to quarrel openly over wealth. Oh, how he underestimated the power of having infinite riches at his disposal. I supposed being one of England’s wealthiest men was an easy thing for him to hold in low esteem when Mother Nature had overcome his only hurdle for acquisition—being male.

Nevertheless, for him to win a woman’s heart the way Father had won Mother’s was a rare achievement Daxton thirsted to acquire. Countless times he suffered a black eye from his abundance of passion because he didn’t limit himself to available women. Often he wooed his prospects while they stood within earshot of their partners, insisting that any woman who entertained him with “the look” had essentially invited him to pursue her.

I wasn’t as bold and certainly not as particular. I simply wished to marry a man equal to Father’s standing and wealth. I would make do with the rest.

The footman opened the front door, and I breezed across the threshold.

Daxton stood in the center of the drive, bobbing impatiently on his tiptoes, waving me along. “Come on then, Rinnie!”

Rinnie was the nickname he’d given me when he first learned to speak because he couldn’t pronounce my full name, Catherine. I called him “Dax.” Not as a last resort, but because I felt it suited him better. To me, Daxton sounded so high and mighty. Like “I’m the heir to the Fairchild fortune” high and mighty. While we aristocrats strove to procure an abundance of riches, it was thought unseemly for us to boast of our attainment.

As Helene had warned, puddles of mud pocked the cobblestone drive. I clutched the skirt of my pale blue dinner gown and hiked it to my knees to keep it from getting soiled as I ran. Of all my garments, this frock was my favorite. The fine curves of intricate lace trim on the bodice disguised the unfortunate fact that at eighteen, my figure resembled that of a young man more than it did a grown woman. As fraternal twins, Dax and I had a lot more in common than I would have liked. While I was fond of my sandy-blond hair, and eyes the hue of a midwinter’s sky, I loathed my lankiness. Without my elaborate feminine updo and dress, I could easily pass for Dax—provided one dismissed my lazy eye.

Up ahead, the porter unhitched the iron gates, and Father’s coach bounded up the drive.

The shades on the cab were partially drawn to indicate he’d been resting—a wise endeavor. Until mid-August, sleep would come to him—to us all—in short supply. London’s social season commenced in two days. As royalty, we were guaranteed invitations to society’s finest dinners, teas, and charitable events, including our coming-out ball. Father had chosen to host the event to give my brother and me an advantage over the young men and women our age and rank who had also become eligible to marry. As Father’s heir, Dax wouldn’t want for prospects.

I, however, being female and an aristocrat, was at the mercy of society’s most fickle men. Graciously, Father had agreed to settle on me a one-million-pound dowry to increase my chances of marrying well.

The carriage shuddered to a halt at the castle entrance, where the footman drew open the door to the cab. Father hopped out and onto the drive, extending his arms outward.

“Children!” he called to us merrily. I was the first to embrace him. Dax was about to join in, when a shifting in the carriage caught his eye.

He froze.

My gaze trailed his, to the pale foot encased in an ivory satin slipper touching down on the retractable step. Next, a yellow bell skirt flared outward as the second slipper touched down. Then a dainty gloved hand clasped the doorframe, and a young woman poked her bonneted head out of the carriage. She glanced our way, offering us a full view of her heart-shaped porcelain face.

Dax and I gasped.

Her irises were as black as a scandalous secret, her lips kissed with a delicate rose hue that looked stamped on. Even her cheeks were perfectly flushed at the apples with a similar effect. In short, she was the most well put-together young woman we’d ever seen. Not a single stitch was out of place, including her raven hair, which she’d styled in a braided chignon and pinned in place at the nape of her neck.

Father swiveled around to confront the object of our stares. “Ah, my dear.” He glided over to his companion and led her carefully onto the cobblestone drive. “This,” he raised the young woman’s arm as if she were a trophy, “is Miss Emelia Charpentier.”

Dax gurgled as though he were ingesting a delicious pie rather than the young woman’s moniker. Springing over to her, he seized her free hand to kiss, when her small wristlet purse slipped from beneath her cuff and swung outward. It bopped Dax in the eye and jingled triumphantly, having stopped his lips short of gracing her hand.

Yowling, Dax staggered backward, favoring his wound with a good rubbing.

“Yet again?” Father chuckled. Generally, I would have laughed with him, but I was stunned silent by the lovely stranger he’d brought home, and by his next words. “Emelia will be staying with us, from here on out.” He grinned in a way that made him look ten years younger, and a whole lot pluckier than when he’d left Davenport for France. “There you have it. The magnificent surprise I promised you, Catherine. Happy Birthday!”

I gulped down my protest, triggering a hacking cough. Emelia was the “splendid gift” Father had assured me would eclipse all other gifts he’d bestowed upon me in my lifetime? Who exactly was this woman? Could she have been the reason for his lengthy stay in Paris? He’d ventured there countless times before, but always for business, or so he’d claimed. Had he lied? All this time, had he been visiting her?

My head whirled like a spinning top. More than anything, I wanted Father to be happy, but with someone his own age, not with a woman young enough to pass for my eldest sister. Someone we had the chance to familiarize ourselves with over time. Someone who wasn’t quite so…unyielding in appearance. I recalled Helene’s remark of how a woman should present herself the way she intended to present her husband’s household. If this were true, there would be no room for mistakes at Davenport if Emelia ran it.

Father noted my distress. “No, no, no,” he said with a chuckle.

I hadn’t needed to ask, “Is she to be your wife?” My expression said it all, it always did. I was terrible at hiding my emotions.

Dax didn’t even blink, as if for fear Emelia would vanish in a puff of smoke.

Father said, “Emelia is to be your companion, Catherine.”

“My—?” He may as well have hit me with a paving stone, because my face contorted in that way.

Swathing his arm around my waist, Father pulled me aside. “My dear,” he murmured so that only I could hear him. “You’re to be officially presented to society. You need a woman to guide you. Someone with proper breeding. With your mother gone—”

“Helene has proper breeding.”

Father chuckled. “Darling, capable as Helene may be, and as much as we all adore her, I can hardly see her dancing the quadrille at the ball.”

The visual he’d stirred of Helene floundering on the dance floor made me giggle. Her portly stature hampered her ability to exude any physical grace.

“True,” I replied. However, in reconsidering Emelia, I decided she was better fit for leading the French Foreign Legion than attending to me. In that regard, Father could rest easy. With her at my side, he needn’t fear me compromising my reputation to secure a suitable engagement. She would keep me in line. But would she extract all the fun out of courting?

Until now, I’d never questioned Father’s judgment. He’d always had my best interests at heart, and rarely held me back, aside from the time he refused to cater to my fourteen-year-old obsession to perform in Dion Boucicault’s London Assurance. The play so did move me that afterward I barricaded myself in the dressing room, where I vowed to remain until the show’s producer cast me as Grace. The cranky old man was anything but obliging. Rather, he sent for the constable, who broke down the door and dragged me back to my furious father, who then barred me from the theatre for months.

Father tugged on a grin, as if he were recalling this same memory. Enough time must have passed that he now found humor in it. “Emelia is also keen to make a respectable match. Perhaps you two could be of use to one another? Share your secrets of the trade, so to speak.”

I couldn’t think of a single secret I would share with her.

“It’s settled.” Father kissed my forehead and gently unhanded me. “Now you and Emelia can get acquainted with one another.” He motioned to the tower on the far left side of the castle. “She’s to have your mother’s old sitting room.”

He may as well have punctured my lungs; his words took my breath away. He’d offered Emelia, a virtual stranger, my deceased mother’s room, our most cherished possession?

“Father, you said that space is off limits to anyone but our immediate family, so as to preserve Mother’s memory.”

“I think it’s high time we breathe new life into it, don’t you agree?” He crooked his head as a plea for my support, or, rather, my surrender. “Besides, the light in that room is perfect, and it’s the quietest in the castle.” He nodded proudly in the direction of our French guest. “Emelia is a writer.”

“Fashion reporter,” she amended with a tight smile.

“Pish tosh.” He waved off her modesty. “It’s a paying position, and a respectable one to boot. From what I hear, the Lady’s Fashion Repository is the Bronte of fashion society. Ripe with artistic passion and originality.”

Somewhere between Paris and London, Father must have been the victim of a literary blow to the head. The Brontë sisters, Charlotte and Margaret, would have found his comparison repellent. Emily would have turned over in her grave. I was reeling from it.

“People are much like books, Catherine,” Father reminded me. His eyes were as black as pitch, capped with a set of dark, determined brows that became his prominent feature whenever he strove to make a point. “We must never judge them by their cover—or their titles.”

Or lack thereof.

Frowning, I murmured, “Yes, Father.”

“Off you go.” With a clap of his hands he signaled for my dismissal and for the footmen to gather the luggage. Then he set off with Dax for his private library.

“Follow me,” I grudgingly ordered our willowy guest. I plodded into the castle and up the main staircase, to the center landing. There, I bore left and climbed the next staircase, which led to the wing of the castle where my bedroom, several guestrooms, and Mother’s sitting room were situated.

The clicking of Emelia’s heels resounded behind me like the rat-tat-tatting of drums before an execution. Mother died when I was minutes old. I never really knew her, but having her old room available for me to visit day or night made me feel as though we were connected. Now a complete stranger, my “birthday gift” had severed that precious connection, on Father’s orders.

Pausing at the last door to our left, the entrance to the tower at the far end of the corridor, I clicked open the access…and balked at the scene that unfolded before me.

All of my mother’s modest Romantic era fittings were gone, replaced with ornate French Empire-style furnishings in multi-colored woods. Blood-red roses bloomed in etched glass vases where delicate white lilies in porcelain pots had once grown. Even Mother’s personal effects—her sketches, books, pens, and letters—had been weeded out. Most disturbing was the absence of her portrait above the fireplace mantel. In its place now hung a painting of a shifty-eyed blond woman cloaked in a red off-the-shoulder gown and a piling of gaudy jewels.

Not until Emelia said, “Zat is Becky Sharp” did I realize I was staring at the canvas, half-expecting the woman to leap out of it. “She is ze anti- ’ero in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, my favorite novel. I ’ad it commissioned and sent ahead. Do you like it?”

Hypnotized by Becky’s calculating green eyes, I inadvertently nodded yes. I’d never seen a picture more alive, or more disturbing. If Becky were a real person, I wouldn’t befriend her. Rather, I would turn and run in the opposite direction as fast as my legs would carry me. In Thackeray’s novel, Becky manipulated and deceived all whom she encountered in her quest for riches, yet Emelia had set her on a proverbial pedestal. I couldn’t think of a single civilized person who would display a deceitful figure so proudly.

“My lady?” the footman prompted, jolting me out of my pondering. “Might you allow me to pass through?” He idled in the doorway, waiting for me to clear the way so he could tote Emelia’s luggage into the room. I shuffled aside while appraising the leather bags he carried and the camel-colored trunk another footman wheeled in behind him.

“My books,” Emelia said of the trunk secured by three tarnished locks. “Put zem over zere.” She directed the second footman to the rows of empty shelves lining the back wall. Well, nearly empty shelves. A rosewood antique sewing box graced the center. I breezed over to claim my last earthly connection to my mother, gripping the box by its ornate metal handles. “The servants must have forgotten to—”

“No!” Emelia erupted, clutching her necklace. “Ze box stays.”

Her outburst stunned me silent. What could she possibly want with a weathered, locked wooden box branded with the Fairchild crest?

“It stays,” she repeated, slicing her hand through the air with chilling finality.

I immediately released the box. No one had ever addressed me with such menacing threat, particularly over a useless trinket. Shuffling backward toward the exit, I reassessed the portrait of Becky, and it dawned on me—she and Emelia may have been worlds apart in appearance, but they were one in manner.

Once clear of the threshold, I wheeled around and rushed off to the library. I had to talk some sense into Father. Not only had he hired me a companion whose company I wouldn’t keep if she were stitched to my backside, he’d bequeathed her my mother’s sacred space, which, without warning, he’d had the servants strip to make room for Emelia’s things. Every trace of my mother was gone. All but—

“Mother’s sewing box!” I cried, bursting into the library. I clutched my chest, which ached so badly, I feared it would split open from the stress. “Emelia’s taken it!”

Father, seated in his favorite armchair, across from Dax, rose up and strutted over to me, puffing on his cigar. “Tut, tut, my dear.” He patted my head. “Emelia is one of us now. You must welcome her as you would a dear sister. Consider the box our gift to her.”

I tried to object, but couldn’t get my mouth around the words. What argument could I give for refusing his request? It wasn’t as if he’d plucked the girl off the streets. Or had he? He rather had a passion for rescuing the downtrodden. Our entire staff had fallen on hard times and were unfit for hire even as matchstick-makers when Father appointed them to our household. He’d spent months training each servant until each one made him proud. Perhaps he considered Miss Emelia his most challenging acquisition.

Father took a pull of his cigar. “She’s a lovely woman, and quite knowledgeable of the inner workings of society. I believe you two will become fast friends.”

Had he read Vanity Fair, he would have considered differently. Alas, he didn’t waste time on such “frivolities,” as he called them. He read “handy” literature, such as the daily news, politics, and poetry. Why he’d likened The Lady’s Repository to the Bronte sisters’ works I could only imagine.

I looked to Dax with hope that he would speak up in my name and bring Father to his senses, but Dax was lost in his newfound manhood, gulping down a cup of brandy and pouring himself another. This was the first grown-up drink he hadn’t had to sneak from Father’s cabinets and later bribe the servants to replace.

My heart prickled with envy when I spotted the object he cradled in his lap—a full gold mask painted with black music staves and raised silver swirls. A priceless family heirloom passed down from one heir of Davenport to the next for eight generations.

The heir was always a man.

When my mother, the eldest of five children, all girls, married my father, her father bequeathed the mask to him until Mother’s eldest male child came of age. Now eighteen, Dax had officially inherited the mask. Once he wed, he would officially control the estate.

“Birthday gift,” Dax said, grinning as he swung the mask before me like a pendulum. My eyes swayed with it, and my expression soured. Although Dax and I were twins, Mother birthed me minutes before him. Had I been born a boy, that mask would belong to me, as would all of Davenport.

Father gave me a proud sideways squeeze. “Doesn’t seem fair, does it? You get to keep company with the electrifying Emelia, while Dax clings to that lifeless, old covering.”

Old the mask may have been, but lifeless it was not. Now that I’d gotten a closer look at it, it appeared to want nothing to do with Dax, with any of us. It was almost as if the mask believed it belonged to someone else entirely.

© 2015 Lowvee Cole. All rights reserved.

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