Page 1 of Unmasked by the Marquess
Chapter One
Alistair ran his finger once more along the neatly penned column of sums his secretary had left on his desk. This was what respectability looked like: a ledger filled with black ink, maintained by a servant whose wages had been paid on time.
He would never tire of seeing the numbers do what he wanted them to do, what theyoughtto do out of sheer decency and moral fortitude. Here it was, plain numerical proof that the marquessate had—finally—more money coming in than it had going out. Not long ago this very library was besieged by a steady stream of his late father’s creditors and mistresses and assorted other disgraceful hangers-on, all demanding a piece of the badly picked-over pie. But now Alistair de Lacey, eighth Marquess of Pembroke, could add financial solvency to the list of qualities that made him the model of propriety.
This pleasant train of thought was interrupted by the sound of an apologetic cough coming from the doorway.
“Hopkins?” Alistair asked, looking up.
“A person has called, my lord.” The butler fairly radiated distress. “I took the liberty of showing her into the morning room.”
Her?It couldn’t be any of his aunts, because those formidable ladies would have barged right into the library. Alistair felt his heart sink. “Dare I ask?”
“Mrs. Allenby, my lord,” Hopkins intoned, as if every syllable pained him to utter.
Well might he look pained. Mrs. Allenby, indeed. She was the most notorious of his late father’s mistresses and if there was one thing Alistair had learned in the years since his father’s death, it was that the arrival of any of these doxies inevitably presaged an entry in red ink in the ledger that sat before him.
And now she was sitting in the morning room? The same morning room his mother had once used to receive callers? Good Lord, no. Not that he could think of a more suitable place for that woman to be brought.
“Send her up here, if you will, Hopkins.”
A moment later, a woman mortifyingly close to his own age swept into the library. “Heavens, Pembroke, but you’re shut up in a veritable tomb,” she said, as if it could possibly be any of her business. “You’ll ruin your eyes trying to read in the dark.” And then she actually had the presumption to draw back one of the curtains, letting a broad shaft of sunlight into the room.
Alistair was momentarily blinded by the unexpected brightness. Motes of dust danced in the light, making him uncomfortably aware that his servants were not doing an adequate job with the cleaning, and also that perhaps the room had been a trifle dark after all.
“Do take a seat,” he offered, but only after she had already dropped gracefully into one of the chairs near the fire.
The years had been reprehensibly kind to Portia Allenby, and Alistair felt suddenly conscious that the same could not be said for himself. She had no gray in her jet-black hair and no need for spectacles. The subdued half mourning she had adopted after his father’s death made her look less like a harlot who had been acquired by the late marquess on a drunken spree across the continent some eighteen years ago, and more like a decent widow.
“I’ll not waste your time, Pembroke. I’m here about Amelia.”
“Amelia,” Alistair repeated slowly, as if trying that word out for the first time.
“My eldest daughter,” she clarified, patiently playing along with Alistair’s feigned ignorance.Your sister,she didn’t need to add.
“And which one is she?” Alistair drummed his fingers on the desk. “The ginger one with the freckles?” All the Allenby girls were ginger-haired and freckled, having had the great misfortune to take after the late marquess rather than their beautiful mother.
Mrs. Allenby ignored his rudeness. “She’s eighteen. I’d like for her to make a proper come out.”
So she wanted money. No surprise there. “My dear lady,” he said frostily, “you cannot possibly need for money. My father saw to it that you and your children were amply provided for.” In fact, his father had spent the last months of his life seeing to little else, selling and mortgaging everything not nailed down in order to keep this woman and the children he had sired on her in suitably grand style.
“You’re quite right, Pembroke, I don’t need a farthing.” She smoothed the dove-gray silk of her gown across her lap, whether out of self-consciousness or in order to emphasize how well-lined her coffers were, Alistair could not guess. “What I hoped was that you could arrange for Amelia to be invited to a dinner or two.” She smiled, as if Alistair ought to be relieved to hear this request. “Even a tea or a luncheon would go a long way.”
Alistair was momentarily speechless. He removed his spectacles and carefully polished them on his handkerchief before tucking them into his pocket. “Surely I have mistaken you. I have no doubt that among your numerous acquaintances you could find someone willing to invite your daughter to festivities of any kind.” The woman ran a monthly salon, for God’s sake. She was firmly, infuriatingly located right on the fringes of decent society. Every poet and radical, not to mention every gently born person with a penchant for libertinism, visited her drawing room. Alistair had to positively go out of his way to avoid her.
“You’re quite right,” she replied blithely, as if insensible to the insult. “The problem is that she’s had too many of those invitations. She’s in a fair way to becoming a bluestocking, not to put too fine a point on it. I hope that a few evenings spent in, ah, more exalted company will give her mind a different turn.”
Had she just suggested that her own associates were too serious-minded for a young girl? It was almost laughable. But not as laughable as the idea that Alistair ought to lend his countenance to the debut of any daughter of the notorious Mrs. Allenby, regardless of whose by-blow the child was. “My dear lady, you cannot expect—”
“Goodness, Pembroke. I’m not asking for her to be presented at court, or for vouchers to Almack’s. I was hoping you could prevail on one of Ned’s sisters to invite her to dinner.” If she were aware of what it did to Alistair to hear his father referred to thusly, she did not show it. “The old Duke of Devonshire acknowledged his mistress’s child, you know. It can’t reflect poorly on you or your aunts to throw my children a few crumbs.”
So now, after bringing his father to the brink of disgrace and ruin, she was an expert on what would or would not reflect poorly on a man, was she? The mind simply boggled.
“Of course I wouldn’t expect to attend with her,” she continued.
He reared back in his chair. “Good God, I should think not.”
Only then did she evidently grasp that she was not about to prevail. “I only meant that I would engage a suitable chaperone. But I see that I’ve bothered you for no reason.” She rose to her feet with an audible swish of costly silks. “I wish you well, Pembroke.”
