Jane Feather - [V Series] Read Free Page B

lodgings and servants; to slip away in the night to avoid the bailiff; to create a wardrobe out of thin air. In short, I would teach them all the elements for a successful masquerade. Just as I was taught.”
    The laughter had left her voice half way through the speech and Sebastian took her hand. “We’ll be avenged, Ju.”
    “For Father,” she said, lifting her head and taking a sip of her cognac. “Yes, we’ll be avenged for him.”
    Silently Sebastian joined her in the toast, and for a moment they both stared into the empty grate, remembering. Remembering and reaffirming their vow. Then Judith put the glass on a side table and stood. “I’m going to bed.” She kissed his cheek and the gesture reminded her of something that brought a glitter of determination to her eyes. “I’m in the mood to play with fire, Sebastian.”
    “Carrington?”
    She nodded. “The gentleman needs to be disarmed. He said he wouldn’t cry foul on us, but supposing he decided to alert people in London to beware of playing with you? If I can intrigue him … engage him in a flirtation … he’ll be less likely to concern himself with what you do at the tables.”
    Sebastian regarded his sister dubiously. “Are you a match for him?”
    Was she? For a minute she felt again the press of his fingers on her skin, saw again the sharp shrewdness in the black eyes, the unconciliatory slash of his mouth, the prominent jaw. But of course she was a match for any town beau. She knew things, had seen and done things, that had honed her wits to a keenness he would not be expecting.
    “Of course,” she declared confidently. “And there’ll be great satisfaction, I can tell you, in seeing him succumb as easily as his cousin did. It’ll teach him to be so high-handed.”
    Sebastian looked even more dubious. “I don’t like it when you mix motives like that. We’re so close to catching up with Gracemere, Judith. Don’t risk anything.”
    “I won’t, I promise. I’m just going to show the most honorable marquis that I don’t take kindly to insults.”
    “But if you arouse his curiosity, he’s going to want to know who we are and where we come from.”
    She shrugged. “So what? The usual fiction will satisfy him. We’re the children of an eccentric English gentleman of respectable though obscure lineage, recently deceased, who, after the death of his wife at a tragically early age, chose to travel the Continent for the rest of his life with us in tow.”
    “Instead of the truth,” Sebastian said. “That we’re the children of a disgraced Yorkshire squire, disinherited by his family, driven out of England by scandal and his wife’s subsequent suicide, forced to change his name and earn his bread at the gaming tables of the Continent.” The story rolled glibly off his tongue, but Judith knew her brother and could hear his pain; it was her own, too.
    “And he taught his children all he knew, so that from a horribly precocious age they were his enablers and assistants,” she finished for him.
    Sebastian shook his head. “Too harsh a truth for the delicate sensibilities of the Quality to handle, my dear.”
    “Just so.” Judith nodded with a return to briskness. “Don’t worry, Sebastian. Carrington won’t get so much as a sniff at the real story. I’ll invent some playful reason for that piece of dubious card play this evening. Mischief rather than need, I think. And if he doesn’t catch us at it again and I manage to charm him a bit, I’m sure he won’t mention it again.”
    “I’ve not yet met the man you can’t entangle when you put your mind to it,” Sebastian agreed, chuckling. “Just watching you at work is an everlasting delight.”
    “Wait until I turn my charms on Gracemere,” his sister said, blowing him a kiss. “That’ll be a treat, I promise you.”
    She went into her bedroom next door—a room as dingy as the parlor and none too clean. The landlord’sserving maid was less than thorough at her