House of Masques Read Online Free Page B

on her right. A gloom-filled room with the furniture shrouded beneath green drapes. Another door. An unused room, empty.
    A clatter drew her to the end of the hallway and she pushed open the last door. A black coal stove crouched to her left. Cupboards clustered along one wall. A pump protruded over the sink. Josiah sat behind a bare wooden table sipping coffee.
    He smiled.
    â€œGood morning,” he said. “Are you ready to accept my proposal?”
    Kathleen sighed. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I accept.”

Chapter Three
    The room was quiet. From a great distance, Kathleen heard the faint warning cry of a steamboat whistle.
    Josiah’s chair scraped on the wood floor. Kathleen stepped back. He rose and held his cup aloft as he would a glass of wine, his slender fingers encircling the rim.
    â€œI propose a toast,” he said. “To the forthcoming meeting of Miss Kathleen Donley and Captain Charles Worthington.” He raised the cup and drank. “May it prove to be both fateful and fatal.”
    Again he lifted the cup. “Another toast. To the long and amicable association of Mr. Josiah Gorman and Miss Donley.”
    He stared down at her and she found no warmth in his smile. “An association commenced today, the third of July, eighteen hundred and seventy one, and lasting…forever.”
    He finished the coffee in a single swallow and hurled the cup against the stove where it shattered into a thousand pieces. She stared at him, open-mouthed, then stooped beside the stove.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” he demanded.
    â€œPicking up the china,” she told him.
    â€œLeave the china,” he said. “You’re not a servant girl any longer.”
    She stood slowly. How should I take this man? she wondered. He was like no one she had ever known.
    Josiah turned from her and walked to a shelf beside the window where five brass bells, no two alike, sat ranged in order of size. He grasped the largest, some six inches from lip to crown. The clapper clanged harshly in her ears.
    â€œDonley,” he muttered. “Donley.” He repeated the word with distaste. “We must do something about your name.”
    A heavy, gray-haired woman appeared in the doorway. The first servant I’ve seen , Kathleen realized.
    â€œWe leave early tomorrow morning,” Josiah told the woman. Kathleen’s breathing quickened. “Tell Miss Clarissa,” he went on, “she will go and so will our guest, Miss Donley. To the Worthington Estate. I’ll be traveling with them as far as Newburgh.” The woman nodded and left.
    â€œWe’ve very little time.” He faced Kathleen, and in the daylight she could see the lines around his mouth and eyes and the white strands curling amid his gray hair. “Eight days, Kathleen,” he told her. “You’ll have the eight days I’m in Washington.”
    â€œYou won’t be with me?”
    â€œNo. Impossible. I don’t have the time.”
    â€œAn-and,” she stammered, “if I don’t succeed in eight days?”
    He shrugged. “I’ll have kept my part of the bargain and I’ll expect you to keep yours. But you will succeed. Somehow I’ll find a way to have you meet Captain Worthington and let you get to know him. I don’t yet know how, but I will.”
    His brown eyes held hers and she nodded. She believed in him. “You will,” she said.
    Motioning Kathleen to follow, he strode from the room and down a back stairs to a door at the rear of the house opening onto a flatland by the river. He led her along a path through an apple orchard, the trees old and untended, the fruit small, misshapen.
    The horses skittered uneasily when they entered the stable, neighing, hooves clattering on the wooden floor. Josiah found the hostler in the tack room and ordered the coach readied for the next morning. He swung about without waiting for a reply and hurried back to the