The Madcap Masquerade Read Online Free

her outrageous terms—terms she would demand be in the form of a written and signed contract.
    Slowly and precisely she removed her worn gloves, finger by finger. She intended to write that contract herself, just as she intended to orchestrate every turn her life took from this minute forward. Painful and disillusioning as this past hour had been, it had taught her one very valuable lesson. She could trust no one except herself—and maybe, just maybe, the twin sister who was the other half of that self.
     
    Theodore Hampton, the eighth Earl of Lynley, rose from the bed of his mistress shortly before dawn and gathered up the shirt and breeches he’d so hurriedly tossed to the floor some six hours earlier. He dressed quickly, placed a farewell kiss on the forehead of the woman with whom he’d spent a vigorous and satisfying night and silently slipped from Sophie Whitcomb’s small, neat house before her neighbors wakened to the new day.
    He doubted there was a soul in the village who was not aware of his relationship with the voluptuous widow. Still, it would be the height of bad taste to be caught exiting his mistress’s domicile the day before the ball at which he was scheduled to announce his betrothal to his neighbor’s daughter.
    Mounting his horse, which he’d tethered behind the house, he set off for his nearby estate just as the first flush of rosy light painted the eastern sky. A picture of the mousy little creature his precarious financial position had forced him to agree to marry flashed through his mind, and something akin to panic gripped him.
    In all the years Meg Barrington had been his neighbor, he had exchanged less than a dozen words with her. Furthermore, when he’d tried to kiss her hand the day he’d offered for her, she’d cringed in horror and fled from his presence.
    “Meg is a wee bit shy,” her gargoyle of a father had explained when he’d signed the marriage contract. But how was a man supposed to build a marriage, much less produce an heir, with a woman as timid as that?
    Not for the first time, he cursed his father for his incompetent management of Ravenswood, an estate that had once been one of the richest and most productive in all of Kent. The illustrious house of Hampton had fallen low, indeed, to be forced to align itself with a loose screw like Squire Barrington and his attics-to-let daughter.
    In due time, he arrived at the Ravenswood stables, dismounted and handed his favorite stallion over to his head groom, who was well acquainted with his employer’s nocturnal habits. For a long moment, the earl stood watching the pale morning sun caress the mellow stone walls of the ancient manor house that was now his to maintain as seven generations of Hamptons before him had.
    “Whatever it takes to save Ravenswood from the auction block, I will do,” he vowed to himself as he strode toward the rear entrance that allowed him private egress to his suite of rooms on the third floor. Grimly, he reminded himself that he’d survived horrors during his five years on the Spanish Peninsula that were far worse than any miserable marriage might produce.
    And there were compensations. Sophie, for instance. Good sport that she was, Alderman Whitcomb’s generous-hearted widow had accepted his need to marry the Barrington heiress without a whimper—even assured him that as far as she was concerned, their “arrangement” need not be altered. After all, he would have more of the ready to see to her needs as well as those of Ravenswood.
    Then there was the London season, where he’d cut such a swath before purchasing his colors, despite the fact that, with his jet-black hair and dark eyes, he looked more like an Italian or Spaniard than an English aristocrat. It would be good to escape his work at Ravenswood, and his brainless bride, for a brief period each spring. He could visit his club, see his friends, look over the latest crop of opera dancers—partake of all the pleasures available to a