A Difficult Disguise by Kasey Michaels Read Free Book Online

perished, my dream intact, and not burdened you with my ungrateful reaction to your splendid good taste.”
    “Then you do like it!” Aunt Belleville exclaimed, clapping her hands as her conformable mind took in only what it wished to hear. “I knew you would. But I understand how you are feeling, my boy. I once had a gown, a lovely pink satin with little bits of lace tacked all along the scalloped hem, that I tried to duplicate in green, everything the same down to the last scallop.” She shrugged, eloquently spreading her hands. “It wasn’t the same, of course. It was the pink or nothing.”
    “I’m so pleased that you understand, Aunt,” Fletcher said, grinning triumphantly at Beck,  who, mentally kicking himself for allowing Fletcher’s single failure make him believe the man had lost his unerring touch in dealing with females, reached into his pocket to withdraw a guinea and place it in Fletcher’s outstretched hand. “Thank you, Beck,” he said quietly, slipping the coin into his own pocket. “I shan’t so insult you as to bite on it first to see if it is genuine.”
    Aunt Belleville, who had been in the midst of fanning herself with a lace handkerchief and therefore thankfully hadn’t noticed this last exchange, sat forward to stare at her nephew. “Fletcher,” she began in a quavering voice, “why are you home? There is a most wonderful party going on in London. I know that because, even way up here, away from everything, we have heard about it. The princes and princesses, the parties, the fetes... Are you ill?” She wiggled herself forward even farther, to sit perched on the very end of the chair. “Of course you are ill! Oh, dear, all that festivity, all the rich food, and too much drink as well, I should suppose. You’re burnt to the socket. Yes, I see it now. You have a certain drained look to you, hasn’t he, Beck? See it”—her own eyes narrowed as she pointed to Fletcher—“right there, around the eyes?”
    Beck, who knew it was time and more that he got a little of his own back, leaned across the settee to peer into his employer’s eyes. “Yes, yes, Miss Belleville, you’re right. I see it too.” He turned to look at the woman. “What do you think? A good dose of salts might do the trick.” He turned back to Fletcher, his face a study in concerned condemnation. “And you wanted to go haring about the countryside, sleeping outside and eating as catch can. Shame on you, Fletch.”

Chapter 3

    I t hadn’t been easy, but Fletcher had finally convinced his aunt that, contrary to what he privately believed to be the woman’s fondest hope, he was not in fact sickening for something and in need of her ministrations. Even more difficult to bring home to the woman was his reasoning for abandoning her at first light to go traveling through the Lake District on horseback with naught but a groom to accompany him.
    In the first place, she declared, ever since overseas travel had suffered such a dreary setback during the war, the district had been inundated with flighty young men taking walking tours and otherwise using the excuse of sightseeing for all sorts of rumpus-making in the area. As a result, anything even vaguely interesting left to see, Aunt Belleville reasoned, would be overrun with young dandies on a spree, and Fletcher wouldn’t like that above half, now, would he?
    And in the second place, Aunt Belleville had declared rationally, hadn’t her dear nephew just driven through a good part of the district in order to arrive at Lakeview, which was in nearly the exact center of the area? How many hills and cows and sheep did one man need to see before he could feel satisfied he had seen enough, for goodness’ sake? The whole idea did not make sense to the woman.
    Beck, of course, had been less than no help at all, taking Aunt Belleville’s side with a joyful perverseness that had left Fletcher longing to land him a facer. He had pointed out that the owner of Lakeview should