Love in Disguise by Nina Coombs Pykare Read Free Book Online Page A

around.”
    Fancy, seeing the Earl of Morgane’s scarred face flash before her eyes, shivered. Certainly the Earl was not the sort one would wish for an enemy. He looked positively sinister with that scar and those mocking gray eyes.
    “Never mind, Ethel. We’ll be happy here. And if the neighbors don’t accept us - that’s their loss.”
    She pushed herself back from the table and smoothed down the gown of green-sprigged muslin that clung to her shapely figure. Though not a single soul had come to call in the several weeks they had lived in St. James’s Square, Fancy always dressed as though they might. “Where is Hercules?” she asked.
    “He’s around here somewheres,” replied Ethel, her hands flying to her ears as Fancy pursed her lips in a shrill whistle that caused more than one of the smart young footmen to shift nervously at his station.
    From a distant part of the house a clatter could be heard approaching and then Hercules slid to a halt only inches from a pedestal that held an expensive vase. Ethel shook her head. “That dog don’t belong in no house. He’s a sheep dog, he is. Ought to be outside somewheres minding sheep instead of eating us out of house and home.”
    “Now, Ethel.” Fancy patted the great dog’s shaggy head. “You know he has always earned his keep. It’s just that Mr. Kemble doesn’t think I need him backstage now.”
    Hercules’s eyes, behind their screen of shaggy brown and white hair, peered at each of them in turn as if asking for an explanation of the whistle. His great tail thumped the floor happily, to the imminent danger of the vase.
    “Come, Hercules,” said Fancy. “I’m going to study my lines in the sitting room and you shall keep me company.”
    Hercules, with a fond look at the doors that led outside, obediently followed her, and as she settled in a chair with the script the dog plopped himself at her feet with a sigh of reproach.
    Fancy scowled at him. “You silly dog, you needn’t look at me like that. I didn’t tell you to go running off to the Earl’s house in that stupid fashion. What did you want anyway?”
    In answer to this query Hercules merely opened one eye momentarily and then closed it again. Fancy laughed. The dog assuredly felt put upon because he was forced to remain indoors. But she was the one who had had to face the supercilious Earl.
    What a shame, she found herself thinking, that he was so excessively arrogant and toplofty. Even with that scar he was a very good-looking man - broad in the shoulders and lean in the hips. Every bit a man. If he had a better temper any woman would be pleased -
    Fancy caught herself and frowned. How absolutely ridiculous. To be thinking such thoughts about a man. And such a man. Besides, his temper was the vilest, and he was intolerably overbearing. No woman in her right mind would form a partiality for such a creature.
    With this settled, she picked up her script and began to study her lines. This was an off day for her since she did not appear in tonight’s performance and she must make the most of it. No time for sitting around thinking about a man who had rescued her and then scolded her like she was the merest chit.
    Fancy was pacing the floor sometime later, repeating her lines for Morton’s School of Reform, when the door knocker was heard. It was such an unusual sound that Fancy stopped in her tracks. It hardly seemed possible that someone would be coming to call. Yet assuredly someone had knocked.
    She found herself standing immobile, holding her breath, until she heard Henry say, “This way, milord.”
    Then the script began to rustle in her trembling fingers. What lord could be calling on her? She knew no lords except - Her heart seemed to flutter up into her throat.
    Then Henry was opening the door to the sitting room. “The Marquis of Castleford to see you, miss.”
    Fancy knew that Henry was carefully keeping all expression from his face, but something glittered in his eyes. “Thank