Caprice: The Masqueraders Series - Book One Read Online Free PDF Page A

yellow marble columns climbed the main stairway while bronze railing mounts circled the opposite side. The sight of Dolick’s flamboyant entrance prompted her to say, “I’m glad to see that some things never change.”
    “As always, milady,” he answered with a resigned sigh. His mood altered as he noted her somber attire. “I—we—the staff, that is, were most distressed to learn of your loss.”
    “You’re very kind,” Clarissa replied, dismissing the sensitive topic of her husband with a slight frown. Her frown deepened. “You may tell me the truth, Potsman. Aunt Heloise wrote to me of her condition, yet I know how she detests any hint of maudlin display. You must prepare me. She is—well, is she sensible?”
    Since Lady Arbuthnott was never what some might call “sensible,” Potsman answered, “I believe you will find Lady Arbuthnott as usual.”
    When he had helped her out of her pelisse, she said, “I will go up at once, though I’m stained from two days of travel.”
    “As you wish,” he answered and, turning, led her through the entrance hall and up the main stairway toward Lady Arbuthnott’s rooms.
    Well acquainted with her aunt’s eccentric mode of viewing the world and its customs, Clarissa did not suggest that she be formally announced. Any other time, Aunt Heloise would have heard the post chaise in the lane before Potsman became aware of it, and known not only who was arriving but exactly how long it should take her to make her way upstairs.
    Potsman’s deferential knock at Lady Arbuthnott’s compartment door was instantly answered by the imperious cry, “Come in!”
    “She sounds amazingly fit,” Clarissa noted in surprise as the butler opened the door.
    “You’ve no idea,” said the majordomo, eyes rolling heavenward as he stepped aside.
    Clarissa took two steps into the room before coming to an abrupt halt.
    Lady Arbuthnott was seated on a chaise longue with her back to tall sunlit windows which highlighted her remarkable red-gold hair in a manner that suggested pure flame. Still strikingly handsome at that equivocal age known as the middle years, she wore a fashionable gown of pale-green silk whose high waist and low neckline showed to great advantage her once-celebrated bosom. Far from resembling a woman in the throes of mortal disease, she had rarely looked more lovely or alive.
    Raising a tortoiseshell lorgnette to her eyes, she subjected her niece to a thorough quizzing before speaking. “So, you’ve arrived at last, Clarissa. What a very naughty disobedient child you are. I should not forgive you for your six-year absence, but I am old and weak, much too sentimental.”
    Accustomed to her aunt’s sometimes stinging and unprovoked comments, Clarissa hurried across the room and threw loving arms about the older woman. “Oh, Aunt Heloise, I feared you were at death’s door!”
    “I should say not!” she returned as she embraced her niece. “Never been in finer fettle.” Yet her voice trembled over those words, moved by the sight of her niece to a joy and relief she would not admit. “Oh, but you are too slight, my dear, much too slight! Have your in-laws been keeping you on bread and water?”
    Smiling through her tears, Clarissa said, “For months I’ve had no appetite. No one has allowed me a moment’s impatience or anger. I must be all widow’s weeds and sighs. It’s been intolerable!”
    “I thought as much,” Heloise answered. “That is why I sent for you. I’ve been neglected. Six years is too long an absence, Clarie.”
    Clarissa drew back from her aunt. “You bamboozled me. I expected—” She searched her aunt’s seamless complexion for any sign of fatigue or lingering shadow of illness. “Your letter said you were ill.”
    “It never did!”
    “Then at least admit that it hinted at severe distress.”
    “I am severely distressed.” Laying a slender arm along the back of her chaise, Heloise reclined in an elegant sprawl. “I’ve been