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

consigned to the country this last year to mourn a man who’s likely to return at any hour, though I’ve given Potsman instructions not to receive your uncle when he arrives. Haven’t I?”
    “Indeed, milady,” he answered, then offered Clarissa an arch glance. “Now that Miss Clarie is arrived, you shall have more pleasant things to occupy you.”
    Clarissa studied her aunt with a puzzling frown. “Surely you don’t—that is, I was given to understand that Uncle Quentin was no longer … alive.” The final word was scarcely audible.
    “He’ll not think himself blessed to be among the living when he dares show his face here, I can tell you! But that is not why I sent for you.” Heloise turned her head suddenly toward the door. “Are you still here, Potsman? Then make yourself useful. My niece would like her tea, while I’m in need of a sherry.”
    “Two sherries, if you please,” Clarissa amended the request.
    Heloise patted her hand. “That’s my gel. Two sherries, Potsman, and no fiddling with them. I detest watered spirits.”
    “Very well, milady,” the put-upon majordomo murmured, though he never watered the sherry. She did.
    When the door closed, Heloise reached out and grasped her niece’s hand tightly. “I intend to keep you with me a very long time, Clarie. Now begin at the beginning and tell me everything that has occurred since I last saw you. I want to know all.”
    Clarissa did as her aunt requested, filling in the last years in such detail that candles had to be lit before she was done. She faltered only once, a spasm of pain crossing her features when she spoke of her father’s last days.
    A campaigner of the old school, Major General the Honorable John Holton had stayed to command his forces on the Peninsula when Wellington would gladly have seen him honorably retired following a severe wounding that made it impossible for him to sit astride a horse. Yet his failing health had led him to seek security for Clarissa in the form of a husband. When Lieutenant Evelyn Willoughby transferred into his unit, he decided he had found the man.
    “I could not refuse Father, ill as he was,” Clarissa admitted. “A month later they were both killed in battle,” she concluded a little forlornly. Hoping to evade her aunt’s sharp gaze, she reached out to break a tender crumb from one of the cake slices Potsman had brought in with the sherry.
    Heloise listened carefully to her niece’s recitation and so did not miss what she had tried so carefully to disguise. Her father’s and husband’s deaths were not the only cause of Clarissa’s misery. “That marriage should never have taken place.” Her aunt’s forceful declaration brought Clarissa’s chin up. Heloise said more kindly, “I adored your papa, God rest his soul, but to marry you off without a thought to your desires? Pain must have addled his brain. Holtons don’t marry for protection, we’ve wealth enough to protect us. Neither do we wed for respectability. That we’ve never had. Holtons marry for love!”
    Clarissa smiled, forbearing to mention that her aunt was a Holton only through marriage. Of course, the marriage formed yet another notorious episode in Holton history. Twenty-five years earlier the Viscount of Arbuthnott had plucked Heloise Cox, a parson’s daughter, off the operatic stage at London and wed her. The scandal had rocked Georgian London with delight.
    “What do you propose to do now?” Heloise asked, watching her niece from beneath red-gold lashes.
    “Three days ago I could not have said,” Clarissa admitted, “but during my journey a solution came to me. I shall take the money left me by my father and open a school for young ladies.”
    “Fidget with other people’s children?” Heloise’s voice rose alarmingly. “My dear child, you’ve not the temperament for such a venture. Think of it. Any skill or pretense to manners you’re able to squeeze into their puddingheads will be accepted by their parents