Moonlight Masquerade Read Online Free PDF Page A

and fresh, home-baked bread—plain fare,
but hearty—so that even now her stomach was fuller than she would
have liked it to be. She had scrubbed her face and hands at the
washstand in the corner, but still she felt dirty and
disheveled.
    She longed for morning and the bath she had
been promised. She’d soak for hours and hours, until her fingers
and toes resembled nothing more than soggy prunes, and then she
would wash her hair—three times—so that it squeaked as she pulled
her fingers through it.
    Just the thought of a bath had her hopping
down from the high bed to struggle into her dressing gown before
pacing up and down the carpet, a movement that was definitely
contrary to all her aunt’s warnings. Her activity also started up
the pain in her head, but she didn’t care. Unused to being ill or
injured, she was, now that she was conscious, a most uncooperative
patient.
    According to Nellis, she should be lying
quietly in her bed of pain, the covers tucked up beneath her chin,
not speaking except to utter an occasional moan or two, and sipping
weak broth while listening to bracing sermons her aunt read to her
from the prayer book she always carried in her reticule.
    But Christine couldn’t help herself. She
felt young, and healthy, and almost disgustingly fit. Besides, she
was unaccustomed to a sedentary life. She wanted to be on the move,
doing things—anything.
    Walking over to the window, she pulled back
the heavy draperies her aunt had closed even as she had begged for
them to remain open, to see that the snow had finally stopped and
the moon had come out. It was nearly a full moon, so that the
garden below her, clothed in what looked like fluffy white cotton
and glistening crystal, was nearly as bright as day. She pressed
her forehead against the windowpane, the cold from the glass
soothing her lingering headache.
    So this was Hawk’s Roost. It was pretty,
very pretty, even as her borrowed bedchamber, full of classic
furniture and fine antiques, was pretty. “Not pretty, you country
bumpkin,” she berated herself aloud. “It’s terribly, terribly modish . Goodness, Miss Denham, you will never take in
Society if you gurgle like a silly miss over anything with just a
touch of gilt on it.”
    A slight frown creased her forehead as she
thought of the Season that was to come. Aunt Nellis had been
filling her head for years with glowing tales of the goings-on in
London in the spring of each new year. It wasn’t that she was
averse to parties, or gorgeous ball gowns, or handsome gentlemen
paying her court. On the contrary, it sounded to be a good deal of
fun. Manderley was fairly isolated, and she longed for company more
her own age.
    It was the financing of the thing that
sprinkled her expectations with uncomfortable grains of guilt.
Christine’s father had left her well taken care of, if she was
careful, but her inheritance hadn’t stretched to cover the
tremendous cost of a London Season, at least not the sort of Season
her aunt desired for her.
    “I’ve had a sudden unexpected windfall,”
Aunt Nellis had told Christine cheerily, but it had been a lie. It
had been Aunt Nellis’s portion that had paid the rental on the town
house in Half Moon Street.
    Not only that, but Aunt Nellis’s treasured
pearl and ruby necklace and her generations-old diamond bracelet
that were traveling with them to the metropolis hidden among the
woman’s undergarments would pay for the many gowns Christine would
wear, the ribbons she would buy, the plays and operas she would
see, and even the food that would go into her mouth.
    Her aunt believed her niece to be unaware of
the sacrifices she was making, and Christine hadn’t been so cruel
as to tell her that she knew the source of their sudden good
fortune. But that didn’t mean Christine did not think about it.
    “I shall just have to marry the first rich
man who wants me,” she said into the quiet room, “so that I can pay
poor Aunt Nellis back for what she has done