The Madcap Masquerade by Nadine Miller Page B

bread and spread it with the bacon grease Maeve had poured from the skillet before cooking her eggs. She plopped back down in her chair, took a healthy bite and regarded Maeve solemnly. “My point is, Missy, you’d be smart to pin the squire down and find out what kind of flim-flam he’s up to here—for your sake as well as Miss Meg’s.”
    Maeve studied the older woman’s face with anxious eyes. “Why do you say that?”
    “Think on it,” Mrs. Pinkert said between chews. “If knowing what she did about that land grant, Miss Meg still couldn’t bring herself to show up at her betrothal ball, it don’t seem too likely she’s planning on coming back for her wedding.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    M aeve spent the balance of the morning in a state of nervous agitation, touring the house accompanied by Mrs. Pinkert and the two old hounds who’d met her at the door when she’d arrived at Barrington Hall. She had no real interest in her father’s manor house, but it helped pass the time until he put in an appearance. She fully intended to confront him with the new knowledge she’d acquired regarding the marriage he’d arranged between Meg and the earl; she simply had to determine how to do so without revealing Mrs. Pinkert’s role.
    Most of the rooms in the rambling manor house had been closed off and the furniture draped with Holland covers. The few rooms the squire used were furnished with massive chairs and couches, all upholstered in a faded brownish damask depicting one hunting scene or another.
    The same smell of stale tobacco smoke and dog that had assailed Maeve’s nostrils when she’d stepped into the entry way two days earlier still permeated every room in the lived-in portion of the house, with the exception of one room. Unlocking a door on the second floor, Mrs. Pinkert led Maeve into what she called “Miss Meg’s music room. The sparsely furnished salon was sparkling clean, free of odor and like Meg’s bedchamber, amazingly bright and cheerful, considering the dark ambience of the rest of the manor house.
    It was the first rewarding moment Maeve had experienced in an otherwise grimly frustrating morning. For sitting in the very center of the room was a pianoforte. “Miss Meg locks herself in here by the hour,” Mrs. Pinkert confided. “Sometimes I stand out in the hall listening to the pretty tunes she plays.”
    Maeve beamed at the genial housekeeper. “At last I find something my sister and I have in common.” Seating herself on the bench, she ran her fingers over the keys, and grinned happily. “For I, too, love music and studied a number of years with a friend of my mother’s, who claimed he was once Louis XVI’s court musician. If you don’t mind, I’d just as soon end my tour here. I haven’t had a chance to play since I left London, and my fingers are itching to try out this pianoforte.”
    She glanced up at Mrs. Pinkert. “However, I do need to speak to the squire as soon as possible. Would you please be kind enough to send for me when he leaves his bedchamber?”
    “He ain’t sleeping in his bed. He’s curled up in the kennel with his pack of hounds, like he always does when he’s four sheets to the wind. I sometimes think there’s more hound blood than human in that man’s veins.”
    “But how can that be when the hounds are lying here at my feet,” Maeve asked.
    “These two old duffers?” Mrs. Pinkert gave the largest of the dogs a nudge with the toe of her house slipper. “They’re too old to run with the pack, and if you’re wondering why they’re living in the house, it’s ‘cause squire thought t’would be too hard on their old bones to spend the winter in an unheated kennel. Of course, that was two years ago and he’s gotten so used to having them sleep on his bed every night, I doubt he’ll ever send them back to their proper quarters.”
    “Very well,” Maeve said patiently. “Please let me know when he comes in from the kennel.”
    “I’ll do that, Miss