Marquesses at the Masquerade

by Emily Greenwood

  “How can you form an opinion of a man whom I myself don’t know that well?”

  “Because he’s an idiot,” Tyne said. “A goddess admires him from afar, and he takes no notice. Trust me on this, for I am a god, and the workings of the mortal male are well known to me.” He was a fool, but a fool who was enjoying his evening for the first time in… years?

  “Do you fancy a particular lady?”

  They’d reached a portion of the street where not a single household had bothered to light a lamp. This was providential, because some admissions were more easily made under cover of darkness.

  “I notice my share of women,” he said. “And those ladies are lovely, and sweet, and could easily become dear, but because I never had to learn the art of romantic persuasion, I know not how to make my interest apparent. I know not, in fact, if my interest qualifies as genuine liking, loneliness, or the base urge that motivates a great deal of male foolishness.”

  Or something of all three.

  “You won’t learn the answer to that conundrum if you simply watch the ladies waltz by on the arms of other men,” Freya replied. “You can’t expect them to divine your thoughts by magic.”

  Miss Fletcher would have offered that sort of observation, and she would have been right. Again.

  “Is this where you live?” Tyne asked, for she’d brought them to a halt before a house from which not a single light shone.

  “My friend bides here.”

  Tyne took a moment to count how many houses lay between the closest door and the corner.

  “You advise me to make my feelings known,” he said. “In the manner of a plundering Norseman, I’ll do just that. I’d like to kiss you, if you’d be comfortable allowing me such a liberty on a deserted street at a quiet hour. I’ve enjoyed your company very much, Freya, and—”

  She mounted the steps that led to the covered porch, where the darkness was dense indeed. Tyne followed, and she passed him what could only be her mask.

  “Your plundering needs work, sir. Allow me to demonstrate.”

  She plucked off his mask and tossed it aside, then braced herself with a grip on Tyne’s shoulder, cupped his cheek with her free hand, and kissed him.

  * * *

  So this was adventure, to stroll down a darkened street with a strange gentleman, discussing highly personal subjects and wishing the night could go on forever.

  In the company of her tall escort, Lucy felt daring, bold, and oddly safe. With Thor, she wasn’t simply a governess owed the courtesies shown to a member of a marquess’s staff, she was a female to be protected against all perils.

  The greatest peril had become her own curiosity.

  Not the long-dormant curiosity of the eager girl. Lucy had weathered that risk with a dashing infantry captain named Giles Throckmorton III. She’d hoped for passion of mythic proportions and reaped only rumpled clothing, awkwardness, and some anxious days. Three weeks later she’d received a nigh-illegible letter from Giles releasing her from any obligation arising from “that dear, brief friendship.”

  For months, she’d pined and paced and considered writing back to him, protesting that she would wait, she could be patient, and they’d had more than friendship. Except… they hadn’t even had a friendship. They’d had a foolish, awkward moment. She had burned his letter years ago, when she’d learned that Giles had married a Portuguese lady and was growing grapes and raising children with her on the banks of the Douro.

  The curiosity that gripped Lucy now was more dangerous for being more mature. Thor raised philosophical questions: How much of Lucy’s yearning for male companionship was simply loneliness? She attributed loneliness to the Marquess of Tyne, but perhaps it belonged to her as well.

  Did his lordship even sense that he’d caught her interest, and what if he had? Was he politely ignoring her, for Tyne was unrelentingly polite? Was Lucy willing to embark on that trite convention of bad judgment, an affair with her employer?

  This conversation with Thor would stay with her long after she’d bid him good night, and later—under bright sunshine—she’d consider the conundrums he’d raised. Now, she’d send him on his way with a kiss.

  He was tall enough that Lucy had to go up on her toes to kiss him. He accommodated her by bending his head and taking her in his arms. The handle of his hammer hit the porch rug with a soft thump, and Lucy got a whiff of bay rum before she learned the true meaning of the verb to plunder.

  Thor’s strength was evident in the security of his embrace. He knew how to hold a woman, how to bring her body against his in a manner that offered shelter as well as intimacy. He was no green recruit to the ranks of manhood, but rather, a seasoned campaigner who could conquer by negotiation.

  Lucy pressed her lips to his and half missed her target, getting the corner of his mouth, which kicked up in a smile. He corrected her aim by settling his lips over hers—I’m here, you see?—a greeting and then a tease with his tongue.

  He tasted of cinnamon, from the stewed apples, and patience which was all him. Lucy gradually understood that she was being invited to explore as he did, his fingers tracing over her features and his tongue acquainting her with his mouth.

  She had fallen for the army captain’s clumsy charms, even knowing her soldier was more enthusiastic than skilled.

  Thor was skilled enough to hide his enthusiasm, to build Lucy’s interest instead. By the time she rested her forehead against his chest, she was hot and disoriented, and in no doubt that she was desired by a god.

  Who is he? His shirt was of the finest linen. His scent up close included the sweet smoke of beeswax candles. He came from means, he was well educated, and unlike Lucy, he had the leisure to regularly mingle with the fancy and the frivolous.

  His hand wandered her back, while Lucy tried to gather her wits and mostly failed.

  “We must part,” he said, “for the hour grows late, and lingering in London’s night shadows is never well advised. May I see you again?”

  He wasn’t asking to pay a call on her, and that was just as well, for his lordship’s housekeeper had been quite clear that Lucy was not to encourage the notice of any followers.

  “That might not be wise.” Though it would be adventurous and—with him—passionate.

  Thor turned loose of her and picked up his hammer. “Wasn’t it you who said I must make my sentiments known, madam? You who encouraged me to speak of my feelings lest opportunity be lost forever? I’m honestly a dull fellow. I’ll not be snatching you away to my mountain hall or plying you with mead until you’re lost to all sense. I’d thought another quiet stroll might appeal, or an ice at Gunter’s.”

  Lord Tyne took his daughters to Gunter’s, one of few venues in London where the genders were free to mix socially. If Tyne should get wind that Lucy was meeting with a gentleman, he’d be curious, at least.

  “The Lovers’ Walk,” she said. “Vauxhall, a fortnight hence at eleven of the clock. I’ll wear your cape.”

  “A fortnight?” Clearly, he’d hoped to see Lucy sooner, and that gratified more than it should.

  “If either of us should fail to appear, we’ll know that a single encounter will have to suffice. One of those charming young ladies might return your interest, and I might engage the notice of my busy, distant gentleman.”

  Though, how likely was that, when Lucy had bided under his lordship’s nose for months, and he’d done little more than hand her out of carriages and ask her to pass the teapot?

  A linkboy trotted past, the lamplight giving an instant’s illumination to an aquiline profile and hair curling with the evening damp.

  “We are to be prudent deities,” Thor said. “That ought to be a contradiction in terms.”

  She liked him. Liked his lively mind, his subtle humor, his skillful kisses. If nothing else, this evening had proved that she could like a man and that there was more to passion than she’d known with her randy captain.

  “I will be a prudent, impatient goddess for the next two weeks,�
� she said. “On that thought, I shall bid you good night.”

  Lucy had chosen this house because a pair of widowed sisters lived here. They would neither hear a conversation on their porch, nor spare the expense of candles kept lit through the night. They would assuredly keep their front door locked, however, and thus sending Thor on his way was imperative.

  He leaned down to kiss Lucy’s cheek. “Eleven of the clock, Vauxhall. Two weeks. Until then, I’ll see you in my dreams.”

  He strode off into the darkness, pausing only to scoop up his mask. She watched him go, waited another ten minutes, then found her mask and hurried down the walkway toward home.

  * * *

  “Do my eyes deceive, or has the Marquess of Tyne made a social call?” Lord Luddington asked, ambling to the sideboard. “Hair of the dog or tea?” He lifted the glass stopper from a decanter and let it clink back into place.

  “Neither,” Tyne replied, “though of course you should dose yourself with whatever medicinal will ease your present ailment. I trust you kept late hours last night, as usual?”

  Luddington had been the sole monk at the previous evening’s bacchanal. Sole, but hardly solitary.

  He pushed sandy-blond hair from his eyes and poured himself a tot of brandy. “The ladies at the masquerade were much in want of company, and my charitable nature had to oblige them. I didn’t see you there, but then, how can the blandishments of a masked ball compare with parliamentary bills regarding turnpike watermen?”

  “Without those watermen—”

  Luddington held up a hand. “Please, Tyne, no politics. I truly did overexert myself last night. The ladies were all agog about some chap who’d decked himself out as Thor. You never heard so much twittering and cooing about the size of a man’s hammer before, and nothing would do but they must compare… well, the night was long, so to speak.”

  Tyne had already returned the sledgehammer to the stable. “Thor, you say? Not very original.”

  “What would you know about originality? He had the hammer, the fur cape, the trews, the whole bit. Strode about the ballroom with his shirt half unbuttoned and sent the ladies into quite a stir. I reckon he went back to Valhalla with some toothsome shepherdess, for nobody knows who he was.”

  “A good-sized fellow?”

  Luddington peered at Tyne over the rim of his glass. “A bit taller than you, more broad-shouldered. More the strapping specimen, less the scholarly politician.”

  Insult warred with amusement, though Tyne had time for neither. Miss Fletcher had requested an interview with him before supper, and Tyne dared not be late.

  “You doubtless escorted a lady to the festivities. What did she make of the Norseman?”

  Tyne posed the question while peering out the window to the garden behind the house. Daffodils were making an effort, and the tulips weren’t far behind. He waited, his back turned to his host, and hoped for a name.

  “The plaguey female ran off. Some tipsy jockey told me she’d departed the premises with a woodsman or a barbarian of some sort, and my sister will tear a strip off my backside, for I didn’t see any woodsmen. Saw plenty of pillaging and sacking as the evening wore on, not that I’m complaining.”

  “Your sister dislikes woodsmen?”

  Luddington downed half his drink, then refilled his glass. “You don’t know Marianne. She entrusted some friend of hers to me, an acquaintance from finishing school, and then I lost her. Marianne frowns on brothers who lose her friends. I frown on me for losing her friend.”

  “Then Marianne ought not to send her friends to masquerades, where the entire point of the evening is to lose one’s identity. You don’t know the name of the female whom you lost?”

  Tyne had little acquaintance with Marianne Benton, though she’d made her come out a good ten years ago. If she was Freya’s contemporary, then Freya was a mature woman, a point that weighed in favor of keeping Tyne’s next appointment with her.

  “I wasn’t supposed to know who she was,” Luddington said. “I prefer not to be burdened with a lady’s secrets—or a shepherdess’s—for even Boxhaven’s masquerades are not monuments to strict propriety. Next time he holds one, you should go, Tyne. Do you good to get out and socialize with a friendly nymph or two.”

  Luddington gave him a bored look that suggested Tyne’s secret was being kept—for now.

  “I’ll bear your suggestion in mind, though a hammer strikes me as a particularly inane fashion accessory when a gentleman’s usual purpose is to stand up with the wallflowers. Good day, Luddington, and next year, consider escorting a Valkyrie instead of a shepherdess. I’ll leave you to your hair of the dog and show myself out.”

  Luddington gestured elegantly with his glass, spilling not a drop. “A pleasure, Tyne. As always.”

  Tyne made his way home, his steps taking him past the house where he’d kissed his goddess the night before. He’d been up early out of habit and taken a morning stroll through the back alleys of the neighborhood, pausing to inquire at the mews regarding the sixth house from the corner.

  A pair of devout older widows dwelled there—both stable boys had agreed. The ladies kept a pony cart for trips to Hounslow, where one of them had a son who was a schoolteacher. No young lady had ever bided with them, and the son was unmarried.

  Freya, in other words, had lied. Tyne did not care for dishonesty, but a lady was entitled to her privacy when a masked man asked for kisses in the dark. He hadn’t exactly been forthcoming himself.

  Her demeanor had suggested she’d have little patience with a dull marquess who could spend fifteen minutes debating which waistcoat to wear for a speech fewer than a dozen men would hear.

  He set aside thoughts of Freya, for another forthright female awaited Tyne in the family parlor, one whom he was equally unlikely to impress with his speeches, ledgers, and politics.

  “Miss Fletcher, good day.”

  She set aside her book and rose. “Your lordship.” The light in her eye suggested a battle was about to be joined, and Tyne barely refrained from smiling in anticipation.

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  The scent of England was always Giles Throckmorton’s first impression of home: briny and brisk regardless of the weather, with an undertone of ancient geology, as if the stony hills ringing Portsmouth lent an aged, unchanging bedrock to even the smell of the place.

  The languages he heard along the docks and in the coaching inn’s common were mostly English, with smatterings of French, other Continental tongues, and the occasional American accent. The variety would have been still greater in Portugal, for that nation had made seafaring even more a part of its soul than England had.

  “Good to be home again?” Giles’s brother, John, asked, stepping down from a smart traveling coach in the inn yard.

  “Always good to be home, but it’s beastly cold here.”

  John clapped him on the back. “This is a fine spring day, nearly hot, but every time you come home, you complain of the cold. Portugal has made you soft.”

  Portugal had made Giles desperate.

  He returned to England yearly, mostly to get away from his children, also to gain a respite from the alternating work and worry of the vineyard. He’d learned enough of the winemaker’s trade to realize wealth was accumulated over decades, if not generations. Worries accumulated overnight.

  “How are matters in Portugal?” John asked as Giles’s trunks were loaded onto the back of the coach.

  John was being tactful, but then, John was a diplomat, always haring off to some treaty negotiation or conference.

  “Matters in Portugal are difficult. The twins grow in mischievous tendencies as well as height, and the younger two follow the example of their elders. Without Catalina to mind the domestic concerns, I’m hard put to give the vineyards the attention they’re due.”

  “You were married to the lady for years. Of course you still miss her.”

  Giles missed Catalina’s ability to charm her father and brothers into as
sisting with the vineyard. He missed her management of the nursery and the household, however mercurial that management had been. He’d loved and admired his wife, and loved and admired the notion of building a vineyard empire with her.

  But more than a year after her passing, there was also much— much—Giles did not miss about her. The guilt of that admission was tempered by the notion that if the boot had been on the other foot, Catalina would likely have felt the same about him.

  “Do you like your wife, John?”

  John pretended to study how the groom secured a trunk to the boot. “I like Agnes exceedingly, more with each passing year. We are friends first and spouses as a result of that friendship. Agnes understands me, and I very much value her counsel and affection.”

  Catalina’s counsel had often been delivered at high volume and to the accompaniment of shattered porcelain. Her affections had become rare after the birth at long last of a daughter. Had Catalina not perished of a lung fever, the marriage would doubtless have found firmer footing as the children matured.

  Giles had assured himself of that happy prognostication often in the early days of widowerhood. For the past few months, he’d taken to assuring himself that an English wife, one inured to the tribulations of the nursery and happy to improve her station even at the cost of journeying to a foreign land, would solve many of his troubles.

  “Agnes will be so pleased to see you,” John said as a fresh team was put to. “We very nearly dropped in on you after our last jaunt to Gibraltar.”

  “I would have been delighted to receive you.” A lie, that. Without Catalina to nip at the house servants’ heels, the staff did the bare minimum in terms of cleaning and maintenance. The harvest last year had been disappointing, and competition in the port market was fierce.

  Giles was determined to take an English bride back to the chaos he’d left behind in Portugal, and his efforts in that regard would start with Miss Lucy Fletcher. The lady had cause to recall him fondly—very fondly, in fact. He’d paint a romantic picture of his fiefdom in Portugal, play a few bars of the grieving widower’s lament, and take Miss Fletcher away from the drudgery of her life as a governess in the household of some stodgy old marquess.