by Deborah Hale
“An excellent suggestion.” She leaned closer and raised her voice to carry over the loud conversations around them. “The gentleman is dressed as King Arthur and the lady as Helen of Troy.”
The most ridiculous quiver of satisfaction ran through Rupert when she failed to mention a third gentleman who might have been her escort. He told himself not to be so daft. It should not matter to him whether the lady was spoken for. He was about to ask Barbara Cadmore to be his wife. Yet he could not suppress a rush of relief that his plans for the evening had gone awry.
Though he kept diligent watch for the lady’s friends, Rupert’s spirits rose as more and more time passed without a glimpse of them. At last he and his mysterious companion found themselves back in the refreshment room where they’d first met.
“I am sorry to have taken up so much of your time, sir,” she let him help her to a cup of punch, “with nothing gained for your efforts but a thirst.”
Rupert took a sip of the cool, tart compound of orange and lemon juices sweetened with sugar syrup and spiced with a hint of cinnamon and cloves. The punch was almost as welcome refreshment as her company.
He gave a cheerful shrug. “For your sake, I am sorry we were not able to locate your friends. For myself, I have no such regrets. Our search passed the time much more agreeably than I would have done if left to my own devices.”
Rupert doffed his oversized hat and waved it to fan himself. He longed to venture outside for a breath of cooler air but he could not bring himself to abandon the lady.
She seemed to divine his thoughts. “Does your earlier invitation to stroll in the garden still hold, sir? After wading through such a crush of humanity, a little peace and coolness would be most welcome.”
“To me as well.” The only boon more welcome at that moment was the opportunity to savor more of her company in quiet and privacy.
After her disagreeable encounter with the sultan, Rupert would have understood if the lady shrank from being alone with any man. He was flattered by her demonstration of trust in his honor, especially after so brief an acquaintance in which they had not even exchanged names. This mysterious lady, whom he’d known less than an hour, engaged his interest far more than his prospective bride.
Did she also suspect a previous acquaintance between them? Rupert could not escape the sense of familiarity. But the harder he strove to place her, the more her identity eluded him. Besides, part of him resented any thought that distracted him from the enjoyment of her company.
As they wandered out into the moonlit garden together, Rupert fancied his disguise somehow hid him from his old heartache and fear of future hurt. Suddenly he wanted to live again. Not just for the sake of his children and Nethercross, but to experience the divine gifts of life—and perhaps love—to their richest depths. Perhaps he had been wrong to sacrifice all his hope for future happiness upon the altar of safety.
Someone else had tried to tell him that, but he had not been able to understand until tonight.
The gentleman in the black garb and strange white mask was the very one Grace had set out to find. When he first strode to her rescue, she had been too surprised and grateful to notice he was wearing the very costume Charlotte had described. In any case, he appeared to be alone. Only after the gentleman explained how he had come to be at the masquerade by himself did she realize his true identity.
Knowing there was no fear of his lordship proposing to Mrs. Cadmore that evening, Grace had meant to return home at once and share her good news with his daughters. But to do that she must first find her friends while trying to avoid that beastly sultan and others like him. Against her better judgment, she’d accepted Lord Steadwell’s offer of assistance.
But as they searched in vain for the Benedicts and his lordship showed no sign of recognizing her, Grace began to wonder if she ought to take advantage of this incognito meeting. Since her previous efforts to suppress her feelings for the gentleman had only intensified them, perhaps indulging those feelings might break the dangerous hold they had gained over her heart. Tonight might be her only opportunity to find out without risking the life she had made for herself at Nethercross.
Plucking up her courage, she asked if he might accompany her on a stroll in the garden.
His swift acceptance made her heart flutter, like a butterfly emerging from its drab, safe cocoon to spread its glorious wings for the very first time. Was she truly seeking to purge her feelings, as prudence demanded, or was she only using that as an excuse to indulge her forbidden fancy? Her rebellious heart refused to consider the question.
Once outside, the frantic clamor of the ball gave way to the whisper of fresh night breezes subtly sweetened with the aroma of country flowers. A welcome sense of ease stole over Grace as she inhaled a deep draft of that cool, flower-scented air. “I am in your debt, sir. First you came to my rescue then you gave me your protection and assistance. How can I ever repay you?”
He dismissed her suggestion with an airy wave of his hand. “What need is there for repayment of services you never requested? Do they not say virtue is its own reward?”
Before Grace could answer he continued, “Not that I claim my actions were virtuous. That sounds insufferably self-righteous. I only mean to say I acted of my own accord. Even if you did owe me a debt, the pleasure of your company would be more than sufficient payment.”
The music and raised voices from the party had muted to a pleasant backdrop for the soft rustle of her skirts and their unhurried footsteps on the brickwork path that wound through the flowerbeds and herbaceous borders. The pleasure of his company was worth more to Grace than she dared reckon.
“That is high praise, for the assistance you provided was invaluable to me. All the more so because none of the other guests seemed disposed to intervene on my behalf.”
“That is to their shame, not to my credit.” His tone took on a sharp edge of scorn. “I do not approve of the way some people cast off their principles when they put on a mask. I doubt that scoundrel in the purple turban would have dared accost you in so reprehensible a manner if you had met at an assembly where his face and name were known.”
“Perhaps I share some of the blame,” Grace ventured. It was a secret fear that had hounded her ever since Captain Townsend had offered to make her his mistress rather than his wife. “If I had only dressed more modestly, rather than in a manner likely to attract attention...”
“Nonsense!” His retort cut through the night air like a switch, yet it did not alarm Grace, for she knew his vexation was not directed at her. “No woman should be obliged to conceal her beauty to prevent men from taking liberties. Part of the reason I came to your aid was that I wanted to show you we men are not all like him.”
“I know that,” she murmured without true conviction.
For years she had regarded all men as alike in that respect and she’d treated them accordingly. But since coming to Nethercross, she had begun to realize some men were different. He was different. His actions this evening only proved what she’d believed about him for some time. His declaration about women not hiding their beauty helped ease her feeling of responsibility for the harassment she had suffered.
“But let us not dwell on that unpleasantness,” he suggested. “I do not wish to oppress your spirits.”
“Nor do I,” Grace agreed. “Let us enjoy this quiet time together in our unsociable way.”
“I would not call myself unsociable.” He tempered his protest with a wry chuckle. “I quite like good company in small doses and familiar surroundings.”
“How small a dose do you favor?” She teased him in a flirtatious way mousy Miss Ellerby would never dare.
“Usually more than one,” he quipped back. Then his voice softened. “But tonight I reckon it is a perfect number.”
Did he mean that the way it sounded? He had no idea who she was and must assume she was equally ignorant of his identity. He might believe he could say anything to her without fear of consequences. Perhaps he to
o had inconvenient feelings he sought to purge before he embarked on a marriage in which love would play no part.
For this one night, Grace felt free to speak words she had never dared address to him before—words she would be obliged to lock away in her heart beginning tomorrow. Might they place less of a burden on her heart if she gave them their freedom now?
“Tonight it is my favorite number as well,” she murmured in reply, “provided you are that one.”
His step slowed even more. “You sense it too?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“This.” He gestured from him to her and back again. “Between us a... bond... a connection.”
He struggled to explain something he seemed not to understand himself but hoped she might. “I feel as if I know you far better than our brief acquaintance would allow. Is it possible we have met before?”
How could she reply to that threatening question? Those delightful little bubbles in Grace’s stomach rushed upward to clog her throat. Must she deny her feelings for him with an outright falsehood? Or did she dare tell him the truth and trust that he might understand?
Chapter Twelve
WHAT HAD MADE him blurt out that question? As his mysterious, yet oddly familiar, companion inhaled a sharp little gasp and froze in her tracks, Rupert cursed his blunder.
The whole point of a masquerade was the secrecy in which it shrouded the guests’ identities, freeing them from the bonds of strict propriety to behave in ways they might not otherwise. He had railed against it in the case of men like the lecherous sultan. But for others—ladies in particular—the motives and consequences might be far more innocent.
Would his charming companion have dared steal away with him into the moonlit garden if her reputation had not been shielded by that mask? Now his intrusive question threatened to rip away her flimsy protection. Might she consider it almost as brazen a liberty as the sultan had tried to take with her? Might she flee from him, too, and perhaps from the masquerade itself?
If he frightened her away, he might never discover who she was and never learn whether the feelings she stirred in him were genuine.
“Forgive me!” he cried before she could turn and flee. “I do not mean to demand your identity.”
“You don’t?” Even the deep shadows of a summer night could not conceal her relief.
Rupert shook his head. “I only wanted to explain this unaccountable familiarity I sense between us. But perhaps I am mistaken—deceived by a trick of the moonlight.”
“I feel as if I know you too.” She began walking again. “You are Hercules and Galahad and every fairy tale hero who ever came to the aid of a damsel in distress.”
Could it be as simple as that? Part of him wanted to accept her explanation. Was his head so full of his daughters’ Mother Goose stories that the beautiful lady he’d rescued came to represent every fairy tale princess? Was that why he’d taken such an immediate fancy to her—because that was how love blossomed in those stories?
Love? Rupert chided himself for letting that foolish notion even enter his head. This mysterious beauty engaged his interest to the point of fascination, but that was a different thing entirely. Yet he could not deny it was the closest he had felt to that heady, all-consuming emotion since Annabelle. He’d assumed his capacity for that sort of feeling had died with her. Or perhaps it had been channeled into his devotion to their daughters.
Part of him tried to resist his overwhelming attraction to the masked lady with her air of wistful innocence. He feared such feelings might be a betrayal of his late wife’s memory. And yet his heart welcomed this unexpected reawakening after a long fallow season of grief. It made him question whether he was wrong to seek a marriage that would be nothing more than a “practical arrangement” unsanctified by love.
“I am no storybook hero,” he warned, not wanting her enamored of a false image, “just a simple man who enjoys simple country pleasures.”
He longed to tell her all about himself and learn everything about her—her tastes, her beliefs, her past experiences. But would she consider such questions a further effort to discover her identity?
“I see no reason why a simple countryman cannot also be a hero in his own way, if he does his duty and treats those around him with honor and kindness.” Something in the lady’s voice seemed to suggest that she still considered him a hero in spite of his protests to the contrary.
It did not sound as if she were referring to a nebulous ideal but to him in particular, praising qualities she knew he possessed. While her words gratified him, they bolstered his conviction that they had a previous acquaintance. Could it be that she recognized him in his well-known bauta but he did not know her? Though that would put him at a disadvantage, Rupert could not resent it.
He wondered what subjects they could converse about without revealing too many personal details.
“A very fine night, is it not?” He fairly cringed at his own words. How tiresome of him to talk about the weather. Too much of that and his mystery lady might flee back indoors, prepared to risk the sultan’s liberties rather than be bored out of her wits.
“Very fine, indeed.” She did not sound bored—not yet at least.
But he must find something more interesting to say that might make her want to remain in his company. “The moon is bright. I fancy I can see human features on its pale face—the man in the moon, looking down on us from the night sky.”
As a topic of conversation that was a little better at least.
“I see the face.” She stopped on an ornamental stone bridge, which spanned a narrow stream that wound down the hill. “But I have always thought it looked more like a woman’s. See how delicate the features are?”
“Perhaps.” He came to stand beside her, close enough to satisfy his compelling inclination to be near her but not so close that it might frighten her away. “But a bald woman seems rather improbable.”
His quip coaxed forth a melodic trill of laughter that blended with the trickle of water beneath the bridge. “I suppose it does. But what if the night sky was her black hair adorned with diamond-studded combs?”
Even that could not compare to the beauty of the lady who spoke those words, though Rupert guessed the silver moonlight did not flatter her. He longed to see her golden curls kissed by the first rays of dawn, while the rose-colored horizon echoed the hue of her gown and her lips.
“But what does that beauty signify,” his companion sighed, “when the lady in the moon looks so mournful? I wonder what sorrow afflicts her.”
“Loneliness perhaps,” Rupert suggested. “Or grief at being parted from her beloved, the sun.”
“Loneliness is a great misery.” A poignant note in the lady’s voice assured Rupert she had experienced that emotion herself, perhaps even longer and deeper than he. But how that someone with so many attractive qualities should ever be lonely, he could not fathom.
She looked toward the great house all lit up from within and fairly pulsing with the sounds of revelry. “It is possible to be lonely even in the midst of a crowd. Indeed, I believe a person can feel more isolated than ever when everyone around them is making merry.”
“I agree.” Rupert recalled his miserable forays into London society in search of a wife. “Yet all it takes is the company of one truly congenial person to dispel that feeling.”
The lady’s hands reposed on the railing of the bridge. Rupert edged his left hand over, not to cover hers, but to rest beside it, barely touching. He held his breath, fearing she might move away and break the tenuous contact between them. To his relief she did not.
A ripple of warmth spread through his hand and up his arm toward his heart. Prudence warned him he had no business engaging in such conduct when he was on the verge of proposing to another woman. No, his freshly stirred heart responded, what he had no business doing was planning to wed a woman he did not love. Perhaps meeting this masked beauty tonight was a warning to that effect. Suddenly he pitied anyone who did not feel as a
live and alight as he did—even a great cold orb of rock circling the earth.
“Perhaps the fireworks will cheer up our mournful moon maiden,” he suggested.
“Fireworks?” his companion echoed, though not in the tone of excitement he expected. In that small strip of flesh where their hands touched, he fancied he could feel her pulse race.
“Just before midnight.” He arched his hand then lowered it again to brush against hers in a subtle caress. “To celebrate our glorious victory and signal the traditional unmasking.”
He could scarcely wait for that, to see her entire face in all its beauty and discover if he recognized her. How their acquaintance might progress from there, it was far too soon to speculate.
But his heart had its hopes.
The prospect of unmasking at midnight alarmed Grace more than if a Roman candle were aimed directly at her with its fuse lit. Her feet itched to flee as fast as they would carry her. Yet she could not bear to bring this sweet interlude to an end one moment sooner than she must.
This evening walk and chat with Rupert reminded her of the ones they had shared at Nethercross. It was a hundred times better, though, for she was not obliged to constantly guard her tongue to keep from betraying her feelings to him. As the mysterious masked lady, she was able to say things Miss Ellerby would never dare and thrill to words he would never address to his daughters’ governess.
Had his brush with the masked lady given him second thoughts about marrying Mrs. Cadmore? Grace hoped and believed it must have. He was too honorable a gentleman to trifle with her if he still intended to wed another. Even the innocent contact between their hands was a greater intimacy than he would have undertaken if he meant to pledge himself to someone else.
The girls would be delighted to hear that.
But Grace knew better than to let herself believe Rupert Kendrick truly cared for her. If he had, then surely he would have expressed his feelings to Miss Ellerby, in spite of her plain appearance and humble station. He only imagined himself smitten with a lady of beauty. Such feelings had no more substance than a fairy tale, no more truth than a masquerade.