Cummings’s butler had not been keen to admit him to this most exclusive of masquerades. He had demanded to see Ethan’s invitation, to which Ethan had replied coldly that no one revealed their identity at a masked ball since that was the whole point of the disguise. The butler had waited, stubborn. Ethan had looked at him. The man had waved him inside. Now Ethan watched as Lottie slipped away from her persistent suitor, one consoling hand placed charmingly on his sleeve to soften her rejection. She paused by the overloaded refreshment table; quick as a flash she had swept half a dozen of the salmon and prawn patties into her bag. Ethan raised his brows.
“All alone, my lord?” A striking redhead with bold eyes and a sultry voice claimed his attention. There was no mistaking her interest. Her gaze slid over him with the sinuous intensity of a predator.
“I fear not,” Ethan said, removing the hand that was already trailing suggestively over his chest. “Pray excuse me.”
“Another time,” the redhead said, pouting. Evidently she was not accustomed to rejection.
Ethan followed Lottie unobtrusively from the refreshment room and out into the hall. Here the crowd was thinning because a lively mazurka was taking place in the ballroom. He could see the swirling dancers through the open doors. Lottie slipped across to two three-foot-tall blue-and-white urns resting on pedestals beside a closed door. A flick of the wrist and the fish patties were consigned to the depths of the vases, one after the other. Ethan watched in admiration.
He strolled over to her and spoke in her ear. “Masterly, madam. I congratulate you.”
She jumped, catching her breath on a gasp, and the ruby-studded evening bag slipped from her fingers. Ethan bent to retrieve it, offering it to her with a mocking bow.
Her eyes, a wary brown behind the mask, were fixed on his face. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was a whisper edged with something fierce. Anger? Fear? He was not sure.
“I could ask the same of you,” he said coolly. He placed an arm against the doorjamb, trapping her between the heavy mahogany panels and his body. No one paid any attention; conduct was always a little more open at a masked ball.
“You saw what I was doing,” she hissed back.
“Revenge?” Ethan said. “Rotting fish in the hall? You are original, I will say that for you.”
Her gaze sparked. “It is no more than Gregory deserves. The servants are all slovenly.” She dismissed them with a flick of a bejeweled wrist. “They will not discover the source of the stink for months. Very likely Gregory will have dug up the sewers by then in a desperate attempt to find out what is wrong. Nobody will want to be a guest here in the meantime.” A smile slipped behind her mask, lighting her eyes. “Rotting fish for a man rotten to the core. Appropriate, don’t you think?”
Her chin tilted up defiantly toward him. Beneath the mask her lips were a luscious red bow. Ethan wanted to kiss her. He leaned a little closer.
“What else have you done?” he asked.
“Oh…” Again her eyes smiled at him behind the mask. “Not much. Gregory’s expensive Spanish cigars are making a delightfully scented fire in the library grate. And I fear that the sleeves are missing from a couple of his favorite jackets and greatcoats…. Weston never thought of such an unusual style, believe me.”
“You cut off the sleeves of his jackets?” Ethan repeated. It was practically treasonable to desecrate Weston’s work. His admiration for her creativity was growing.
“Only one sleeve on each,” Lottie corrected. Her gaze flickered to his, wicked and amused. “Better than cutting off something else of his, tempting as that was.”
“Is that all?”
She ran a finger thoughtfully along Ethan’s arm, leaning so close that the feathered edging on her mask brushed his cheek. “I gave the servants the keys to Gregory’s private wine cellar,” she whispered. “The one with all the bottles he does not wish to share. They are serving his priceless champagne to the guests now. Oh, and I put nettles in his bed, under the sheets, so more than his pride will be stung.”
Ethan laughed. “It is a very fine wine. I must remember to compliment Mr. Cummings on it on my way out.” He shifted. “And this was why you came to London? For revenge?”
Her body tensed a little. She tried to move away from him but he held her close now, a hand on her wrist.
“No.” She sounded sulky. “I only heard of Gregory’s masquerade from gossip in the gown shop yesterday. That was when I decided to attend uninvited.” She straightened. “I came up to London because I was bored. I told you—I need to be entertained. I require it. You neglected me.”
“Nonsense,” Ethan said. “I have been most attentive to you.”
“Oh, in bed…” Her tone was dismissive. “I cannot fault your attentions nor indeed your style, my lord.” Her mouth curved into that provocative smile. “But alas, not even you have the stamina to keep me occupied all the time.”
“And Wantage did not provide sufficient entertainment for you?”
“Of course not,” Lottie said. “How could it?” She flicked him another look. “There is no theater or concerts but for those ghastly musical displays that Captain Le Grand organizes, and no balls and parties, at least not the sort that I am invited to attend. You can go to those tiresome gentry dinners whilst I am considered too decadent.” Her scarlet fan tapped his chest. “Well, I can come up to London, whilst you cannot. At least you should not.” She frowned. “How comes it you are here? Do you have permission from the Parole Officer? And how did you find me?”
“So many questions,” Ethan mocked, “now that your thirst for revenge is quenched.”
He saw the temper flare in her eyes. “At least I am free to come here and take my revenge on Gregory.” Now her tone mocked him. “I went to the most delightful play last night, my lord. Incognito, of course, but even so I was in no danger of arrest. Unlike you. And tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow you will be back in Wantage with me,” Ethan said.
“Not if I find myself a new protector before then,” Lottie said sweetly.
Ethan bit back the instinctive repudiation that sprang to his lips. God help him, he had been about to forbid it, claim her, say: “You are mine, I want you, I refuse to cede to another man….”
Masculine pride, primitive possessiveness, jealousy… He had never been motivated by any of those emotions before. And she was testing him, pushing him a little to see how far she could go. He was not going to rise to that provocation just to please her. He smiled down at her.
“How busy you have been in the couple of days since I have seen you, madam. Any success in that direction yet?”
Her lips pressed together in temper. “Do you think that I would tell you if I had?”
“No,” Ethan said. “I think you would fleece me and then run off with another man without a word.”
She laughed. A couple of heads turned in their direction at the sound, so full of genuine amusement, and she quieted at once, as though aware that someone might recognize her.
“It is true that you know me very well, my lord.” Her voice had quieted, too. “But you offer me nothing.” She sounded disdainful. “Other than this—” Her hand slid to the band of his pantaloons and he stopped her with an iron grip.
“Enough, madam. Not here, now. Unless it pleases you to make love with me in your former husband’s house?”
Again that little smile played about her lips. “I’ll allow that the idea has some appeal, but… No, on balance, I think not.”
“Then come and dance with me instead.” The lilt of the waltz was calling to them from the ballroom.
He could see that the idea intrigued her. She had never thought that they would waltz together in a London ballroom. Neither had he, for that matter.
“Dance?” she said. “In there—in front of everyone?”
He drew her toward the ballroom doors. “Of course. Are you nervous that someone will recognize you?”
She was. He could feel her hesitation even as she
denied it. “No, of course not. I have been here a full hour and no one knows who I am.” She paused. “Except your brother, Northesk. He gave me a very searching look when we met in the library.”
They stepped into the dance. It was a risk, a dare, and he knew that Lottie would not shrink from it simply because that would prove she was afraid, prove that he had won the challenge. Her scarlet domino flared out to reveal a gown of silver beneath. The silk brushed his thigh, rippling, smooth and sensuous as Lottie herself. The other dancers swooped past as the rhythm of the music swept them up and spun them around, and Lottie smiled with exhilaration, as light as thistledown in his arms.
“You dance well,” she murmured. “I would have expected a cavalryman to thunder around the room as a horse would.”
“You do the cavalry an injustice,” Ethan said. “Our leg muscles are very well developed. It makes us the best of dancers.”
“I had noticed your well-developed muscles.” Her voice was dry. She tilted her head to look at him. “So how did you find me, my lord?”
“You had told Margery you were coming to London,” Ethan said.
“It is a big place.”
“It was not so difficult.”
It had not been. He had a network set up to gather intelligence about the war, about prisoners and escape routes. Such an intelligence service could also gather information of another sort and find a wayward mistress who was flitting about London incognito and causing quite a stir in the process.
“And why did you trouble to follow me?” Her voice was soft. “Did you miss me?”
That, Ethan thought, was a very good question.
“I wished to ascertain whether or not you would come back,” he said. Half truths, he thought. Actually she deserved better than that. He had come to find her, to claim her, because he did not want to be without her.
“Did it matter whether I came back or not?”
That was another good question. Ethan had forgotten her penchant for putting him on the spot. He hesitated. What had she said?
You offer me nothing….
He thought about it. It was true that he had given her nothing but money. That had been their agreement. He had bought her for her scandalous name. He did not trust her. He had barely confided in her, other than a few insights into his childhood and a brief painful mention of his son. He had rejected her attempts to draw closer to him. He had even turned from her after the intimacy of making love with such profound and tender passion.
He was using her—even tonight, on his way to find her, he had stopped in some smoky tavern in the rookeries off the Radcliffe Highway to exchange information, letters, plans and news, sending out more spies, more instructions as the day grew closer when the conspiracy would come together. That would be the day he would leave her, with the pile of cash that would be her final payoff.
Except…
Except that he did not want to lose her. He knew that now. He had known it when he had returned to Priory Cottage and found her gone. They were two of a kind, he and Lottie. They understood one another. For the first time he considered taking her with him. And wondered if she would be prepared to go.
“Yes,” he said. “It mattered whether or not you would come back to me.”
Something shimmered in her eyes behind the mask, an emotion that gave the lie to all her claims of indifference. He felt it, too, the tug of emotion that went deeper than lust. He remembered the times he had made love to her and lost himself in that sense of rightness, of recognition. Such a dangerous affinity, for a man who had never loved and who wanted no ties to bind him. He had been fighting this feeling for weeks. Now he admitted that it had finally caught up with him and it showed no signs of letting him go.
Lottie did not speak. Ethan wished that she would, to break that moment. It felt like a strange magic, the music, Lottie in his arms, and the candlelight and her scent of flowers and summer leaves. He felt like an untried youth who had never had a woman before. Bizarre. Impossible…
There was a clatter of noise in the ballroom doorway and a splash of red uniforms. Candlelight struck metal. Pistols. Someone screamed. The music faded, discordant, and died away. There was a silence with an odd quality of tension to it.
“We have come to arrest the parole breaker, Ethan Ryder.” The captain had stepped forward. “We have information that he is here.”
The crowd gasped with a mixture of fear and excitement, rippling like corn in a storm. A corpulent man in a blue domino, whom Ethan assumed to be Gregory Cummings, had ripped off his mask and was advancing on the posse of soldiers.
“Ridiculous!” he sneered. “Ryder, here? How dare you disrupt my ball on such a foolish basis, sir!”
Lottie’s hand was in his, tugging at him. “This way,” she whispered in his ear. She was drawing him stealthily through the shifting crowd with a murmured “excuse me” here and an apology there as she stood on someone’s foot. But it was impossible to be surreptitious in scarlet. Heads turned, people pointed. The captain broke off his apologies and explanations to shout an order. And then Lottie was running, dragging him with her, through the door into the refreshment room, pulling the cloth from the table to scatter silver dishes in the path of the pursuing soldiers. One of them raised his pistol, and Ethan saw a man in a domino stumble heavily against the soldier just as he was about to take the shot. It flew wide, smashing a bust of Cummings himself on a marble side table.
“Frightfully sorry, old chap,” the man said. Ethan recognized Northesk’s voice. He raised a hand in brief thanks and Northesk nodded acknowledgement.
Then Lottie was bundling him through the refreshment room door, into the library—which smelled deliciously of burning tobacco—over to a spiral stair in the corner. She grabbed an antiquated sword from the wall and threw it to him, by which he realized she meant him to fight on the stairs. Ethan wondered if the sword was even serviceable. Well, he would find out. The soldiers were bursting into the library now and piling toward the spiral stair. Lottie was dragging him backward up the steps. It was the devil of a job to fight at the same time, though there was only room for one man to challenge him at a time and the turn of the stair gave him the fighting advantage. He really did not want to kill anyone because then he would be in genuine trouble, so he had to very careful. He nicked one man in the arm, slicing through his sleeve if little else, and caught the next in the shoulder. The whole posse fell back in dismay at the sight of blood. Really, Ethan thought, if this was the way the British fought they did not deserve their reputation. And the antiquated sword was proving rather good. It had excellent balance.
He and Lottie fell backward into an upstairs bedroom and Lottie slammed the door in the faces of their pursuers, turning the key in the lock. Ethan put out a hand to steady her, slow her down, but she was in full flood now and could not be stopped. She had torn off her mask and her eyes were alight with excitement and fervor. Her hair streamed from beneath the hood of the domino, chestnut and gold, adorned with glittering rubies.
“The servants’ stair!” she gasped. “Come on!”
With a philosophical shrug, Ethan followed her through a maze of connecting doors, bedroom to bedroom, down the servants’ stair, flight after flight until they reached the kitchen, the servants jumping back at the sight of the naked blade, a scullery maid screaming with her apron over her head, a potboy leaping for cover and Gregory Cummings puffing through the door with the Captain in his wake. Ethan was willing to bet that it was the first time Cummings had ever visited his own kitchens. The Captain raised his rifle and missed Ethan completely, the bullet ricocheting off a large iron cooking pot and smashing through a window. A man came at him from the left with a kitchen knife. Ethan disarmed him with a quick twist of the wrist. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see Lottie taking advantage of the moment her former husband’s attention was distracted to break a flan dish over his head. Gregory Cummings slumped to the floor. “The Ton will be talking about this for years to come,” a voice said in
his ear, and then Northesk had taken his arm and swept Lottie up, too, and was ushering them out into the Mews where there was already a closed carriage put to with horses, waiting.
“Give me your papers,” Northesk said, holding out his hand. “I’ll sort this out for you.”
Ethan reached into his breast pocket and handed over the letter from Mr. Duster granting permission for his trip. He shook Northesk’s hand. “Thank you.”
Northesk nodded. “Godspeed.”
Lottie was looking at him, her eyes wide and dark. To forestall the questions he knew were coming, Ethan bundled her up into the carriage, slammed the door and tapped on the roof. The coach sprang forward.
Lottie took a deep breath. “You had permission to be here all along?”
Ethan grinned. “Of course.”
Lottie’s face was working like milk coming up to the boil. “Then what the devil was all that about?”
“When a detachment of soldiers come at you with rifles, you tend to fight first and ask questions later,” Ethan said mildly. “Otherwise you may end up dead before you get the chance to ask anything. Besides,” he added, “you were having such a good time. I did not want to spoil it for you.”
“I? I was terrified!” Lottie looked furious. “I thought they would arrest you—or kill you!” Her eyes kindled. “Not that you do not deserve it! I wonder why I tried to help you! Clearly I am completely misguided.”
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