“Do you want to try a dance in that mob?” Colin asked.
“I think I would rather stay here and watch,” she said. “It is like a play.”
“Indeed. Rather like the one we saw the other night, though with more harmony amongst the players.”
She laughed.
Colin brought her a glass of champagne, and they drank and ate and talked with their friends, pointing out to one another particularly interesting costumes or incidents in the crowd. Tom tried to persuade his wife to dance, and was repulsed. The Nettletons did venture down, and returned looking disheveled to report that it was a madhouse. Some unknown person had actually pinched Victoria.
The hour drew closer to midnight, and Emma felt her body tightening with tension. She continued to gaze out over the room, responding more and more mechanically to the others’ sallies. It was almost time to put her plan into action. Now that it was here, she didn’t quite believe that she had concocted this scheme. But though her hands trembled a little, her resolution did not waver.
She was about to rise when her eye was caught by something familiar in a box across the room. A woman sitting there wore a black gown trimmed with bunches of ribbon and embellished with a unique bell-shaped sleeve. Emma did not have to see the golden hair and pouting pink lips beneath the mask to identify Lady Mary Dacre. A groan escaped her lips.
“What is it?” asked Colin.
“There’s… I saw someone I know,” Emma answered.
“Who?”
“Someone who should not be here.”
“Who?” Colin tried to follow her gaze, but it was impossible to pick out any one person in the crowd.
“It’s better not to say. Perhaps no one will find out.” A male figure in black was seated next to Lady Mary. It was difficult to make him out against the dimness of the box, but she was certain it was Count Orsino. No one else would bring Lady Mary to such a place. “Damn him,” she murmured under her breath. This complicated her plan considerably. She would have to make certain Lady Mary was not left alone in this unsuitable place, and was taken home after Orsino… disappeared.
“I beg your pardon?” said Colin, bending toward her.
“Nothing.”
He looked at her, unconvinced.
It was time. She had to move now if she was to be in position, no matter what the complications. Emma rose and excused herself, knowing the others would assume she was going to visit the ladies’ convenience. As planned, Ferik slipped out after her, silently and discreetly, and they made their way down the inner stairs and along a corridor that bordered the main room. It too was filled with raucous revelers, but Ferik’s hovering presence discouraged any of them from accosting Emma.
Ferik took the lead. He had been here a day earlier to examine the building and find a spot he considered suitable for this fateful meeting. He led Emma past two small rooms that held a few masqueraders and into another, smaller one that was empty.
Emma looked around it, evaluating the place she had appointed, sight unseen, for her meeting with Orsino. It was not a salon. It appeared to be a kind of storage room for broken chairs and torn draperies. Emma found herself thinking that the Pantheon must have many of both, and realized that she was trying not to think of what was to come.
“I will stand here,” said Ferik quietly, stepping into a deep shadow cast by the open door. “He will not see me until it is too late.”
Emma nodded. She clasped her hands together to hide their trembling and walked into the center of the room. The chamber was lit by only two sconces. Most of the light came from the hall, thrown across the floor like a swath of bright cloth. Emma stood in it and waited.
Too soon, she heard booted footsteps approaching. Then, a dark figure appeared in the doorway, paused, and came in. “Baroness,” said Orsino’s voice, and he bowed deeply.
He wore a black tunic with a somber glitter of silver thread and black hose. In his hand he carried a flat velvet cap, also black. He looked like a renaissance portrait of a wicked Italian duke, Emma thought. His bland round face and the malicious glitter of his dark eyes fit perfectly with the role.
“You like my costume?” he asked, noticing her scrutiny. “I am Machiavelli. You have heard of him?” When she didn’t respond, he added, “No? A pity. You English are so ill educated. Machiavelli was the author of The Prince, a masterpiece of courtly strategy. It tells the truth about what is behind the smiles around a ruler. He was Italian, of course.”
When Emma expressed no interest in this topic, he shrugged. “You English,” he added. “No subtlety, no style. The things that pass for humor among Englishmen! It is appalling!”
Emma made an impatient gesture.
“Ah, yes. So, down to business, eh, baroness?”
“Yes,” said Emma, her throat dry.
“An odd place for it,” he said. “But your week is up.”
“I know.”
“So? You have decided to cooperate?” He sounded utterly confident. He didn’t seem to imagine that she would dare to oppose him.
Emma hesitated. She was to raise a hand to brush back her veil. This was the signal to Ferik.
“After all this waiting, I think I may ask a little more,” Orsino went on. “Perhaps further meetings like this, where we can be private. Eh? You might find that we Italians are more… more exciting than the clumsy English in many, many ways.”
He had been drinking, Emma thought. His eyes were glazed with reckless desire and greed.
He started to move closer. Emma raised her hand.
Ferik stepped out of the shadows like an exotic ghost emerging from the wall. Before Orsino even registered his presence, he encircled the man’s neck with one massive arm and tightened his grip upon his throat. The count’s eyes widened in astonishment. His face began to turn red.
Emma felt a mixture of relief and nervousness. “I will not do as you ask,” she said. “And I will not allow you to hurt my husband or my friends. So…”
Orsino gurgled. His face was deepening to magenta. Emma looked anxiously at Ferik.
“Better you go now, mistress,” the giant servant said. “I will take care of this evil man.”
“What will you…?”
“No need for you to know.”
Orsino began to thrash and kick. His face was purple. Ferik clapped his other arm around the man’s chest, imprisoning him as effectively as iron shackles.
Emma was assailed by doubt. “Ferik, do you think…?”
“No one will ever find him, mistress,” was the calm reply. “You may be sure of it. You can trust me.”
“But should we really do this?” she questioned.
Orsino produced a frantic grunt. His face was now a dark purple, and his eyes seemed to bulge a little.
“An extremely good question, my dear Emma,” said Colin, strolling into the room as calmly as if he were entering a rather dull evening party. “Do ease your grip a bit, Ferik, while we ponder this matter.”
Startled, the giant complied. Orsino still could not speak, but the color of his face lightened slightly.
Emma found her tongue. “Colin! You… I…”
“What is going on?” complained Lady Mary Dacre, entering on Colin’s heels and pushing her way impatiently around him. “I have been left alone in that box for an age, and I think it is excessively rude of you to…” Taking in the scene, she fell silent, staring from one to another with wide blue eyes behind her mask. “Good heavens,” she added feebly.
The little storeroom was beginning to feel remarkably crowded, Emma thought.
“Really, Emma,” said Colin. He examined Orsino, Ferik, and the details of the chamber in which they stood. “This is not the way to discourage such scoundrels. Threats have no effect.”
“I am going to kill him,” declared Ferik.
Orsino began to thrash ineffec
tually again.
“Ah,” said Colin, looking startled. “That would do it.”
“But I wasn’t going to run away with him!” exclaimed Lady Mary. “A hired carriage is fetching me in half an hour to take me home.”
Orsino goggled at her. Colin raised his eyebrows. “You know about him?” Emma asked her husband.
“All about him,” answered Colin in an almost meditative voice.
“I let him think I would go with him because I wanted to see the masquerade,” continued Lady Mary. She frowned. “And no one else would take me. Everyone is so Gothic and prudish.” She caught Emma’s glare. “But I remembered what you said,” she assured her. “I was very careful, and I didn’t believe anything he told me.”
Orsino gurgled urgently. Ferik shook him a bit, and he fell silent.
“‘Count’ Orsino is of great interest to several foreign governments,” said Colin, as if Lady Mary had not spoken. “He is not welcome in his own country—or in this one.”
Orsino stopped struggling and went very still.
“He is, in fact, slated to be escorted to the coast by the authorities tomorrow morning and put on a boat leaving England.”
Lady Mary’s mouth had dropped open below her mask. “But I told you,” she said, “I wasn’t going to—”
“Aha!” shouted a new voice from just outside the room. “I’ve found you!” A slender figure in a black domino erupted into the room. Above his mask, he wore a large-brimmed hat enlivened by an ostrich feather, and he was brandishing a long unsheathed rapier with alarming freedom. “I’ve uncovered your despicable plan,” the newcomer added. “And I won’t allow it, do you hear? I’ll kill you first.”
“Robin?” said Emma faintly.
Her brother turned in a half circle, taking in the crowd in the small room through the limited viewpoint of his mask. His sword drooped a little. “Did you know about it already?” he asked, clearly very disappointed.
“Know about what?” demanded Colin.
Robin gestured with the sword, causing Lady Mary to screech in protest and back away. “That… that blackguard’s plan to carry off Lady Mary and ruin her,” he answered. “I only discovered tonight from her maid that he meant to bring her here. I came at once. He has a traveling carriage waiting outside, you know. And two dashed havey-cavey characters waiting with it.”
“You came to rescue me?” asked Lady Mary, clearly pleased.
“To save you from your own folly,” Robin retorted. “You would have been ruined without me.” He paused. “And, er, the others, of course.” He looked around the room again, observing Ferik with great interest. “What are you going to do with him?” he asked.
“Kill him,” replied Ferik.
“Really?” Robin looked pleased and impressed. “Going to throttle him, are you? Good man!”
“But there’s no need,” began Lady Mary again.
“Silence!” thundered Colin. Everyone started and turned to look at him. “Our friends are in box number twenty-three,” he told Robin, enunciating each word very clearly. “You may take Lady Mary and join them there, or you may take her home.”
“But I—”
“Or you may both go to perdition,” added Colin, in a tone that made Robin take a step back, “so long as you leave us now.”
Robin grasped Lady Mary’s arm, almost hauling her from the room. “But what’s going on?” she wondered. It had finally penetrated her consciousness that the scene in the storeroom was not centered around her fate.
“None of our affair,” Robin told her.
“I want to stay and—”
“Naturally you do. Why must you always want the most unsuitable things in creation?”
“I don’t!”
“You do.”
As their bickering faded into the general noise of the masquerade, Colin turned back and surveyed the other three. “I really think you can let him go, Ferik,” he said.
“I am going to kill him,” Ferik repeated, in the same calm voice he had been using all evening.
“That won’t be necessary. As I mentioned, I have made arrangements for his departure. And unless he wishes to find himself in prison, he will not show his face in England again.”
“How did you know?” asked Emma quietly.
He looked down at her. “From your manner.”
Emma bent her head.
“How did he threaten you?” asked Colin gently.
She flushed, continuing to stare at the dirty floor of the storeroom. “Edward talked when he drank,” she murmured, so softly that he had to bend closer to hear. “He told Orsino… things, intimate things, about me. He was going to spread them about, make a scandal, let you think that he and I had…” She choked on the rest.
“I see.” Colin looked at the count, and the emotion in his eyes made the other man cringe. “Perhaps Ferik should kill him.”
Ferik grinned.
With a massive convulsion of his whole body, Orsino broke Ferik’s grip, jumping free of the huge man and backing away. Bending, he pulled a large knife from his boot top.
Ferik roared and started toward him. Colin said, “You cannot get through both of us, Orsino.”
The count grabbed Emma, throwing one arm around her throat and pressing the knife to her breast with the other hand. “Get back,” he said, his voice hoarse from Ferik’s manhandling. “If you come near me, I’ll kill her.”
Colin put out a hand to stop Ferik. “Wait,” he said.
“I’m leaving,” said Orsino. “And if anyone tries to stop me…” He moved the blade slightly. “Get away from the door.”
They obeyed, Ferik’s face in a murderous grimace.
Orsino half pushed, half dragged Emma into the hallway and along it toward the only exit, which led through the ballroom. Did he imagine that he could take her through the crowd without being stopped? she found herself wondering, even though her heart was pounding with fear.
The roar of the ballroom came nearer. A pair of dancers reeled together out into the hall, then stopped short and gaped when they saw Emma and Orsino. The razor-sharp blade nicked Emma’s collarbone, and a trickle of blood ran down her breast and stained the bodice of her gown. The unexpected pain made her falter and trip over one of its trailing veils. Thinking quickly, she let herself fall, trying to take the count down with her. But he pulled free and viciously jerked her arm to get her up again.
With a roar, Ferik surged forward. Emma huddled into a ball away from the knife. Casting one frantic look behind him, Orsino plunged through the doorway and into the crush of dancers.
Ferik and Colin raced after him. Pushing people aside, the three cleaved the sea of masqueraders, leaving a line of angry revelers like the frothing wake of a ship. One irate man struck out and knocked off Colin’s mask, so that he was revealed to all the onlookers in the boxes. Emma groaned. A shrieking woman whose headdress was knocked askew took hold of Ferik’s vest with both hands, and he dragged her nearly twenty feet through the crowd before the embroidered material gave way and she fell with the rags of the garment in her fingers.
His great chest now bare, Ferik forged through the crowd, his dark eyes blazing, his exotic figure nearly a head taller than anyone else. He reached for, missed, then caught the tail of Orsino’s black tunic, jerking the man backward as if he were a doll. Twisting his other hand in the count’s collar, he lifted him up over his head, a squirming exhibit for everyone to see. Emma glanced up and saw Tom leaning over the rail of their box, his mouth hanging open. The rest of their friends were similarly riveted, not to mention hundreds of others.
“Ferik, put him down,” shouted Colin, tugging on the giant’s arm to get him to release his prisoner. “Put… him… down.”
Emma leaned against the corridor wall and closed her eyes behind her mask. Their exposure was complete. Ferik’s name was known to ma
ny in the ton after the fever of curiosity his appearance had excited. There would be no hiding Colin’s identity. And no stopping the gossips from ferreting out every detail.
She ventured another look. Orsino was on the ground again, and they had taken his knife. No doubt he would be sent away, as Colin had promised, now that it was too late, now that a scandal far juicier than any so far had been set in motion. All her efforts to keep Colin from being an object of gossip and malice had gone up in smoke.
Sick at heart, Emma made her way around the edge of the crowd and outside. She couldn’t bear any more. Trudging up the street, she found a hackney cab to take her home. In her bedchamber, she shed her fantastic costume and left it lying in a heap on the floor. Putting on her wrapper, she huddled in an armchair by the fire, crushed by her failure.
After a while, her maid came in. “My lady, I didn’t know you were here. His lordship just sent someone to make certain you were home, and I said you would have rung if you were, but he insisted I check. So I—”
“As you see, I am here,” interrupted Emma.
“Yes, your ladyship. I’ll send word. Can I get you…?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes, ma’am. But shouldn’t I…?”
“I need nothing. I’m very tired. You may go to bed.”
The girl hesitated, then dropped a curtsy and went out. Emma let her head drop back and stared blankly at the ceiling. The mantel clock ticked out the minutes; the fire fell into itself with a shower of sparks. After an endless time, and a constantly repeating litany of might-have-beens, Emma fell asleep.
***
It was very late when Colin gently opened the door that connected their rooms and came in, carrying a single candle. He looked first to the bed and, finding it empty, scanned the rest of the room with a frown. Discovering Emma still curled in the chair, he went and stood beside it, setting the candlestick on a small table. He gazed down at her bright hair, which strayed over her shoulders like a shower of gilt, at the beautiful line of her cheek and throat. His heart seemed to turn over in his chest, and he was overwhelmed by love and longing. He knelt beside her. “Emma,” he said quietly, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Emma, you must get to bed.”
The Marriage Wager Page 36