Regency Masquerades: A Limited Edition Boxed Set of Six Traditional Regency Romance Novels of Secrets and Disguises

by Brenda Hiatt

  “There is an art to bullfighting that you might find similar to your art of fencing,” Doña Alomar was saying to a group of admirers gathered around her. She was like a queen holding court. Jeremy could not even get close.

  Later, after several of the ladies had entertained the company by singing or playing the pianoforte, someone pressed the señora to take a turn.

  “I am so sorry,” she said with a regretful smile, “I do not sing or play at all well.” She hesitated, and then she looked straight at Jeremy. Her smile turned devilish, looking just like Tobey’s when he hit upon some mischief. “If you wish, perhaps I could demonstrate a Spanish dance!”

  This offer, of course, was greeted with great enthusiasm. Doña Alomar shyly apologized in advance for her limitations and the fact that the dance would normally be danced by a couple as it was a courtship dance. She then taught a lively clapping rhythm to the group and explained that the tempo should be slow at the start and gradually increase.

  Jeremy was forced to watch helplessly while she proceeded to dance a variation of the fandango, his attention as riveted as that of every other man in the room. Courtship! More likely designed to drive a man insane, he thought, following every fluid movement of her arms and every turn of her body. At the beginning her motions were coy, flirtatious, but as the dance gained speed, her stamping feet and swirling skirt sent a message of teasing passion, no matter how dignified she still managed to appear. She would stop and hold a pose, arms raised and neck arched, then she would start in again, with increasing frequency as the dance spun on. She moved with remarkable grace and speed. The rhythms of her feet and snapping fingers helped to guide the hand-clappers around her, while she danced to a tune none could hear but her, and with a partner none could see. A fierce possessiveness ignited in Jeremy. His blood was racing. In her rather revealing Spanish dress, the performance was seductive, provocative, scandalous. He was certain she had done it just to spite him.

  “You have utterly charmed them all,” he said to her later when he finally found a chance to catch her alone. He could not seem to keep the irritability out of his voice. “Have you been enjoying yourself?”

  “Why, yes. Much more than I expected to,” she answered, offering him a heartwarmingly innocent smile.

  “I noticed that Lord Fulford was particularly attentive.”

  “Yes, he has been very kind. He asked me to drive in the park with him tomorrow afternoon, but of course I had to refuse, since that is when I promised to give your son his first lesson. He also invited me to go to the theater with him on Tuesday. Poor fellow, I had to explain that I was already engaged to go that night with you.”

  Jeremy did not feel any sympathy for the “poor fellow” at all. In fact, he secretly felt rather pleased.

  “No doubt you will find this disappointing, but I must insist that we be among the first guests to leave tonight. If you recall, we have some business to attend in the morning and have not the option of sleeping ’til noon like most of these others.”

  His tone was unduly harsh, and he could see the look of surprise that passed through her eyes. But there was something else there, too. Was it disappointment? Or relief?

  “Yes, of course, you are right. I’ll just get my shawl.”

  He accompanied her, unwilling to share her company with anyone else any longer. Knowing that his feelings were utterly irrational did not improve his mood.

  In the carriage, he put as much distance between them as possible and spoke not at all. He could not seem to get rid of the idea that kissing her would make him feel better. The minutes dragged.

  “Did I do something wrong?” she finally asked him. “If somehow I have offended you or your friends, I must apologize. But I am at a loss to know—”

  “You did nothing wrong.”

  “I must return your mother’s necklace. It was very kind of her—”

  “Not now.” If he had to touch her now, he knew he would lose his battle for control.

  “But…?”

  “No.” Of course she did not understand. How could she? But then he made the mistake of looking at her, and the mixture of puzzlement, hurt and concern in her green eyes touched him as surely as an outreached hand. “God help me, do you not realize I cannot resist you?”

  In an instant he closed the gap between them and took her into his arms, pouring into his kiss all of the passion long buried within him. Heated and needy, he pursued the sweet taste of her mouth with unrelenting intensity, holding her as if the very pull of his arms could meld their bodies into one.

  At first she seemed passive, accepting but perhaps too shocked to return his ardor. Still he could not stop himself. Then, slowly, miraculously, he felt the response build within her. So slightly she shifted to better fit her body into his embrace. Her lips softened and parted under his. Her hands came up, not to push him away, but to encircle his neck, and her mouth began to answer his movements.

  Oh, God! How much he wanted this woman. How could he burn so for a woman he hardly knew? She had completely addled his brains, and he did not even care. Even without Anne to anchor him these last years, he had never felt such driving desire for any woman he had met through his work or outside of it. It was a total shock to him when the carriage shuddered to a halt moments later in front of her lodgings. The drive, which only a few minutes earlier had seemed so endless, had suddenly become accursedly short.

  He released her, thinking how beautiful she looked with the heightened color and dazed expression of a woman just roused from passion. “I should apologize, but I do not want to,” he said, his voice husky. “Must I?”

  She looked away, so he could not read her thoughts in her eyes. But slowly she shook her head. “I am as much at fault as you,” she replied, her voice barely a whisper.

  Sanity had returned to Jeremy by the time his footman woke him in the early hours of the following morning. Last night, he had been at odds with himself and completely out of control. He could hardly explain what had happened in the carriage. It might have been easy to lay the blame on Doña Alomar, for her alluring dance or her enticing person. But he knew he was the one at fault.

  Today, at least, he felt quite clear about what he was doing. When the señora identified the contents of her trunk, he fully expected to learn something useful.

  He had arranged for his men to take away the trunk yesterday afternoon while his mother and son were not in the house. The last thing he needed was for Tobey to start asking questions of him! He was counting on the lad to direct questions to the señora during their lessons and hoped that she might be less guarded in her answers to a child.

  Meanwhile, his men should have secreted the trunk in a corner of St. George’s within the past hour, and he was expecting them to come by soon to report. He dressed with care, patiently waiting while his valet fixed his cravat, and then went down to take an early breakfast.

  Nicholson knocked on the door so discreetly that Jeremy had no idea the man had arrived until the footman brought him into the dining room where Jeremy sat at table. After observing the way the fellow eyed the aromatic spread on the sideboard, Jeremy took pity on him and invited him to help himself.

  Munching a warm, buttered muffin, Jeremy waited.

  “Twasn’t much choice of where to leave the trunk, sir,” Nicholson said after wolfing down toast and a boiled egg in herbed cream sauce. Forking a slice of cold ham onto his plate he added, “We’ve left it behind the stairs that lead up to the north gallery. ’Twas there or in the chapel, and we didn’t fancy carrying it in through the church, or you having to carry it out again.”

  “That sounds perfect, Nicholson. Thank you. The chapel would definitely have drawn too much attention to us all, coming or going.” Jeremy nodded. His plan was well under way.

  He had explained to his mother and son yesterday about the hope of recovering the stolen trunk—there was no avoiding including them in the lie, since they insisted that they would accompany him to church. Having to do so had l
eft a bitter taste in his mouth, however. Lying to his own family! Was there no end to the deceptions his duty required of him? In order to finally quit this business, must he sacrifice the last remaining vestiges of honor and decency that he hoped he still possessed?

  The cost was exorbitant, the irony too cruel—especially now, when he was no longer certain that his assignment had merit. He had found no proof that the señora was a foreign agent. Without that justification, the mere fact that this was his job did little to soothe his conscience. How he wished that he could enjoy Tobey’s delight at the simple prospect of “something interesting” going on!

  A good hour after Nicholson had left, Lady Danebridge and Tobey came down to breakfast.

  “Are you going to try to catch the thief?” was the first thing out of Tobey’s mouth after he greeted his father.

  “Thief?” said Lady Danebridge.

  “You know, Grandmama. The trunk thief.”

  The baron thought there was a familiar ring to this conversation. “Well now, Tobey, all we would have is a person who returned the trunk to its rightful owner, don’t you see? We would have no proof that the person was the same one who stole it.”

  “Oh.” The boy’s disappointment was obvious.

  “Doña Alomar will be very happy to get her trunk back, I think, even without catching anyone.”

  The mention of the señora brightened Tobey right up again. “Will she come in our carriage, Papa? When will we go to meet her? Can we take a drive with her after church?”

  “We will go to fetch her in our carriage soon after you finish your meal, lad. We would like to be early enough to look for the trunk before the church is full of people and the service begins. Therefore, you would be well advised to forego asking questions in favor of eating. Unless, of course, you have changed your mind about coming along?”

  Jeremy had to chuckle when he saw how fast the food began to disappear from Tobey’s plate.

  A short while later they were en route to Charles Street.

  “I know you would like to take the señora for a drive after church, son,” the baron said as their coach turned the corner of Manchester Square, “but remember that she will want to take her trunk back to her lodgings right away. I realize that weather is no doubt irrelevant to someone of your age, but even so I would also point out to you that it is cool and gray this morning, with a threat of rain in the air. Will you settle for a Spanish lesson? She has promised to give you one later this afternoon.”

  “Oh, yes, Papa!”

  That issue settled, Tobey moved on to other questions, such whether Doña Alomar lived where she did because the street around the corner was called Spanish Place. Moments later the coach turned into Charles Street and drew up in front of Mrs. Isham’s lodging house.

  Falcon was ready when the baron and his family arrived to escort her to church. She had wrestled with her part in the events of the previous evening, shocked by her own behavior, both in dancing at the dinner and in her response to Lord Danebridge’s passion in the carriage. What was she doing? He was making her lose sight of the reason she was here, the one goal that made sense of her life. She could not afford to let such emotions rule her, no matter what she might be starting to feel for the man. It was a mistake. She resolved to act as if it had never happened. She would pretend that it meant nothing. Certainly Lord Danebridge would behave with decorum in front of his family. And so would she.

  She had, in fact, been waiting for quite some minutes, eager to go to the church and find her trunk even though it meant seeing him again so soon. She had convinced herself that her mother’s jewelry would be gone, but she held great hope that the other keepsakes would not have appeared to be valuable to anyone else. Perhaps even the banknotes, drawn on a foreign bank as they were, might have presented too much of a problem for a common thief to bother with.

  She had decided that her mantilla would only single her out for attention among the Sunday churchgoers. Accordingly, she had borrowed Maggie’s best black silk bonnet, which was trimmed with fabric flowers and a small plume of the same color and which had an admirably deep, concealing brim. The effect, combined with her burgundy-colored walking dress and a large black silk shawl, was utterly sober and discreet. She hoped that Lord Danebridge would not see anyone with whom he would be expected to exchange greetings or introductions.

  Just the sight of him was enough to create a pull of attraction when she came down to meet him, even though his expression was inscrutable. “You are looking, uh, very respectable this morning, señora,” he said, offering his arm.

  As she took it he turned to her with a quick grin and peered playfully under the brim of her bonnet. “I do have the right woman, do I not?”

  She pulled back instinctively, and he chuckled, patting her hand still in the crook of his elbow. “Just checking, you know.” As the door closed behind them and they descended the steps to the sidewalk, he added in a low voice, “I admit I can think of ways I might enjoy testing that.”

  He deserved a slap for that impertinence, but she could not do it in front of his family, who were sitting right there in the waiting carriage. She was spared the necessity of replying as he opened the door of the coach and assisted her up the steps.

  She settled beside Lady Danebridge, relieved to sit anywhere that was not beside the baron. She did not even have to look at him after he seated himself opposite her, for Tobey was well pleased to have her attention. It felt very odd to Falcon to be riding in their carriage so much like a little family group; it called up memories of a past lost forever and conjured images of a future that could never be.

  “You look sad,” Tobey remarked, honest and observant like most children his age.

  “I was just remembering days long since gone by. Forgive me?” She smiled. “In Spanish we say, ‘perdone’.”

  Tobey grinned and in that moment resembled his father so greatly that she had to look away. She found herself wondering what the baron’s wife had been like.

  They reached St. George’s a short while later, although it seemed agonizingly long to Falcon. The massive, stone-columned portico impressed her as the little group hurried up the steps and went inside.

  “The trunk is supposed to be behind the stairs,” Lord Danebridge whispered, taking possession of her arm and steering her past the stairway to the north gallery. Back in the shadows, it seemed to Falcon that he kept hold of her a bit longer than necessary. But sure enough, tucked back against the wall was a trunk. It looked like hers.

  “Is it locked? I must check the contents to be certain…”

  “I do not think we can take the time just now. People are beginning to come in for the service. We’ll have to wait.”

  Jeremy had no more wish to wait than the señora did, he was certain, but the risk of attracting attention had become too great. He could just imagine the curious looks and indignant reactions they would receive if people arriving for church were met by the sight of a young woman rifling through the contents of a trunk and displaying her personal items for all to see.

  “Come, let us deposit the reward money and take seats. I am sure the trunk will still be here when the service is over. We will just have to wait until everyone leaves.”

  Jeremy had prearranged for one of his men to bring his own family and sit in the pew where the reward money was to be left. He experienced a few anxious moments between the time he left the reward and the moment when the man and his wife appeared—what if someone else filled all the seats in that pew? But it seemed to work out perfectly; the man and his wife arrived early enough to be sure they got the pew, and a short while later their eldest daughter came in with two younger children, who sat quite innocently where the money was hidden.

  Never had a church service seemed to pass so slowly. Jeremy was as fidgety as Tobey by the time the sermon was over. He glanced at the señora frequently, trying to determine if she was uncomfortable in a Protestant setting, but she did not seem to be. Perhaps he had been mistaken when he
thought she must be Catholic.

  Suppose he was mistaken about her in everything? Could she not be both the cousin of the Earl of Coudray and the widow of a Spanish lord? Had she ever claimed to be Spanish born? She had never made any claims at all, and he had never been in a position to confront her. He had lied to, stolen from, and spied upon her. And he very much feared he was in love with her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jeremy studied the señora’s exquisite face as she watched the congregation of St. George’s slowly and sociably make their way up the aisles after the service ended. He had no doubt that she was looking at each person, wondering who among them had returned—and quite possibly previously stolen—her trunk.

  Did she seek to know the thief out of righteous anger or compassion? Since so many of the people gathered there for worship were well-heeled residents of the most fashionable West End addresses, there was an element of the ridiculous to it all that tugged at his sense of humor along with his guilt. How rightfully shocked and angry she would be if she knew that the true culprit was sitting right beside her!

  Meanwhile, Jeremy’s mother smiled and nodded happily at various acquaintances, occasionally pointing out certain people to Jeremy. “You see?” she would say, tugging his sleeve. “There’s Lady So-and-So. I had no idea that she attended St. George’s! I’m so glad we came.”

  For the life of him Jeremy could not see why which church Lady So-and-So attended and whether or not his mother knew about it should make any difference in anything. But at least she was happy and occupied for the moment. Tobey, on the other hand, begged to be released from captivity.

  “Can I go up in the pulpit, Papa? Do you mind if I go see the chapel? What about the gallery? I want to go up and see the great organ and look down upon all the people.”

  Jeremy thought the church could not empty out soon enough. However, Tobey’s curiosity did provide a good excuse for their little group’s staying behind when the last stragglers finally paid their respects to the minister and went out. The good reverend had no problem with visitors who wished to admire his beautiful church and after pointing out a few key features left them to it. While Tobey climbed the stairs to explore the upper regions and Lady Danebridge went to examine the painting of the Last Supper behind the altar, Jeremy and Doña Alomar pulled her trunk out into the light. As Jeremy knew perfectly well, it was not locked.