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

by Brenda Hiatt

  Miss Colburne was clearly dismayed. “Oh, dear. We have received a number of cards and invitations. I suppose I hoped that if I ignored them they might disappear and at the same time I would be considered so rude no one would send any more.” She looked at him appealingly. “Must I go? You understand now the reasons why I did not wish to join in social events.”

  He did. He also realized that it had been his doing that she had been pushed into the glaring light of the ton’s attention. Had his own actions contributed to putting her in danger? It was a painful thought.

  “Could we not simply send apologies?” she asked. “How do you intend to dance without using your arm? I know of no dance that can be done so.”

  “After what has happened I think it more imperative than ever to make an appearance there. The gossips will have spread the story of the shooting all over Town. For the sake of your reputation, we must convince them it was nothing, perhaps an accidental discharge during an attempt to thwart a robbery. I will have to give my family the same story, lest they worry.”

  “Well, perhaps the ladies will fall all over you with sympathy if they think you were injured, and you will be spared the need to dance.”

  His gray eyes were dark when he replied. “You may rest assured that I will claim at least my two dances with you. And one of those had better be the supper dance.”

  To create a space large enough to accommodate their guests, the Wallinghams had transformed their large townhouse garden into a huge pavilion with four rooms. Opening into each other, these were draped in rose-colored muslin and hung with handsome pier glasses which reflected the light of many chandeliers. Swags of perfumed flowers crowned the draperies and ornamented the imitation columns that supported the roof. Colored lamps glowed like jewels along the walkway from the house, adding to the magical effect. It was obvious to all of the guests at the ball on Wednesday evening that no expense had been spared.

  Falcon felt as if she had stepped into the center of an enchantment or an elaborate theatrical production. “How beautiful!” she could not help exclaiming, although she noticed that the people around her seemed to take it all in stride.

  Benita had labored valiantly to clean and repair Falcon’s green evening dress so that it could be worn again this evening. As she had on the previous night, Falcon wore her mother’s jewels. Not yet ready to give up the persona of Doña Alomar de Montero, she wore the black lace mantilla in place of an evening headdress. Maggie had insisted on adding a cluster of black plumes and green satin ribbon to the back of this in order to improve the elegance of the effect.

  Lord Danebridge looked as handsome as ever in his dark evening coat and snowy linen. Falcon noticed a number of ladies turning to look his way as he escorted her and his mother through the house and out to the pavilion behind it. As a supposedly widowed lady, Falcon did not require a chaperone, but the baron’s mother had been too delighted by the prospect of attending to be left behind.

  He was right, of course, about the gossip. Many people approached them, curious to know what had really occurred at Covent Garden the previous night. Lord Danebridge repeatedly told the story they had decided upon, assuring all comers that it was nothing of importance.

  She was right that many ladies showered him with attention and sympathy, clucking over his injured arm. Despite the stiffness and pain he professed to feel, he did dance, although he avoided the liveliest country dances. Falcon found it difficult to keep her attention on her own partners when her gaze kept straying to wherever he was.

  “It is absolutely obligatory that I dance with young Penelope,” he had said early in the evening. “This is her ball.” And later, “I cannot be seen only to dance with you and Miss Wallingham—people would most definitely talk.” But she had yet to dance with him. She knew it should not bother her, but it did.

  Falcon found that she had no lack of partners. She had not realized that in the course of barely a week she had become a celebrity. She was appalled to learn that huge sums had been wagered over her in the men’s clubs; in one someone had won five hundred pounds for being the first to report her Spanish name and someone else had won eighty guineas by guessing correctly when that name would first become known. Her dance card was more than full, with gentlemen seeking to subscribe even for moments of time with her between the dances. She found it all too absurd to be flattering.

  “I do not understand it,” she said to Lord Danebridge when they found a few minutes to speak between dances. “They know nothing about me.”

  He touched her veil lightly with two fingers. “Ah, reclusive Lady of the Mantilla, you are beautiful, mysterious and unattainable. That is more than enough to make men mad.”

  The number of guests in attendance continued to swell as the evening wore on. The frequent announcements necessitated by their arrivals might have become annoying if anyone had paid much attention to them.

  “Some have been at other parties, some probably at Almack’s,” the baron told Falcon when they next stood together. “Almack’s is a stuffy weekly assembly with bad food and bad music. All the high sticklers go there because it is so terribly exclusive.”

  She giggled. Perhaps she had had enough champagne. “You must have been there to know so much about it. Are you a ‘high stickler’?”

  He gave her a long look. “I have been, at times, both a high stickler and at Almack’s. That is where I met my wife.”

  She had opened her mouth to reply when an announcement ending with the words, “Lord Coudray,” caught her up short. Closing her mouth, she stared at Lord Danebridge. The baron stared back.

  Her first instinct was to flee. She did not even want to see the man who was her father’s cousin. She did not want to hear the earl’s voice or know if he resembled her father in any way, and she did not want to risk meeting him face-to-face, lest he somehow recognize her and betray her masquerade. Something of her feelings must have shown on her face, for Lord Danebridge put a hand on her arm.

  “My father’s cousin,” she whispered. “I do not wish to meet him.”

  “Even so, you cannot simply dash out of here all of a sudden. Nothing would be more certain to draw attention to you.”

  He was right, of course. She was trapped for now. She could not help glancing at the elegant man who entered the pavilion and stood just inside, surveying the crowded scene before him.

  “Let me see your dance card. Look. There are only two more dances before the supper dance, which is mine. If it is what you wish, perhaps we could slip away then. My mother will protest, but at least you need only contrive to avoid him until then.”

  Falcon’s next dance partner came to claim her, and as she took her place in the set she felt relieved that it was forming farthest from where the earl was standing. He made no move to find a partner or join in the dancing. He watched.

  Falcon watched, too, wary of any circumstance that might bring her too near the man. She was unable to keep her eyes off him for long. He appeared to be perfectly comfortable just standing there; numerous people came over to speak with him, which showed Falcon that he was reasonably well known at least among certain circles within the ton.

  He did have a look of her father about him. Part of it, she decided, was the way he held himself, but part of it was the trim shape of his body, the long shape of his face and the way his dark hair was graying at the temples. Seeing him was very unsettling.

  When the dance ended, Falcon begged her partner’s pardon for the mistakes she had made and searched for Lord Danebridge or his mother. Seeing neither, she agreed to accompany her partner to the refreshment table on the other side of the pavilion. She was sipping delicious champagne punch and struggling to make conversation directed carefully to harmless topics when she saw Lord Coudray heading towards the table. She set her cup down abruptly.

  “I believe they must be setting up for the next dance,” she told her escort pointedly. “Would you take me back?”

  Jeremy, too, was watching the earl, trying to deter
mine if the man had any inkling of who the lovely Spanish lady gracing the ball really was. Was he watching her in particular? Had he come here looking for her? Or was it merely coincidence that had brought them all here? Jeremy assumed that after his visit Mr. Fallesby must have communicated with the earl. What had he set in motion, if anything?

  Miss Colburne’s reluctance to face her cousin puzzled Jeremy. Had she ever written to the earl, as she had told Mr. Fallesby she would? After hearing her extraordinary story, Jeremy could not believe that she would not welcome the existence of some remnant of family. The information he had found waiting for him at his superior’s office this morning had corroborated everything she had told him, from the disorder and disaster at Astorga to the respective ranks of Sweeney, Pumphrey and Timmins in the Forty-third. At his club old Lord Saltersby had said that the former Lord Coudray, her grandfather, had rejected her mother and cast off her father. But the current earl was not the one who had done these things.

  Jeremy kept an eye on Miss Colburne as well as her cousin. So far, she was managing to keep well clear of the earl. He could tell that she was distracted by the man’s presence even though she moved gracefully through the dance figures and seemed to learn quickly any patterns that were apparently unfamiliar to her. She did not pay quite such rapt attention to her partners’ remarks nor did she laugh or smile as readily as he knew she might. It did not displease him. He was suffering a relapse of the jealous feelings that had attacked him at the Giddings’ dinner party.

  When the dance ended Jeremy lost no time heading towards her.

  “My dance, Doña Alomar?”

  “Yes, so it is.” She took his good arm and allowed him to lead her out. As they walked she whispered, “Just in time. I think he was going to come over to me with Lady Halstead.”

  Jeremy thought it was just in time simply for the reason that he could not stand to watch her dance with one more man. Despite the pain in his injured arm, he wanted his turn. He had never dreamed it would be so difficult to wait until the supper dance. It looked as if he never would be able to claim his second dance—he had signed her card again for a dance even later in the evening, and now it appeared that they would be leaving early.

  This dance was a gentle progressive country dance performed in a longways set for as many as wished. The line of couples stretched the entire length of the pavilion. As the music began, one more couple hurriedly joined the line.

  “Do not look now,” Jeremy said.

  “Oh, no.”

  “It is too late to drop out. Perhaps the music will end before we ever get to them.”

  “He was not dancing before this. Why did he have to decide to do so now?”

  Jeremy tried to reassure her. “Perhaps he only wanted to ensure that he had a partner for supper. You must try to relax.”

  They began the dance, touching, parting, returning, turning. The light from the chandeliers cast changing shadows and highlights upon Miss Colburne as she moved. Jeremy could hardly take his eyes off her long enough to acknowledge the other dancers with whom they came into contact. She managed to smile at him, although he could tell she was nervous. Every little while she would dart a glance down the line to check on the position of her cousin. As the alternating couples variously moved up or down the line, Lord Coudray and his partner came closer and closer.

  Inevitably, the music continued. When finally the two couples were face-to-face, Jeremy tried to give Miss Colburne’s hand a reassuring squeeze. She had talent as an actress. Now was a very good time to use it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Riding home in the baron’s carriage, Falcon hoped fervently that she had passed the test. She had faced her cousin, dutifully going through the dance figures nodding and smiling politely. The encounter in the dance lasted no more than a few moments, and then the couples moved on to the next dancers in the line. She thought it was not until afterwards that a slight trembling had seized her limbs.

  But that had proved only a prelude to the real test. The worst moment had come when Lord Danebridge went to seek his mother in the card room so that the trio might leave. With perfect timing Lady Wallingham, beaming benevolently, had brought Lord Coudray over “at his specific request” to present him to Falcon. No doubt the delighted hostess had expected the señora would feel honored.

  Meeting the earl had produced a strange sensation of being introduced to her own father. That this stranger should be so much like him triggered a kind of horrified yearning to have her real father back and resentment that this man stood before her instead. Then a wave of guilt over her attempt to deceive him washed through her. Had she been wrong not to make contact with him? Her only knowledge of her father’s family came from their callous treatment of her parents. But even if they might have accepted her, no doubt they would not have approved of what she’d come here to do.

  She had not been able to judge whether the man’s interest in her was anything different from the curiosity shown by all the other gentlemen she had met during the evening. He had bowed graciously over her hand and made the same sort of polite remarks she had heard all evening. She replied in kind, her smile fixed in place. She hoped that her resemblance to her mother was not obvious with her mantilla covering her hair. Perhaps this cousin had never met her mother, the “accursed Irish bride.”

  The carriage arrived at Mrs. Isham’s lodging house and Lord Danebridge saw Falcon to the door. She knew he had been watching her intently during the drive home all the while he was pretending to listen to his mother’s assessment of their evening.

  “Perhaps it is just as well that you finally met your cousin,” he said in a low voice as they approached the door. “You could not have avoided him forever.”

  Yes, I might have, she thought, if I could have finished this business and returned soon to Spain. But she did not say so. She merely nodded.

  “Will you trust me to pursue some additional measures to track down this Sweeney? I thought you would be safe enough at a private event like tonight’s, but I do not want you to go out and about in the city until we know you are out of danger. Promise me?”

  She nodded again. In truth, she was at a loss to know how to proceed, now that there seemed to have been such a turnabout of events. The hunter had become the hunted. If Lord Danebridge could help her to turn it around again, she would be foolish to refuse. Yet she was reluctant.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Will you not be in danger?” The thought that any further harm might come to him filled her with dread and served only to underscore how much she had come to care for him.

  He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Have no fear for me, Miss Colburne.”

  Behind her, Mrs. Isham’s footman opened the door, curtailing any further exchange.

  In the morning, Falcon fretted over her promise to stay in. The man at Rudkin and Bowles had indicated that her mother’s harp might be ready by today, but keeping her word to the baron meant that she would have to send Triss. It also prevented her from visiting Pumphrey at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. During her restless night she had become convinced that seeing him might be worth the risk of adding to her danger if the former corporal had any information about Sweeney. If only she had not agreed!

  Frustrated, she decided to write a letter to Carmen. She had written to Don Andrés and Doña Luisa during her self-imposed solitude yesterday afternoon, pouring out her anxieties about their state of affairs but saying very little concerning her own. To Carmen she could unburden herself; Carmen had become a sister to her during their years together in Spain. Falcon could not know if the letters would reach them, but the mere act of writing made her feel better.

  She sent Triss and Maggie off to Cheapside and settled at the small writing desk by the window in the sitting room. She had covered both sides of one sheet, crossed it, and had gone on to a precious second sheet of paper when she was interrupted by the announcement of a visitor. A glance at the clock told her it was barely noon—perhaps her visitor
was Lord Danebridge! But she was wrong. It was Lord Coudray.

  “I do not wish to see him,” she told the footman in rather panicked tones. “Tell him I am not at home.”

  “He said to tell you he would wait as long as necessary, señora. Suggested you might as well see him now as later.”

  What could he want? Had she not passed the test after all? Falcon looked about the sitting room as if it might offer some clue to what she should do. It was an ordinary room in perfectly good order and inspired no solutions. She sighed.

  “All right. Give me a moment to call in my maid and then send him up. I suppose I have no choice.” She did not relish seeing the earl alone for she did not know him. Was she receiving him as the widow, Doña Alomar de Montero, or as his unmarried cousin, Falcarrah Colburne? Maggie had gone with Triss, so Benita would have to play chaperone.

  “You have a snug little place here, small but not really objectionable, I am pleased to see,” the earl said, looking about the room as he made his entrance. He carried a huge bouquet of hothouse flowers which he presented to Falcon with a bow.

  “I thought these were beautiful and exotic, like you, my dear. You should have them. You were the belle of the ball last night, despite the fact it should have been Miss Wallingham. But it made me proud to see a Colburne conduct herself with such grace and elegance.”

  So, he knew. She had not fooled him at all. Something of her dismay must have shown on her face, for he laughed.

  “Now, do not be alarmed! Did I betray any sign that I recognized you last night? Surely that should tell you that I mean you no harm. May I sit?”

  She nodded, too numb to apologize for her poor manners. He seated himself on the small settee across from where Falcon was standing, still holding the flowers.

  “From what Mr. Fallesby has told me, I rather think I am your legal guardian, or will be. We are family, my dear. I think it little short of a miracle to find you here! If only you knew the grief that followed the reported deaths of you and your parents! But we can speak of that later. What I must know is why in the name of heaven you did not write to us, now or even long before this. Why are you masquerading as this Doña Alomar de Montero?”