by Ingrid Hahn
By the third mention, the most intrusive and clumsy of all, Abigail’s mistress made an excuse about the heat from the fire to take a seat completely opposite and as far from Mrs. Biddleton as possible.
It wasn’t an unusual pattern. Mrs. Gordon and Mrs. Biddleton fell in together as quickly and easily as they fell out, the former mortified by the manners of the latter, but unable to stay too far away for any overly long period due to the fact that Mrs. Biddleton had a knack for ferreting out all the best on-dits. And Abigail’s mistress had a penchant for wanting early and detailed knowledge on all the best gossip.
What would they say about her if they’d known how she’d spent the previous night?
Though her mood was far from mirthful, the idea pulled a smile to her lips. She bowed her head, looking into her hands trying to suppress the expression.
The two women’s eyes would go wide and they’d cover their mouths, inhaling audibly, and then declare they’d never heard of anything more shocking. And who knew, maybe they wouldn’t have. What Abigail and the marquess had done was so far beyond the pale as to be transparent. Either way, Mrs. Gordon might show some sense on the subject, but Mrs. Biddleton would lean in and no doubt ask the most unimaginably impertinent question possible.
Biting back laughter, Abigail’s fingers went to her throat. Instead of finding the cameo pendant Edward had given her, she found nothing. Rather like the omission of gemstones about her ears and throat for the ball, only this time, the realization came with no pitching regret. She’d given the cameo, chain and all, to one of Mrs. Gordon’s maids who’d always admired it.
As it should have been. It was one thing to vow to oneself that there would be no more clinging to impossible dreams. It was another to shed all evidence of ever having them out of one’s life for good.
“Excellent.” Lady Ingrahme’s attention focused on the new arrival shadowing the doorway. “You’ve come at last, nephew.”
The entire room went silent.
Situated in an awkward part of the room as she was, Abigail was without vantage and didn’t have an immediate view of the newcomer. But she too had her head turned, her eyes unblinking waiting for this man to make his entrance.
“I apologize for keeping everyone waiting.”
Icy shards of dread drew clawing marks down Abigail’s back. The voice was enough. It could belong to but a single person in the world. She didn’t need to see.
No, it couldn’t be. It was impossible. Completely and utterly impossible. Fate wouldn’t be so—couldn’t be so—what? Cruel? Kind?
But it was. It was.
Her insides turned into a mad flutter of tiny beasts writhing to free themselves from their confines.
Sweet savior, help her.
12
There was something about that woman sitting apart from the others. Harland had only to glance her way once and he knew—he knew only too well what she was. An outsider. Like himself.
But unlike himself, who was alone in the center of the room with only his aunt who might have a hope of seeing beyond the title, she was alone in both place and time.
If she was trying to be invisible, she wasn’t very good at it.
He couldn’t look her way again, but for quite another reason. In the fraction of a second he’d glanced at her, he’d seen something he didn’t care to see. The tilt of her mouth was reminiscent of the one he’d most recently kissed. Seeing her from the corner of his eye was bad enough. Like a punch in the gut. Something about the shade of her hair brought a mad hope bursting over his heart. He was too weary for this. Too weary to feel his heart sink each and every time he had to remind himself that it was impossible that the creature in the corner be his Miss S.
Perhaps it was to be expected for a while—part of him still held hope. Still wanted to find her. So of course he’d be imagining her in a good fraction of the number of women he encountered. When he’d stopped briefly at a coaching inn on his way to Westmore, he’d thought he’d seen her disembarking from a carriage, helped down by the outstretched hand of round-faced gentleman who, when he smiled up at her, brought the untamed bite of savage jealousy down into the tender flesh of Harland’s heart.
But a more careful look revealed the woman at the coaching inn hadn’t been anything like the woman behind the mask, with a sharper chin, different skin tone, and wide-stretched lips. She’d even had much lighter hair—almost a true flaxen, nothing like bits of flame that shimmered in the strands of last night’s woman when the locks caught the glowing candlelight.
But his mind wanted to see her, so it’d wished its way into doing so.
He struggled against looking back in the direction of the other outsider in the room. From his peripheral vision, he caught two things. First, the simplicity of her dress, and second, the way she kept her head bowed low as if the most interesting thing in the room were the hands she rested gently one atop the other in her lap.
That or she’d fallen asleep.
He wouldn’t look. He couldn’t. It didn’t matter. The world held thousands upon thousands of women, and the only one he cared to see was lost somewhere in the London multitudes.
“Harland, my dear boy, what is the matter?” Lady Ingrahme pulled him aside while the company was dispersing.
“Nothing, I’m sure. I’m overtired is all.”
“You’re going to keep my guests’ tongues wagging for the next six weeks with the fodder you’re giving them being so distant and sullen. What ever is distracting you so?” She made a sound of exasperation. “It’s that ball, I know it.”
And he’d been thinking he’d done rather well in the company, considering. “I’ll do better at dinner.”
“I told your father a hundred times to put an end to the wretched thing. No, no, he always said, can’t break with tradition. I always considered you as having superior reason, thanks to the sense your dear mother brought to the Harland bloodline. Now I call upon you to apply that sense. You must end the tradition.”
“I can’t, aunt. I’m sorry. I can’t.”
If ever he might defy reason by hoping to see Miss S again, the best bet might be at next year’s ball. And that left naught but three hundred and thirty-four days filled with nothing but waiting.
Abigail’s attempt to convince Mrs. Gordon she was too ill to come down to dinner was met with a headshake and a frown. “You’re not going to miss dinner, my dear. Not on Christmas. You’ll have plenty of time to be ill tomorrow, if that’s how you really must choose to spend your time.”
There was something to be said for facing him instead of retreating. Of what had she to be ashamed? Why should she absent herself for nothing more than his comfort?
So she’d dressed.
The scolding continued in Mrs. Gordon’s room, a comfortable chamber with simple furnishings in the best of taste done in whites and yellows. “Really, Abigail, I’ve never seen you so out of sorts. It’s like you’ve gone into mourning for that cat all over again.”
Mrs. Gordon hadn’t been too enthusiastic about taking on a companion who wouldn’t give up her cat, but even she’d come to show some begrudging affection for Pie in his final years.
Carter was working on the finishing details to make their mistress ready for dinner when Mrs. Biddleton swept in wearing a gown of deep garnet and a headdress of wafting feathers. She shut the door behind her with a conspiratorial smile.
Abigail kept still on the dimity bed and tried not to listen. Though she didn’t try very hard.
“Well, dear Selina, did I not tell you? Isn’t he just as I described? The very picture of a rake? Lady Edlebrook receives an invitation to his ball every year, and my upstairs maid knows her upstairs maid, they’re very great friends, you know, for my maid used to work for Lady Edlebrook as well, and she tells me…”
Mrs. Biddleton’s penchant for knowledge came at the price of servants. That is, she paid exorbitant sums to poach them from the households of the finest families of England and then provided those under her
employ with strategically free afternoons.
“And you’ll never guess what else.”
“What?” Mrs. Gordon listened with rapt attention.
Carter caught Abigail’s eye in the mirror from where she stood above Mrs. Gordon placing the turban over the woman’s mass of temporarily tamed silvery curls, expression loaded with concern. Abigail pulled a soft smile on her face and gave her friend a little head shake to indicate she wasn’t in any distress.
“Well, apparently the marquess isn’t seen much at these things—and at his own ball, can you imagine? Only think of what he must be doing.”
Mrs. Gordon stared wide-eyed. “What?”
The second woman gave her friend a significant look.
Abigail’s mistress drew back and fanned herself. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear, oh dear.” She paused. “Wait a moment, I thought this was a masked affair. How do you know he’s not there in the midst of everything going about disguised?”
“Well, you know what these masked affairs are like.” Mrs. Biddleton made a dismissive gesture as if everyone simply must have firsthand knowledge of such an experience.
“No, but I must say I rather wish I did.”
“The masks are really just a pretense. Everyone knows who everyone else is. Mostly—that’s the most delicious thing about this.” Her eyes were wide and glistened with eager anticipation.
“Oh?”
With a strange premonition about what Mrs. Biddleton was about to say, Abigail shivered as if reliving the moment when the marquess’s body had first brushed up against her own.
“Yes, they say that this year—this year—he danced with someone. Just one single dance with one particular lady. And this is the best part of all. Nobody knows who she is.”
It was four of the clock when Abigail took her seat at the table. She was unable to prevent her stare from pulling towards the marquess with one lingering sidelong glance. He sat at the high end with his aunt. She, Abigail, sat at the low end.
Although, considering the discrepancy in their respective situations in life, it was rather a wonder they shared a table in the same time and place at all. As a space to share with the man, the dining table was so much stranger than the drawing room for some reason, as if they were never meant to take a meal together. That or the spanning distance between them grew with each passing hour.
The table was the most sumptuous she’d ever seen, lavish in the gleaming silver of finely wrought serving dishes and decoration, as well as in food offerings. Each beautifully crafted utensil was meticulously spaced, as if Westmore boasted more refined, more exacting measurements than any other place on earth.
How one such as Mrs. Biddleton had received an invitation to this place was a matter of great wonder. If Abigail had stayed awake for more than five whole minutes in the carriage, no doubt she’d know how such a feat had been accomplished instead of being left wondering. Maybe she’d blackmailed her way into an invitation. If anyone could, it’d be her. Lady Ingrahme didn’t seem the sort to truck with such nonsense, but Abigail could picture her throwing up her hands and relenting in exasperation under the other woman’s unyielding efforts.
But never mind that.
The marquess remained oblivious to her. Seemingly so, at least. His manner was suspect, as if he were in the midst of a rather substantial wager for how long he could go without looking her way…
He did recognize her, didn’t he? The mask couldn’t have been quite so good at disguising her identity, not when they were confronted with each other not twelve hours after the night they spent in each other’s embrace.
How comfortable he seemed in such surroundings.
She turned her attention to the food. If he wouldn’t acknowledge her, she very well wouldn’t acknowledge him. The food was more deserving of her mind anyhow.
The first repast was no fewer than nineteen dishes. Fish, vegetables, game, soups, puddings—all of them in the finest preparation, and many rare in Abigail’s daily experience due to Mrs. Gordon’s particular tastes. It wouldn’t do not to take advantage of the offerings so seldom seen on her plate, no matter that the tantalizing smells elicited no growl from her empty belly.
But by the time the second course was laid, she’d hardly touched her selections from the first.
Part of her—a none too small part of her—wanted to break the excruciating tension weaving a binding of leaden threads around her bones. She’d stand here before God and all at this very table to demand he recognize her openly once and for all. For how dare the man have the gall to not know her after so thoroughly knowing her?
A strange fear crept into her thoughts, closing her throat against the bite she moved around her mouth, the food tasteless upon her tongue. What if he didn’t recognize her? Hadn’t that been her stipulation during the game? No names?
And he’d taken his mask off. She’d left hers on.
13
Harland was going to go mad with that women present. She was at the end of the table, but Lord save him if the entire world hadn’t shrunk to her and only her.
It was like he was so desperate to get the masked woman back he’d invent her even in the most impossible of circumstances.
Despite himself, he caught the woman’s profile in a sidelong glance. The line of her nose was straight and strong. That’s one thing he wouldn’t have been able to discern through a mask. The wretched things disguised the upper face too completely.
But that turn of her mouth. It was uncanny. It would have been quite enough to coax him into kindling a smoky wisp of hope. If only it hadn’t been outright impossible, which it was. Her? Here? That woman down the table? No. It couldn’t be. His fancies were toying with him.
The woman didn’t seem in very good spirits. She was pale and withdrawn, as if she carried some great worry on her mind. He’d probably frighten her if he tried speaking to her, which he had no reason or inclination to do. She belonged to the party of older women, the two whose connection to his aunt he’d have to enquire about later—a daughter or a niece perhaps. A Miss… Miss something. Later he’d have to ask his aunt what her name had been, although with little hope of being able to recall again a quarter of an hour later.
Pity she’d never married. Though of an age some might try to dismiss her as a spinster. With a touch of color in her cheeks and the attrition of a pleasantly rounding stone or two, she’d have the sort of face a man would enjoy gazing upon across a dinner table, even if she never made any expression other than sullen.
One thing was for certain. He was going to have to talk to the woman, if only to prove to himself once and for all that she wasn’t the one he sought.
He’d be nothing but a craven good-for-nothing if he did aught else.
After the meal, Abigail slipped away from the ladies retreating to the drawing room. The men, of course, stayed behind to their spirits and dull masculine talk, whatever that might have been. Someone had boasted on Lady Ingrahme’s behalf that Westmore was home to the finest conservatories in the county.
Seemed the perfect place for a reprieve—to find relief from the unending necessity of trying to shield the outside world from her inner tumult. Not that she’d want anyone to gain any insight into her interior workings, especially not on this matter, not truly, despite fantastical imaginings of throwing a fit at the table, demanding that the marquess acknowledge her as the one with whom he’d spend the last night.
She wouldn’t be missed, not for a short while. It was absurd she’d been made to come at all—as if Fate and Mrs. Gordon were in some sort of collusion to make this Christmas the worst in memory, little more than a cruel and painful farce.
The corridor was dark, but a dim golden glow emanated from the other end. Abigail caught the scent of the room, green and humid, before happening upon it. The conservatory was in the older section of Westmore Hall, designed from a repurposed ballroom when the new wing of the house had been built. The decoration from that former time hadn’t been done away with when the improvement
s had been undertaken, and the ornately gilded carvings caught the radiance of the candlelight and fires kept burning throughout all hours of the day to keep the temperature high.
She paused in the doorway, wood floor making an ungainly groan beneath her feet.
It was the Mandeville ballroom all over again, only reimagined as if through the lens of a vivid dream—the space smaller, the designs and ornamentations from a different age, condensation obscuring the view through the windows, the people replaced with a stunning array of plants, vines, and flowers. So many roses. No wonder their faint odor lingered so in the main part of the house.
Perhaps he’d appear at any moment to reprise their dance.
Abigail hardened herself. This wasn’t Mandeville house, this wasn’t a dream, and the idea of wishes coming true belonged to the province of fairy stories. Silly fairy stories at that, where nothing followed the proper rules of order.
She, Abigail Sutton, lived here and now, where proper rules of order were observed, and rightfully so. Those who dared flout the principles of behavior that bound good society—those who might steal one night in the hope of fulfilling frivolous fancies—those people would only reap what they deserved.
How far better it would have been to have never tasted what it might have been like to attain a far happier conclusion to the chance she’d taken when she’d slipped on that mask.
Wandering through the clusters of unnamable exotic plants, she came to the bank of windows and, with the side of her hand, wiped away the trailing droplets of water, glass chilled from the other side where the outside air had only winter as its master.
Another clear night had fallen outside, the last hints of twilight long since faded into nothing, revealing a blanket of stars. Among the visible bevy so much more innumerable here than what the lights of London’s night partially obscured, it was impossible to pick out the one she’d wished upon only the night before.