She ducked beneath his arm. “Please, Sebastian. I was wrong. This is wrong. I can’t do this to Tricia. She’s been kind to me. Given me a home.”
He braced his weight against the tree. “And love, Prudence? Has she given you love?”
She had no answer for that and slipped quietly from the willow’s canopy. Sebastian followed, flinging the curtain of leaves aside. They faced each other in the pouring rain.
“I am sorry to disappoint you,” she said, “but I am not part and parcel of my aunt’s estate. I know you’re accustomed to taking what you want, but you can’t have everything.” She was shivering again, and Sebastian ached to put his arms around her. “Please stay away from me. I will be civil to you for my aunt’s sake, but if you approach me again in any way that can be deemed improper, I will be forced to tell her the truth about you.”
He knew Prudence meant what she said. Her determination was written in her whitened knuckles, in the painful rigidity of her spine. She twisted her hair into a nervous knot before realizing she had nothing to hold it with.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small tartan packet. He held it out to her without a word, and she unfolded it with trembling fingers. Nestled in the precious scrap of wool were five silver hairpins tipped with pearls.
“You’ve misjudged me, Miss Walker,” he said, his voice bitter. “I know I can’t have everything. I learned that long ago. But for once in my life, can’t I have what I really want?”
A small sob broke from her, and she reeled away. She scooped up her bedraggled kitten and fled across the meadow, a slender figure, bare-footed and loose-haired, running as if something were pursuing her. Sebastian’s fists slowly unclenched. The rain washed over him, running into his eyes. He watched as Prudence was swallowed by the curtain of rain and he was left alone with the mocking rumble of thunder.
Old Fish plucked the cane out of the potted orange, snorting with disgust. He held it with two fingers as if it were a serpent. If he had his way, he would use it for kindling.
He leaned the cane against the pier-table and sifted through the stack of envelopes there. The front door opened, and he winced as a cool gust of rain struck him in the face.
Prudence ran in and shoved the door shut with her shoulder. A dripping, squalling beast clung to her arm.
Old Fish gazed down his nose at her, noting every aspect of her shocking state of dishabille. “Will you be taking tea with your aunt, Miss Prudence?” His voice oozed polite contempt.
She pelted past him without a word, trailing mud across his polished tiles and up the stairs.
He waved a creamy envelope after her. “Wait, Miss Prudence. You have another letter …” His voice trailed off at the slam of her bedchamber door.
Ungrateful wench, he thought. The girl was a disgrace. No manners at all. He eyed the cane thoughtfully. If she were his niece, he’d use it to give her a good beating. He studied the envelope in his hand. Crimson wax sealed the heavy folds, giving it an aura of importance.
Old Fish held the envelope up to the light, but could see nothing. He brought it to his nose and sniffed it, then lowered it, shrugging his bony shoulders.
Miss Prudence never received correspondence of any import. It was more likely a plea from one of those blasphemous scientific societies her father had supported, begging a donation. Miss Prudence had no funds of her own. He would not have Lady Tricia plagued by such infidels.
He gathered up the entire stack of letters and strode into the parlor. Ignoring the curious maid who was attempting to start a fire on the hearth, he tossed the letters on top of the sputtering kindling. The fire flared. He brushed off his hands, smiling with smug satisfaction as the dancing tongues of fire licked at the wax seal, staining the flames to the color of blood.
Thirteen
The coaches rocked up the long drive, their lanterns casting bells of light through the darkness. Liveried footmen flung open the gilt doors, and masked figures darted toward the house, their capes splashes of white around their feet. There was something bewitching about their flight, as if a magical being had breathed life into the garden statues, sending them tripping and laughing across the lawn. The discordant hum of violin and harp being tuned drifted up through the floorboards with the melodious ring of a sonnet.
Prudence watched from her window, separated from the gaiety below by more than a fragile pane of glass. It could have been another world, another galaxy. If any of Tricia’s guests had glanced up, they might have seen her there, half hidden by the drapes. None of them did.
She finished her braid and dropped her hairbrush in her lap, then pulled a shawl around her night rail, although the night was warm. The sky unfurled above like a dark banner sprinkled with stars. Tricia could not have arranged better weather for her masquerade ball. God would no doubt favor her with sunshine and blue skies for her wedding two days hence, and perhaps even a rainbow to span the garden folly where she and Sebastian would exchange their vows.
Prudence hugged her shawl tighter. She had been lonely for most of her life. But this loneliness cut deeper—bone deep—deep enough to last a lifetime.
Behind her, the door to her chamber opened and shut with a soft click. She didn’t turn around. “If you’ve come to finish me off, Jamie, there’s a letter opener on the dressing stand.”
Jamie blew out a huge sigh. “What sort of welcome is that? I had the very devil of a time sneakin’ past Old Pruneface.”
“Old Fishface,” she corrected him, then swung around in the window seat.
Jamie was a bright splash of tan and russet against the muted cream of her walls. “Sebastian ain’t goin’ to kill ye, is he?”
“Yes, he is. Very slowly. It may take years.”
Jamie raked his fingers through his hair. “I ain’t no happier about this weddin’ than ye are. Do ye think I want to spend the rest of me days as a stableboy to some uppity countess?”
“There are worse fates.”
“Aye, it could be me marryin’ the wench.” He walked over to the window seat. Together they watched the torches along the terraces wink to life. “It ain’t about money. It ain’t even about that godforsaken castle of his.” He stabbed his finger at the window as another opulent coach spilled out its guests. “It’s about them. He’s always wanted to be one of them. Like his mum. Like the Kerrs shoulda been if the MacKays hadn’t taken it all.”
“Then he’s about to get everything he wants, isn’t he?”
“Everything he thinks he wants,” Jamie muttered. “But what do ye want, lass?”
She brushed his hand from her shoulder. “I want to be left alone.”
“And I think ye’ve been left alone far too much in yer life.” With surprising gentleness, he dropped to his knees and clasped her icy hand between his freckled paws. “Ye’ve got to help me, lass. Ye’re the only one who can.”
She tried to withdraw her hand, but he held it fast. Fighting to keep her voice cool, to swallow the tears brimming beneath her calm, she said, “Sebastian has made his choice painfully clear.”
“Ye don’t understand. Sebastian ain’t had a lot in his life, but he’s always had his freedom. He’ll wither up and die here as sure as he would in prison.”
Her hands curled into fists. “I have no control over Sebastian’s future.”
With a hoarse oath, Jamie jumped to his feet and began to pace the chamber. “Aye, and a bright one it is at that! All stuffed into a frock coat fer the rest of his life. Drinkin’ hard to dull his hunger fer the wide-open moors, the silvery shimmer of rain on a loch. It won’t be dull, though, will it? He and the countess, they’ll have their wee tussles between the sheets—lovers whose names they won’t remember when the morn comes.” He picked up the letter opener and jabbed it toward her. “What of yer own future, Prudence? What do ye have to look forward to when Sebastian grows into a fat sot? A peep under yer skirts as ye climb the stairs? A drunken fumble in the garden? I wager that’ll be enough fer an old spinster like—”
He ducked as Prudence’s hairbrush came sailing at his head.
Straightening, he glanced behind him and whistled. The force of the blow had torn a jagged chunk of plaster from the wall. Prudence was on her feet. Her eyes snapped violet fire. “You insolent”—she groped for a word vile enough to describe him—“Scot!”
A slow grin spread over Jamie’s face. “Bonny good shot, lass.” He waved the letter opener in front of her. “Would ye like to try this next?”
“I’d like to bury it in your gullet, you evil little wretch.”
She lunged for it. Jamie danced just out of her reach. “Have ye ever really fought fer anything ye wanted, Pru? Really scrapped for it, tooth and claw?”
“You want claws? I’ll give you claws.” Her fingernails swiped the air, but Jamie was gone.
He cleared the bed in one bound, swinging around the bedpost like a demented monkey. “I bet ye’ve spent yer whole life sayin’ ‘Aye, sir. No, ma’am. Never mind me, sir. I ain’t of any import.’ ”
His simpering attempt at a curtsy was Jamie’s mistake. Prudence gave the stool under her dressing table a vicious kick. It flew across the room and slammed into his shins. He dropped like a stone.
She leaped on top of him, and he threw up his hands to protect his face. She grappled for the letter opener clenched in his fist, but her struggles slowly stilled as she realized that Jamie was howling not with pain, but with laughter. Her rage abated as reality sank in. She, Prudence Walker, virtual paragon of temperance and restraint, was lying on top of Sebastian’s man in her night rail, gasping, sweating, and fully prepared to do murder. What in God’s name was happening to her?
She sat up, brushing a stray tendril from her eyes with a shaky hand. Jamie curled on his side, snorting and snuffling. When she started to rise, his hand shot out and circled her wrist.
“If you won’t help yerself, Pru,” he said, his eyes strangely earnest, “help Sebastian.”
She hesitated for only a heartbeat. “What do you want me to do?”
He sat up cross-legged behind her. “I want ye to listen very carefully. The first thing ye’re goin’ to have to do is learn how to fight dirty. Sebastian ain’t never known no other way …”
As he spoke, his deft fingers were already unbraiding her hair.
In the ballroom below, three men garbed in long velvet surcoats lifted their trumpets and blew a discordant blast. Boris threw back his massive head and howled in accompaniment.
Old Fish appeared at the top of the four shallow marble steps leading down into the sunken ballroom. He sucked in a deep breath and intoned, “The demigod Pan and his companion, the goddess Diana.”
“God pity the goats,” Sebastian muttered as a beaming Squire Blake and a simpering Devony materialized on the stairs.
The mock heralds wandered off like a deck of mismatched playing cards. The Great Dane padded after them, drooling into his Elizabethan ruff. Old Fish gathered his scythe and went in search of new victims. Sebastian wondered if it had been Tricia’s idea to dress the butler as Charon, the grim spirit who ferried the dead across the river Styx to Hades. It was rather appropriate. As Tricia linked her arms in the Blakes’ and led them through the dazzling array toward Sebastian, his suspicion that he was in hell deepened to certainty. He tossed back a glass of champagne in one gulp.
Tricia had defied her own edict, abandoning a Greek costume for that of a medieval maiden. The satin of her kirtle gleamed like a ruby among the pale creams and ivories of togas and robes. A towering cone perched on top of her elaborate wig. Sebastian watched with renewed interest each time her flowing veil fluttered near one of the candle sconces.
Squire Blake clumped toward him on plaster hooves. “Sebastian! Always a delight, old chap.” The horns perched on top of his wig bounced with enthusiasm.
“Always,” Sebastian murmured, bringing Devony’s hand to his lips.
Her lashes fluttered as her gaze swept over him, taking in the elegant cut of his knee-breeches, the falls of lace at his wrists and throat, the scandalous absence of a mask. “Why, Lord Kerr, whatever are you masquerading as?”
His lips tightened in a thin smile. “An Englishman.”
Devony clapped her hands. “How clever!”
Tricia shot him a pout. Their first real quarrel had been over his costume, or lack of it.
“Deucedly clever,” the squire echoed. “An Englishman, you say. I’d never have thought of it.” He captured Tricia’s hand as the orchestra struck up a new tune. “Shall we dance, my lady? Your days of freedom will soon be over.” He grinned at Sebastian. “After Saturday, I shall have a jealous husband to contend with.”
Sebastian’s cheek twitched with the effort it took to keep his smile from turning into a grimace. Squire Blake swept Tricia into the humming merry-go-round of a minuet, trailing laurel leaves. The folds of his linen toga slid lower over his hairy belly with each clumping step.
Devony faced Sebastian expectantly.
He caught her by the shoulders and turned her around. “Look over there, Devony. Isn’t that Sir Arlo with the pitchfork and green wig? Won’t you serve as hostess in Tricia’s absence and dance with him? He looks rather forlorn.” He shoved her in the sheriff’s direction, ignoring her sputtered protests.
Alone again, he sank against the marble pilaster with a sigh of relief. Shoving his fists into his pockets, he prayed he could keep from striking the next person who congratulated him on his impending wedding. The irony of the night was not wasted on him. All of his life he had dreamed of being in such a room, surrounded by a whirl of motion and light. His head had been tilted to hear such magnificent music since he had first heard his mother sing, but now the melody of the violins was no more than a grating whine. He had learned too late that gilt was not true gold, and that the masks had more substance than the souls they hid.
Where was Prudence? he wondered. Probably in her bedroom with her nose buried in some damn book. He had started from the ballroom three times to seek her out, but Tricia kept appearing to drag him into the dance. Her attentions had been both needier and greedier since he’d shut her out of his bedchamber. After their wedding, there would be no more locked doors between them.
Dewdrops of crystal draped the chandeliers. Thousands of candles cast sparkling diamonds of light across the dancers. Sebastian’s gaze drifted upward. A vaulted ceiling capped the ballroom like the sky of heaven. His eyes traced the delicate pattern of honeysuckle carved into each molding. What a difference there was between the cold wood and the real blossom with petals as soft and velvety as Prudence’s skin!
He wished for the eloquence to make her understand. If he had a choice, he would carry her away from Lindentree tonight, find a ramshackle cottage, and fill it with their babes. They would need neither wealth nor titles; they would need nothing but each other. But he wasn’t marrying Tricia only for wealth. He was marrying Tricia to escape D’Artan before his zealot grandfather turned him into the kind of man who would murder a girl like Prudence simply for seeing his face. His time was running out. D’Artan’s election to the House of Commons had been announced in the London Observer only last Friday. He would return from London in less than a week.
When Sebastian next met with his grandfather as Tricia’s husband, he would have within his grasp enough wealth and power to laugh in the old man’s face. He remembered another time, laughing in his father’s face and biting back tears of pain as the blows fell, knowing he was daring his father to kill him, but not caring.
The heavy perfume of the pomaded heads curled through the air like tentacles. Sebastian started for the terrace doors. He had to escape, to find a place where he could breathe again.
Tricia appeared like magic at his side. “Miss me, love? Our Pan nearly hooved me to death. My toes are quite sore. Would you rub them later?”
Before he could answer they were surrounded by a cloying circle of well-wishers, the Blakes and Sir Arlo among them.
�
�Splendid ball, Countess!”
“Outstanding champagne!”
“The prologue to a fine life together.”
Their words bounced off Sebastian like a foreign language. He watched Tricia greet them, trying to remember a time when he had found her pleasant company. It really wasn’t her fault. If he had never met Prudence, perhaps he would still find Tricia’s smile charming instead of vacuous, her breathless patter witty, not shallow.
Old Fish appeared on the stairs, obviously relishing his role as a portender of doom. “The …” He paused, at an uncharacteristic loss for words, and glanced at the figure next to him. “The creature—Cupid.”
Sebastian cringed as a nasal voice rang out. “The creature? What kind of intro is that? Every other bloody bugger gets to be gods and semi-gods. How come I have to be a creature?”
Fish took a step backward, dodging the dangerous swing of the arrow in Cupid’s hand. Painting it gold had done little to disguise the fact that it was a real arrow, its tip sharpened to a lethal point.
Tricia freed Sebastian’s arm. “Why, it’s that naughty coachman of yours! He’s crashed my ball.” Her eyes sparkled with delight. “I shall have to take him to task.”
She gathered her skirts and flounced across the floor. The curious eyes of her guests followed her as she greeted the half-naked savage with a wag of her finger and a peck on the cheek. Jamie hiked up his loincloth and swaggered after her, his bony chest puffed out like a robin’s and his unpowdered hair blazing like a sunset. Apprehension tightened its fingers around Sebastian’s throat.
“Hullo, master,” Jamie said as he reached Sebastian.
Under the pretense of ruffling his hair, Sebastian caught his ear and gave it a vicious twist. “And who do you think you are?”
“Ye heard the old man. I’m Cupid, the messenger of love.” He leered at Devony. She giggled into her hand.
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