It only took a moment before the door opened, and a tall woman with dark hair and a knowing look answered.
“Tilda,” Amelia greeted her with a smile. “Is everything ready?”
Tilda smiled rather mischievously. “Yes, darling, and I may have gone too far, but I won’t apologize. Come in, I’ve got it all sorted, and we haven’t much time.”
Chapter Eleven
As it turned out, masquerade balls were just as bad, if not worse, than your everyday run-of-the-mill balls. Especially when the female attendees knew what the token male prey of the evening was wearing. It was bad enough that a masquerade allowed the guests leniency with propriety under the protection of absolute anonymity, but when one is in particular pursuit of another guest in attendance, the behaviors could be downright shocking, even to one as morally dissolute as Gabe.
Why could he not be doing something dangerous and possibly bloody instead?
“So help me,” Gabe muttered to the caped man beside him, “if one more girl strokes my leg, I am going to step on her toes, tear her skirt, and break a finger.”
The man choked on a sip of his beverage and managed a chuckle. “Come now, my lord. You must be flattered by all the attention you are receiving.”
Gabe offered as black a look as he could manage with the silver and blue mask upon his face. It was a far more elaborate mask than he’d wished for, but Geraldine had actually forbidden him to come in costume as many of the other men had done. She had arranged everything about his ensemble for him, down to the exact stockings he wore, so he had no choice. It was this or go exposed as himself, and that was not going to happen.
He felt oddly underdressed in his tails, even with the waistcoat to match his mask, especially considering the elaborateness of some other costumes. Either the Prince of Wales had indeed come to his aunt’s ridiculous gathering, or someone wished to imitate his excesses. Also in attendance were King Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette, Queen Elizabeth, Dionysus, and, oddly enough, a statue. Several birds had made their rounds about the room, though one swan looked quite like another, and some poor girls seemed to think canaries were flattering characters for themselves.
Poor fools.
“I’d be more flattered if an assassin showed up,” Gabe said with a sigh of longing.
His companion chuckled and adjusted his thick cape around his entirely black ensemble. “Don’t behave too badly. Some of the women here might consider that encouragement.”
Gabe groaned and scratched at the too-frilly cravat. “I will pay you to stand in for me.”
“You don’t have any money.”
“I will win some.”
“I’m married, my lord.”
“Is she here?”
“As a matter of fact, she is.”
Gabe turned in surprise. “Is she really? Where?”
He received a knowing look. “No. You cannot pester Lady Marlowe instead of doing your duty.”
“Lord Marlowe, and his blessed sense of duty, can go stuff it,” Gabe grunted, taking another glass from a passing servant, who wore the token white domino of all servants tonight.
Why the servants should need to be masked, he had no idea.
“Actually, I think I will go dance with my wife,” Marlowe said with a bit of a smug smirk. “After all, I’ve jumped through my hoops.”
“Noose,” Gabe corrected, waving him away. “And don’t look so damned happy about it.”
“Don’t pester Rothchild, either. He doesn’t want to deal with you, he only came to see his wife wear a mask, and to see you forced into interacting properly with women for a laugh.”
Gabe rolled his eyes and waved him away again. “Rothchild is fortunate he has a wife at all, masked or not, and the day I interact properly is the day I’ll ask Rothchild for a waltz.”
He heard his friend laugh over the sound of the music, and he felt sourer about it by the second. Rothchild would have been a passable companion through all of this, if only to make Gabe laugh, but when he was with his wife, he was remarkably lovesick, and Gabe did not need that influence tonight.
This whole thing had been positively interminable. Gabe would have been better served by soaking his head in the Thames for three hours than being here for half as long.
If it weren’t for that meddling aunt of his…
“Gabriel, don’t glower, the women will never approach when you look like that.”
“Speak of the devil,” he sighed, as he turned to his emerald-encased aunt, wearing a wide, Georgian dress with far too many jewels about her neck, which he suspected to be paste. Her mask bore matching emerald feathers, and her fan flicked rapidly, which probably added little comfort to her ensemble. The towering powdered wig she wore would have overheated anyone, least of all the woman flitting about to manage every detail of the evening. He could see the sweat glistening on her face, despite the faint powder she wore.
Geraldine’s fan stopped, and she glared at him. “What devil?” she snapped.
He shrugged nonchalantly and chose not to answer her. “Can I go home now?”
She rapped him on the shoulder hard with the aforementioned fan. “If you didn’t glower so, you might enjoy yourself. Change your face, change the evening.”
“This is my face, Aunt.”
“More’s the pity.”
“I could wear a bigger mask,” he suggested hopefully.
“For the rest of your life? I doubt it.”
Gabe groaned and returned to watch the dancing, which was quite comical. Shepherdesses ought not to dance with their crooks. It led to such difficulties.
“Any ladies striking your fancy?” Geraldine asked, leaning close to pretend at whispering.
“Not half as many as are striking my arse,” he replied.
Again, he was rapped with her fan. “Gabriel!”
He shrugged, hiding a smile. “What did you expect, Aunt? You know inhibitions disappear when masks and costumes are brought out. It’s beginning to scandalize even me.”
“Oh, I doubt that very much,” she scoffed, resuming her fanning. She waited a long moment, then gave her nephew a curious look. “Have they really been striking your…?”
“Yes,” he answered bluntly. “Three swans, two fairies, and two queens have taken such liberties. Most of the others tend to stay with my extremities, but only four have not touched me at all. I was getting quite used to it, so those four might have scared me most.”
Geraldine snorted a soft laugh behind her fan.
“It is unseemly to laugh at such matters, Aunt,” Gabe said with a faint sniff.
“Call me unseemly all you like,” she quipped. “That would not bother me at all.”
He gave his aunt a wry look. “And yet you will not let me be such?”
“You are all sorts of things against my wishes,” she replied, smiling a little. “Unseemly is in our blood, so you’ll never escape it entirely.”
Gabe heaved a sigh. “Well, that is a relief. I have lost many sleepless nights to concerns about my mannerisms.”
Geraldine rolled her eyes and snapped her fan shut in her hand. “You are impossible.”
“I’ve been trying to explain that to you…”
She turned him slightly and shoved hard. “Go dance with someone. I don’t care who.”
He looked over his shoulder at her, chuckling a little. “Well, I was going to ask you, before you brutalized me.”
She looked a little surprised, then her eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you.”
Gabe let himself smile fully, which he never did in public, and took the few steps back to her. “Lady Geraldine, would you do me the honor of standing up the next dance with me?” he asked in the most polite voice he had ever pretended in his life, extending his hand to her.
His aunt’s mouth dropped open, and she looked between his hand and his face repeatedly.
He bent a little closer to her. “It is generally customary to accept such a polite request, particularly from a peer.”
She clamped her lips together, smiled and rolled her eyes. “Oh, Gabriel. What am I going to do with you?”
He shrugged again, smiling. “Accepting my dance request would be an excellent place to start.”
Geraldine took his hand, laughing to herself, and let him lead her down to the dance floor. “Oh, why not? It will give me a chance to see who is watching you and push you in that direction afterwards.”
Gabe’s cheery attitude vanished, and he glared at her. “Don’t make me regret this.”
Her smile turned conniving, and she tapped her chin with her fan. “You had to know I was not going to give way just because you flattered me with a dance.”
He scowled as he bowed. “One can always hope.”
True to her word, Geraldine began describing every woman looking at him and speculated on who it might actually be. Gabe stopped listening after he heard the words “dairy maid” and chose instead to focus his thoughts on the details of his investigation, more particularly on Amelia herself. He’d not been able to progress as far as he would have liked with that, as she was continually planting herself in the middle of everything, so he’d been forced to actually investigate her mother and attempt to discover details about her along the way.
So far, he was not doing well.
She was as private as he was, despite her trying to draw him out, and no matter what she said about her name, he knew it wasn’t right. Her Clairbourne relatives were on her mother’s side, but where had the Palmer name come from? Had her father’s last name been Palmer, or had there been another name change in the middle she had not told him about? Had her mother died under yet another name?
What had happened to Amelia between the time her mother died and the time she had moved in with the Bergers?
Where had she learned to speak French so well without a governess or school?
It was a tangled mess of things, and he would never figure it out if he kept letting her get under his skin.
The more he got to know her, the more time he spent with her, the less he wanted to discover her secrets, for among the secrets would be lies.
And he could not abide lies.
That seemed odd, even to him. He, who lied for a living, required honesty from others. What a contradictory thought, and a paradox for his soul.
He snorted. Soul. What? The blackened center of him that could not manage to twitch for morality? As if that added any substance to him.
Perhaps he ought to speak to someone about being re-christened. He doubted the first one was valid anymore.
He glanced down at his aunt, stunned that she was somehow still talking. What had possessed him to be sentimental and ask her to dance with him? He could have had a dance where he ignored his partner this much with quite literally any other female in the room, and without any of the previous expectation of enjoyment.
He groaned as he realized that he’d made the gross miscalculation of standing up with his aunt during a long dance, of all horrid things. Next time he was so stupid as to dance with his aunt, he would ensure it was a quadrille. That would entertain him sufficiently.
A movement to his right caught his attention, and he looked towards it, grateful for the distraction.
Weaving in and out of the several-bodies-deep border of the dance floor was a woman in a white gown, looking to be in her early, perhaps middle-twenties, and her focus was nowhere near the dancing. She was looking at the people, mostly in the distance from her, but she glanced carefully at the ones nearest her as well.
Gabe wouldn’t have given her a second thought, but there was something about the way she moved that interested him. There was an ease to her gait, a confidence that belied the presumed nature of young women in Society, and yet she was not haughty or puffed up. She moved with natural grace and poise, but no airs, and not for effect. In fact, despite his looking at her so intently, no one else was doing so. Hardly a single man looked in her direction, and even fewer women did.
A break in the crowd allowed him a better view of her, and his world seemed to shift on its axis. She was dressed as a Grecian goddess, with the loose, yet somehow form-fitting gown of the same style, gathered at her waist with a gold belt, from which vines of braided gold proceeded upwards to the bodice, twisting themselves within and extending up to her shoulders, which shockingly were without sleeves. Her arms were strong and lean, and surprisingly elegant, and the depth of her neckline, though hardly shocking by any stretch, was enough to warrant a double look.
He could not see her face, as she was turned away, displaying a tantalizing turn of her throat, and the long, intricately curled and braided length of blonde hair cascaded from whatever form contained it and hung down her back. She turned away from him altogether, moving towards the rear of the room, and he was more transfixed by her retreating form.
Against the custom of the day, the back of her dress scooped low, her shoulder blades visible, as the fabric drooped beneath them. The cut of the costume was such that it would intentionally put her shoulders and back on display, and hers were quite the sight for anyone fortunate enough to see. From her shoulders and back hung a sheath of fabric, gathering together to form a cape or train, elegantly flowing along behind her, giving her an added regal air that had nothing to do with the golden diadem perched within her blonde curls.
Had Gabe ever noticed so much about one woman at once?
Had he ever cared?
Look back, he thought fiercely, turning as he must with the dance, returning his eyes to the goddess as quickly as he could. For the love of God, look back.
Just then, she stopped, turned slightly to glance down at a bit of her train that had been caught and tugged it loose, then raised her face.
Gabe’s heart slammed against his ribs with such force that he grunted softly.
She wore a gold and cream domino mask, and even from this distance, he could see the lace detailing and small gatherings of gold feathers on each side, blending back into her elaborately-coifed, blonde hair. Her eyes had been heavily lined with kohl, and gold paint dusted the visible skin around her eyes, which were a striking, dusty shade of blue. Her full lips were painted rosy pink, but beyond that and the costume, she appeared to be completely natural.
Gabriel Statler had never had any real interest in a particular woman, finding them to rarely be worth the time or effort. He’d never spent more than three minutes wondering about his future with one or considering any form of courtship, wooing, or pursuit with one.
At this moment, none of that mattered.
As soon as the goddess’s eyes had clashed with his, his heart and mind joined forces and emblazoned one word in his thoughts:
Mine.
Why were there so many people in this cursed ballroom?
Amelia tugged her train free of yet another inconsiderate shoe, wondering if she was going to have to take this exquisite, yet troublesome costume back to Tilda so damaged that she would have to pay for it. Tilda hadn’t seemed too concerned about it when she’d dressed her earlier, but Amelia wasn’t quite sure she trusted her enough to believe it.
She glanced up and across the room, finding the man in dark tails and a crisp white shirt still staring at her fixedly, his blue eyes magnified by the silver and blue mask he wore. He completely ignored the flock of women around him, including one in bright green that seemed to wish for his attention in particular.
He’d been staring at her all night, first in his dance with the green lady, then during two more with others. He had not yet managed to get to her, but she sensed that he would soon. There was something powerful and captivating about him, and it sent a thrill down her spine to have him notice her. She felt her heart stutter a little again, but there wasn’t time for fancies.
No matter how curious she was about his attention.
She dipped her chin in an acknowledgement of his notice. His eyes flashed in response and a corner of his mouth lifted, sending her knees shaking and her breath catching.
Oh no, th
at was not what she had intended.
She swallowed and turned quickly, hoping to lose herself in the mass of people. She’d only been here an hour and hadn’t managed to find the people she needed to.
Some Clairbournes were in attendance tonight, and she’d bribed no less than three servants to tell her what they were wearing and where to find them.
She’d created the perfect identity for herself. Her mother had been a schoolmate of Mary Clairbourne, and when this venture into London had come about, she had just begged her to try and find her, as they had lost touch. She knew enough of the details of her mother’s life to be able to pretend her way through any story, and Amelia had spent years acting a part. She could improvise her way through almost anything, and her ability to read reactions and play off them had not failed her yet.
She was still incredulous that she had managed to scrape together an invitation to this event. Lady Geraldine Rochester was nothing to her, and certainly not a particularly well-known name in Society. At least, that’s what the servants of various households had told her during her escapades of late. But talk of this masquerade had been buzzing about. Apparently, costumes and masks were an exciting diversion, and definitely not an event to be missed, but invitations were limited. It was to be a rather exclusive party.
Amelia Berger would never be able to attend such an event.
Her saving grace had been some connection of Gent’s, the details of which he had not gone into, and she had not asked.
As she looked around now, she wondered how a party of this magnitude could ever be considered exclusive. It appeared as though the whole of London had turned out for it. How was she ever going to find the Clairbournes here? And despite it being a masquerade, how could she possibly manage to approach them without an introduction?
Were they the sort of people to turn their nose up at such things?
None of the servants had been able to give her that much detail, and it was hardly the sort of question one asked if one wished to remain above suspicion.
A Rogue About Town (London League, Book 2) Page 13