Midnight Masquerade

by Shirlee Busbee

  Dominic had been enchanted by the area on sight when he had first visited with Morgan years ago, though it had not been the lure of cotton that had drawn him to it. He now threw himself, as eagerly as Morgan once had, into shaping the land to his own dreams. Like his brother before him, he had the money and determination to rapidly accomplish what he set out to do, and in the short period of time that he had owned Thousand Oaks, there were already ample signs of his stewardship.

  Even before he had arrived as the new owner of the land, Dominic had sent ahead men and supplies so construction could start on the sites he had selected for the new stables and paddocks which would soon house some of the finest horseflesh to be found in the entire Mississippi Valley. Since their arrival nearly a month ago, Dominic and Royce had spent their time overseeing, planning and discussing the progress which was moving along at an astonishing rate.

  Neat white fences seemed to spring up overnight as the paddocks and pastures were laid out; the brood mare barns and the stallions' quarters were nearing completion, and the area being cleared for a long, sweeping racetrack was gradually taking shape. Small, brick servants' houses had been hastily constructed; fields of cotton, oats, com and barley were under cultivation on the land which Morgan had originally wrested from the tangled wilderness. Everywhere one looked there were signs of activity as Thousand Oaks shook off its sleepy air and came alive under Dominic's hand.

  There was one area, though, that Dominic left untouched, beyond the few extra necessities it had needed to make it more comfortable, and that had been the actual house at Thousand Oaks. Mrs. Thomas and her husband, the taciturn Mr. Thomas, the servants originally retained by Morgan, had kept the house scrupulously clean and tidy over the years—not such a hard task when all but a few of the many rooms in the house remained empty.

  Morgan had overseen the completion of the construction of what he had dreamed would be his home, but he had left the interior of the house unfinished, thinking that his wife should have the pleasure of selecting the wall coverings, rugs, furniture and other amenities. Consequently, though the kitchen, situated a short distance away from the main building, as were all kitchens for fear of fire, had been fitted out properly, the inside of the house consisted of bare floors and walls. Two of the bedrooms had been hastily furnished for Dominic and Royce; a small table and chairs had been placed in the long dining room, and a few comfortable leather chairs, side tables and desk had been hurriedly introduced into the room Dominic had chosen for his office. For the two bachelors, gone most of the day from the house, these meager furnishings did fine—especially since Mrs. Thomas was an excellent cook and the tasty meals she prepared and the fine liquors that Morgan had laid down in his wine cellar and liberally served by Mr. Thomas more than made up for the lack of elegant surroundings.

  Dominic had much to be satisfied about as the days passed and he could see his dreams and plans gradually taking shape, but he was conscious of an annoying feeling of discontentment—just when he should have been feeling pleased with his life. He could not put his finger on the source of his problem, but he was aware, despite all the progress, of a lack of fulfillment. There was an unpleasant emptiness within himself that he had never experienced before, and it interfered with his delight in the revitalization of Thousand Oaks.

  He could not even blame his odd dissatisfaction on loneliness. Royce was a most agreeable companion and they spent many enjoyable hours together, discussing the plans for Thousand Oaks and hunting in the game-filled forests. Everything was developing just as Dominic had envisioned—his own servants and personal belongings were even now on their way from Bonheur to Thousand Oaks. Within the next week or so, his stablemaster and the first of his horses would be arriving; he had even received a few letters from knowledgeable horsemen congratulating him on his undertaking and expressing interest in the fine-blooded stock they were confident that Thousand Oaks would one day produce.

  So why did Dominic have this nagging sense of... of... of what? he had demanded angrily of himself more than once lately. Wasn't he doing precisely what he had said, time and time again, that he wanted to do? Wasn't everything going along just as he had planned? Just as he had expected it to? Of course it was! If anything, events were moving along swifter than his fondest hopes. So why did he have a damnably uncomfortable feeling that somewhere he had miscalculated... that he had somehow gone astray? It was vexing, this strange feeling of hollowness within himself. And damned annoying, too! Especially when these odd sensations all seemed connected to an unsettling memory of that provoking Miss Melissa Seymour!

  To his consternation, he could not push aside the memory of that night with her, remembering vividly the feel of her mouth beneath his. Annoyingly, he would find himself dwelling on the dowdy and unappealing Miss Seymour at the most inopportune times. Viewing the newly constructed brood mare stable with its wide alleyways and huge, freshly whitewashed stalls, the tack room filled with expensive leather saddlery and equipment, the bustling, neatly attired stableboys as they hurried about doing their tasks, he found himself brooding on the memory of the shoddy excuse of a barn that served Miss Seymour. The contrast between the two buildings was ludicrous, but for some peculiar reason, Dominic took no pleasure in the differences. And watching the muscles ripple in the broad back of one of his field slaves as the man labored to even out the floor of one of the new stalls, he was irked to discover himself remembering his first sight of Miss Seymour, her slender body bent over as she cleaned out one of the dilapidated stalls at Willowglen.

  Furiously he attempted to banish her from his thoughts, especially when he became conscious of feelings of admiration and sympathy. The woman was nothing but a stubborn, rude, sharp-tongued vixen. he reminded himself. She was obviously content with her lot—he'd been willing to pay a goodly sum for Folly, and the money would have gone a long way in alleviating the necessity for her to work like a damned slave! But had she taken advantage of this opportunity? No! The stupid little shrew wouldn't even let him see the blasted horse, let alone consider selling the nag! Let her wallow in the uncomfortable bed of her own making, he thought wrathfully. He wasn't going to waste another moment thinking about her!

  Which was far easier decided upon than done, he was to find to his growing resentment. At night when he lay in his bed, the seductive memory of her warm mouth responding so passionately to his kiss, the way her slim form had melted into his hard body, came back to bedevil him, to make him wonder if there were indeed such things as witches and spells that could snare the unwary male. Why else was she always at the back of his mind? Why else did he wonder even now what she would think of Thousand Oaks and his plans for the future?

  It was unnerving, to say the least, made all the more so when he recalled his last sight of her. In the clear light of day her lack of obvious beauty had been apparent, and without effort he could see in his mind's eye the tight, unattractive bun anchored at the back of her head, the ugly spectacles and the drab, shapeless gown. For a man who prided himself on his superb judgment of beautiful women, a man whose mistresses were legendary for their charm and loveliness, his reaction to Miss Seymour that one evening was incomprehensible.

  Annoyed with himself, Dominic vowed to stop this ridiculous fascination with Miss Seymour and channel his thoughts in a more pleasant direction... such as the success he would make of Thousand Oaks, or, if he wanted to think of women, why not the soft, yielding body of a certain young woman of easy virtue who resided in Natchez in a discreet little house owned by Dominic.... Smiling, he took a large swallow of wine. Yes, it was far more enjoyable to remember the buxom charms of the delectable Yolanda than it was to speculate about the infuriating Miss Seymour.

  At present, on this fine June evening, Dominic and Royce were sitting on the broad gallery which ran across the front of the stately two-storied house. They were savoring glasses of port, having just finished another of Mrs. Thomas' tasty meals, talking idly of this and that.

  Seeing Dominic's smile in t
he gloom of falling dusk, Royce asked, "That's a very suggestive smile you have on your face, my friend. Any special reason for it?"

  Putting down his glass, Dominic grinned. "I was just thinking of a particular soiled dove in Natchez and wondering if I wanted to visit her bad enough to leave here."

  Royce chuckled, a knowing gleam in his eyes. "Yes, I had noticed that you have been exceedingly chaste of late and I've been curious to know if you'd taken a vow of abstinence! If I remember correctly from our London days, you were ever a man for the ladies."

  "And I seem to recall that you were not backward yourself—remember that night in Covent Garden and the red-haired doxy you won in a card game?"

  Royce laughed aloud, and for a while the conversation drifted back to their days in London, full of "Do you remember...?" as they reminisced. But eventually the subject of Dominic's clash with Latimer came up, and some of the enjoyment of the evening vanished.

  Dominic stiffened as Royce said Latimer's name; then he murmured, "I'm glad you introduced the subject yourself—I have not taxed you with it, but it did seem underhanded that you made no mention of Latimer's presence until we were to leave the Baton Rouge area."

  Grimacing, Royce admitted, "I know that hot temper of yours and I didn't want you to challenge him to another duel—which you probably would have done if you had known where he was."

  "And now that I do know where he is?" Dominic asked in a suspiciously meek tone. "Aren't you afraid that I shall still challenge him?"

  "No. Hot-tempered upon occasion you may be, but you're not a fool, and I have great hopes that now that you have gotten used to the idea that he is here in America, your own common sense will prevent you from doing something so singularly stupid," Royce replied. Leaning forward in his seat, he continued, "I know that few things would please you more than putting a hole through Latimer's black heart and I don't deny he deserves it, but that act would accomplish nothing—it wouldn't change what happened between you and Deborah."

  His features suddenly pale, Dominic said tautly, "I don't want to talk about Deborah. Whatever I may have felt for her was long ago, and if she was willing to allow that bastard of a brother of hers to force her into a marriage with a man old enough to be her grandfather, then she wasn't the woman I thought she was anyway."

  "She never was," Royce remarked. "You took one look at that lovely face of hers and came as close to falling in love and committing yourself to the prison of marriage as you ever have—and don't try to deny it. I was there and I saw you making a cake of yourself over her." Royce grinned. "A most stylish cake, but one nonetheless."

  Dominic moved in his chair, aware that there was more than a little truth in Royce's comments. He had been very near to falling in love with Deborah Latimer that summer in London, and there had been a time, granted it had been an exceedingly short time, that he had actually contemplated the married state... until Julius Latimer had shattered his half-formed dreams. If the brief affair with Deborah Latimer had been his nearest foray into love, it had been her brother who had made him conscious of a darker side of his own nature.

  Julius Latimer's reputation had been notorious in London. Even though he was tolerated by polite society, there were many doors of the ton that had been closed to him and, because of him, closed also to his sister. The Latimers were poor, distant relatives of a well-liked aristocratic family, and despite the fact that most members of society found Miss Latimer perfectly acceptable, they thought it a shame that such a shy, lovely young lady should have such a cold-blooded man like Julius for her brother.

  It wasn't just that Julius had been prepared to sell her to the highest bidder. There had been more than one unsavory incident attached to his name. Too well did Dominic remember the scandal which had erupted when Latimer had fought a duel and killed a young man just up from the country, a mere boy too green to recognize a skilled and unscrupulous gambler like Latimer. There had been nasty whispers, too, about a beggar's maid who had died beneath the wheels of Latimer's carriage.

  Dominic stared out into the darkness. He had not liked Julius on sight, and from the beginning there had been a thinly veiled hostility between the two of them. Oh, they were civil to one another, but they tended to circle each other like wary cats, tensed for the first antagonistic move. It wasn't until Latimer had maliciously filled Deborah's ears with wicked lies about him that Dominic had begun to realize just how unprincipled Latimer was, how determined he was to see that his sister married only the man of his choice—a rich man, to be sure, but one whom Latimer could control. Once Dominic had discovered the reason behind Deborah's sudden aversion to him, it had been too late to retrieve the situation between them, the mixture of lies and half-truths too cleverly interwoven to be unraveled. He had gained satisfaction, though, by challenging Latimer to a duel.

  When they had finally met, his heart and pride smarting, suffering from the hurt caused by Latimer, for the first time in his life Dominic had let rage rule him—which was why his shot had gone through Latimer's arm instead of his heart.

  Breaking the silence that had fallen, Dominic said suddenly, "I shouldn't have missed the bastard!"

  Royce nodded in agreement. "If nothing else, it would have saved you from that beating by those rogues Latimer hired."

  Dominic winced. The beating had not only left him sore and bruised , it had further dented his pride. He had been aware of an uneasy feeling that if some of his friends had not happened along when they did, Latimer's unsavory cronies would have finished their job and killed him. Aloud, he merely said, "I think that is what galls me so. We know that he was guilty of what happened, but there was nothing to lay before a magistrate, so he goes free as the air."

  "I can countenance his freedom easier than I can finding him in my mother's drawing room," Royce muttered. "It is all I can do to greet him civilly, but he has entree everywhere."

  Royce frowned. "I've tried to warn my father that Latimer is not the sort of man one allows to run tame through one's home, but beyond telling him that Latimer's reputation in London was reprehensible, I have nothing with which to back up my assertions. If anything, the fact that he is a well-known London rake gives him a certain cachet, and my reluctance to have anything to do with him makes me look childish and jealous of his popularity amongst the local plantation owners." Cynically he finished, "Our countrymen are fascinated by what they think is a proper English gentleman in their midst—they hang on his every word believing he is an arbiter of fashion, a veritable Beau Brummell, if you will. The fact that he strenuously espouses our cause in this ridiculous war with England makes him even more in demand with the gentlemen. And the ladies! They adore him!"

  "Including Miss Seymour?" Dominic asked, startling both of them by his question.

  An interested gleam in his eyes, Royce glanced at Dominic. "Now why would you want to know that, I wonder?"

  Cursing his unruly tongue, Dominic muttered, "I was just curious—Zachary didn't seem to dislike him, and I just..."

  Royce looked so satisfied that Dominic swore aloud and said tightly, "Oh, never mind! I don't want to know anyway. I'm sick of talking about Latimer, and as for Deborah, I hope being married to the very old, very rich Earl of Bowden and being able to style herself 'countess' is worth having to put up with a half-mad husband!"

  Hesitating a second, Royce asked, "Dom, are you really over your calf love for Deborah?"

  Surprise written across his face, Dominic stared at his friend. "Good Lord, yes!" he said wryly. "It was only a touch of madness, and you don't have to worry that I am secretly nursing a broken heart. The affair may have wounded me at the time, but it was not serious."

  "I'm very glad to hear that. You are bound to meet Deborah here socially sooner or later." With no inflection in his voice, Royce added, "You may not know this, but the earl died suddenly, an indecently short time after he and Deborah were married—an accident, it was. It seems he drank too heavily one night and fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. He
died instantly."

  "And was dear brother Latimer visiting at the time?"

  "How strange you should ask!" Their eyes meeting in understanding, Royce said, "He had arrived just that evening, so I am told. It was he who discovered the body and broke the sad news to his sweet sister."

  Dominic made an exclamation of disgust. "And so Latimer once again gets what he wants—not only his sister back under his hand, but control of a fortune in the bargain."

  "Not quite. I have a friend in England, and he wrote me a most interesting letter about the entire affair, including the dispersal of the old earl's estates. There were no children of the marriage, naturally, and since most of the earl's fortune was entailed, the bulk of it went to his brother. The Lady Deborah was left only a small pension... which ends if she remarries."

  A sardonic smile curved his handsome mouth, and Dominic murmured, "So there is justice of sorts."

  "I suppose one could say so," Royce admitted. "But, like all cats, Latimer seems to land on his feet. He may have been denied the earl's fortune, but I'm afraid he is still going to get his hands on a fortune, albeit a much smaller one."

  Frowning, Dominic asked, "The note that Zachary mentioned? I don't mean to pry, but I don't quite understand the connection between Latimer and the Seymours. And from what I do know of Latimer, he never had that kind of money."

  "The original holder of the note was old Weatherby, Latimer's uncle. When Weatherby died, Latimer's inheritance was a long overdue voucher, and I suspect it will remain long overdue... unless, of course, Melissa decides to marry."

  At Dominic's look of incomprehension, Royce laughed and briefly explained the trust that his grandfather had left for Melissa, Zachary and his mother, Sally.