She’d live on these memories. What other choice did she have?
* * *
When morning came Daphne forced herself to eat some toast and jam for breakfast. She feared offending her London cook’s efforts to please her with kippers, veal pie and baked eggs, but toast was all she could manage. She was sipping a cup of tea when Carter entered, looking again like a servant, not a masked gambler.
‘Mr Everard, m’lady,’ Carter announced.
‘Everard? Here? So early?’ It was ten in the morning, too early for callers.
‘Yes, m’lady. He is eager to speak with you, he says.’
She’d hardly slept, still felt near tears and was not in the mood for callers. ‘Very well. Tell him to join me here.’
A moment later he entered and immediately bowed. ‘My lady.’
‘Good morning, Everard.’ She managed a smile and a bright voice. ‘Do serve yourself some breakfast from the sideboard. I insist.’ Perhaps his appetite would gratify Cook’s desire to please.
‘As you wish, ma’am.’ He bowed again, piled food on his plate and sat down opposite her.
Daphne poured him tea. ‘To what do I owe the honour of your visit?’
He had already put a forkful of food in his mouth and held up a finger to signal he would answer after he swallowed. ‘I was concerned about your intention to go to the Masquerade Club last night, as you know. I simply wished to make certain nothing went amiss for you.’ He speared a piece of veal from the pie. ‘I hope you do not think it improper of me to be concerned.’
She did think he took too much of an interest in her affairs, but it was her own fault for manipulating him into escorting her to the Masquerade Club night after night two years ago.
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘But you must not be so concerned about me. You have much more important matters to tend to, I am sure.’
He placed his fork down on his plate and gave her a direct look. ‘Nothing is more important than your well-being, my lady.’
She must do what she could about this devotion to her. ‘Nonsense.’ She took a sip of tea. ‘As you can see, I am well. How is your wife? She is fortunate indeed to have a husband who concerns himself with the welfare of others.’
‘My wife?’ He sounded as if he’d forgotten the woman. ‘She is in good health.’
‘I am so glad to hear it. I should like to meet her some time.’ She took a bite of toast.
‘You would?’ He tackled more of the food on his plate.
Did she really wish to meet Mrs Everard? It would be a nice gesture, she supposed. ‘Of course I would. Why would I not?’
He devoured yet another forkful of food before asking, ‘Did you find everything satisfactory at the Masquerade Club?’
Her stomach fluttered at the mention of the club, but she put on a pleased expression. ‘Oh, yes. I was so happy to see it looking so unharmed. The supper room was as lovely as always.’
He took a gulp of tea. ‘Then you will not go back?’
She glanced down at the table. ‘I will not go back.’
He looked relieved. ‘Is there any service I may render while you are in town?’
She made herself smile. ‘You may pay my bills. I intend to do some shopping while we are here.’ She sounded like the old Daphne, even to herself, although this time she could think of nothing she wished to buy for herself.
She wondered if there were items she could purchase for the tenants. Perhaps she ought to send a letter to Mr Quigg. The estate manager would know what they might need. Perhaps some furniture. Furniture was so expensive. The tenants might like a nice bureau or a chest or something. Who could not use a pretty chest?
‘Do you know of any good furniture shops?’ she asked him.
‘Furniture shops?’
‘Oh, not fine furniture shops, but some that might be appropriate for an ordinary household.’
He looked very puzzled. ‘I cannot think offhand, but I will make enquiries, if you like.’
‘That would be so good of you,’ she said.
If she kept very busy, shopping for her servants and her tenants, she might not think of Hugh so often and she might not always feel this despair so acutely.
* * *
Hugh stumbled out of bed with a colossal headache. No doubt the bottle of brandy he’d consumed after closing the Masquerade Club had done the damage. He was half tempted to drink down another. Better to remain in a stupor than to remember. He walked over to the mantel clock and read the time. Ten minutes to noon. Why was he up so early?
Because even the brandy did not help him sleep. His mind whirled with thoughts of Daphne. He felt fresh rage at her for leaving him, for deceiving him, and a deep painful ache of desire for her that even his anger could not eliminate.
Daphne had returned to him for one more deception, one more trick, and was this not the biggest and best of all her tricks? She’d known him all along. She’d been the bane of his family for a time, nearly ruining his sister’s happiness and almost burning down this building.
Why had she done it? Why had she deceived him from the beginning and why had she returned? Apparently she’d not planned to make herself known to him. Why?
He’d allowed her to slip through his fingers again without answering any of these questions. Well, this time she would not get away with it. Now he knew who she was, he could discover where she lived. In fact, he probably had the information in the Masquerade Club records. She would have wanted Xavier to know where she lived; she probably had provided the location of her town residence.
He rummaged through the cabinets in the bedchamber and in the drawing room until he found another bottle of brandy. He drank enough to calm the headache, even though it burned his stomach. He poured water from the ewer into the basin and washed, shaved and dressed before going below and looking for some breakfast.
He found MacEvoy at the breakfast table, as well.
‘I counted our take from last night,’ MacEvoy said.
‘How did we do?’ Hugh asked, although the success of the Masquerade Club was not at the forefront of his mind this morning.
‘Better than the previous night,’ MacEvoy said, ‘by about two hundred pounds.’
‘Well done.’ That was a very tidy sum.
When Hugh and Ned first convinced Rhys to run the club for them, Rhys took half the profits, but now that he’d given up the management, his share dropped to one quarter. Hugh would receive the other quarter, and half still went to repay the Westleigh estate. At least, if this rate continued he’d come out of this latest family task with a fortune.
‘Yes, indeed,’ admitted MacEvoy. ‘The club is still doing well.’ He sounded surprised.
Hugh supposed Cummings and MacEvoy and the croupiers did not expect him to be as successful as Rhys. Hugh figured that Rhys had built the foundation and there was not much he could do to weaken it. The idea of being able to gamble masked was still a popular one.
One of the kitchen maids brought in Hugh’s breakfast and he made himself eat, knowing it would sooth his brandy-burnt stomach. There was also a welcome pot of coffee on the table.
Hugh poured himself a cup. ‘I have a favour to ask.’
MacEvoy looked up warily from his plate. ‘What is it?’
‘See if you have Lady Faville’s location in the records.’
MacEvoy nodded knowingly. ‘So that was the lady, eh? I suspected as much. Why did she come back? Was she looking for Campion?’ Campion was Xavier’s surname.
She’d been obsessed by Xavier before; Hugh feared she still was.
‘I do not know why she returned,’ he answered MacEvoy. ‘But I intend to find out.’
MacEvoy gave him an approving look. ‘Good idea. Make certain she keeps to her bargain and never returns here.’ He turned thou
ghtful. ‘Although with Campion busy with his shops, there’s really no reason for her to come back.’
Somehow that did not appease Hugh.
* * *
After breakfast, MacEvoy checked the records and found the location of Daphne’s town house. Hugh immediately set off to call upon her.
She resided in Mayfair, but where else would Lady Faville reside? Her house was on Hereford Street, a few streets from Grosvenor Square and near the corner of Hyde Park that bordered Oxford Street. From the Masquerade Club near St James’s Street, it was a little over a mile. Hugh welcomed the walk. He’d been spending too much time in darkness, watching people play cards and dice. Even though the nightlife suited his recent gloom, the sun and fresh spring air made him feel more alive than he had felt in over a month.
Or was it the prospect of seeing Daphne again that roused him?
Perhaps anger was a step up from gloom. He refused to believe that anything but anger prompted him to make this visit. He wanted answers, answers she’d cleverly avoided giving him. This time he would not leave until he knew precisely why she had returned to the Masquerade Club. If Lady Faville planned more mischief for his family, he would nip it in the bud right now.
While he’d tossed and turned in his bed that morning, one thought had consumed him, and it was not the notion that she’d come to the Masquerade Club looking for him. It was that she’d come looking for Xavier.
Apparently she’d held her obsession with him for ten years. What made him think it was over now? Or had been over even when she’d been with him in the cottage? What other reason than Xavier would have made her come back? She might not have known Xavier was rarely at the club now that Hugh had taken over its management.
If she was really pining for his brother-in-law, what had been her meaning in making love to him?
He passed Berkeley Square and walked down Mount Street to Park Lane, which bordered the park. He needed to smell trees thick with new leaves, spring grass and flowers. Scent had become so much more important to him, a vestige of his two weeks of blindness.
He turned onto Hereford and found the house easily. With no hesitation, he strode up to the door and sounded the knocker.
A footman opened the door and broke out into a smile of recognition before composing his face again. ‘Mr Westleigh.’
‘Carter?’ This was Hugh’s first glimpse of Carter’s face. The man had been masked at the Masquerade Club. Hugh returned the man’s smile. ‘Believe me when I tell you it is good to see you.’
Carter grinned again. ‘I am delighted you can tell me so, sir.’ He stepped aside to allow Hugh to enter. ‘Have you come to see—?’ The man shut his mouth and looked perplexed, probably not knowing which name his mistress wished him to use.
‘I have come to see Lady Faville.’
Carter bowed. ‘Allow me to see if she is receiving callers.’ Carter’s voice was comfortingly familiar.
He escorted Hugh to the drawing room and, leaving the door open, left him there to find Daphne.
The room was dominated by a full-length portrait of Daphne—or rather, Lady Faville—her expression too cool and remote to be the Daphne he thought he’d known. Hugh closed his eyes and remembered the cottage drawing room, which he’d learned to navigate without sight. He turned away before opening his eyes again. This room was larger, more formal and feminine than the cottage’s furniture had turned out to be. This room was decorated in fine brocades and velvets in shades of ivory and blue, no doubt to reflect the blue of her eyes. There was no pianoforte in this room, which somehow made it seem cooler, more impersonal, not warm and comfortable like the cottage had been.
Perhaps this room suited the cool beauty of the portrait, whose appearance was always calculated to turn heads. At least, that had been his impression of Lady Faville. That was not the same woman he’d known in the cottage. He closed his eyes and remembered her, the sound of her voice, her scent, the warmth of her skin. That Daphne had not been real, but a fabrication based on her lies and his need. To know her as Lady Faville could only make it easier to forget the illusion she’d been.
He heard a swish of skirts behind him and her voice. ‘Hugh?’
Daphne stood in the doorway. Or rather, Lady Faville stood there. Her gleaming blonde hair was pulled away from her face into a simple knot and the rose-coloured dress she wore accented her flawless skin and matched the pink of her full lips. This paragon of beauty, so cool and flawless, was, indeed, not the Daphne he’d known.
‘Why have you come here, Hugh?’ She’d not moved from the doorway, as if she was afraid to enter the room.
‘We have unfinished business, you and I.’ He stared her in the eye. ‘I would speak with you.’
She blinked and glanced behind her. Looking for an escape? But she closed the door and took a step closer to him. ‘I have apologised for coming to the Masquerade Club. I will not come there again.’
‘As you said.’ His voice sounded bitter. ‘But that is not why I have come.’
‘What more can be said?’ She lifted her chin regally.
There was no reason to mince words. ‘I want to know why you came in the first place.’
She clasped her hands together. ‘I—I wanted to see the place.’
‘See the place?’ He gave a dry laugh. ‘Do not play me for a fool. Again.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘Then why did you think I came there?’
He glared at her. ‘To find Xavier.’
‘Xavier?’ She acted surprised.
‘Xavier,’ he repeated. ‘You remember him. Xavier Campion? My sister’s husband? The man you lusted after for weeks—years. You planned to break up his marriage, if you recall.’
She lowered her gaze to the floor. ‘That was a long time ago.’ She raised her eyes again and her expression was like ice. ‘Surely you have not come here simply to point out my past failings. I assure you I am well acquainted with them.’
‘I want to know if you came to the Masquerade Club to see Xavier.’
She stepped towards one of the chairs and placed her hands, delicate and long fingered, on the back of it. ‘You took the trouble to call upon me merely to ask me that?’ Her voice rose in pitch. ‘You want only to know that I will not further trouble your family?’
That was not the only reason. He wanted to know how deep her deception had been in those two weeks he’d been blind. He wanted to know if she was still as obsessed by Xavier as she’d been before. If so, what had he, Hugh, meant to her?
He moved closer, standing behind her, close enough for her scent to reach his nostrils. Her scent matched the rose of her dress.
‘I will cause no more trouble, Hugh,’ she said, her voice weary.
That did not answer his question. ‘I am to believe you? You made other promises and broke them. You’ve told other lies.’
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But whether you believe me or not, I will trouble you and your family no further.’
He scoffed. ‘Maybe you cannot return to the Masquerade Club, because now you know even a mask cannot disguise you from me, but how do I know you are not plotting some other mischief?’
‘You cannot know.’ She shook her head. ‘I mean, I ask only that you believe me this time.’
Believe her? ‘I am to believe you do not have some other mischief to wreak upon my family?’
‘Yes, because I do not.’ Her voice turned very quiet. ‘I mean none of you any harm at all.’
He strode up to her and held her by her shoulders. ‘Then tell me why you came. If not to start that business with my sister’s husband again, then why?’
It was a mistake to come so close to her, to touch her. His body was drawn to her like a magnet to metal.
She made no effort to pull away. Instead, she looked up into his face. ‘Would you believe me if I told y
ou I came to see you?’
His senses heightened at her words and her nearness. It hurt to look at her; she was that beautiful.
‘I would not believe it,’ he managed.
She took a breath and it felt as if she’d robbed him of air. ‘Well, I did come to see you. I wanted to look at you without bandages, to see for myself that you were not blind. When I left the cottage, I did not know if you would be blind or not.’
‘If you’d cared so much, Daphne—’ he released her ‘—you never would have left.’
She stepped away from him. ‘If I’d stayed, you would have discovered who I was.’
His voice dipped low. ‘I would have discovered how seriously you deceived me, you mean.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed again. ‘That is what I mean.’
Had he meant that much to her that she needed to see him healed? Wait. He must not fall for more deception. ‘How did you even know I was at the Masquerade Club?’
She paused before answering, ‘Mr Everard, my man of business, told me.’
Her man of business? Hugh knew that Lady Faville’s man of business had met with Rhys and Xavier to arrange the compensation for the damage to the Masquerade Club.
‘Your man of business told you I was at the club and that was why you came there?’
She nodded.
He could not believe her. If he’d been that important to her, she would not have deceived him. She would not have left him. ‘You came to assure yourself that I was not blind and not to see Xavier?’
She turned her head away. ‘Yes.’
Was she jesting? ‘Your man of business would have mentioned a blind gambling-club manager. There cannot be so many of those in London. When he spoke of me, surely you knew then I was not blind. Why come to see it?’
Her shoulders slumped and she retreated to the fireplace. ‘It does no good to banter back and forth. You cannot believe me and I cannot convince you. Suffice to say I will not bother you again, Hugh. I do promise that.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Please leave me now.’
A Lady of Notoriety (The Masquerade Club) Page 18