by Diane Gaston
Chapter Eighteen
It seemed to take for ever for Dell to return. Lorene paced, played her pianoforte and paced again until it approached eight o’clock. What could possibly take him so long? What if he could not discover where the masquerade was to be held?
Finally Trask announced his arrival and Dell strode into the drawing room.
Lorene rose from the piano stool and rushed towards him. ‘What did you learn? Do you know where it is to be?’
He lay down two wrapped packages and took both her hands in his. ‘The Argyll Rooms at ten o’clock.’
Relief washed through her. ‘Then we do not have much time. We must go there and stop her before she enters the building.’
He squeezed her hands. ‘I will go. Not we.’
‘I must go with you!’ she insisted. ‘One pair of eyes may not be enough.’
He gave her a sceptical look. ‘Were you not planning to go there alone if I had not shown up?’
‘Yes, but that was different.’ She set her chin. ‘I had no other choice, but now I am able to go with you.’
‘No,’ he said.
Her brows rose. ‘Do you think you can refuse me?’
She could not sit alone waiting and wondering, not another second.
He rubbed her arms. ‘It is no place for you, Lorene. A masquerade is a raucous, debauched place.’ Especially this one, he feared.
‘I want to go,’ she said firmly. ‘It will draw a crowd and everyone will be masked. It will be difficult to see her, will it not? You will need an extra pair of eyes.’
‘I will take your butler, then,’ he said.
‘You will not take poor Trask!’ she cried. ‘I insist. Take me with you. If you do not, I will come anyway.’
‘You have to wear a costume. If you are not masked, you will reveal yourself and your name will land in the newspapers.’
‘You won’t have a costume.’ If he went without, so could she. If he revealed himself, so could she...except they should not be seen together.
Never mind. The scandal her mother would create would be so much worse. She would have to risk some gossip about her and Dell together.
He picked up one of the packages. ‘I have a domino and mask. That is all I need.’
‘Then I can make a mask! I’ll wear a cape or something. That’s all a domino is, really.’
Once she would have been cowed by the demands of a man—Tinmore’s demands—but no longer, not even Dell’s. Tinmore’s will might have made her wealthy, but it also made her independent. She could pay for what she wanted.
Dell turned away and her nerves almost failed her. Would he leave? Make her do this on her own?
Instead, he picked up the smaller package and handed it to her. ‘Open it.’
She untied the string and unwrapped the paper. It was a mask! A beautiful mask!
‘Oh!’ Words failed her.
‘I did not mean for you to wear it and come with me, but as you are determined...’ He shrugged.
She ran up to him and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I am determined!’ She hurried to the door. ‘I will have Cook serve us something quick to eat and have Nellie help me devise a costume. Do you mind waiting here?’
He smiled. ‘Not at all.’
* * *
At ten o’clock their carriage stood in a line of several others and inched its way to the Corinthian pillars that graced the entrance of the Argyll Rooms. The chance to catch her mother at the door was lost. When it was finally their turn to disembark, they stepped into a crowd of gaily dressed guests all waiting their turn to pass through the doors.
There were plenty of men dressed in dominos like Dell, but others wore costumes from history—Medieval lords and ladies, Renaissance courtiers and noblewomen, Elizabethan jesters and clowns. Some dressed like shepherds and shepherdesses, or like Turkish sultans and Indian princesses. Or abstract concepts like curiosity or courage. Lorene, who wore a ball gown, a silk cape and the beautiful Venetian mask, searched only for ladies dressed as Greek goddesses.
They were difficult to see. At the doorway, most still wore capes or cloaks, like she. When they reached the inside and all the costumes were revealed it would be easier to spot them.
‘We will find her,’ Dell assured her. ‘We have the whole night to search.’
Dell would not fail her. He never did.
They entered the lobby illuminated by gilt lamps and Lorene was struck with the enormity of their task. There were other rooms on this level. Three, she counted, and this was not even the main ballroom. Who knew how many more spaces there were?
‘Stay with me.’ Dell took her hand as they climbed the grand staircase.
Already the revelry surrounded them, squealing maidens chased down the stairs by men costumed as priests, exotic couples groping each other intimately as they made their way upstairs, others laughing, others ogling. The music from the orchestra competed with the din of a multitude of celebrating voices.
They reached the ballroom, a grand, oblong saloon, curved at each end. At one end the orchestra played. Above the entrance on each side were three tiers of boxes made private with scarlet draperies.
Lorene’s sprits sank. Any could hide her mother.
The first tiers were decorated with bronze antique bas reliefs, the upper ones in vibrant blue, with faux-stone scrolls and gold mouldings. Along the walls were Corinthian pillars and long benches also covered in scarlet. Off the ballroom was another huge dining hall with tables laden with food and another room set up for playing cards, several tables already full of determined players. Above their heads in the ballroom were crystal chandeliers so abundant they lit the whole space.
And everywhere there were masked, costumed people dancing, masked costumed people drinking wine and spirits, masked costumed people wantonly embracing.
‘This is a mad house,’ Dell muttered.
‘There!’ Lorene cried. ‘Is that her?’
She glimpsed a blonde-haired woman draped in white, like the clothes on Greek statues, and ran after her.
Dell cried, ‘Wait!’
But she couldn’t. She reached the woman and looked her full in her mask-covered face.
‘What, my dear?’ A masculine-sounding voice came from the goddess’s tinted lips. ‘Never see a goddess before?’
She was stunned.
The man laughed and melted into the crowd again.
Dell reached her. ‘Was it your mother?’
‘It was a man!’ She looked at him, incredulous.
‘A man dressed as a woman. I’ve seen that done at a masquerade.’ He scanned the crowd again.
They saw several more Greek goddesses, all fully clothed and none her mother. They strolled around the room, trying to look as though they belonged there.
‘Perhaps she is late arriving,’ Lorene said as the time ticked by. ‘She would like being fashionably late.’
‘We can watch near the door,’ Dell said.
The scene before Lorene both attracted and repelled her. She envied the women their freedom from the confines of propriety. Because no one knew who they were while masked, they could act without restraint. Dance with abandon. Kiss their lover without fear of what people would say.
On the other hand, some seemed to make a mockery of love. Men kissed and touched several women in succession, and women did the same. Masked, how did they know with whom they shared such intimacies?
There was only one man she wished to kiss; only one man she loved. She could kiss him now, as passionately as she wished, and no one would know. In this setting no one would care. It was only those guests whose behaviour leaped into excesses of sensuality and drink who earned disapproving looks.
She glanced up at Dell, so intent on their task, his eyes darting from one pe
rson to the other. The black silk robe that made up his costume made him look mysterious and dangerous, especially with the black leather mask that covered half his face. Still, she felt she would have known him instantly even if she’d encountered him here by chance. How could anyone not recognise the set of his jaw, his strong neck, his sensuous lips? Even if she merely saw him from the back, would she not have known him by the way he stood, the way he moved?
She shook her head.
This was no time to moon over Dell, nor to regret the loss of that idyllic time between them. She forced her eyes back to the people walking through the door.
One woman caught her eye. Not because she might have been her mother. She was dressed as a shepherdess, complete with a shepherd’s crook on her arm. She was young, though, perhaps younger than Lorene herself. The girl walked tentatively into the ballroom. Her glance swept the room. Nervously, Lorene thought.
The shepherdess’s gaze then fixed on Dell. She stared long and hard. Not an interested gaze, like young ladies at a society ball might engage in, but one of terror. Her hand flew to her face and the hook on her shepherd’s crook caught her mask, pulling it down.
Lorene recognised her! The girl quickly put the mask back in place and retreated to the wall near the door.
Lorene pulled on Dell’s arm. ‘That was Lady Alice!’
He looked around. ‘Where?’
She pointed to the shepherdess, nervously standing by the wall just inside the doorway. ‘The shepherdess. Her mask came off and I saw her.’
‘Come,’ he said.
They walked directly to her.
Dell confronted her. ‘Lady Alice. What are you about now?’
The young lady’s eyes looked panicked. ‘I—I am not—you have mistaken me.’
Dell leaned closer. ‘I know it is you. What are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for somebody?’ she said uncertainly. ‘Please do not give me away! It is vastly important that you do not give me away.’
‘Are you in trouble?’ Lorene asked, very concerned. She would not have felt safe in this place if not at Dell’s side.
Lady Alice’s expression relaxed. ‘Oh, no. Not in trouble. Not at all.’
‘You had better tell us right now what you are doing here or I will expose you. And see you taken back to your father.’
She seized his arm. ‘You must not do that! My whole future happiness depends upon it.’
At that moment a shepherd came up. ‘Are—are these people bothering you, miss?’
Lady Alice practically fell into the shepherd’s arms. ‘Oh, Frederick! I was afraid you would not come.’
‘Who is this, Lady Alice?’ Dell demanded in a tone so commanding her shepherd backed off in fright.
‘You remember him, sir,’ the girl answered. ‘He is Mr Holdsworth.’
‘Your friend from childhood?’ Dell whirled on the young man. ‘What sort of gentleman are you to meet this respectable young lady at a place like this?’
‘I did not know it would be like this,’ Mr Holdsworth said. ‘Or I would have made another plan.’
‘Plan?’ asked Lorene.
The shepherd and shepherdess looked at her as if noticing her for the first time.
Lady Alice straightened her spine, but clung to Mr Holdsworth’s arm. ‘We are eloping to Gretna Green. Coming here was just a ruse to confuse my parents.’ She turned to Dell. ‘Like the betrothal with you, Lord Penford. That was a ruse, too.’
‘Come.’ Mr Holdsworth pulled her away. ‘I have a carriage waiting.’
‘Do not tell on me,’ Lady Alice pleaded. ‘I will write a letter to my parents explaining the whole thing. I’ll tell them you never proposed to me.’
‘Alice!’ A booming voice sounded coming from the stairs. ‘Alice!’
The young couple cowered in the corner while Dell peeked out of the door.
‘It is your father,’ he told them. ‘With two other men.’
‘Oh, no!’ cried Alice. ‘What will we do? He will kill me!’
Mr Holdsworth embraced her. ‘I will protect you with my life.’
Dell pushed them. ‘Move. Disappear into the crowd. Wait until you can get by them and make your escape.’
They nodded and, hand in hand, hurried away, joining the crowd and disappearing from view.
‘Now we must go as well,’ Dell said.
‘Why?’
‘If her father finds me here, he will blame this on me. He must not see me here.’
Dell led her to the stairway that led to the tiers of boxes. They looked through many, alarming some couples who were in flagrante. They finally found one that was empty.
Dell pulled her inside and immediately took her in his arms. ‘Do you know what this means, Lorene?’
His arms around her, his strength, completed her. Since she sent him away, she’d felt like half of her had been wrenched away. She relished the embrace.
But did not understand it.
‘What does what mean?’ she asked.
He hugged her tighter. ‘It means that I’m free of Lady Alice. In a few days her parents will know that I was telling the truth. We can be together again.’
Be with him again? Make love to him again? She wanted nothing more, but a pall of sadness covered her, as well. She still was leaving London. Her plans had not changed.
‘We still have to find my mother,’ she murmured.
‘We will find her,’ he said. ‘I am certain of it.’
He gently removed her mask and his own, and captured her lips. His kiss brought her back to life, like bluebells in the forest after winter is done. When she left him, would the bluebells wither and die?
She did not want to think of that.
She rose on tiptoe to better kiss him back, threw her arms around his neck and held on. He released her, kissing her cheek, her ears, her neck. He lifted her off the ground and lay on top of her on the chaise longue provided there for couples like themselves. Her body flared with sensation and the need for him grew.
Was this not what she feared her mother was about? Copulating with some man in this near-public place? But she did not care, not as long as it was Dell whose hands touched her, whose lips kissed her. Filled with need, she pulled up her skirts and his hand slid between her legs. To her great surprise the sensations grew stronger, just as if he’d joined her. Her need built, higher and higher, until her release came, an explosion of pleasure.
He held her close as her the pleasure washed away into a satisfied languor.
‘Dell,’ she whispered, fighting the malaise that would certainly come when she ended this affair.
A shouting voice sounded outside the box, coming closer. ‘Alice! Alice! Are you in there?’
Lord Brackton was near.
Dell groped for their masks, but there would be no time to put them on again. He pulled pins from Lorene’s hair which fell to her shoulders.
‘Kiss me again,’ he whispered.
He sat on the chaise longue with her on his lap, her legs wrapped around him. Her hair was like a curtain, hiding much of his face.
‘Call me by another name,’ he said.
Lady Alice’s father’s voice came closer, right next to them.
‘John. John,’ Lorene cried against his lips as the door to the box opened. ‘I want you, John.’
The door closed again and the voice passed on.
They each released tense breaths.
He found their masks on the floor and handed hers to her. She set it aside until she tamed her hair a bit, pulling a piece of ribbon off her dress and using it to tie back her hair. Then she put her mask back in place.
Dell donned his mask and peeked out of the curtains to the ballroom floor below. ‘We’ll stay here until we see Brackton le
ave the ballroom.’
She stood next to him, her arm around his waist.
The music stopped and the orchestra left the platform. The dancers on the ballroom floor moved away, some to the dining hall, some to the benches against the wall. They watched Lady Alice’s father search through the room again before leaving with his minions.
‘We can go now, too,’ Dell said.
But Lorene’s eye caught a woman, draped in white, leading a man in a black domino much like Dell’s by the hand down the length of the room towards the door.
‘Dell!’ she cried. ‘That is my mother!’
He looked down to the ballroom. ‘It could be.’
They hurried out of the box to the stairway, climbing down as fast as they could in hopes of reaching her mother before she left the room. As soon as they re-entered the ballroom, though, they caught her figure walking out the door arm in arm with the gentleman in black.
They just caught the tops of her mother’s head and that of the man with her as they hurried through the guests on the stairway.
Lorene pushed her way through the crowd, breaking away from Dell. She ran after her mother, reaching the pavement outside just as her mother climbed into a waiting carriage.
As the carriage pulled away, her mother took off her mask and cried in surprise, ‘Lorene, whatever are you doing here?’
Dell reached her and they both watched helplessly as Lorene’s mother’s carriage disappeared down the street and around the corner.
‘Did you see?’ she asked Dell. ‘Was she fully dressed?’
‘All I could see was a great deal of drapery,’ Dell responded. ‘The man with her was not Alvanley, though. Alvanley is quite stout.’
‘What shall we do now?’ Lorene asked.
‘There is nothing to do now but go home,’ Dell said. ‘She could be anywhere.’
They walked the line of carriages until finding Lorene’s carriage, which took them back to her town house.
* * *
Dell climbed out of the carriage and extended his hand to her.
She placed hers in his and let him help her from the carriage. She held his arm as he walked her to the door. She dreaded his leaving. She was almost as alone as when her husband died.