By the time Gabriel finally arrived in the mammoth ballroom, which was thronged with hundreds of people, he was in a thoroughly disagreeable mood.
“Thank you, my good man,” he said to the waiter, who was hovering around offering the guests glasses of sweet sherry. Gabriel took two, and to the servants’ surprise knocked back the first in one gulp and returning the empty glass to his tray.
“Honestly Gabe,” Caro rolled her eyes at his shenanigans, “You’re too old to be making a disgrace of me. Run off and find your friends, while I go chat with the grownups.”
His sister left him, and Gabriel went off in search of Sebastian, who was there at Aurelia’s behest, and Lydia, who was probably as miserable as he was at the prospect of a night with the ton. Gabe pushed his way through the heaving crowds around the dance floor, who were whispering excitedly.
Gossip.
There was nothing quite as nauseating as listening to his peers get into a flap over some ridiculous debutante dancing with a Duke or an unfortunate Miss falling into the arms of a rake. Despite feeling above such things, Gabe scanned the floor to see who was causing all the fuss. And when his eyes found the waltzing couple, who were causing all the whispering, he felt as though he had been kicked in the stomach; a feeling very familiar to him after his many years spent brawling in Eton.
For there, waltzing in the arms of the obnoxious Count Zitelli from earlier, was the girl who proclaimed that she never danced: Lady Lydia Beaufort.
“Excuse me,” Gabriel said, as he took a step backwards, knocking into an elderly matron, such was his hurry to be away from the scene unfolding before him.
And you thought you were in a bad mood before, a voice in his head taunted, as Gabriel hurried away.
Just look at me now, he agreed forlornly.
Chapter Six
The heaving crush that was Lady Jersey’s ball, was the last place that Lydia wished to be. Without the help of Marguerite, Lydia had dressed herself in a deep purple gown, and topped it with a matching turban of the same colour complete with black ostrich feather. Her choice of outfit seemed to be eliciting stares from the demurely dressed ladies of the ton, and for once Lydia wished that her taste in fashion wasn’t quite so extreme, for she was in no mood for being looked at.
Her head ached from all that had happened just that afternoon, and to make matters worse, when she went to look for the portrait she kept in her reticule, it had vanished.
“I have to return home Aunt,” she whispered frantically to the Dowager Duchess, who was holding court with other distinguished society ladies of a certain age, who peered at Lydia curiously.
“Don’t be ridiculous dear, you’ve just arrived,” Tibby whispered back from the corner of her mouth, before shooing Lydia away in annoyance. Her aunt wasn’t to know the depth of her despair, Lydia reasoned, though the crowd in the ballroom suddenly felt like it was closing in on her. Her breath catching, and for the first time in her life feeling like she might swoon, Lydia pushed her way through the piles of glittering Lords and Ladies, toward an auspicious looking empty corner.
Here she allowed herself to lean back against a marble column, and hidden from the crowd, she took several deep, calming breaths.
It was all balderdash, she told herself sternly, once her sense of panic had subsided. There was no way that Carmen could have communicated with her mother; it had to be some kind of trick. She thought longingly of Gabriel, who had often dismissed the fortune tellers of Covent Garden as being on a par with thieves and pickpockets, whenever Lydia had brought them up. Lydia wished that Gabriel was there right now, to dismiss her fanciful notions. But he wasn’t, and the fact that the portrait had disappeared on the same day that she had been visited by her mother and her sisters made Lydia shiver with apprehension. It was too much of a coincidence to ignore, even Lord Sutherland would admit to that, if he knew what the portrait actually meant to her.
Just balderdash, she repeated firmly to frighten away the nervous, skittish feeling that was threatening to overwhelm her, before straightening her turban and deciding that food was probably the best distraction - for she had not eaten since that morning. She set out to leave her little alcove, but before she had a chance to take even one step, her way was barred.
By the most beautiful man that God had ever deigned to create.
Slightly built, with a face that could only be described as gamine, the man was the prettiest creature that Lydia had ever seen. His eyelashes were obscenely delicate, framing deep brown eyes, which reminded her of her morning chocolate. And his hair, Lydia watched spellbound as the man ran a tanned had through his lustrous locks, which fell over the collar of his coat - far too long a style to be considered decent and proper.
“Mi scusi,” the man said, in a smooth lilt, reaching out with both arms to steady Lydia, for she had jumped at his sudden appearance. “I know it is most improper for me to say, but as I watched you Miss you reminded me of a poem I once read…”
“Oh?” Lydia cocked an eyebrow, and prepared herself to listen to a few stanzas of “She walks like beauty”.
“I had a dream, which was not all a dream,” the strange man whispered, his arms still holding Lydia tightly, his eyes holding hers, hypnotizing her. “The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars, Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless…”
“Darkness?” Lydia asked incredulously, recognizing the poem at once, for it was one of Lord Byron’s newest and had been discussed at length at the many literary lectures she attended. “I must have looked thoroughly miserable sir, if that was the poem that sprang to mind.”
“Oh, you did,” the man agreed, his eyes dancing with merriment, “But I see I have cheered you up. Ah poetry, it is a gift from some God, a gift so great we won’t even fight over which God it might be.”
“Indeed,” Lydia responded, smiling despite herself at this strange man.
“But what made you so sad, my Lady?” the man asked suddenly, his mood instantly sombre as his eyes held hers. “I looked at you and I think, ah, this is a lady who knows loss. This is a lady who has suffered greatly.”
Lydia found herself speechless at his boldness, and the passion with which he spoke; from the depths of his emotion, she would wager a guess that this strange man had too, had felt the despair of losing a loved one.
“I have lost too,” he whispered softly, confirming her suspicions, “There is no shame in sadness. When I think of my home in Italy, and know that I can never return, I weep…”
Italian?
Of course, he was Italian, Lydia thought stupidly; his accent, his dark looks, his clothes - he could be nothing else. But now that he had spoken his nationality aloud she was truly entranced - was this the man her mother had spoken of?
“You look like you have seen a ghost?” the man smiled, revealing for the first time his teeth, which were very white against his sallow skin, his pronounced canines so sharp they were almost wolfish.
“No, I’m always pale. It’s a lack of red meat, or so my Aunt says,” Lydia mumbled distractedly, her head in a spin. Would this day ever stop throwing strange things at her?
Ghosts. Italians. Wolves.
She felt as though she were going insane.
“Then I shall have to fetch you a steak,” the stranger quipped to her explanation of her paleness. “But first, a dance.”
“I don’t dance, sir,” Lydia replied automatically.
“Oh, but I insist,” the Italian said smoothly, dismissing her words, and taking her by the hand. He confidently her from the alcove toward the dance floor, where a dozen couples were readying themselves for the waltz.
“But we can’t dance together,” Lydia whispered frantically, as the deceivingly strong stranger pulled her into the centre of the floor. “We haven’t even been formally introduced.”
Silence followed her statement, during which Lydia marvelled at the rules of etiquette that had somehow been hammered into her subconscious, during endless lectur
es from her Aunt.
And Tibbs isn’t even here to appreciate it, she thought wryly, but was distracted by the Italian who was performing a flourishing bow before her, much to the crowd’s amusement.
“I am Pirro Zitelli, Count of Lombardy,” he said, as he straightened himself, “And you, are the most beautiful woman I have ever known. So beautiful I don’t even need to know your name to know I want to dance with you.”
“It’s Lydia,” Lydia offered, despite her name apparently being irrelevant to him, “Lydia Beaufort.”
“Lyyydiaaa,” the Count crooned, as he took one of her hands and placed it on his shoulder, then grabbed her free hand in his own. “Never before have I heard a name so beautiful.”
Balderdash, Lydia wanted to reply in her usual acerbic fashion, but her attention was caught up in the fact that she was now dancing, in public. Something she had sworn she would never do. Sutherland’s dejected expression, the night that she had refused to stand with him, popped into her mind, and she hoped fervently that he wasn’t there to witness her waltz with the Count, for it felt like a betrayal.
I can’t very well leave now, she thought as she allowed Zitelli to lead her around the floor. The Count was light on his feet, and though he stood only an inch or two above her, she felt the admiring eyes of the ladies of the ton following him around the floor. English women, despite their protests to the contrary, adored exotic looking men.
This isn’t so bad, she thought as the dance neared its finish, wondering why she been avoiding dancing so. It appeared to be the only feminine art that she was actually good at, her feet were light and she matched every step that the Count took to perfection. The dance would be even better, Lydia decided, if it were the Marquess of Sutherland standing opposite her, and not the Count of Lombardy. But this thought was too much to bear, and so she pushed it aside, to be analysed at a later date.
Chapter Seven
“Gah!”
Having the bedclothes ripped off him whilst sleeping was not how the Marquess usually awoke. Bleary eyed he sat up and prepared to give Wilkes a stern talking to, only to discover that it was not his Valet who had woken him so cruelly, rather his friend, Sebastian.
“Good God man,” Sutherland grumbled, scratching his chin which was covered in a beard of stubble. “What’s the meaning of waking a fellow so ungraciously? All you had to do was waft a cup of steaming coffee under my nose and I would have awoken naturally from the smell.”
“Is that how the servants lure you from slumber every morning?” Sebastian asked, his eyebrows raised in horror at the excesses of the aristocracy.
“No, it was my way of verbalizing the hope that you’ll be a dear and fetch me a cup,” Sutherland retorted, throwing his legs over the side of the bed, and wincing at the pain the action brought to his head. He was hungover, desperately hungover.
“Rough night?”
“I’m having a dreadful sense of de ja vous,” Gabriel said with a grimace; how many nights had he spent drinking away his misery now?
“As am I,” Sebastian replied sarcastically, “Though my spies had no reports of you fluttering away the family fortune at Nuit Noire, so that can only be a good thing.”
“Au contraire, old boy,” Sutherland mumbled darkly, “Nuit Noire was too proper an establishment for the tricks I wished to play.”
Sebastian winced, for that did not bode well.
The Marquess had left Lady Jersey’s the night before and headed straight for the Seven Dials, where he had met with a number of young rakehalls, and proceeded to drink himself into a gin filled stupor. His young friends had all disappeared as the night wore on, lured away by the tavern wenches looking to earn an extra sixpence, but Gabriel had remained resolutely at his seat by the bar, uninterested in a quick tumble with a lightskirt.
If you had opted for a night between the sheets, a voice mocked him, you might not be so hungover. For Gabriel had remained propped up at the bar, until the proprietor became so fed up of him, that not even the offer of paying triple for a drink could tempt the man to watch the morose Marquess any longer, and he was kicked out onto the streets of London as the bells rang six in the morning.
“Well pull yourself together,” Sebastian retorted, fresh faced and probably awake since dawn. His healthy vigour made Gabriel feel even more nauseas. “Michael is downstairs and he wants a word.”
Michael Linfield; the sixth Duke of Blackmore and the only man that Gabriel found even slightly intimidating. The Duke used silence as a weapon, and doled out words like they were a precious commodity not to be wasted. As such, when he actually deigned to speak, everybody listened, including the Marquess.
“Give me a second to stick my head in a bucket of water,” Gabriel muttered, “And I’ll be down to you then.”
Sebastian left his friend gingerly making his way across his vast bedchamber, to his dressing room, where a very bored Wilkes was waiting for him.
“Don’t.”
Gabe held up a hand to silence his valet, who was looking at the expensive clothes he had prepared for the Marquess the night before, now rumpled and thoroughly ruined after a night drinking and sleeping in them.
“Oh, it’s not my place to pass comment my Lord,” Wilkes huffed, trotting off to fetch soap and a bowl while Gabriel stripped and lowered himself into the freezing cold bath, which had probably been prepared for him hours before. He washed himself vigorously, enjoying the cathartic effect that the ice-cold water had on his gin-soaked body, and when Wilkes handed him his razor, he removed every bit of itchy stubble that covered his chin.
“Much better,” Gabriel said a few minutes later, once he was dressed and presentable again.
“Much better by miles, Lord Sutherland, compared to what you looked like before…” the valet replied, in tones so innocent that Gabe wasn’t sure if he was being complimented or insulted.
“There are some articles on my bedside table,” Gabe said, fixing his cravat, “I wish them to be sent to Lady Beaufort.”
“Of course, sir,” Wilkes replied.
“But tell the footman not to say who sent them,” Sutherland instructed; he wanted the stolen portrait and the beautiful diamond comb to be in Lydia’s possession, but after last night he could not stand to spend an afternoon explaining to her the meaning of why he had taken the silver case, nor why the amethyst had so reminded him of her eyes. His stomach somersaulted as the image of Lydia in the arms of Count Zitelli flashed across his eyes, and he knew that he could not bear, for the next few days at least, to be in her company and listen to her rhapsodizing about the cretinous Count.
“Blackmore,” Gabriel said curtly, as he entered his library, where the Duke of Blackmore and his half-brother, sat reclining in leather seats by the fire. Both men stood as he entered, and as always, Gabriel was struck by the similarities between the two half-brothers. Both were tall and dark, with aristocratic features and aquiline noses, though Sebastian was more elegantly muscled than his brother, whose chest was as broad as a barrel and who could pass for a farm labourer if stripped of his Ducal attire, so broad were his shoulders.
“Sutherland,” Blackmore acknowledge him with a curt nod; it was remarkable that while all three men were in Sutherland’s own library, he suddenly felt like the guest and not the host.
“I’ll cut to the chase,” Blackmore said, once all the men were seated.
“How surprising your Grace,” Sutherland quipped, “I feared we would spend the whole morning idly gossiping before you got to the point.”
“Well that’s an impossible task, seeing as its well afternoon,” Blackmore replied slowly, his tone insinuating that the Marquess was a sloth for having just woken up. Gabriel grinned despite the insult, for there was something about Blackmore that made him want to play the errant schoolboy. From Sebastian’s muffled laugh, he sensed his friend felt the same way.
“Your brother in law wrote to me, just this very day.” Blackmore continued, a grimace of pain at having to suffer the indignity o
f speaking with the two jokers in front of him, crossing his face. “He is returning from Vienna quite soon, but rumours abound that there is a plot to assassinate the Viennese viceroy of Venice, and that the conspirators are here. In England.”
Zitelli.
The name popped into Gabe’s head straight away, though he hesitated before he spoke it aloud. He didn’t like the chap, that much was true, but he couldn’t accuse him of being a political activist just because he had stolen Lady Lydia from under his nose.
“Any idea of who they might be?” Sebastian asked, interrupting Gabriel’s jealous thoughts, his expression serious.
“None,” Blackmore admitted, peeved at his lack of knowledge. “I want you both to keep an ear to the ground, and if you hear anything suspicious you must let me know. Sebastian ask your captains to inform you of any unusual crossings.”
Sebastian nodded; as the owner of Black Night Shipping he had a fleet of merchant vessels, which served the seas of Europe, at the Crown’s disposal. Gabriel wondered what the Duke wanted him to do; his estates were many, from Scotland to Southampton, the Marquess owned numerous tracts of land around the island of Britain, but he doubted the Duke wanted him to interrogate the dairy farmers who grazed his lands in Devon. Unless the plotted assassination involved death by Cheddar.
“Sutherland,” the Duke said, and Gabe could see that whatever he was going to say was paining him greatly. “Keep an ear out in your clubs. You’re the most affable fellow I know, use it your advantage. Bernard is informed that the plotters are of aristocratic stock.”
Affable? Gabriel snorted with amusement at the compliment.
“If I am to charm the secrets from this would-be band of murderers, I can only hope there’s a delectable lady amongst their ranks,” he said cheerfully, “For I would do anything for King and country bar trying to seduce secrets from a -”
“- well hopefully it won’t come to that,” Blackmore said, cutting him off before he could elaborate any further. “With any luck, your brother in law shall return with fresh information to guide us. Thank you for your time gentlemen.”
A Lady Like No Other: A Regency Romance (Regency Black Hearts Book 3) Page 6