by Julia Ross
When she had first applied for her position with Miss Farcey, she had wet the most wayward strands to darken them, then dragged them back beneath a modest little cap. Yet her hair had always had a life of its own, as if it sparked with hidden electricity.
It was lucky that she was otherwise unremarkable and speckled like a thrush, or how could she have risked accosting a strange gentleman, especially one as intimidating as Guy Devoran?
She made a face at herself and turned away. For Rachel’s sake, she would have faced down the devil himself, had she thought it necessary.
Her coat was soaked, so she tugged it off and hung it behind the door, before she sat down on the single chair and pulled a small key out of her pocket.
Rachel’s letters lay tucked into the secret compartment of Sarah’s writing case. The same hidden drawer that graced any ladies’ writing case. With an uncomfortable new awareness, she stared at the mahogany box. It was crafted mostly from thin veneers. Any strong young man could smash it open with one blow.
A shiver ran down her spine.
It was only custom and social disapproval that prevented aristocrats like Guy Devoran from smashing into whatever they desired to take whatever they wanted. A nephew of the Duke of Blackdown was essentially above the law.
That was why she hoped he would help her.
Yet the thought of that potentially unrestricted power yawned its threat: casual and absolute. Guy Devoran and his cousins could play at life and death if they wished, and no one would stop them.
Was Rachel’s tormentor just as powerful? Had she been stolen away by a man who knew that no one could touch him, whatever he did?
Sick fear seized Sarah by the throat. Even the thought of tea was nauseating for a moment, though that was what she needed: a nice strong cup of tea.
A rap at the door revealed one of the inn servants with a tray. As soon as the girl left, Sarah poured herself a cup, then read Rachel’s last letter through yet again, though she had already committed parts of it to memory:
…He insisted that I marry him, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was obliged to be very firm. Yet I fear that he intends to persecute me, even that he will resort to a most dishonorable solution to his ardor. I’m so afraid. I dare not imagine what he might do if he found me here alone. Please come right away, dearest Sarah!
This man must know that she and Rachel had no family left to turn to: two young ladies, essentially unprotected in the world. It was despicable. It was also terrifying.
Sarah had rushed up to town to find Rachel already missing. All of her inquiries had run into blank walls. Just this morning she had become certain that a forcible abduction was the only possible explanation for Rachel’s disappearance. Otherwise her cousin would surely have sent word by now.
Then she had crashed into the wall of Mr. Devoran’s disbelief.
In the face of it, her certainty had almost wavered. Yet the fear in Rachel’s letters was palpable—enough to make Sarah determined first on rescue, then on revenge.
She sorted at random through the earlier letters. Ah, this one! Rachel had written it the previous autumn, when her news had still been only light and amusing, filled with the trivial details of her life as a governess for the Penlands.
…When I get too bored with all this, especially with having to eat my meals by myself—too exalted for the servants’ hall, but nowhere near good enough to grace the family table—I try to recall those long summer days that we spent together as children. I miss it all so much, beloved Sarah! Then sometimes I think of that day on the yacht with Mr. Guy Devoran. I can still hardly believe that I spent all those hours with a nephew of the Duke of Blackdown! Even though it reminds me of everything that we’ve lost, dear Sarah, it also reminds me that some men are true gentlemen—
Sarah folded the paper and tucked it back into her writing case. Everything had changed after Christmas, when Rachel had become so euphoric that she often neglected to write. Yet in the spring the tone of her letters had become suddenly frantic, until she had sent that last panicked plea.
The paper split a little as Sarah unfolded the final missive yet again. Her eyes skimmed over the important phrases:
A lady alone is so helpless against any influential gentleman. Society always judges a female more harshly than her persecutor, and I fear no one would believe me if I ever revealed his name. But, oh, how I think now about that day on the yacht—one golden, bright memory in my sea of despair! How I wish I might ask Mr. Devoran, the loveliest man I ever met—Rachel had scratched through the next several lines—But no, that would never do! What if my enemy found out? All these titled families know each other, don’t they? They might even be friends—
So when she’d denied that Rachel had wanted to enlist his help, Sarah Callaway had indeed been hiding something. But so had he.
Why else had Guy Devoran reacted to her explanation of her cousin’s predicament with such vehemence? No doubt he’d been annoyed that Rachel had given him a false name, and perhaps that information had bruised his pride a little, but surely he must be otherwise unconcerned?
After all, they had met only that once. Rachel had adored her day on the yacht, because Guy Devoran—carefully courteous—had neither embarrassed nor propositioned the young lady in his power.
Instead he had made Rachel laugh.
Yet it had all only been to help another young lady named Anne, who was now married to Lord Jonathan St. George, Mr. Devoran’s younger cousin. According to the newspapers, the couple had recently returned to England from India, and Lady Jonathan was expecting a happy event any day.
By spending that day on the yacht with Rachel, Guy Devoran had helped Lord Jonathan’s future wife to escape her enemies, and made all her happiness possible. He had done it only because he was generous and gallant and compassionate, not because of any personal concern for Rachel.
But what if this time he decided not to help a young lady in distress, after all?
Or worse: What if she had misjudged everything about him from the snippets in Rachel’s letters? What if Mr. Devoran was hiding something that really mattered?
RAIN streamed along the pavement. Guy stood in the doorway of the bookseller’s with several volumes wrapped in brown paper tucked under one arm. He glanced up and down the street as if checking the weather.
The light-skinned man that he had seen earlier loitering near his townhouse was gone. The man’s presence might have been coincidence, or it might be that Guy was not the only person who had noticed Mrs. Sarah Callaway, captain’s relict, lingering in the street with anxiety marking her face like a brand.
Devil take it! If anything truly dangerous was going on, she would have been far safer to have sent him a note. No one in his house would have dreamed of opening his correspondence. Instead, she had delayed her decision to seek his help until Rachel had already been missing for several days.
If she really was missing, of course, and not simply hiding from the disappointed rage of another abandoned lover.
Guy shrugged and strode off. He was indeed well known in London: the duke’s nephew who was the friend of so many and the intimate of almost none.
As soon as he was ensconced in the security of his study, Guy sent out several letters. The first to deliver his regrets to a certain lady whom he had planned to escort to the Park that afternoon. The second to Lady Ryderbourne, the beautiful wife of the Duke of Blackdown’s eldest son, who had a marked fondness for him and wouldn’t hesitate to do as he asked. The third a set of requests to London’s ladies’ employment agencies, where one might—if one needed such a creature—find a governess.
As soon as his missives were gone, Guy jotted two names on a sheet of paper and stared at them: Lord Grail, Mr. Harvey Penland. He knew Grail, though not well. The name Harvey Penland meant nothing.
He glanced at the clock and wrote one more note—in a code they had invented as schoolboys—to his younger cousin, Lord Jonathan Devoran St. George, otherwise known as Wild Lord Jack, so Jack
would receive it before he reached London.
With the Goatstall address still burning in his mind, Guy stalked out of his study and called for a thick cloak. Yet as he strode away down the wet pavement, he made no attempt whatsoever to face the riot of hurt and anger that Sarah’s news about Rached caused him.
SARAH stared down from her bedroom window to watch the lamplighter casting out the night. She had come to stay in town once as a small child, long before the widespread introduction of gas, a few years before she had gone to live with the Mansards. The streets had been pits of darkness then, the sooty glow of the lanterns barely penetrating the murk. The memory made the gaslights seem like a miracle.
Had it been a madness to try to enlist Guy Devoran?
Her stomach rumbled. She glanced at the tray holding the cold teapot. She had spent a good part of her savings already, and she was almost out of money. She didn’t dare order any more food until tomorrow. Nor did she dare to go out, in case Mr. Devoran sent word.
What on earth could she do, if he refused to help her?
She had been able to walk to Goatstall Lane, but no one who might have known Rachel there would talk when they learned that Sarah lacked the funds to reward their cooperation.
She glanced at the clock: almost bedtime. Ignoring the gnawing hunger and fear, she began to pace, trying to count her assets and reassess what she knew.
Someone rapped.
Sarah jumped like a startled hare, then stared at the door for a moment. Her heart beat loudly enough to almost choke her, while one man’s name seemed to echo into the room: Guy Devoran!
The knocking progressed into thumps.
A gentleman would never rattle the panels like that. It was probably some slightly inebriated guest, trying the wrong room. Sarah cracked open the door.
A boy gawked up at her. He held a large package in both arms.
“Delivery for Missus Callaway. By hand to the lady herself and no one else, on pain of a whipping.”
Sarah opened the door all the way. “I’m Mrs. Callaway.”
The boy grinned. “The gennulman said I’d know if it was the right lady, because she looks like a mouse had dabbled his little feet in brown ink, then run all over her skin. That’s you, right enough.”
He dropped the package, touched his cap, and ran off down the corridor.
A flush of mortification warmed her face, but her predicament was far too serious to be upset by such nonsense. Whatever a gentleman might notice about Sarah Callaway, it was certainly not her good looks.
She picked up the package, carried it into her room, and set it on the bed. Perhaps he had sent her some food? At the very thought, she laughed at herself. Apprehension was obviously a more appropriate reaction when a gentleman sent a lady an unexpected gift.
Sarah pulled herself together and cut the string.
The paper fell open to reveal a mass of blue silk. Aware of a renewed flutter of nerves, she shook it out: a blue-and-white fantasy of a peasant dress, at least a hundred years out of date.
Caught by the sheer beauty of the fabric, she stared at the dress for a moment before she unwrapped the next layer: a white-powdered wig, set with bows of blue ribbon and tiny models of sheep—sheep?—that decorated a miniature bonnet. A dark-blue mask lay beneath that, wrapped in a white lace handkerchief. A pair of silver shoes and a tiny shepherd’s crook set with beetles’ wings and glass spangles sparkled at the bottom of the parcel.
Tied with more blue ribbon, a bulky paper was wrapped about the handle.
In spite of the frippery of the ribbon, the note carried a hint of cedar and beeswax beneath its top note of expensive ink: masculine scents that spoke of an elegant study, the private preserve of the man who had so disturbed her composure in the bookstore.
His dark head had bent over this very sheet of paper, a dry quirk at the corner of his lips, his profile perfect as he dipped his pen in the inkwell.
And—if he had happened to glance up—he’d have pinned any observer with eyes so dark that a woman might drown in their black fire.
Her fingers fumbled as she untied the ribbon and unfolded the paper, while a rush of trepidation sent quite definite little mouse feet running down her spine. To her surprise, some coins rattled onto the table. She set them aside and started to read.
Dear Madam,
The recent christening of the infant Lord Wyldshay, the first grandson of the Duke of Blackdown, is to be celebrated tomorrow night with a masked ball. I enjoy the perhaps unfortunate privilege of being one of the baby’s godfathers, so I am obliged to attend.
No one will notice an extra shepherdess.
A maid from Blackdown House will arrive tomorrow evening to assist you. You may, of course, send her away, if you wish. However, it would be prudent for you to remain quietly in your room at the hotel until then.
Meanwhile, since the servants will expect their vails from your hand, and Brockton’s will expect you to settle your reckoning with a certain generosity, I enclose a small token toward that end.
If you don’t wish to accept it, please use it for charity.
Either way, we need not refer to it again.
I remain, dear madam, your most humble, obedient servant,
Guy Devoran
Sarah picked up the coins. Money was such an improper present for any gentleman to give to a lady that she ought to return it with a stiff note. Yet her hotel bill would use almost the last of her cash, and now she could buy several meals, as well as offer the correct rewards to his servants.
She had asked for Guy Devoran’s help. It would be idiotic to faint from hunger before he could give it. And, of course, he had very cleverly offered her a way to save face—please use it for charity.
So it was just one more small indignity she must suffer for Rachel’s sake.
Yet a masked ball?
Sarah had never attended such an event in her life.
The first grandson of the Duke of Blackdown—that would be Lord Ryderbourne’s new baby, who enjoyed the courtesy title of Earl of Wyldshay even in his cradle. The birth had recently been announced in the newspapers.
The thought of Mr. Devoran’s being godfather to his cousin’s new baby was indeed oddly reassuring.
Concentrating only on that, Sarah washed her face in cold water, stripped off her plain green gown, and donned the blue silk. The fit was tight, but passable. The fabric, obviously, was French.
The shoes, luckily, were a good fit.
The entire costume was probably worth several months of her schoolteacher’s salary.
It was not easy without the help of a maid, but she managed to bundle her unruly hair beneath the wig. The little bonnet perched above her left ear like a drunken post boy. Using the small dappled mirror above the fireplace, she tried to adjust it. The sheep—all tied together by a length of ribbon—seemed determined to race off down the powdered ringlets to escape over her shoulder. Which only emphasized that the tight bodice was very close to being indecent.
Sarah tucked the handkerchief into the décolletage. One of the sheep entangled itself in the lace edging. She tried to free it and only caught two more of them.
From the sheer absurdity of it—and as if she must at last release all of her worry in open mockery at herself—she began to laugh. She laughed till she cried.
CARRIAGES lined the street. Music echoed into the night.
Beneath the glow of the gaslights, each fabulous equipage moved, then stopped, then moved again. The procession stretched for several blocks as the most glorious members of the beau monde stepped down into the courtyard to sweep in through the grand entry of Blackdown House.
Sarah stood in the shadows and tried to breathe normally, though a rapid staccato beat in her veins. The tall, burly footman who had been sent to accompany her stood at her elbow.
As Mr. Devoran had planned, she was completely hidden beneath a dark cloak, the one worn by the maid who had arrived as promised at Brockton’s Hotel. Should anyone be watching, it woul
d appear that the woman had delivered a message, then left again to rejoin the footman who waited for her in the street.
So Sarah felt physically safe enough, in spite of her harshly beating heart and tingling spine. It wasn’t simply the prospect of the ball that was so unnerving, not even one given by a duke. It was the idea of surrendering her quest to Guy Devoran’s control without guide or anchor.
In spite of the shepherdess costume, or perhaps because of it, whenever he glanced at her with those intelligent, laughing eyes, he was bound to find her wanting.
She took another deep breath.
Some of London’s less respectable citizens had gathered at the gates to watch. The grand mansion sat in its own grounds, as if it had been plucked from the countryside to flaunt its superiority over the neighboring streets. As the town residence of one of the most powerful peers in England, perhaps the Duke of Blackdown’s London house had reason to boast. After all, he also owned a castle at Wyldshay in Dorset. The facade and setting were intimidating, precisely because they had been designed that way.
Yet Sarah’s headgear required perfect posture, as she demanded from her pupils when she taught them to dance. With a wry appreciation for all of her own childhood lessons in deportment, she stared at the glittering home of one of the most powerful members of the peerage and kept her head high.
Already masked, Neptune and Athene—complete with owl—passed up the steps. Meanwhile Sir Lancelot and Titania were climbing down from their carriage.
The crowd cheered and called out comments, trying to guess identities. A circle of liveried menservants kept them at bay. Yet every member of the rabble was clutching a mug of ale, a meat pie, and a small purse set with blue ribbons. So another kind of party was taking place in the street.
Sarah Callaway belonged to neither of these worlds. Both the watching crowd and the glittering aristocrats were as foreign to her as the men of Patagonia, who were said—or so her geography book claimed—to be of gigantic size.
As if acknowledging her lack of status, the footman hustled her around to the back of the house. The stable yard was another hubbub of activity. The man winked solemnly as he handed Sarah over to the care of a maid, who rushed her into the house past the frantic preparations in the kitchens, then into a small anteroom.