The Black Mask

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  Knowing now he’d find sleep unattainable until he checked, Niles sighed and put on his dressing gown. If she had climbed over, she’d find it impossible to climb back without help. Unlike Lady Marlton’s gardener, his man didn’t keep a ladder out where any passing young lady could find it. The walls that enclosed his garden had no exit save through the house, and even the usefully oblivious Baxter would notice if a young lady woke him up and asked him to show her out at four o’clock in the morning.

  The only chivalrous thing would be to go to Miss Spenser’s rescue. If she had found his mask, Niles would tell her the truth about his activities. Even as he made that vow, he recognized a feeling of disappointment. At some point, he’d begun to hope Rose would discover his secret for herself. If she came to him and declared she’d learned everything, he would confess and propose all in one breath. She might not want to marry Sir Niles, but could she resist the Black Mask?

  For some reason, that notion didn’t please him as much as it should have.

  She stood about ten feet away from the wall, her hands on her hips defining her figure in a way that made Niles blink. “Trying to stare it down, Miss Spenser?”

  Though she jumped, she did not, to her credit, squeak or scream. “You startled me,” she said, “but then you always do.” She went on glaring at the intransigent brick wall.

  “I believe I shall omit the flurry of questions one usually asks when finding a young lady in one’s garden in the predawn hours.”

  “My goodness, you really do have a formality for every occasion. The truth is, Sir Niles ...”

  He held up a finger. “In my experience, whenever anyone says ‘the truth is,’ they are working themselves up to tell a spectacular lie. Let us take whatever story you are intending to tell as read and permit me to help you return to your side of the garden wall.”

  “That would be most kind of you. But I have no intention of telling lies. I merely wished to ask you to help me.”

  “You aren’t going to offer an explanation for your appearance here at so unusual an hour?”

  “No. I don’t believe it’s any of your affair. Have you a ladder?”

  “Not with me.” Niles turned away to hide a grin. He attempted to summon up all his reserves of duty and every remembrance of his cold anger to stave off the impulse to drop to one knee and beg her to be his wife. He’d never imagined a woman like this when deciding to cling to his bachelorhood.

  Falling in love right now showed a poor sense of timing, but Niles didn’t care anymore. She’d found an unguarded path into his heart. Now that she had taken up residence there, Niles knew only gladness. He’d kept his anger hot for so long only to discover he could no longer summon it at will.

  “Very well,” he said, trying to keep his voice low and his attitude stuffy, when everything in him wanted to shout and dance. “I shall help you as though we were trying to seat you on your horse without a mounting block.”

  “Excellent. I’m very grateful.”

  Standing as close as she could to the wall, Rose lifted her skirt the necessary few inches to put her heel in his hand. A slight squeak escaped her lips as he lifted her with the clean jerk of pure athleticism. Her fingers scrabbled at the wall before they found a firm grip on the top.

  She sat sideways on the wall, not unlike a lady in a saddle. There wasn’t really a halo around her, but she made a light in his mind. He felt he could read her feelings by the set of her shoulders against the sky. She was puzzled as she looked down on him, her beautiful hair coming down from a bundle at the back.

  “Thank you for not lecturing me,” she said.

  “I haven’t the least shred of a right to. I hope I wouldn’t even if I did have such a right.”

  “I don’t believe you would. You deserve your title of ‘the Most Polite Man in London,’ though I would argue that ‘most chivalrous’ serves as well.”

  Niles bowed, trying not to laugh. “Always a pleasure to be of assistance.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “Of course. What further help do you require? If it is something on your side of the wall, I’m afraid I shan’t be much use, but I can try.”

  “No, not that. I can get down. I have a ladder.”

  “Excellent forethought. Then what may I do for you, Ro ... Miss Spenser?”

  “Ride with me today at seven. I have an appointment I do not wish to keep alone.”

  Niles tensed. “An appointment? Why not ask your brother to accompany you?”

  “He’d try to stop me from keeping it, and I gave my word.” When he didn’t answer at once, busy with conjecture, she twitched her shoulders. “It’s too much of an imposition. I’m sorry.”

  Niles caught her bare ankle to stop her swinging her feet over. “I shall be happy to serve you, Rose, in any capacity. I shall call for you at seven.”

  She held very still after the shock of his touch, but Niles could feel the fine trembling that shook her limb. “Not much sleep for us, then,” she said with an attempt at lightness.

  “I need very little sleep.” He realized the impropriety of continuing to hold her by the leg, but his fingers seemed reluctant to let go. She had skin like silk shot with lightning, so smooth and yet vibrant.

  “Good night,” he said, releasing her and stepping back.

  * * * *

  As she swung her legs over and felt for the first rung of the ladder with her feet, Rose’s conscience pinched her with bony fingers. The mask she’d found on the ground nestled against her bosom. She should warn Sir Niles that the Black Mask had, most likely, already robbed him of his treasures.

  Unless he planned to beguile the sleepless hours by counting over his jewels, the odds were good he wouldn’t discover his loss for some time. She hoped Rupert’s vowels were stored in the same place so the Black Mask would have no trouble burglarizing Sir Niles’s home a second time upon her instructions. She only hoped the Malikzadi would prove enough of a temptation not only to bring the Black Mask to her but to bribe him to carry out her plan.

  Still and all, her plan would have difficult consequences for Sir Niles. She had every intention of paying back the debts at some future date, but Sir Niles’s jewels would be gone forever. She tried to salve her conscience by reflecting that, if the Black Mask had already targeted the collection, Sir Niles’s jewels were already as good as gone. It couldn’t matter to him if Rupert’s pledges disappeared as well.

  Yet her better self would not be silenced by such specious reasoning. Sir Niles had been kind again, true, but even if he’d been a beast to her, as he’d been to poor Colonel Wapton, didn’t she owe it to him to inform him a burglar might try to steal from him? Perhaps he would try to protect his jewel collection. The Black Mask could no doubt overwhelm any such effort as easily as snapping his fingers.

  Only after Rose had again retired to her room, slipping silently through the sleeping house, did another issue arise to torment her.

  * * * *

  She had only an absent smile for Mr. Quayle’s groom walking her mare from around the corner. When Sir Niles arrived promptly at seven, Rose asked him the question that had troubled her—-as soon as a thrilled Aunt Paige pulled her head in after waving to Sir Niles.

  “After last night,” she began as the horses ambled toward the park, “am I compromised?”

  Sir Niles suffered a sudden fit of coughing. “Comp ... compromised?”

  “Yes. I was out very late, and you were wearing a dressing gown. Someone with a suspicious mind might: wonder what we were doing and why you were helping me return over the wall.”

  “Fortunately, there was no one to see.”

  “I hope there wasn’t,” Rose murmured, her color high. The Black Mask might have seen them.

  “Is over the wall the only way out of your back garden?” she asked.

  “Yes, except through the house. It’s the usual way for houses of that vintage. They didn’t want the less fortunate setting up housekeeping in the garden shed.”


  Rose frowned perplexedly. How then had the Black Mask entered the garden? She might have thought she’d dreamed seeing him if it weren’t for the mask tucked away in her stockings drawer.

  ‘Then you feel my reputation is quite secure?” Rose asked, returning to her previous preoccupation.

  “Entirely. If I thought otherwise, I would be requesting permission to call on your father.”

  “I see. Yes, that’s very clear.”

  Sir Niles leaned forward to catch the cheek branch of her mare’s bit. Obediently, the mare stopped. “Miss Spenser, kindly don’t misconstrue. That is by no means the only circumstance which would prompt me to such an action. Indeed, I...”

  Until the whip cracked in the air, neither of them realized that they’d brought their horses to a stop in the middle of the street. A heavily laden dray swerved past them, the driver’s shout singeing the air, while several other drivers, slower and more careful, made vivid comments on the absentmindedness of the gentry.

  When they reached the other side of the thoroughfare, Sir Niles had evidently thought the better of what he’d intended to say. “A very pleasant day for a ride. Where is your ‘appointment’ to be found?”

  “Down the main path, where the bushes grow thickest.”

  “Is that wise? Notice I ask no other questions.”

  “I appreciate it very much.” Rose reminded herself Sir Niles had promised not to demand explanations. Perversely, she felt all the more compelled to explain. “I don’t want you to misunderstand. I’m not meeting a clandestine lover or anything like that. It’s merely that Colonel Wapton asked me to meet him here this morning.”

  “Colonel Wapton? Am I not a strange choice to accompany you, then? You did not approve of my attitude toward him the other day.”

  “That’s why I asked you,” Rose confessed. “I’m not frightened of him, but he looked and acted so oddly yesterday. I know if anything’s amiss, you’ll know what to do.”

  ‘You saw him yesterday?”

  She told him about how Wapton had appeared from the underbrush like a highwayman. Glancing at him, Rose could hardly believe the way the tension made his jaw look so strong. For one instant, she felt as though she rode beside a stranger.

  “I shall wait for you a few yards away,” he said. “I shan’t overhear any confidences the colonel chooses to make, but if necessary, I can be at your side in an instant.” As an obvious afterthought, he added, “Will that be satisfactory?”

  “Entirely. We are all but there now.”

  Rose had worn her very nicest riding habit, all blue broadcloth and silver basketwork buttons like a man’s coat. A long white veil twisted around the glossy blackness of her hat, floating behind her on the breeze stirred up by her passing. She had not worn it for the colonel. As she reached the rendezvous, she looked back toward Sir Niles and gave her riding crop a slight flick like a salute. He rose up in his stirrups and she smiled.

  When she looked around again, Colonel Wapton stood before her. If he’d been unkempt yesterday, today he looked all but slovenly. His eyes were red and even more sunken in a face that looked more like a skull.

  ‘You’re unwell,” she said, concerned.

  “It doesn’t matter. Who’s that? Rupert?” He squinted down the path.

  “Just a friend,” Rose said, suddenly wishing she’d asked anyone in the world to accompany her besides Sir Niles. What could it look like to the colonel but that she preferred the man who had all but thrown him from her aunt’s home? With a shock, Rose realized she did indeed prefer Sir Niles and always had. “You asked me to come here, sir. You had a favor to ask, I think?”

  From under his coat, the colonel produced a flat leather satchel, the buckle and tongue cinched as tightly as possible. “Keep this for me. Just for a few days.”

  “I?” She took it from his hand because he seemed so insistent. “Haven’t you a bank or a lawyer? My father says there’s nothing more secure than a bank.”

  “I don’t trust anyone.” His gaze flicked constantly from Rose to the distant man on horseback. He even turned on his heel once to scan the bushes. “But no one would suspect you of keeping my secrets.”

  “I’m not sure I wish to keep them. Take this back again, if you please.”

  “It will only be for a few days. A few ... When it’s safe, yes, when it’s safe, I’ll come for them. I...” He pushed his hand through his greasy hair. She noticed how it shook with fear or grief, and pity touched her.

  “Surely, sir, whatever is amiss, someone at your regiment can help you.”

  “My regiment,” he whispered. Suddenly, horribly, tears glistened in his bloodshot eyes. “My regiment. No, the last place ... besides,” he added with a whiplash change of mood, “I don’t trust anyone there. No, I don’t trust anyone.”

  Colonel Wapton glanced up at her, and the intensity of his gaze was like sunlight focused through a magnifying lens. “Keep it safe. Tell no one you have it. Do this for me, for one who admired you.”

  “I will keep it because you are an officer in His Majesty’s Service,” she said. He winced as though she’d raised her riding crop to strike him. Puzzled and pained, Rose continued, “But pray come to retrieve this parcel as soon as you may. I don’t wish to keep it any longer than the few days you have promised.”

  “If I don’t come for it in three days, you may destroy the contents. It won’t matter then.” More composed, he glanced again toward the figure on horseback down the path. Rose turned her head as well. Sir Niles sat like a statue, his horse under perfect control. When she brought her gaze back to the path beside her, the colonel had disappeared. Only the faintly waving branches of the bush beside her showed which way he’d gone.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Men,” said Rose with newfound conviction, “are more confusing than French verbs.”

  Aunt Paige looked up from her petit-point work. “What prompts this grand statement?” she asked with a girlish smile.

  “Sir Niles. You saw him when we left. Wasn’t he in a cheerful mood?”

  “So far as I could tell from the window, yes.”

  Rose flung her beautiful hat onto an empty chair. “Would you believe he hardly spoke three words to me after ... after we reached the park?”

  “That doesn’t sound like Sir Niles. He’s usually so courteous, even to excess.”

  “Not today. I know it’s difficult to converse on horseback, but it isn’t impossible. Yet every to every gambit I tried, he would return nothing but single word answers. Not always the right word, either!”

  “Perhaps he was preoccupied by something, business affairs or such like. All the same, he is usually more attentive, especially, or so I have noticed, to you.”

  “Yes,” Rose admitted. “I thought so, too. Now I can see my mistake.”

  “I thought you didn’t care for him. Isn’t he the most cold and unfeeling of men?”

  “Yes, he is every bit of that. Even so, I thought, sometimes, that he treated me differently from other women.”

  Paige made room for Rose to sit beside her. “Search your heart, Rose. Have you ever liked a man more than Sir Niles?”

  Rose thought of a kiss freely given to a man of mystery whose face she could not see. It was a thrill that would live in her memory for as long as she had breath. And yet...

  “Sir Niles isn’t as cold and harsh as I first believed,” Rose admitted softly. “He has, on several occasions, shown me amazing consideration.” She remembered the kindness of his eyes, how they laughed when she amused him, giving her such a sensation of triumph, and how intensely they dwelled on her when she longed for his understanding.

  “On the other hand,” Rose went on, interrupting Paige before she could begin the words she’d opened her mouth to say, “he is terribly moody. I have seen him change within the space of a minute between charming, kind, all I could wish, to someone whose lightest word can chill my blood.”

  “People do have moods, Rose. I have them myself.”

 
; “Not like this. There’s no reason for these lightning changes. If there were, even if I couldn’t completely understand his reasons, perhaps then I would fall in love with him.”

  “Oh, my dear ...” Paige said, her eyes wide. “You couldn’t try a little harder, could you? He’d be exactly the right sort of husband for you. He’s so generous, and the Alardyce fortune is more than sufficient to command the elegances of life. You’d never know a moment’s want or worry.”

  “Not financially, I suppose. As it is, however, I could never trust myself to such a man. I should be too afraid.”

  “You might change him once you were married,” Paige ventured.

  “And if I couldn’t? What then? I couldn’t live on the edge of a volcano.”

  “If he loved you enough ...”

  “If he loved me, wouldn’t I know it by now? Who is it who said ‘love and a cough cannot be hidden’?”

  Paige reflected a moment. “I think you are failing to account for Sir Niles’s reputation. He has so often shown disdain for marriage. Were he to propose to you, he would have to face a great deal of talk. Anyone would shrink-at first from such a step.”

  “He’s no coward.”

  Even in the midst of her preoccupation, Rose noticed Aunt Paige frowned at her response.

  “It’s not cowardice,” she said, her voice rising. “We live in this world of gossip and social rivalry. It may not be an ideal world, but it is ours and we understand the rules by which it is governed. One cannot simply throw all that away without some due thought toward what a different life would mean. How is Sir Niles to build himself a new place in that world as a married man? I can’t see him giving up London society to be a gentleman farmer or a banker, can you?”

  “But if you are in love,” Rose said, “as you obviously love the general...”

  “Love isn’t everything when you are middle-aged as it is when you are young.”

  “So you have said.”

  The silence between them hummed with reconsidered arguments. Paige spoke first. “Have you considered that if you were to marry Sir Niles, Rupert’s debts would vanish? Sir Niles couldn’t press his brother-in-law for payment. Furthermore, the only thing that prevents Rupert from joining the army is your father’s adamant refusal to purchase a commission. Sir Niles could purchase any number of them and never miss the cost.”