Chapter 4
Damien Joshua David Boscastle, Viscount Norwood, the first Earl of Shalcross, resisted looking back at the hollow where he and the gypsy wench had crossed words. Fortune-teller, his arse. She hadn’t even been able to keep her hands steady as she’d laid out the deck for a reading. She also hadn’t been able to hide the intelligence in her eyes or the fact that she was a literate fraud. Perhaps she was an actress hired to amuse the guests. And even though other men must find her as appealing as he did, she’d kissed like an innocent.
Only one thing was certain: Damien’s kiss had not only disconcerted her, but had also proven that he wasn’t as immune to temptation as he liked to think. He hadn’t emerged as unscathed from their flirtation as he should have.
He tended to regard all forms of divination as utter rubbish. Perhaps tonight he had thumbed his nose at fate. It wouldn’t be the first time, but unless he was careful, it might be the last.
He’d lost twenty minutes in that tent before he realized he’d overspent his stay. And now, only steps away from the shallow crossing at the brook, his skin prickled in warning.
He turned his head, glancing once at the wind-battered tent. As he’d suspected, there wasn’t a pony in sight, but there was a tall man leaning against a willow tree with a casual demeanor that did not deceive Damien for a moment.
The man was measuring every step Damien made, and while Damien did not acknowledge him, he reached inside his jacket for his gun and walked calmly on until the man began to follow him. Damien had been prepared for possible violence tonight, but not this early on. Had his ruse been uncovered?
“By damn,” an incredulous voice said at Damien’s shoulder. “That red beard threw me for a moment, ugly beacon that it is. But I’ve known only one man in my life who had the bollocks not to turn around when he’s being followed. I consider myself lucky to have made it this far alive.”
Damien did turn then, matching the sardonic voice to a face from his distant past. It was a long-ago friend and trustworthy soldier who had served under him in Spain. He drew his hand from his pocket. “Michael Rowland,” he said with a rueful laugh. “Still sneaking up on men and surviving to brag of it. Please don’t tell me that you are you are Urania’s pony?”
“Urania?”
“She’s very pretty,” Damien said, grateful again that he had not followed his baser instincts when he’d had the chance. “And unintentionally entertaining. I assume that’s the purpose of her presence here. To entertain.”
Michael ran his hand through his unruly hair. “It’s a long story. I’m only a party to this embarrassment. What are you doing here? And in that odd disguise? I didn’t recognize you at first.”
“It’s a longer story. Dear God,” Damien said with a laugh, taking in Michael’s mop of black curls and garish scarlet cloak that came halfway to his gold-striped trousers. “Why are you dressed up like a gypsy vagabond? No one mentioned to me that this was to be a masquerade party.”
Michael crossed his arms, looking Damien up and down. The curved silver knife he had pulled from his boot rested against the crook of his elbow. “I’m dressed for a private affair. And you? I hope the red fungus growing from your chin and that girth are not the genuine Boscastle. Is this what wealth has done to the man who slipped unnoticed through a crack in the family door?”
Damien grinned. “I don’t have time to explain, but let’s just say that I’m on a mission that called for a disguise tonight.”
“A mission?” Michael stared across the brook at the candlelit manor house. “At Lord Fletcher’s ball? It must be personal.”
Damien shook his head, turning in distraction as another gust of wind threatened to tear the tent from its poles. “It isn’t.”
Michael stepped out from the shadows of the willow. “I’d offer to help,” he said with a glance of resignation at the muffled thud that arose from the tent, “but I’ve got my hands full for the moment.”
Damien looked back at Michael and laughed. “So the fortune-teller is really your—”
“Sister.”
“Thank God.”
“Excuse me?”
“She mentioned her brother in a threatening manner, that’s all. Of course, I never guessed she meant you. Do me a favor?”
“Name it.”
“If you run into me later in the evening or during the next few days, we do not know each other. Obviously my disguise isn’t as foolproof as I intended, or you would not have recognized me.”
Michael flashed him a grin and slipped his knife back into his boot. “Then again, you and I spent weeks on battle trails together. I saw you unshaven and covered with dust and blood more than once.”
“If I play my cards right, no one else will recognize me tonight. And there will be no blood.”
A splatter of rain hit Michael’s cheek. “Your life is at risk?”
“More than mine, I’m afraid.”
A panicked female voice drew the men apart. “Michael! The tent is falling down on my head, and he’s abandoned me! Hurry! The cards are escaping all over the place, and I can’t chase after them and hold off this pole at the same time.”
Damien placed his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “A sibling in distress. Go. I’m glad to have seen you.” And gladder still that he’d found the control to stop at robbing an old friend’s sister of a tantalizing kiss.
For an instant Damien envied their game. Surely it involved promises of passion and not political motives that would end in wholesale death if Damien did not remember that he had a previous engagement for the evening.
Soldiers kept one another’s secrets. He assumed he wouldn’t be blamed for ruining her plans when the wind was really to blame.
He’d been away from England for more than a decade. He had spent years fighting a foreign war for the regular army, and a longer stint in the East India Company, plundering and amassing wealth. He had been contacted by one of his Boscastle cousins and asked if he could locate a missing relative, one whom the family refused to believe was dead.
Why not? He was rich, and the woman he’d intended to marry had betrayed him. He had money in London banks, investments that had prospered him beyond his dreams.
What would it cost him to hunt down young Brandon Boscastle and his friend? Damien had never done a damn thing to help anyone except himself.
So he’d set out for Nepal, and within a month of travel was imprisoned under false charges and cut off from the rest of the world. His only good deed had landed him in hell, where he might well belong. But he’d been determined he wasn’t going to stay, especially since he’d found evidence that Brandon and his partner were still alive.
He lifted his face to the wind. Freedom. How good it felt.
Perhaps, in a month or two, after he’d foiled another plot that had nothing to do with sweet liaisons but everything to do with deadly conspiracies, he would cross the fortune-teller’s path again and have a chance to take more pleasure in the acquaintance.