Chapter 48
A masquerade ball in a Park Lane mansion. Emily would have loved to invite her father and brother, and Lucy and Lady Fletcher, too. Everyone back home would tease her about her costume, although considering how it had all worked out, she had no regrets about that evening. How could she regret anything that had brought her and Damien together?
Tonight was only for fun, to enjoy rather than to entrap. A small tent emblazoned with mystical symbols had been constructed on the terrace. A huge line had formed outside, but thank heavens she wouldn’t be reading palms alone. Chloe, Viscountess Stratfield, and Jocelyn, Lord Devon Boscastle’s wife, had volunteered to take over whenever Emily grew tired. Chloe had sneaked a list of invited guests and a few tidbits of personal information for Emily to use as a tease.
But Emily didn’t feel as awkward in her costume as she did when she dressed in satin and jewels. She vowed to predict only happiness for the guests who flocked to her tent. It wouldn’t be hard, when her own life had turned out to be better than what she had believed possible.
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Damien strolled down the candlelit hall with his three brothers. Dark-haired, blue-eyed, they each lived and loved hard and were openly committed to one woman, a fact that did not stop several ladies from issuing invitations to stray with a provocative stare or sly flirtation with a fan.
“Is it rather crowded in this hallway, or is it me?” Damien asked, coming to a dead stop as a woman in high-necked ruff dropped a deep curtsy that showed more of her cleavage that Damien wished to see.
“You are a fresh commodity on the market, married or not,” his youngest brother Gabriel said.
“So is your wife,” Sebastien said. “Keep a watch out for the young bloods.”
Damien smiled coldly. “I intend to.”
As they reached the end of the hall they balked and stood as one at the open doors to the ballroom. Damien stared at the figures dancing beneath the brilliance of a crystal chandelier. “Isn’t there another way to reach the terrace?” he asked over his shoulder.
“There are several private corridors, my lord,” said the tall footman standing at one of the doors. “I shall be glad to show you through them.”
Damien stood back as a guest dressed as a highlander passed before him, a masked female gamekeeper in tow. “Do pardon us, please,” the gentleman said, smiling beneath his domino. “I’ve walked a mile to reach the terrace. I miss the air outside.”
Damien stared after them, the comment lingering in his mind. Did he know that voice? Did it belong to one of the innumerable Boscastle friends who had been introduced to him since his arrival? He had let down his guard since he had reached London. But now, without discernible reason, he felt his familiar unease return.
He glanced back at the footman. “I will take you up on your offer of a direct route to the terrace. Sebastien? Colin?” He glanced at his brothers. “Care to have your fortunes told?”
“We’re going upstairs to gamble,” Sebastien admitted with a grin. “If your wife cares to give us guidance, we’ll share the profits.”
Damien laughed. “I think you’ll do better on your own. She makes mainly romantic predictions.” At least she wasn’t looking for a husband tonight. He was hers for life. And Winthrop had Iris, so Damien would not be disturbed by anyone except Emily.
“I’ll go with you,” Gabriel said. He was still shorter and bulkier than Damien, but he was no longer the headstrong boy Damien remembered. It was evident, from the family rumors he had heard, that Damien’s three brothers had learned to harness their demons and force the self-destructive creatures to work for and not against them. As he had.
Sometimes that was all a man could do. Sometimes, with the right woman beside you, it was more than enough.
“Come up if you change your mind,” Colin, the second-oldest brother, called back to him. “We’d like a chance to win some of that wealth you acquired.”
Damien grinned and considered going up with them for a game, but only for a moment. He didn’t feel right leaving Emily alone in that tent, where he couldn’t see her. Even though nothing was likely to happen at a party of this class. Nothing except perhaps that there would be a man standing in line who’d push to the front and insist that the sultry lady inside read his fortune.
Most likely the man wouldn’t care about his fortune. He might have glimpsed Emily on her way to the tent and found her dark beauty alluring, believing her to be a woman open to romance.
He frowned at the thought as he followed the footman outside. There were plenty of guests and servants bustling past the tent. But there wasn’t a pony at the back who could stamp a hoof when a customer grew too bold or asked an impertinent question of the fortune-teller. A hopeful guest might assume she was only the hired help for the evening, and not know she was a young countess who had a protective husband standing in the garden, where he could keep the tent in sight.
But he couldn’t see inside the tent. He couldn’t see her.
And he did have a good reason for his suspicious nature. Besides, this was London, and life moved at a faster pace here than in Hatherwood. Emily might not know how to deal with a passionate gentleman, one who found her as irresistible as her husband did.
Moreover, the line to the tent had grown smaller, and what would it hurt to pop inside and ask a beautiful soothsayer to read his palm? In the crush, it might be the closest he would get to her until the party ended.
Which would not be until breakfast. When the marquess gave a party, the guests did not go home until noon.
He couldn’t wait that long. He would hold off another minute and stand outside the tent in Michael’s place. And then when she was finished, he would whisk her away for an hour to one of the mansion’s secluded rooms that had been designed for such secret meetings.
All he had to do was wend his way through the hundred or so costumed guests who thronged the garden and terrace stairs.
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Emily had depleted her talent for telling people what they wanted to hear. She had also run out of patience for those who went into raptures over her predictions. It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that she was an imposter making up fortunes as she went along, and that she was sitting here in the spirit of fun.
She reminded herself that she was also doing this for charity as well as to prove to the Boscastles that she had a benevolent heart. But honest to St. George, if one more debutante entered the tent and begged to know whether there was a titled husband in her future, Emily would put down her head and weep. How mortifying to remember that she had once longed for such words of reassurance.
And yet Emily’s dream had come true. It seemed cruel to deny hope to another. What did it cost her to tell a young girl that a titled husband was in her future? It wasn’t as if Emily aspired to be the Oracle of Delphi. No one would knock on her door years from now, denouncing her ability as a prophetess.
At last there came a lull. Perhaps the novelty of her predictions had worn off. Wouldn’t it be awful if all the debutantes had met in the retiring room and discovered that she had foretold the same fate for each and all? She should have thought to end her readings with the warning, “Do not speak a word of this to another person, or none of it will come true.”
A resounding cheer from outside the tent startled her. She rose from her chair and peeked outside to the terrace. Not a debutante in sight. However, there did appear to be some sort of fencing performance taking place in the garden, and it had drawn a large number of guests. Presumably Damien and his brothers had been attracted to the spectacle. She tried to pick out their figures in the crowd.
It was time to close up shop. She loved swordplay and she loved her husband. She didn’t want to miss this party. Not when she’d come full circle and there was so much to celebrate.
She turned to extinguish the light.
A shadow fell across her chair as she leaned forward. Her hand hovered over the dimly burning lamp on the table. She looked up into the shadow’s face, too stunned to say a word. It would be useless to pretend ignorance. Had he known all along who she was? How had she ever believed him to be a victim when he had not cared that innocent people would be killed for his cause?
“Why?” she asked, genuinely confused but also playing for time. Surely another guest would burst into the tent.
The fencing spectacle could not last forever.
Someone at the party had to seek her out before it was too late.
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Iris was good and truly chafed. Here she waited in the private suite of a Park Lane mansion, a virtual palace of the gods, for her mistress to come upstairs and change out of that garish costume into one befitting a countess. Emily could have passed as a medieval princess in the brocaded skirts and heavily boned bodice that Lady Sedgecroft had left hanging in the spare wardrobe.
But did Lady Shalcross show any respect for her rank? Did she care that her maid would be judged on the countess’s appearance? Not that Iris gave a care what others thought of her. Still, she had her pride. Masquerade or not, Iris did not approve of her ladyship’s gypsy attire. It reminded Iris of their harrowing escape. And while the Boscastle family might consider the notion of a fortune-teller at a party to be amusing mischief, Iris felt it was taunting fate.
“Ah, I found you at last.”
She glanced over her shoulder to see Winthrop slip into the room and walk toward the window.
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” she whispered.
He drew her into his arms. “Who’s to tell?”
“There are nine days left before the wedding.” She wriggled free and turned back to withdraw, hiding a smile. “Control your passions.”
“Nobody else in this house does,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her waist, his chin propped on her shoulder to stare outside. “I wonder if his lordship will take a day to fence with Sir Christopher. He was damn good in his day. He had a way with his blade.”
Iris had no idea who Sir Christopher was, but she had just noticed a man lurking at the back of the tent. He was wearing a mask, as were half the other men at the party. But even from here Iris thought he looked familiar.
“It can’t be,” she whispered.
“Yes, it could. I mean, his lordship could put on a decent show, even though he hasn’t fought a duel in almost a decade.”
“Look at him, Winthrop. Dear God, look at the man who is lifting the back of the tent. Don’t you recognize him?”