Chapter Twelve
WHAT HAD MADE him blurt out that question? As his mysterious, yet oddly familiar, companion inhaled a sharp little gasp and froze in her tracks, Rupert cursed his blunder.
The whole point of a masquerade was the secrecy in which it shrouded the guests’ identities, freeing them from the bonds of strict propriety to behave in ways they might not otherwise. He had railed against it in the case of men like the lecherous sultan. But for others—ladies in particular—the motives and consequences might be far more innocent.
Would his charming companion have dared steal away with him into the moonlit garden if her reputation had not been shielded by that mask? Now his intrusive question threatened to rip away her flimsy protection. Might she consider it almost as brazen a liberty as the sultan had tried to take with her? Might she flee from him, too, and perhaps from the masquerade itself?
If he frightened her away, he might never discover who she was and never learn whether the feelings she stirred in him were genuine.
“Forgive me!” he cried before she could turn and flee. “I do not mean to demand your identity.”
“You don’t?” Even the deep shadows of a summer night could not conceal her relief.
Rupert shook his head. “I only wanted to explain this unaccountable familiarity I sense between us. But perhaps I am mistaken—deceived by a trick of the moonlight.”
“I feel as if I know you too.” She began walking again. “You are Hercules and Galahad and every fairy tale hero who ever came to the aid of a damsel in distress.”
Could it be as simple as that? Part of him wanted to accept her explanation. Was his head so full of his daughters’ Mother Goose stories that the beautiful lady he’d rescued came to represent every fairy tale princess? Was that why he’d taken such an immediate fancy to her—because that was how love blossomed in those stories?
Love? Rupert chided himself for letting that foolish notion even enter his head. This mysterious beauty engaged his interest to the point of fascination, but that was a different thing entirely. Yet he could not deny it was the closest he had felt to that heady, all-consuming emotion since Annabelle. He’d assumed his capacity for that sort of feeling had died with her. Or perhaps it had been channeled into his devotion to their daughters.
Part of him tried to resist his overwhelming attraction to the masked lady with her air of wistful innocence. He feared such feelings might be a betrayal of his late wife’s memory. And yet his heart welcomed this unexpected reawakening after a long fallow season of grief. It made him question whether he was wrong to seek a marriage that would be nothing more than a “practical arrangement” unsanctified by love.
“I am no storybook hero,” he warned, not wanting her enamored of a false image, “just a simple man who enjoys simple country pleasures.”
He longed to tell her all about himself and learn everything about her—her tastes, her beliefs, her past experiences. But would she consider such questions a further effort to discover her identity?
“I see no reason why a simple countryman cannot also be a hero in his own way, if he does his duty and treats those around him with honor and kindness.” Something in the lady’s voice seemed to suggest that she still considered him a hero in spite of his protests to the contrary.
It did not sound as if she were referring to a nebulous ideal but to him in particular, praising qualities she knew he possessed. While her words gratified him, they bolstered his conviction that they had a previous acquaintance. Could it be that she recognized him in his well-known bauta but he did not know her? Though that would put him at a disadvantage, Rupert could not resent it.
He wondered what subjects they could converse about without revealing too many personal details.
“A very fine night, is it not?” He fairly cringed at his own words. How tiresome of him to talk about the weather. Too much of that and his mystery lady might flee back indoors, prepared to risk the sultan’s liberties rather than be bored out of her wits.
“Very fine, indeed.” She did not sound bored—not yet at least.
But he must find something more interesting to say that might make her want to remain in his company. “The moon is bright. I fancy I can see human features on its pale face—the man in the moon, looking down on us from the night sky.”
As a topic of conversation that was a little better at least.
“I see the face.” She stopped on an ornamental stone bridge, which spanned a narrow stream that wound down the hill. “But I have always thought it looked more like a woman’s. See how delicate the features are?”
“Perhaps.” He came to stand beside her, close enough to satisfy his compelling inclination to be near her but not so close that it might frighten her away. “But a bald woman seems rather improbable.”
His quip coaxed forth a melodic trill of laughter that blended with the trickle of water beneath the bridge. “I suppose it does. But what if the night sky was her black hair adorned with diamond-studded combs?”
Even that could not compare to the beauty of the lady who spoke those words, though Rupert guessed the silver moonlight did not flatter her. He longed to see her golden curls kissed by the first rays of dawn, while the rose-colored horizon echoed the hue of her gown and her lips.
“But what does that beauty signify,” his companion sighed, “when the lady in the moon looks so mournful? I wonder what sorrow afflicts her.”
“Loneliness perhaps,” Rupert suggested. “Or grief at being parted from her beloved, the sun.”
“Loneliness is a great misery.” A poignant note in the lady’s voice assured Rupert she had experienced that emotion herself, perhaps even longer and deeper than he. But how that someone with so many attractive qualities should ever be lonely, he could not fathom.
She looked toward the great house all lit up from within and fairly pulsing with the sounds of revelry. “It is possible to be lonely even in the midst of a crowd. Indeed, I believe a person can feel more isolated than ever when everyone around them is making merry.”
“I agree.” Rupert recalled his miserable forays into London society in search of a wife. “Yet all it takes is the company of one truly congenial person to dispel that feeling.”
The lady’s hands reposed on the railing of the bridge. Rupert edged his left hand over, not to cover hers, but to rest beside it, barely touching. He held his breath, fearing she might move away and break the tenuous contact between them. To his relief she did not.
A ripple of warmth spread through his hand and up his arm toward his heart. Prudence warned him he had no business engaging in such conduct when he was on the verge of proposing to another woman. No, his freshly stirred heart responded, what he had no business doing was planning to wed a woman he did not love. Perhaps meeting this masked beauty tonight was a warning to that effect. Suddenly he pitied anyone who did not feel as alive and alight as he did—even a great cold orb of rock circling the earth.
“Perhaps the fireworks will cheer up our mournful moon maiden,” he suggested.
“Fireworks?” his companion echoed, though not in the tone of excitement he expected. In that small strip of flesh where their hands touched, he fancied he could feel her pulse race.
“Just before midnight.” He arched his hand then lowered it again to brush against hers in a subtle caress. “To celebrate our glorious victory and signal the traditional unmasking.”
He could scarcely wait for that, to see her entire face in all its beauty and discover if he recognized her. How their acquaintance might progress from there, it was far too soon to speculate.
But his heart had its hopes.
The prospect of unmasking at midnight alarmed Grace more than if a Roman candle were aimed directly at her with its fuse lit. Her feet itched to flee as fast as they would carry her. Yet she could not bear to bring this sweet interlude to an end one moment sooner than she must.
This evening walk and chat with Rupert reminded her of the ones they had shared at Nethercross. It was a hundred times better, though, for she was not obliged to constantly guard her tongue to keep from betraying her feelings to him. As the mysterious masked lady, she was able to say things Miss Ellerby would never dare and thrill to words he would never address to his daughters’ governess.
Had his brush with the masked lady given him second thoughts about marrying Mrs. Cadmore? Grace hoped and believed it must have. He was too honorable a gentleman to trifle with her if he still intended to wed another. Even the innocent contact between their hands was a greater intimacy than he would have undertaken if he meant to pledge himself to someone else.
The girls would be delighted to hear that.
But Grace knew better than to let herself believe Rupert Kendrick truly cared for her. If he had, then surely he would have expressed his feelings to Miss Ellerby, in spite of her plain appearance and humble station. He only imagined himself smitten with a lady of beauty. Such feelings had no more substance than a fairy tale, no more truth than a masquerade.
For all that, she sensed they were coming to know one another on a different, deeper level through tonight’s conversation. Seeking to avoid subjects that might reveal too much about their identities, they spoke instead about the feelings common to every person regardless of outward appearance or rank. It was as if their masks and costumes allowed them to shed the facades they wore in daily life to reveal glimpses of their truest selves.
“Tell me,” she asked him at last, “what is it you want from life and the future?”
They were still standing beside one another on the ornamental stone bridge, the sides of their hands barely touching. Yet Grace found herself as intensely aware of that glancing contact as if it had been a full embrace.
Rupert gave her question several moments of silent reflection, perhaps searching his heart for a nugget of precious truth to offer her. “I used to think I wanted to be the kind of hero you mentioned—doing my duty to those who relied upon me without seeking anything for myself. At least nothing beyond a bit of relief from the ache that has gnawed at my heart for so long.”
“But that has changed?” Grace prompted him in a gentle murmur, as she would to one of the daughters who sought to unburden herself. “What is it you want now?”
He shook his head slowly. “It is too soon to tell. I only know that... meeting you here tonight has made me question whether perhaps I am settling for too little. You have made me hope life may have something better in store for me yet.”
She had done that for him? Grace’s eyes tingled. There was so much she wished she could do for him, so many things she would have liked to give him, but this one favor might satisfy her.
“Am I a fool,” he asked, “to raise my hopes on the strength of a chance meeting and a few brief hours with you? Am I intolerably selfish to think of disregarding my duty to those I hold most dear?”
“Never!” She pressed her hand harder against his, wishing she dared offer him greater reassurance. “Even on the strength of a chance meeting and a few hours, I know you are neither foolish nor selfish. You deserve far more from life than you were prepared to seek. I am certain those you care for would not want you to give up any hope of happiness on their account. If it were me, I could not bear that.”
Her voice caught and she was obliged to pause to gather her composure. “I hope with all my heart you will find a way to do your duty without sacrificing the happiness you deserve.”
“Perhaps I will.” He lifted his little finger and brought it to rest upon hers. “Perhaps I have.”
Tonight might be an elusive fancy, with no more substance than moonshine, but the happiness it brought Grace was as genuine as any she’d ever felt.
“What about you?” he asked in a murmur warm with concern yet shaded with doubt. “Do you want the things to which most women aspire—a brilliant marriage, children, a glittering social life?”
What did she want? Grace had never truly considered that question until now. What had been the use in wanting things her circumstances made impossible? Now she searched her heart and struggled to articulate what she found there. “I would prefer a soft, steady glow to brilliance and glitter. I would rather have tender devotion, or even simple friendship, than the most advantageous marriage without love. As for children, I did not always have a hankering for them, but now I do.”
She wanted children and thanks to him she had them—three girls, each so different in her way yet all so dear. They were hers to teach and raise and love.
“There is one more thing I want.” She had not meant to speak of it but since she’d relaxed the guard on her tongue the words slipped out.
He had asked and tonight Grace could not deny him. “I want to be valued for the person I am inside, not just my outward appearance.”
Had she given herself away? The moment she spoke those words Grace feared he would recognize the sentiment Miss Ellerby had confessed to him. Did she want him to guess her identity, even if it risked the safe, satisfying life she had found at Nethercross?
Rupert hesitated to reply. Instead he tilted his head slightly, as if straining to catch an elusive whisper. When he turned toward her, Grace could not resist the impulse to face him.
“You cannot blame people for being attracted to such a lovely appearance.” He raised the hand that had so recently pressed against hers to graze her cheek with a stroke no heavier than the brush of a butterfly’s wing. “From what I can tell, you are every bit as beautiful inside as out.”
Her lips parted slightly to release a quivering sigh. Perhaps he could care for her in a way no other man had—merging his respect and sympathy for Miss Ellerby with his attraction to the masked lady.
“There is something I must tell you.” Grace wished she could see his eyes, to judge his reaction. But they were obscured by his mask in the moonlight.
“Speak then.” His fingers glided over her cheek again. “You have my complete attention.”
Grace gathered her breath and her courage.
Then suddenly the night sky erupted in a thunderous explosion of light and color. Grace recoiled as she might from a nearby musket shot—and with just cause. The fireworks aroused all her fears to a shrieking pitch that was impossible to ignore.
In a few moments Rupert would remove his mask to reveal his identity and he would expect her to do the same. Would he recognize her then? Or would the moonlight, the shadows and his refusal to think of his daughters’ governess in a romantic way all conspire to keep him blind? Grace could not bear that, for it would make a cruel mockery of his claim to admire her for more than her appearance. And it would destroy her belief that he was different from those other men who’d pursued her.
And what if he did realize that the object of his fancy was the same woman who had lived under his roof and raised his daughters for the past several months? Would the revelation delight him as she’d hoped, or would he react with shock and suspicion? As the fireworks splashed across the night sky in all their violent splendor, Grace pictured Lord Steadwell demanding answers and questioning her motives for coming here tonight.
Might he accuse her of spying on him? And if he did, could she truthfully deny it? Worse yet, he might suspect she had attended the ball with the deliberate intention of luring him away from the woman he’d planned to marry.
The raging colors overhead bathed his white mask in lurid shades of red and orange. Grace could picture his dark brows hunched over blazing eyes, his upper lip curled in scorn. She recalled such looks all too well from other men when she had denied them what they wanted from her. Their reactions had made her fear for her safety and her virtue, yet they were nothing compared to the damage this man could wreak upon her heart if he chose. Her feelings for Rupert Kendrick armed him with a powerful weapon—one perhaps capable of destroying her.
The sound of the fireworks drew many of the masquerade guests out to the garden. Before long a substantial crowd had gathered around the little bridge. While Rupert’s gaze was fixed upward at the spectacle unfolding above them, Grace seized her chance to protect her heart and the happiness she had found in her present position. She slipped between a pair of tall revelers then ducked behind the shrubbery. Once out of sight of Lord Steadwell, she plucked up the front of her skirts and fled the garden as fast as she could run.
Only when she was quite certain he could not easily track her down did Grace pause to wonder how she would get home. Nethercross was only a few miles away from Winterhill, but it was not a distance to walk in such an elaborate old gown and a pair of borrowed slippers that were beginning to pinch. But neither did she dare accept the offer of a drive from anyone except Rebecca and her husband.
Thinking of her friends gave Grace an idea, though she feared it might be in vain. On the unlikely chance that Lord and Lady Benedict were still at the party, she checked the spot where they had parked their carriage. If it was still there, she could take refuge inside until they were ready to leave.
To her surprise, the carriage stood exactly where they had left it. Not only that, their coachman lingered nearby rather than gathering with the others around a small fire some distance away.
“Miss, it’s you!” he cried when she appeared. “I was beginning to worry. Her ladyship felt unwell and they couldn’t find any sign of you so they borrowed another carriage to take them back to the inn. His lordship said you’d likely come back here sooner or later and I should fetch you home.”
“I looked for them too,” Grace announced in a breathless rush as he helped her into the carriage. “We must have missed one another in the crowd. I only wish I’d thought to check here sooner.”
But then she might have missed out on her innocent tryst with Rupert, Grace reflected as the driver climbed onto his perch and the carriage rolled away. Though she dared not risk her future on what had passed between them this evening, she would remember it always.
Bright fire soared across the sky, bursting into a shimmer of falling stars. At the same time, vivid emotions lit up Rupert’s heart with forgotten wonder.
It was the sort of night when nursery tales might come true with their promises of love at first sight and happily ever after. Of course he did not love the woman he had only met that evening and whose name he still did not know. But he had been in love before and knew his feelings already went deeper than a superficial attraction to her looks alone. How much stronger those feelings would grow as he came to know her better, he could only guess.
Breathtaking as the fireworks were, Rupert doubted they would hold a candle to his companion’s beauty once her face was unmasked. Then he would know for certain if they had a previous acquaintance.
He glanced back down at her, intending to draw her close in case she felt threatened by the surge of other guests surrounding them. But when his gaze fell to the spot where she had been standing only a moment ago, the lady was no longer there.
His first impulse was to call her name at the top of his lungs, but that was impossible since he did not know it. Instead he scanned the gardens, searching desperately for a glimpse of pink skirts or golden curls. In more than one direction his view was blocked by clusters of guests, staring skyward and exclaiming over each new burst of color. Rupert no longer cared about the fireworks. They were nothing but a loud, gaudy distraction from his search.
He pushed his way through one knot of spectators, ignoring their indignant protests. He scarcely thought of them as people—neighbors, political allies, perhaps even relatives. To him they were only animated statues that got in the way of what he was trying to do. Surrounded by people he’d never felt more alone—just as his companion had observed.
He latched onto someone’s arm. “Have you seen a lady in a pink gown? She was here just a moment ago.”
The owner of the arm pushed him away roughly with a curse he probably deserved.
“Please,” Rupert tried someone else, forcing himself to show better manners. He repeated his question.
“She brushed past me,” came the reply, shouted to carry over the noise of the fireworks and the crowd. “Headed back toward the house, I think.”
Rupert shouted his thanks and plunged off through the press of revelers craning his neck and hoping for a glimpse of the lady.
With one final ear-splitting flare the fireworks display ended and guests began removing their masks. Rupert threw off his hat, whipped back his cowl and tore the white mask from his face.
Where was the lady in pink and why had she disappeared so abruptly?
He ran through the house, which was now nearly deserted. He peered into every room, but with no more success than he’d had out in the garden.
She must be there somewhere. Rupert plowed his fingers through his hair. He must find her to make certain she was not in any difficulty and to demand an explanation for her sudden disappearance. Did she think he would not notice her absence or not care that she had abandoned him without a word? If so, she was wrong on both counts.
He had noticed and he did care. He cared far more than he had expected—far more than he wanted to. Especially in light of the manner in which she’d disappeared. One moment she’d been there by his side with everything ahead of them. The next, she was gone without an explanation or even a proper goodbye.
Was he thinking of his mysterious companion or his late wife? Rupert wondered as anger and a sense of abandonment warred within him. Though he knew Annabelle had never intended to desert him, he could not deny her death had affected him that way. Tonight’s events echoed it far too closely for his peace of mind.
Determined to get some answers, he stationed himself outside the front entrance of Lord Maidenhead’s country house and kept watch for the lady. By the time the last stragglers departed in the early hours of the morning, it was clear to him that she had long since gone. If he had not been such a practical man, Rupert might have questioned whether he had imagined his whole encounter with the masked lady.
Now he could only wonder what had made her take flight. The timing suggested she did not want him to discover her identity. What reason could she have for that unless there was something more than her face she wished to hide? Could she have been a married woman dallying with his affections for an evening’s amusement?
In the midst of so many unanswered questions, there were two things he knew for certain. The first was that he’d been a fool to throw his accustomed caution to the winds and pursue a deceitful stranger. The other was that he had been right in seeking to choose a wife with his sensible head rather than his foolish heart. This incident renewed his intention to propose to Barbara Cadmore at the earliest opportunity.