Chapter Two
What consenting adults got up to was no business of Tyne’s, but he’d be damned if he’d be made to watch an orgy.
“I apologize for that… that… scene,” he said, ducking out of the gallery and into the corridor that would take them to the front of the house. “I’ve overstayed my tolerance for the evening’s entertainments. I will find your escort and take my leave of you.”
He didn’t want to. The lady was easy to talk to and sensible. Miss Fletcher, who answered to the same proportions as Madam Valkyrie, though with fewer curves, was also sensible. So why did Tyne feel as if he had to mentally prepare for every interaction with his children’s governess?
“Are we in a hurry, sir?”
“A tearing hurry. Outside the purview of the chaperones in the ballroom, first the wigs fall off, and then clothing starts flying in all directions. I should have known better, but one loses track of time. Why otherwise rational human beings, who will nod to one another cordially in the churchyard, must comport themselves like—”
The Valkyrie planted her booted feet and brought Tyne to a halt. “You are not responsible for their folly, and I’m hardly an innocent maiden to be shocked by kisses and flirtation.”
Tyne peered at her, but the damned masks made interpreting an expression futile. “I was shocked. Some kisses are meant to be private.”
“I was affronted, but mostly I was amused.” She linked her arm with Tyne’s. “If we’re to find my escort, he’s the only monk in the crowd.”
The monk was Jeremy Benton, Lord Luddington, heir to an earldom. The Valkyrie moved in good company, though Luddington was a flirting fool.
“I expect Brother Monk will be among the last to leave. Shall I escort you home?” The offer was out in all its well-meant, bold impropriety before Tyne could call it back. Down the corridor, glass shattered and a roar went up from the crowd in the cardroom.
“I’ll need my cloak,” Madam Valkyrie said. “I can’t parade across London looking like this.”
“Not without your spear, you can’t,” Tyne said. “Take my cloak. What it lacks in fashion, it makes up for in warmth.”
He draped the fur cape about the Valkyrie’s shoulders and fastened the frogs. The cloak reached nearly to the floor on her, which would afford her both warmth and modesty.
A laughing footman ran past—full tilt—with two shepherdesses in pursuit.
“Time to leave,” Tyne said, offering his arm. “I believe that was Lord Malmsey impersonating a footman.”
“Interesting strategy. I should at least tell Brother Monk that I’ve found another escort.”
Tyne tripped the next escapee from the ballroom—a man dressed as a jockey—by the simple expedient of tangling the man’s boots in the handle of the sledgehammer.
“Find the monk and tell him the Valkyrie is being escorted home by a trustworthy friend.”
“I say, is that—?”
Tyne hefted his sledgehammer across his shoulders, like a pugilist stretching with an oaken staff. “Find him now, please.”
The jockey saluted with his riding crop. “Will do, guv.”
Tyne took the lady’s hand, lest some marauding pirate carry her off, and led her through the front door. The night air was brisk, the drive lined with waiting coaches and lounging linkboys.
“We’ll wait half an hour for my coachman to get through this tangle,” Tyne said. “Do you live far from here?”
Her hand was warm in his—apparently, Valkyries were no more inclined to wear gloves than Norse gods were. The familiarity of clasped hands inspired in Tyne a mixture of awkwardness and pleasure. He hadn’t held hands with a lady since he and Josephine had courted. He had forgotten the comfortable friendliness of joining hands. He stood beneath the wavering torches, telling himself to turn loose of his companion and trying to summon his coach forward with a wish.
He wasn’t a leering centurion or a frisky monk, and yet, dropping the lady’s hand would seem more gauche than pretending he was at ease with the presumption.
“I live not far from here,” Madam Valkyrie said. “We could walk the distance by the time your coach arrives.”
“Fine notion. Lead on, if you please.”
“You’re sure it’s no bother?”
How he wished she’d take off that dratted mask, but then he’d have to remove his own mask and reveal himself to be not a god, but rather, a shy marquess toting a sledgehammer through Mayfair.
“No bother at all, though I need a name for you. In my mind, you’re Madam Valkyrie, which conjures images of strapping shield-maidens and longboats with bedsheets flapping from their rigging.”
“You have a vivid imagination, Thor.”
“If I am Thor, perhaps you could be Freya?”
“A goddess. That will serve.”
They reached the foot of the drive, and Freya turned left, in the direction of Tyne’s neighborhood. This was coincidence, of course, not good luck, fate, or divine providence. Certainly not a sign from on high, or Valhalla, or anywhere else of any import. Nonetheless, in the lowly region of Tyne’s breeding organs, notice had been taken that he was in proximity to a female of marriageable age and interesting temperament.
“What made you decide to be a Valkyrie tonight?”
“I didn’t. I’m impersonating a friend, and she chose to be a Valkyrie. Why are you Thor?”
“The costume was simple. The cloak you’re wearing was sent to me by a cousin in Saint Petersburg. Crossed garters are a matter of some purloined harness, and the sledgehammer is borrowed. Add an old shirt and some worn chamois breeches and riding boots, and you have a god.”
Also a surprisingly comfortable ensemble. No cravat half-choking a fellow, no sleeve buttons at his wrists, no waistcoat that must lie just so under his exquisitely tailored evening coat. Perhaps wardrobe alone explained why the Vikings were such a cheerful lot.
“This thing on my head,” Freya said. “I feel as if I’m wearing a copper pot on my hair. It’s beastly uncomfortable.”
That Tyne should enjoy rare liberty from the tyranny of his tailor while Freya suffered seemed unfair.
“Let’s have it off, shall we? Whatever stewpot gave up its life to become your helm won’t be missed if it should end up in yonder bushes.”
“Please,” she said, dropping Tyne’s hand. “The dratted thing pinches behind my ears.” She tried to lift the helmet off, but some bolt or other caught in the collar of her cloak.
“Let me,” Tyne said, moving behind her. He explored along the edge of the cape’s collar with his fingers—gently and thoroughly—finding warm skin and soft tresses in addition to fur snagged on a joint in the metal. He ripped the fur and lifted the helmet. Calling upon long-dormant cricket skills, he tossed the helmet up and used his trusty sledgehammer to bat it off into the darkened square beside the walkway.
The helmet landed with a clonk many yards away.
“Better,” Freya said. “My thanks.”
She’d wrapped a scarf about her hair, like a turban, so Tyne was deprived of even hair color as a hint to her identity. She made no move to take his hand, but rather, twined her arm through his in proper escort fashion.
Well, drat. What was a god to do? Tyne had not the first clue how to comport himself with a goddess, but a gentleman made pleasant conversation with a lady.
“You mentioned that your papa read to you. Have you any favorite tales?”
“I loved the myths and legends, the stories with fantastical beasts and clever maidens. Improving sermons put me to sleep, and fables, with their thinly disguised moralizing, bored me.”
“A woman of particular tastes.” Miss Fletcher was such a female. Tyne had the odd thought that she’d be pleased with him for this night’s version of socializing. “Do you still love the fantastical stories?”
She was silent until they reached a corner. “No, I do not. The heroic feats and strange lands are fine entertainment, but one grows up. The amazing accomplishments become dealing with disappointment, finding meaningful employment, and learning the uncharted terrain of adult responsibility.”
She sounded so sad, so resolute.
“I had a tutor once,” Tyne said, “who claimed that no great problem was ever solved without creativity and courage. The fables and legends can help us be courageous and creative. Perhaps you should resume their study.”
He’d like to give her a book of fables or a compendium of the world’s mythologies.
Or a kiss. Perhaps he should whack himself on the noggin with his borrowed sledgehammer.
“An interesting notion,” she said. “What of you? Do you love to reread certain books? Know classical tales you can recite almost by heart?”
“Wordsworth’s poetry is still wafting about in the dungeons of my memory, and I was quite fond—”
Freya stumbled on an uneven brick and pitched against Tyne. “I beg your pardon.”
“Steady on,” Tyne said, slipping an arm about her waist. She had a lovely figure, and he didn’t turn loose of her until she had clearly regained her balance. “How much farther? I can summon a hackney if you’re growing fatigued.”
“I’m managing.” She sounded as if she was uncertain where she’d left her abode. They were only two streets up from Tyne’s town house, a delightful coincidence, in his estimation.
He resumed walking, his pace slower. “Will you think me unbearably forward if I ask whether a particular swain has caught your fancy?”
Now, he was grateful for his mask, though he wished he could read Freya’s expression. This late in the evening, the neighborhood was only half conscientious about keeping terrace lamps lit.
“My affections are not engaged,” Freya said. “I admire… a man, but he’s much taken up with affairs of state, and my esteem is that of a distant acquaintance only. I suspect I would like him, given a chance to know him better, though I don’t see that chance befalling me.”
Her affections were not engaged. That was good. As for the rest of it…
“I’m sure he’s a decent sort,” Tyne said, “but he sounds as if he’d bore you silly before the conclusion of the first set. Best look elsewhere for a man worth your attention.”
She turned at the corner, onto a street where not even half the porch lamps were lit. Tyne didn’t know his neighbors well, and he certainly wasn’t acquainted with the families on this street—not yet.
“How can you form an opinion of a man whom I myself don’t know that well?”
“Because he’s an idiot,” Tyne said. “A goddess admires him from afar, and he takes no notice. Trust me on this, for I am a god, and the workings of the mortal male are well known to me.” He was a fool, but a fool who was enjoying his evening for the first time in… years?
“Do you fancy a particular lady?”
They’d reached a portion of the street where not a single household had bothered to light a lamp. This was providential, because some admissions were more easily made under cover of darkness.
“I notice my share of women,” he said. “And those ladies are lovely, and sweet, and could easily become dear, but because I never had to learn the art of romantic persuasion, I know not how to make my interest apparent. I know not, in fact, if my interest qualifies as genuine liking, loneliness, or the base urge that motivates a great deal of male foolishness.”
Or something of all three.
“You won’t learn the answer to that conundrum if you simply watch the ladies waltz by on the arms of other men,” Freya replied. “You can’t expect them to divine your thoughts by magic.”
Miss Fletcher would have offered that sort of observation, and she would have been right. Again.
“Is this where you live?” Tyne asked, for she’d brought them to a halt before a house from which not a single light shone.
“My friend bides here.”
Tyne took a moment to count how many houses lay between the closest door and the corner.
“You advise me to make my feelings known,” he said. “In the manner of a plundering Norseman, I’ll do just that. I’d like to kiss you, if you’d be comfortable allowing me such a liberty on a deserted street at a quiet hour. I’ve enjoyed your company very much, Freya, and—”
She mounted the steps that led to the covered porch, where the darkness was dense indeed. Tyne followed, and she passed him what could only be her mask.
“Your plundering needs work, sir. Allow me to demonstrate.”
She plucked off his mask and tossed it aside, then braced herself with a grip on Tyne’s shoulder, cupped his cheek with her free hand, and kissed him.
* * *
So this was adventure, to stroll down a darkened street with a strange gentleman, discussing highly personal subjects and wishing the night could go on forever.
In the company of her tall escort, Lucy felt daring, bold, and oddly safe. With Thor, she wasn’t simply a governess owed the courtesies shown to a member of a marquess’s staff, she was a female to be protected against all perils.
The greatest peril had become her own curiosity.
Not the long-dormant curiosity of the eager girl. Lucy had weathered that risk with a dashing infantry captain named Giles Throckmorton III. She’d hoped for passion of mythic proportions and reaped only rumpled clothing, awkwardness, and some anxious days. Three weeks later she’d received a nigh-illegible letter from Giles releasing her from any obligation arising from “that dear, brief friendship.”
For months, she’d pined and paced and considered writing back to him, protesting that she would wait, she could be patient, and they’d had more than friendship. Except… they hadn’t even had a friendship. They’d had a foolish, awkward moment. She had burned his letter years ago, when she’d learned that Giles had married a Portuguese lady and was growing grapes and raising children with her on the banks of the Douro.
The curiosity that gripped Lucy now was more dangerous for being more mature. Thor raised philosophical questions: How much of Lucy’s yearning for male companionship was simply loneliness? She attributed loneliness to the Marquess of Tyne, but perhaps it belonged to her as well.
Did his lordship even sense that he’d caught her interest, and what if he had? Was he politely ignoring her, for Tyne was unrelentingly polite? Was Lucy willing to embark on that trite convention of bad judgment, an affair with her employer?
This conversation with Thor would stay with her long after she’d bid him good night, and later—under bright sunshine—she’d consider the conundrums he’d raised. Now, she’d send him on his way with a kiss.
He was tall enough that Lucy had to go up on her toes to kiss him. He accommodated her by bending his head and taking her in his arms. The handle of his hammer hit the porch rug with a soft thump, and Lucy got a whiff of bay rum before she learned the true meaning of the verb to plunder.
Thor’s strength was evident in the security of his embrace. He knew how to hold a woman, how to bring her body against his in a manner that offered shelter as well as intimacy. He was no green recruit to the ranks of manhood, but rather, a seasoned campaigner who could conquer by negotiation.
Lucy pressed her lips to his and half missed her target, getting the corner of his mouth, which kicked up in a smile. He corrected her aim by settling his lips over hers—I’m here, you see?—a greeting and then a tease with his tongue.
He tasted of cinnamon, from the stewed apples, and patience which was all him. Lucy gradually understood that she was being invited to explore as he did, his fingers tracing over her features and his tongue acquainting her with his mouth.
She had fallen for the army captain’s clumsy charms, even knowing her soldier was more enthusiastic than skilled.
Thor was skilled enough to hide his enthusiasm, to build Lucy’s interest instead. By the time she rested her forehead against his chest, she was hot and disoriented, and in no doubt that she was desired by a god.
Who is he? His shirt was of the finest linen. His scent up close included the sweet smoke of beeswax candles. He came from means, he was well educated, and unlike Lucy, he had the leisure to regularly mingle with the fancy and the frivolous.
His hand wandered her back, while Lucy tried to gather her wits and mostly failed.
“We must part,” he said, “for the hour grows late, and lingering in London’s night shadows is never well advised. May I see you again?”
He wasn’t asking to pay a call on her, and that was just as well, for his lordship’s housekeeper had been quite clear that Lucy was not to encourage the notice of any followers.
“That might not be wise.” Though it would be adventurous and—with him—passionate.
Thor turned loose of her and picked up his hammer. “Wasn’t it you who said I must make my sentiments known, madam? You who encouraged me to speak of my feelings lest opportunity be lost forever? I’m honestly a dull fellow. I’ll not be snatching you away to my mountain hall or plying you with mead until you’re lost to all sense. I’d thought another quiet stroll might appeal, or an ice at Gunter’s.”
Lord Tyne took his daughters to Gunter’s, one of few venues in London where the genders were free to mix socially. If Tyne should get wind that Lucy was meeting with a gentleman, he’d be curious, at least.
“The Lovers’ Walk,” she said. “Vauxhall, a fortnight hence at eleven of the clock. I’ll wear your cape.”
“A fortnight?” Clearly, he’d hoped to see Lucy sooner, and that gratified more than it should.
“If either of us should fail to appear, we’ll know that a single encounter will have to suffice. One of those charming young ladies might return your interest, and I might engage the notice of my busy, distant gentleman.”
Though, how likely was that, when Lucy had bided under his lordship’s nose for months, and he’d done little more than hand her out of carriages and ask her to pass the teapot?
A linkboy trotted past, the lamplight giving an instant’s illumination to an aquiline profile and hair curling with the evening damp.
“We are to be prudent deities,” Thor said. “That ought to be a contradiction in terms.”
She liked him. Liked his lively mind, his subtle humor, his skillful kisses. If nothing else, this evening had proved that she could like a man and that there was more to passion than she’d known with her randy captain.
“I will be a prudent, impatient goddess for the next two weeks,” she said. “On that thought, I shall bid you good night.”
Lucy had chosen this house because a pair of widowed sisters lived here. They would neither hear a conversation on their porch, nor spare the expense of candles kept lit through the night. They would assuredly keep their front door locked, however, and thus sending Thor on his way was imperative.
He leaned down to kiss Lucy’s cheek. “Eleven of the clock, Vauxhall. Two weeks. Until then, I’ll see you in my dreams.”
He strode off into the darkness, pausing only to scoop up his mask. She watched him go, waited another ten minutes, then found her mask and hurried down the walkway toward home.
* * *
“Do my eyes deceive, or has the Marquess of Tyne made a social call?” Lord Luddington asked, ambling to the sideboard. “Hair of the dog or tea?” He lifted the glass stopper from a decanter and let it clink back into place.
“Neither,” Tyne replied, “though of course you should dose yourself with whatever medicinal will ease your present ailment. I trust you kept late hours last night, as usual?”
Luddington had been the sole monk at the previous evening’s bacchanal. Sole, but hardly solitary.
He pushed sandy-blond hair from his eyes and poured himself a tot of brandy. “The ladies at the masquerade were much in want of company, and my charitable nature had to oblige them. I didn’t see you there, but then, how can the blandishments of a masked ball compare with parliamentary bills regarding turnpike watermen?”
“Without those watermen—”
Luddington held up a hand. “Please, Tyne, no politics. I truly did overexert myself last night. The ladies were all agog about some chap who’d decked himself out as Thor. You never heard so much twittering and cooing about the size of a man’s hammer before, and nothing would do but they must compare… well, the night was long, so to speak.”
Tyne had already returned the sledgehammer to the stable. “Thor, you say? Not very original.”
“What would you know about originality? He had the hammer, the fur cape, the trews, the whole bit. Strode about the ballroom with his shirt half unbuttoned and sent the ladies into quite a stir. I reckon he went back to Valhalla with some toothsome shepherdess, for nobody knows who he was.”
“A good-sized fellow?”
Luddington peered at Tyne over the rim of his glass. “A bit taller than you, more broad-shouldered. More the strapping specimen, less the scholarly politician.”
Insult warred with amusement, though Tyne had time for neither. Miss Fletcher had requested an interview with him before supper, and Tyne dared not be late.
“You doubtless escorted a lady to the festivities. What did she make of the Norseman?”
Tyne posed the question while peering out the window to the garden behind the house. Daffodils were making an effort, and the tulips weren’t far behind. He waited, his back turned to his host, and hoped for a name.
“The plaguey female ran off. Some tipsy jockey told me she’d departed the premises with a woodsman or a barbarian of some sort, and my sister will tear a strip off my backside, for I didn’t see any woodsmen. Saw plenty of pillaging and sacking as the evening wore on, not that I’m complaining.”
“Your sister dislikes woodsmen?”
Luddington downed half his drink, then refilled his glass. “You don’t know Marianne. She entrusted some friend of hers to me, an acquaintance from finishing school, and then I lost her. Marianne frowns on brothers who lose her friends. I frown on me for losing her friend.”
“Then Marianne ought not to send her friends to masquerades, where the entire point of the evening is to lose one’s identity. You don’t know the name of the female whom you lost?”
Tyne had little acquaintance with Marianne Benton, though she’d made her come out a good ten years ago. If she was Freya’s contemporary, then Freya was a mature woman, a point that weighed in favor of keeping Tyne’s next appointment with her.
“I wasn’t supposed to know who she was,” Luddington said. “I prefer not to be burdened with a lady’s secrets—or a shepherdess’s—for even Boxhaven’s masquerades are not monuments to strict propriety. Next time he holds one, you should go, Tyne. Do you good to get out and socialize with a friendly nymph or two.”
Luddington gave him a bored look that suggested Tyne’s secret was being kept—for now.
“I’ll bear your suggestion in mind, though a hammer strikes me as a particularly inane fashion accessory when a gentleman’s usual purpose is to stand up with the wallflowers. Good day, Luddington, and next year, consider escorting a Valkyrie instead of a shepherdess. I’ll leave you to your hair of the dog and show myself out.”
Luddington gestured elegantly with his glass, spilling not a drop. “A pleasure, Tyne. As always.”
Tyne made his way home, his steps taking him past the house where he’d kissed his goddess the night before. He’d been up early out of habit and taken a morning stroll through the back alleys of the neighborhood, pausing to inquire at the mews regarding the sixth house from the corner.
A pair of devout older widows dwelled there—both stable boys had agreed. The ladies kept a pony cart for trips to Hounslow, where one of them had a son who was a schoolteacher. No young lady had ever bided with them, and the son was unmarried.
Freya, in other words, had lied. Tyne did not care for dishonesty, but a lady was entitled to her privacy when a masked man asked for kisses in the dark. He hadn’t exactly been forthcoming himself.
Her demeanor had suggested she’d have little patience with a dull marquess who could spend fifteen minutes debating which waistcoat to wear for a speech fewer than a dozen men would hear.
He set aside thoughts of Freya, for another forthright female awaited Tyne in the family parlor, one whom he was equally unlikely to impress with his speeches, ledgers, and politics.
“Miss Fletcher, good day.”
She set aside her book and rose. “Your lordship.” The light in her eye suggested a battle was about to be joined, and Tyne barely refrained from smiling in anticipation.