Chapter Five
She had known he was there, watching her. A large man in a black domino who didn’t dance or converse, merely strolled around the ballroom, observing. And she became increasingly sure he was observing her. So were several other men, of course. It was a masquerade, and guests were constantly trying to identify those they couldn’t at once recognize. But there seemed something different about this man, something poised and confident about the way he held himself, the way he moved, lithe, economical, subtly predatory.
Intrigued, she had deliberately wandered closer to him, and found she was actually piqued when he neither spoke to her nor asked for an introduction. And so, she veered toward Mrs. Winslow.
“Satisfy my curiosity, ma’am, if you will. Who is the gentleman in the black domino? Please don’t tell me to wait until the unmasking!”
“Would you like me to introduce you?” Mrs. Winslow asked, apparently amused.
“I could not be so forward,” Anna said at once. “But was he not at the musical evening?” There was something familiar about him.
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Winslow said with certainty. “But I believe I met him for the first time on the same day.”
Possibly, she thought the clue would mean nothing to Anna. She could not have known that Anna always remembered everything, that she guessed at once her observer was very probably the highwayman’s victim. She hadn’t realized he was still in Blackhaven. For some reason, she had assumed he’d continued his journey north.
And so, to learn more about the highwayman himself, she had commenced the dance, shadowing him, moving closer, drawing him in until he waited for her behind the pillar. It was almost a relief when he stepped out into her path at last.
Something jolted hard inside her, something she neither recognized nor understood. It was all she could do to preserve her expression of tolerant contempt. And then he spoke.
“Madam, will you walk?” He quoted from a familiar country song, his voice deep and pleasing, reaching far inside her, perhaps with warning. But his accent was unmistakably that of a gentleman.
“No,” she replied lightly, and quoted from the next line of the song. “And neither will I talk with you.”
“But you are already talking to me,” he pointed out. “And we both know you could have avoided me if you chose.”
She curled her lip. “I never choose to let a man divert me from my course.”
Apparently undeterred, he offered his arm. “Then perhaps you would allow me to accompany you upon that course.”
Anna hesitated only a moment. She preferred not to touch him at all, but neither did she wish to send him away. Feeling as if she took a huge step, a huge risk of some kind, she laid her fingertips on his arm and allowed him to guide the direction of their promenade.
“You do not dance,” he observed.
“Neither do you.”
“I would,” he said at once, “if you would dance with me.”
“Well I won’t, so you must make do with walking and talking.”
“Oh, I am not making do,” he assured her.
“What do you want, Sir Black Domino?” she asked bluntly.
“A few moments of your time. What do you want?”
She laughed. “To win my wager. My sister-in-law and I are in disagreement over whether or not you are the gentleman who was held up on the road to Carlisle.”
His face gave nothing away. The faint smile continued to play around his lips. “Why should either of you imagine that I am?”
“Something Mrs. Winslow said. Don’t be imagining she gave you away, for she didn’t. I merely guessed. Am I right?”
“What do you win if you are?”
“My sister-in-law’s garnets,” Anna lied with aplomb, touching the necklace at her throat.
He blinked. “That is a large wager.”
“My sister has a large fortune.”
“And, alas, she will keep the garnets.”
A frown tugged down her brow before she could help it.
“I am not the highwayman’s victim,” he explained.
She searched the eyes behind the mask. “Then who are you?”
He smiled. “I am the highwayman.”
Abruptly, his arm straightened and her hand fell to her side. He bowed and walked away into the throng.
Anna couldn’t help it. She laughed. It was too good an exit, even when the implications swamped her, depriving her of breath.
She had already been more than half-convinced that the highwayman had been Louis. And yet, here she had been fooled by his mask—not just the black one over his upper face, but by his easy grace, his pain-free eyes and English accent. Yet the clues had always been there, that dark blond hair, those deep blue eyes, the sheer presence.
Dear God, she was not half as good at this as she had imagined. And she was letting him elude her again.
The man in the burgundy domino—whom she suspected of being Mr. Banion—was bearing down on her from the dance floor. Rupert was bringing some friend of his toward her from the opposite direction, and nowhere could she see the man in the black cloak.
Instinctively, she hurried toward the ballroom entrance, slipping between her brother and her admirer and swerving around several couples as she went. As she reached the foyer, the doorman was bowing in a group of late arrivals, but she was sure she glimpsed a swathe of black vanishing into the night.
She almost followed him, so keen was her desire not to lose him again. Fortunately, after a brief struggle, sense and self-preservation won. She could not draw attention to herself by haring off down the street after him in her dancing slippers and bright red domino. And she had to remember he was the enemy. He must have been suspicious that she was more than she seemed, and he could have been luring her to harm, even to her death.
In any case, whatever his reason, he had come to her. Excitement soared as she whisked herself back into the ballroom. He would come again.
So lost was she in plans for their next encounter, that she failed to avoid Rupert and his friend who reached her at almost exactly the same time as the man in the burgundy domino.
“This insolent fellow wants me to introduce him to you,” Tamar said carelessly. “Though I can’t see the point when I’m not supposed to tell you who he is. Or who you are.”
“You came in together and sat together,” his friend argued. “You must be acquainted. Fair Lady Red Domino, will you do me the honor of waltzing with me?”
“I thank you for the invitation, Sir Blue Domino,” Anna replied, “but alas, I do not waltz.”
“Not with strangers, of course,” the burgundy domino said from her other side. “But you and I have already been introduced.” He even held out his hand to her.
She regarded it with distaste. “I do not waltz,” she repeated.
“And that,” Rupert said with a hint of steel in his voice, “is the end of the matter, gentlemen.”
As both men, who obviously knew him, by reputation at least, turned to him in surprise, Anna stepped smartly back out of their circle and spun away straight into the arms of another man who, instead of merely steadying her, as had seemed to be his intention, suddenly swept her onto the dance floor.
“I do not waltz,” she uttered once more, this time with cold fury as she attempted literally, to dig her heels in.
“Why ever not?” enquired a voice that paralyzed her. Her partner took unfair advantage of her astonishment, whisking her among the couples on the dance floor, just as the music struck up.
“It bores me,” Anna said. However, she didn’t quite achieve the cold contempt she had intended, for her partner wore a black domino, and despite his educated English accent, sounded remarkably like the Frenchman. Between the slits of his mask, his eyes were a deep, intense blue. He moved to the light yet relentless rhythm of the waltz, and somehow, she was following him, blindly, trying only to keep her feet until she could escape with dignity.
He said, “I don’t believe you and I need to bore each other. Like this we can have a long and uninterrupted conversation.”
“You left,” Anna blurted. She strove to squash the panic, to relax the rigidity of her body.
He smiled. “I wanted to see if you would follow.”
“Why?”
“You intrigue me. I hear you are the sister of a marquis, and yet…” He trailed off, leaving her in no doubt he was referring to their first meeting.
“He is not just any marquis.” Anna lowered her voice further. “As any Englishman would know. We Tamars grew up like wild animals, fending for ourselves. I go where I please, whenever I please.”
“Then I am all the more thrilled to be holding you in my arms.”
Anna never blushed. And yet she felt the blood seep into her face and neck. It distracted her from the discomfort of his nearness, his touch. And yet, curiously, the discomfort was not revulsion. This was new. And strange.
“Against my will,” she pointed out.
“I took you by surprise. I apologize. I thought I was saving you from your other admirers.”
She searched his eyes, so much more mysterious, so much less revealing surrounded by the black mask. “No, you didn’t. You hoped to catch me off guard.”
“That also,” he admitted.
“You are insane to come here. Mr. Winslow, the magistrate, is present. So is Major Doverton, the commanding officer of the 44th who are stationed here. For all I know, there are officers from the fort present, too.”
“There aren’t.”
She ignored that. “Why did you come?”
“Mostly to see you.”
He was lying. She knew that and yet she couldn’t help her pleasure in his word. She, who loathed flattery.
“Why?” she asked.
“I refer you to my previous answers concerning your beauty and fascination—”
“I’ve forgotten those.”
“—and my own curiosity,” he finished, apparently undeterred.
She considered him. He danced with grace and elegance, guiding her with so much easy skill that she followed him without thinking. No one watching, surely, would guess that she had never waltzed with a man before. Or that this man had been shot barely a week ago.
“And so, you are the highwayman,” she said thoughtfully. “Did you hold yourself up?”
“No, I’m afraid I held up a young couple in a hired chaise and may have spoiled their elopement. The young lady had hysterics, but he took it very well. We parted on amiable terms.”
“You probably seemed preferable to the hysterics,” Anna said flippantly.
“I was. In fact, I felt so sorry for him I didn’t take everything.”
“I don’t understand why you took anything,” Anna admitted.
“I needed clothes and money to live.”
A frown tugged at her brow. “Just to come to Blackhaven? As your own victim?”
“It seemed a good place to wait.”
“For what?”
He smiled beneath the mask. “For you.”
In spite of herself, her heart fluttered. Not that she believed him.
She tilted her head, allowing amusement to fill her eyes and curve her lips. She heard his intake of breath and knew he was not immune to her. Men rarely were.
“I would imagine you wanted my help,” she said. “Only, on your own, you have already committed theft and highway robbery and disguised yourself among Blackhaven society. I doubt there’s anything I could do for you if I wanted to. Except keep my silence.”
“Do you really have family and friends fighting in the war?” he asked unexpectedly.
“No,” she admitted. “I don’t have friends. And none of my family could afford a commission if they wanted one. Or at least they couldn’t before my brother married a Braithwaite heiress.”
“Then why did you help me?”
“I really don’t know,” she said. “But trust me, it’s an impulse I’m regretting.”
His thumb moved over her gloved fingers, sending a jolt through her body. It should have been unpleasant, and yet it wasn’t. “I don’t think you are, though I don’t understand why not. Have you ever been to France, my lady?”
She blinked. “How the devil could I have got to France? We’ve been at war for as long as I can remember. Are you stuck, sir? Do you actually need my help getting home to France?”
“I might,” he said. “If I had any intention of going there.”
She stumbled, and he tightened his grip, steadying her while she stared into his eyes. “You don’t want to go home?” she asked. “If that is true, sir, why did you bother to escape in the first place?”
His lips quirked. “That is a very good question and the answer is likely to exhaust me. I’m afraid my desires, yet again, outweigh my strength. I need to sit down and I know the very alcove.”
She allowed it. Now that he had begun to talk, she would have gone anywhere with him. But she wasn’t prepared for the excitement of the escape, of dancing toward the edge of the dance floor and all but spinning into the corner alcove. The concealing curtain fell behind them before she could even draw breath.
For an instant, she stared up into his face. The earth seemed to tilt. She didn’t want to move.
It was he who did so first, releasing her to sink onto the sofa provided for those wishing a rest away from the bustle of the ballroom.
She swallowed and sat beside him, recalling reality with an effort. “Why do you not wish to go home?”
He shrugged. “I have enemies in France.”
Her heartbeat quickened once more. This was a better beginning than she’d hoped for, than even Henry had hoped for. “What kind of enemies?”
“Powerful ones.”
She met his gaze. “It can only be a month or two more until the war ends at last. You should have stayed safely in prison.”
“I wasn’t safe. I was meant to die in October, on the day the prison was attacked.”
So, Henry had been partly right. The attack was what had drawn Henry’s eyes to the prison inmates and to the discovery of M. L’Étrange. He had assumed the attack had been to rescue the valuable spy. Could it have been to kill him? Why would the French go to such trouble to kill their own man? Unless he had a good deal of information that would benefit the British if he chose to divulge it.
“Why?” she asked bluntly.
“Because they think my…knowledge is dangerous. Because they are afraid I will take revenge. And change sides.”
Her heart leapt into her throat. It was proving to be simple, after all, this task that had given her so much trouble. “Will you?” she asked.
“Change sides?” He smiled. “No.”
He did not even think about it. He meant it. Which was a blow after her surge of hope, but at least he was still here and still talking.
“Then what do you want of me?”
“Your silence,” he said softly.
She dropped her gaze. “I already told you, you have that. On the conditions I made.”
“Why?” he asked.
The lie was easy. She’d told similar ones before. And yet for some reason it stuck in her throat. Not because it was a lie, but because she was suddenly afraid it was the truth.
She stood, swinging away from him. “Because I like you,” she said, carelessly. “I was sorry for you, and then I liked you.”
She had thought him too tired to move. But without a sound, he stood suddenly in front of her. Neither of them had removed their masks. She jumped when his fingers tilted up her chin.
“Then why,” he asked softly, “do you flinch when I touch you?”
The intrusion was too much. Fury surged and she swung up her fist. Just as he caught it in his free hand, the curtain swished. The Frenchman’s face swooped down and his mouth covered hers.
Shocked beyond belief, she could not move. A woman’s voice, surely Serena’s, seemed to be talking, mercifully on the other side of the curtain. Relief flooded Anna. He was not assaulting her, but providing a romantic excuse for their assignation, whose true purpose was much more dangerous for him. With the rush of knowledge, her instinctive fear disintegrated and she realized the light pressure of his lips, softly caressing hers, was not unpleasant at all.
Butterflies stirred in her stomach. Without meaning to, she actually reached up and touched the silk of his mask. And then the curtain swished again with more purpose, and this time, someone definitely came in and halted in their tracks.
“Sir, unhand the lady and deal with me,” Tamar’s voice said ominously.
A hiss of quite inappropriate laughter escaped Louis’s lips as they left hers. He straightened and turned to face her outraged brother and Serena.
“Sir,” Louis protested. “I have absolutely no desire to kiss you.”
Rupert was still protecting her, because what had happened all those years ago still tore him up. It warmed her, and yet she couldn’t let him ruin everything.
“Go away, Rupert,” she managed. “I thought such things were meant to happen at masquerades.”
“Not if you don’t want them to,” Tamar growled.
She regarded her brother until a smile flickered over his face.
“Really?” he said, sounding more pleased than angry. He was an unusual brother in many ways.
Anna, unsure yet exactly how she felt about the kiss, began to walk to Serena. Escape seemed to be necessary after all. However, she cast a flickering smile back over her shoulder at the Frenchman before she said carelessly, “I presume this gentleman may call on us?”
“Not until we know who he is,” Serena said at once.
“Lewis, my lady,” the Frenchman said. “Sir Lytton Lewis, at your service.” Though he didn’t remove the mask, he bowed elaborately.
Lewis. Louis. “You should be clapped up,” Anna said unsteadily. “In Bedlam.”
“Anna!” Serena objected. Anna gave in and walked out of the alcove with her sister-in-law before she was dragged out.
*
Louis regarded the marquis with interest. He had been involved in thwarting the autumn attack on the fort. In fact, so had the lady who now appeared to be his wife. Lord Tamar, distractedly turning a pack of cards in his hand, stared back at him, with more suspicion than aggression.
“How do you know my sister?” he asked abruptly.
“We met by accident in the woods last week,” Louis said readily. “I was much struck by her as you might imagine and managed to secure myself an invitation to tonight’s event.”
Tamar scowled a little and scratched his head as though wondering what the devil he was supposed to do now. Then his hand fell back to his side.
“She seems to like you, so I won’t come the heavy-handed brother,” he said at last. “But you’ll treat my sister like a lady, or you’ll answer to me.” His lips twisted. “And to her.” He seemed to become aware of the packet in his hands and cocked one eyebrow at Louis. “Game of cards?”
“Why not?” Amused by the sudden change in the marquis’s manner, Louis sat down in the chair Anna had vacated and stretched out his legs.
However, after a couple of games with Anna’s amiable brother, exhaustion drove Louis from the ballroom and he returned somewhat wearily to his hotel. His mind wanted to stay for the unmasking, to seek her out and spar with her, not just for information but for the pleasure of her company. Alternately sweet and sharp, funny and prickly, brave and timid, her contradictory character drew him like the proverbial moth. And he could still taste her lips, stunned, virginal lips, which he had taken to conceal the true purpose of their meeting. And yet there had been a moment…
He curled his lip at himself. A moment when he’d imagined a true awakening passion? Keep dreaming, coxcomb. The woman eats men like me for breakfast.
Only they didn’t usually get to kiss her. He understood that much. They ate out of her hands, probably, in the vain hope of those kisses.
Easing off his coat, he all but fell into the chair by the window and splashed some brandy into the waiting glass. There was a lot of French brandy in Blackhaven, which meant smugglers. They could bring people in, too, and take them away. Gosselin would have to come himself now. No one else would be able to recognize him in person.
And when Gosselin was dead…then he could think beyond vengeance. He could never go home, of course. France was surely denied to him now, whoever ended up in power when Bonaparte finally fell. There was a certain charm in losing himself in England, in becoming Sir Lytton Lewis for good. A man like him could always hide.
But Anna knew the truth. She had kept silent already, and so he’d told her a little more to engage her help as well as to watch her reaction. She could be exactly what she said, the wayward sister of an eccentric and poverty-stricken nobleman. In fact, he didn’t doubt that part. But there was more to Anna, much more.
He raised the glass to his lips, drinking while he remembered how she had felt in his arms, how her rigid shock had slowly relaxed. He wasn’t sure she needed protection, and yet he wanted to shelter her, hold her… Her beauty, the scent of her hair, every movement of her graceful body, stirred his blood. The way her eyes laughed, the curve of her lips, the humorous twitch of her eyebrow… It all captivated him, coiled his body into a ball of lust he was too tired to do anything about.
A knock sounded at the door.
Or was he?
The chamber maid had been fluttering her eyelashes and flirting. Perhaps she was here now. And perhaps he should take up her offer and assuage the hunger.
It wouldn’t work, of course, but just for tonight it might make things better.
He swallowed the remains of the brandy in the glass and reached for the bottle. “Enter.”
A quick glance showed him not the chamber maid but a lady in a black domino cloak and mask, leaning against the door she had just closed. Just for an instant, the black fooled him, because it wasn’t red, but a moment later he stumbled to his feet. “Anna.”