Banquet of Lies (15 page)

Edgars went completely still. “Yes, my lord.”

His steps were fast and nervous as he walked back down to the kitchen.

She heard Aldridge draw out a chair, and then the scratch of pen on paper. Ah—the letter to Dervish.

If Dervish replied and she could see the note, it would solve one of her problems. She’d know if he was D.

She tightened her grip around her legs and wondered if Edgars had had enough time to settle in for the night, if she could sneak back down to the kitchen without running into him.

Aldridge’s chair scraped again and he walked out of the library, standing right next to her, in front of the little table.

She could reach out and touch his leg if she wanted to.

Then he moved off, the stairs creaking as he climbed them.

When she heard his bedroom door close, she crawled out
from her hiding place. She stood for a moment, looking at his note to Dervish, ready for Edgars to send off. She picked it up but it was sealed, and she put it down again. She didn’t think the contents would concern her, anyway. It was just Dervish’s handwriting she wanted to see.

There was another letter on the table. A thick, expensive, cream-colored envelope, with the flap open. She picked it up and slipped the card out. It was an invitation from a Lady Crowder to a ball the next day, and she wondered why it was lying out here.

Surely it had been received a few weeks ago, at least.

She turned the card in her hand over and over. She didn’t know Lady Crowder, but she might know someone at her ball.

She’d met many English noblemen and women through the years, some in Vienna, some in Scandinavia and a few in Russia. She knew who her father had liked and trusted.

Perhaps she could spot one of them in the crowd? Ask them for help?

Time was running out, and it was worth trying. She couldn’t risk going back to Dervish’s.

And if she found no one at the ball, she would turn to Aldridge. She’d have no choice.

Holding tight to the stolen invitation, she walked on silent, stocking-clad feet to bed.

W
rapped in her black cloak, Gigi stood in the shadow of one of the many oak trees that lined Grosvenor Square, and watched the men and women spill from their carriages like sparkling gems from a velvet bag. The double doors of Lord and Lady Crowder’s town house stood wide open above, welcoming them in.

She shifted her weight from one aching foot to the other. The Crowders lived only seven minutes on foot from Aldridge House, but after the first two minutes she’d realized that her pale gold slippers, which so perfectly matched her dress, hadn’t been made for walking over rough cobbles.

It didn’t help that she’d been on her feet all day.

She’d sidled down the alley twice to see if she could make it unseen to Goldfern to check whether the note had gone, but during the day the back lane was as busy as a highway.

Edgars had breathed down her neck the rest of the time, watching as she made a hearty lunch and then dinner for
Aldridge and his estate manager, down from Suffolk to discuss his lordship’s business.

A man got out of a private carriage and laughed at something his companion said as he helped her down, drawing Gigi’s focus back to her goal.

The entrance to Lord and Lady Crowder’s house.

A rowdy group of young men tumbled out of the next coach, teasing the footman at the door by dropping their invitations and muddling them up. A crowd of guests began to build up at the foot of the stairs as the coaches continued their relentless stop and go.

Gigi undid the catch of her velvet cloak and took it off, rolling it up tight and pushing it into the fork of one of the branches in the tree. Then she slipped from the shadows, drew level to the carriages, and stopped on the outer edge of the growing group—close enough to look as if she were with them, but holding herself slightly aloof from the crush.

With a sharp word from one of the older men waiting in the irritated huddle, the smug, laughing youngsters finally trooped in.

The crowd began to move.

Gigi gripped her stolen invitation tightly enough to bend it.

Halfway up the stairs she saw that, in his stress and fluster, the doorman was letting everyone in en masse. She gave him a friendly nod as she passed, and he tried to smile back.

She’d deliberately arrived late, hoping the Crowders would
no longer be standing in the hallway to greet their guests but would be busy entertaining within. And there was no sign of them as she was carried along on a wave straight through into the ballroom.

She stumbled to a halt just within the door, momentarily at a loss as the people she’d come in with rushed across to friends or formed small groups.

She was suddenly on her own.

Heads turned in her direction and she wondered, for the first time, if she had made a very serious misjudgment.

This was her first ball in England. She’d left with her father when she was fourteen years old, so her experience of these things had been on the Continent.

The cut of her clothes was very similar to those worn by the other women here tonight, but the pale gold satin with its fine edging of ivory silk stood out amongst the pastels and whites.

A murmur rose up like a hot breeze on a summer day and danced its way across the crowds. She suddenly became the eye of the storm.

Desperately, she lifted the fan hanging from her wrist and gave a definite incline of her head, as if spotting an acquaintance in the crowd. Eyes continued to watch her, undaunted, and she took a step toward the refreshment table, keeping her step light and unconcerned as the weight of a room full of gazes tried to drag her down and strip her of her nerve.

Her plan would only work if she was the observer, not the observed.

Perhaps she should have come as a maid?

The thought almost made her laugh and steadied her. She was a topsy-turvy Cinderella as it was. The lady pretending to be a cook, sneaking into the ball to play herself, even though it was with a stolen invitation.

The first high, sweet note of the orchestra starting up diverted attention from her for a blissful second, and she dived into the crowd around the refreshments. She ignored the younger men and women as she squeezed her way through, searching for people around her father’s age or older.

There was someone . . .

She stared at the jowl-cheeked man with pure white sideburns and a rounded stomach and tried to recall the circumstances under which she’d last seen him.

A diplomatic function in Russia. Her father shaking his hand, but with a look in his eyes . . .

Gigi turned. Not that one. Her father hadn’t liked him.

She was propelled into a knot of lords and ladies sorting out who was down to dance with whom.

“It’s unpardonably rude to ask for a dance without an introduction,” a man said quietly into her ear as she was pressed against him in the jostle, “but in this crush, no one will notice, and I have the feeling you would not be completely insulted. I believe Lady Crowder is being old-fashioned and starting with a minuet.”

She looked up and found he was in his early thirties, with a handsome face and eyes as dark as his hair. There was a spark
of interest in those eyes, and a slight leer on his face. One she’d seen on a hundred different faces, at a hundred different balls.

She almost relaxed into the familiarity of it all.

It was unpardonably rude to ask a woman to dance without being introduced to her first. Unheard of, in fact.

But this man had seen something in her—that she was here under false pretences, or had something to hide—and thought to test if she’d be interested in more than a dance. Not that it mattered. Dancing would make her blend in, and give her a way to move around the room in plain sight like nothing else.

“I accept your invitation.” She held her hand out and saw his lips twitch a little at her cool tone.

He bowed and took it, and led her onto the floor with more of a flourish than was necessary. While the minuet was usually started by the couple with the highest rank and worked down, tonight was a more informal arrangement. Lady Crowder’s nod to modernity, no doubt.

“Name’s Harriford. Captain Reginald Harriford.”

“Very pleased to meet you, Captain.” She followed his lead, at home enough with the dance to let her gaze sweep the other dancers on the floor.

None of them stood out to her as familiar. Most of them were too young, anyway.

She cast her gaze to the watching crowds and as Harriford twirled her around, she looked straight at the entrance—just in time to see Lord Aldridge enter the room.

She fumbled her next step. She let Harriford spin her again so that her back was turned to her employer, her heart thumping louder than the many boots and slippers on the tiled ballroom floor.

What was he doing here? He wasn’t supposed to come. She had his invitation!

She was a Cinderella who most definitely did
not
want to dance with the prince tonight.

Harriford made a sound, and she looked up to find him staring at her, eyes narrowed. “And you are?”

“I’d rather not say, to be frank.” Gigi smiled at him, at the disbelief on his face. Captain Harriford had just learned two could play at his game. Her response was as outrageous as his forward approach earlier, but what could he do about it?

Just then, the dance led them to the far end of the room.

“Lovely to make your acquaintance, Captain. I have to find a family friend somewhere in this crowd, so I’ll have to leave you mid-dance, I’m afraid.”

Before he could answer or tighten his grip on her hand, she pulled free and slipped into the crowd, leaving Harriford openmouthed with shock.

She’d been desperate, coming this evening. She had a lot to lose, but a lot to gain if she could find someone familiar in this heaving, crushing crowd. Now that Lord Aldridge had arrived, the balance had tipped in favor of losing.

She peered through a gap in the wall of people to see if he’d moved away from the entrance, her only way out, and for a single instant, looked him directly in the eyes.

She spun away, allowing the currents in this sea of satin and starch to suck her deeper into the morass.

In her head, she repeated a number of the curses Georges and Pierre had uttered through the years.

Midnight had struck early tonight. Far, far too early.

J
onathan sorely regretted being talked into coming to the Crowder ball. He’d gone to the club hoping to find Durnham, but he hadn’t been there, and for once, Jonathan had felt strangely at a loose end.

Now both Fitzgerald and McKinley, who’d nagged him into coming in the first place, had taken themselves off to the card room and left him to his own devices.

It was a crush. More so than usual, as if the poor weather that had trapped them in their houses for days had turned them all slightly mad, and this first dry evening had sent everyone leaping and shoving down the glittering cliff of social elegance.

He scanned the crowd, wondering idly if Durnham could be here with his wife, and his gaze locked with Madame Levéel’s.

Though surely not?

He took a step forward but she was gone, if she’d ever been there at all, her place taken by a tight-packed rainbow of color.

His focus was entirely on the spot she’d stood in, and he began to stride across the room.

“Tallyho.” A friend from his club, Craigmore, twirled past him with a giggling girl in white, almost knocking into him.

He stopped and took a step back.

The movement steadied him.

Either it was Madame Levéel or it was not. And it was easy enough to find out.

He went left, weaving through the people watching the breathless couples as they spun, dipped and turned.

Perhaps not so easy.

She—or whoever it was—had been wearing a gown in a light gold color, and he caught a flash of it up ahead; the view of a shoulder lifted to plow through the crowd, the sparkling gleam of a diamond earring, the curve of a chin.

If he hadn’t known better, he’d have said it
was
her.

He caught another view, the slim line of her back, before two laughing men stepped together to shake hands and blocked her from sight.

By the time he’d reached them, moved around them, there was nothing to see.

“Looking for her, are you?” A man watched him with interest, keeping his place in the crowd with slight adjustments and side steps.

Aldridge gave him a quick look, his eyes scanning the crowd again.

“She’s making for the door. She panicked when she saw you. Nearly fell, and until then, I’d have said she was a most accomplished dancer.”

Jonathan spared him another look. “What’s her name?”
He didn’t pretend he didn’t know what they were talking about.

“She wouldn’t tell me.” The man gave an amused laugh. “Not that I behaved all that well—I deserved a set-down. Though I feel a little better knowing you don’t know her name, either.”

But he might. He really might.

“Harriford.” The man put out his hand, and Jonathan shook it, quick and hard.

“Aldridge. If you’ll excuse me.” He turned sideways so he could squeeze through any gap that presented itself, Harriford’s eyes still on him.