Caprice: The Masqueraders Series - Book One (15 page)

“Isn’t that the point of a masquerade, dear Aunt?”

Heloise turned to her niece. “Absolutely not! What good is an excuse to behave recklessly if one hasn’t the least idea who one’s partner is? It’s all very well for the Regent to dance with a tinker’s daughter. The rest of us must exercise discretion.”

Clarissa did not respond. Lord Ramsbury had not answered her message, nor had she seen him at any affair during the four days since. It was as if he had disappeared from London. Yet she had come here tonight, hoping against hope that he would appear. If part of his punishment was to keep her dangling like a trout on a line, he had achieved the goal. The suspense of not knowing what he intended to do had leached away any joy she might have felt in Soltana’s successful cultivation of the acquaintances of two of Almack’s patronesses.

“Oh, the bell is sounding to announce the Cascade,” Heloise said suddenly and pulled Clarissa toward the Grand Cross Walk. “We must hurry if we want a good view.”

The Cascade was an extravagantly painted backdrop of a mountain vista from which a real waterfall cascaded into the artificial lake below, foaming and rushing as it reached the bottom. For fifteen minutes visitors
oohed
and
aahed
and pushed and shoved and generally made nuisances of themselves in an attempt to discover the “magic” behind the scene. When the time was up, a second bell sounded and then the fireworks display began. The night sky was filled with silver rockets, exploding red stars, brilliant St. Catherine’s Wheels; a great shimmering, deafening, glorious phantasmagoria promised by the handbills. All at once Clarissa understood why even the most jaded roué and self-important dandy could be persuaded to spend an evening in the Gardens. Vauxhall provided spectacular entertainment.

Once it was over, the crowd turned to other pleasurable pursuits, awaiting the hour when the masquerade ball itself would get under way. There were booths for buying trinkets and others for playing games of chance and winning prizes. Traversing the main walks was a wide avenue called the Grand Cross Walk. Here the more fashionable gathered to parade under the lights in an area known as the Grove. Along one side of the Grand Cross Walk stood many two- and three-tiered structures fancifully decorated to resemble Oriental pagodas, French chateaus, Greek pantheons, and Russian cupolas. They were the supper boxes, one hundred thirty in all, one of which had been rented this night by the Viscountess of Arbuthnott.

Once they reached their box, Heloise dismissed her footman with instructions that he was to return for them precisely at one
A.M.

“At last,” she declared and threw off her cape to reveal her costume: a soft full lingerie gown with a crushed-satin sash, a style made popular in France by Marie Antoinette. “I was all but suffocating in my wrap,” she continued as she pulled a wide-brimmed hat with ostrich feathers from the voluminous pocket in her cape.

With the aid of a small mirror hanging beside one of the many Hayman paintings which decorated the boxes, she artfully arranged the hat over her “shepherdess’s” curls. When she was done, she turned back to her niece. “How do I look?”

“Absolutely enchanting! Like a Gainsborough portrait.”

Heloise smiled. “Now let me see you.”

Clarissa drew back her hood and shrugged out her of cloak, revealing a brocaded-silk tunic of sapphire over a skirt of emerald. The deep neckline, banded under her breasts by gold braid, was balanced by long sheer sleeves banded in gold. Her gold sandals had tiny straps binding her ankles. Her waist-length hair had been braided by Sarah’s clever fingers with ropes of pearls and tied with trailing ribbons; it was topped by a silver cloth cap trimmed with false pearls, gold coins, and a silk tassel that hung down over one shoulder. It was a costume of the harem, and one unlikely to ever have been seen before in London.

“Oh, Sarah has outdone herself,” Heloise announced and clapped her hands in delight. “Now where is your mask?”

Unlike every other time when she went out as Princess Soltana, Clarissa had been convinced that she should not wear a veil. Instead, her mask was an elaborate creation of sapphire-and-emerald feathers. Surrounding the eye slits were dozens of paste diamond, sapphire, and emerald jewels. She retrieved it from her cloak and held it up to her face.

“You will be the
belle
of the masquerade,” Heloise assured her. “Wait and see.”

Clarissa merely smiled, feeling very exposed. Yet when she looked in the mirror for reassurance, she realized that she was better disguised than in a veil. Would Lord Ramsbury even recognize her if he came?

The boxes were made to be private yet allowed the occupants to view the proceedings from a platform in the front. Nibbling beef pastries and broiled chicken, and sipping a potent concoction of wine, rum, and brandy sweetened by oranges, raisins, sugar, and spices called Vauxhall Punch, the Holton ladies passed a quiet hour. Across the way in the Grove a sizable orchestra played for the benefit of the visitors. As soon as the official concert ended, a great cry went up, announcing the official beginning of the masquerade ball.

Heloise rose from her chair, her face shining with the effects of Vauxhall’s brew. “Let the revelry begin! I am longing to dance!”

Clarissa came a little less steadily to her feet, feeling the pleasurable effects of the spiced punch break in gentle waves over her thoughts. She, too, was ready to dance. The concert had brought forth her natural affinity for music, and the wine had persuaded her to try her luck at the ball.

Masks in place, they stepped out of their box as two young gentlemen in Dandy finery paused to look them over.

“Lawd, ’tis a vision ye are,” one of them said, his eyes unblinkered by a mask. He came up to Clarissa, squinting as he tried to peer through her mask. “Who might ye be, darlin’?”

“Your last great thought on this earth,” Clarissa tossed back and swept past him with a laugh.

“I do believe ye’ve the right o’ that!” the second young man called after them.

Giggling like two schoolgirls, Clarissa and Heloise made their way to the Grove, where a portable wooden dance floor had been laid over the grass. Within moments it was covered by dozens of swirling couples.

“They’re waltzing,” Clarissa declared and moved forward for a better view.

Beside her, Heloise swayed gently in time to the music. “Quentin learned the waltz in Hamburg. He might have been a great musician had his father not forbade it. Beethoven himself once complimented your uncle on his ability at the pianoforte.”

Was that true? Clarissa wondered and then thought, does it matter? It gave her aunt immeasurable solace to recall things which pleased her.

Though they were not the only revelers in costume, certainly they were the most elaborately dressed. Clarissa noticed that many gentlemen were dressed as Harlequin or Pierrot. More than one woman wore a gown cut so daringly low it would not have passed muster at a legitimate ball. But for the most part the crowd wore dominoes over their ordinary finery.

From the corner of her eye, Clarissa noticed a masked man approaching and her throat went dry. Was this Ramsbury? She could not tell, for he wore the long black wig and heavily embroidered velvet coat of the court of Louis XIV. “Mesdemoiselles,” he greeted them and made a courtly bow.

The moment he spoke, Clarissa was certain that this was not the earl. Equally certain that she was to be the subject of an unwelcome advance, she mentally composed a rebuff. Yet when he straightened, he turned to her aunt.

“Enchantress, if you would but honor me with your favor on the dance floor, I could die a happy man,” he said in French-accented English.

To Clarissa’s surprise, Heloise favored him with a brilliant smile below her mask.
“Honni soit, mon cavalier. Jamais belle coureuse ne fut prise.”
So saying, she extended her hand with an elegance worthy of a queen.

Clarissa suspected the change in the man’s expression might have been ludicrous had she been able to see more than the lower half of his face. He took her aunt’s hand and smothered it with kisses, murmuring in French his delight at finally meeting in London a lady of sense and sensibility.

“Suffisant,
monsieur,” Heloise replied. “Tonight a commoner may waltz in the arms of a king.” Turning to Clarissa, she said, “I shan’t be long.”

As they walked away arm in arm, Clarissa sent an astonished gaze after her aunt and then broke into laughter.
So, “Old birds aren’t to be caught with chaff,” are they?
she thought. It seemed her aunt had quite conquered her French gallant with a single repartee.

As she watched the Frenchman swing Heloise into his arms to begin the waltz, she found herself thinking how young and vivacious her aunt looked. Her carefree laughter and smiles seemed those of a lady half her age. Was it only the effects of the Vauxhall Punch? Or was her aunt beginning to rise above her melancholia?

Even now, there were times when Clarissa could not fathom the workings of her aunt’s mind, as when she spoke to her husband’s portrait as if she expected it to reply, or when she sat for hours in silence, staring out of the window while tears slid silently down her cheeks. Yet Clarissa did understand some things. She knew that her aunt had loved her husband with a rare passion and that his loss had threatened her hold on sanity. This sojourn in London had lifted her from the doldrums where the specter of madness resided. Her aunt’s mental state was fragile, and nothing must threaten it. If Lord Ramsbury did not come to Vauxhall tonight, then she would go to him, even if it meant ringing his front doorbell.

The evening wore on quickly, the revelers becoming more and more lively, as much from the freeflowing wine and Vauxhall Punch as from the release of their uninhibited personae. Clarissa declined every offer to dance, preferring to wait and watch for Lord Ramsbury. Heloise and her French gentleman danced until they could stand no more. Finally the three decided to stroll through the other walks of the Gardens.

They were on the final broad path when suddenly a man stepped out of the darkness several yards ahead. The lights of the South Walk reflected the pure white of his robes and turban and the embroidered sash into which a wickedly curving saber had been stuck. A swath of black cloth masked his eyes and nose, but Clarissa did not doubt his identity. What she had suspected all along was true: the corsair of Plymouth was Lord Ramsbury.

“Quentin? Dear God! Quentin!”

Clarissa turned at the sound of her aunt’s hoarse cry to see their French companion embrace her as she sagged against him.

“Ma pauvre petite,”
the Frenchman murmured as he cradled the stricken woman in his arms. “Who is this Quentin?”

“Her dead husband,” Clarissa answered as she stripped off her aunt’s mask to gently pat her cheek. “It’s all right, dearest. It’s only a reveler.” When her aunt’s lids fluttered, she added, “You know it cannot be Uncle Quentin.”

Yet even as she said the words Clarissa turned her head toward the man still standing legs astride on the path and felt again a tremor of recognition. She knew who it was. Looking back at her aunt, whose eyes were now open, she said, “I will go and fetch him so that you can see for yourself that it is someone else.”

“Yes. Yes, please go after him!” Heloise’s laughter was shaky but she gave her niece a little push. “Go quickly, child, before he escapes.” She looked up into the concerned expression of the man still supporting her and said, “I shall wait here with my cavalier.”

“I will take her back to the Grove,” the Frenchman offered, lifting Heloise in his arms. “She needs a reviving drink.”

After a lingering look to reassure herself that her aunt was, indeed, in safe hands, Clarissa turned toward the place where the corsair stood. But he was no longer there.

Even as her gaze swung from side to side in her search, she spied him at the far end of the path. As if he surmised her intent to pursue him, he turned into the dark shadows and disappeared.

The lanes were crowded. Several men tried to detain the lovely young woman in emerald-and-sapphire silk as she passed them. The boldest finally did catch her by the waist and held her long enough to plant a gooey kiss on her cheek before she wiggled free.

When Clarissa reached the place where the man in white had disappeared she found a narrow passage between the trees which connected the South Walk to another. Before stepping through it, she looked quickly up and down the path but did not spy the telltale flash of white.

When she reached the other side of the tree break, the tail end of a string of young people playing Snap the Whip snaked across her path. As she leapt out of the way to keep from being overrun, they swept past her, holding hands and screaming their fear and pleasure of the game. She adjusted her mask and glanced quickly up and down the path until she caught sight of the man in white. He stood at the far end of the walkway, as if waiting for her. Heartened, she hurried after him, past lords drinking with breeches makers while ladies strolled on the arms of carpet dealers’ sons, and wine merchants’ daughters danced with gentleman officers.

As she neared him, she saw him turn again down a connecting passage and disappear. This time she followed him without hesitation. The path led to a narrow lane, unlit by gaslight or torch, hemmed in by tall trees and hedges. Surprisingly, the orchestra’s music could be heard more clearly here than on the broader well-lighted avenues. The melodic notes seemed to soar above the revelers’ chatter and laughter which the hedges muffled.

She knew at once that this was the Dark Walk that her aunt had warned her about, and that the man she followed had deliberately led her here.
Very well,
Clarissa decided, and paused at the head of the path. He had made his point. If he wanted her to go any farther, he would have to show himself.

She felt his presence an instant before he stepped from the shadow of a hedgerow into the pathway where moonglow spilled through the boughs, scattering silver coins of light across the bricks. He stood perfectly still, waiting for her.

Moments before there had been no doubt in her mind, but now, alone in the dark, instinct for self-preservation made her hesitate. What if she was wrong? What if this was a stranger, a reveler hoping to lure an unsuspecting female into a compromising situation? What if similarity of dress and impetuousness had once again led her to make a grave error? Lifting her skirts, she turned to flee.

The hand that caught her by the arm was not gentle, but the one that caught her about the waist turned quickly into a caress as his fingers spread possessively across her abdomen just below her bosom to draw her back against him. Then a voice so close to her ear that it made her tremble said, “Don’t leave me,
Bahia
!’

Clarissa felt relief and anger, a flaming sting of self-indictment for having allowed herself to be frightened into fleeing. She knew that voice. It belonged to Lord Ramsbury. And what was more, he knew who she was. No doubt, he had known all along and had only been toying with her, waiting for her to make a mistake. The image of trout, hook set, and leaping futilely as the angler slowly drew it in came to mind. Well, she would not struggle. She would not give him the satisfaction.

She turned and stared into his masked eyes and smiling mouth and answered in Arabic,
“Burra sahib.
What now shall you do?”

She felt his start of surprise at her use of Arabic.

At that moment a couple entered the lane, their arms wrapped about each other’s waist and their heads bent close together. Not looking up, they crossed to a stone bench and sat down, wholly engrossed in each other’s company.

The arm about her waist tightened to draw Clarissa closer. “Come, come away from the crowd.”

He kept his grip on her waist as they moved deeper into the gloom of the narrow lane where high hedgerows hid the light if not the sounds of the Gardens. Finally Clarissa could stand the suspense no longer and stopped. “Where are you taking me?”

“Where we may speak in privacy,” he replied in Arabic.

Clarissa did not dissemble. She knew that he would unmask her. She lifted a hand up to her cheek to touch the edge of her mask. What should she say first? How could she make him understand that she hurt no one by her deception but that it might well destroy her aunt if their little secret became common knowledge?

When he tried to draw her along again, she dug her heels in. “No. We will speak here.” She struck his hands away and crossed her arms defensively before her bosom. “What do you want? A confession?”

“Is that what it shall be?” He sounded sad, almost disappointed, but how could that be? He should be victorious. But when he spoke again, the same sadness invaded every word. “Tell me,
Bahia
, though I cannot promise that I can keep your confidence.”

“You already know, don’t you?” she asked, dreading having to say the words herself.

“What I suspect will ruin you.”

That sadness in his voice! Somehow the thought of facing his disillusionment was more terrible than her own fears.

She turned quickly and fled from him, but the thin strap of her sandal gave and she stepped out of it before she could stop. “Wait! My shoe,” she called as he caught up with her and forced her to a stop. Frowning in the dimness, he finally saw it lying a few feet away. “I will get it if you promise not to run from me again,” he said.

Clarissa nodded. What was the use? He knew everything.

When he came back to stand before her, he offered the shoe with a smile. “Here is your shoe. What shall be my reward,
Bahia
?’

Clarissa took the sandal but did not try to replace it, not while he was looking at her with an intensity his mask could not hide. “I should go back to my aunt,” she said slowly, needing sound to fill the expectant silence. “She will be worried, thinking I am lost.”

“You have lost your companion and your shoe. What next shall you lose,
Bahia
?” He said the words softly, as if he were trying not to frighten her. But she was frightened.

“Don’t go. Not yet.” His tone changed as he held out a hand to her. “Dance with me,” he whispered in Arabic. “Waltz with me.”

She heard on the night draft the sweet strings of violins and soughing of cellos. Beneath it all the irresistible lilting tempo of three-quarter time hovered on the air like the embodiment of a spring nocturne. The music brought back memories of happier times, of days when her father was alive, when she was not yet married, when she had danced into the early hours with officers of the regiment. A sweet sadness welled up inside her, the piquancy of it bringing unexpected tears to her eyes. And suddenly she wanted nothing more than to do what he asked. “Very well, my lord.”

His hand found the indentation of her waist, the other engulfing her right hand in a large warm grip made infinitely personal by the fact that she wore no glove. Almost without thought, her left hand found the high ridge of his shoulder. She felt the hard strength of muscle lying just behind a few layers of cloth, and wondered not for the first time who this man really was. None of the appellations by which she had known him thus far seemed enough of an answer. The soldier; the much-admired earl; the aristocratic head of a large household; the scandal-bedeviled man with a secret past; the nob who gambled like a rakehell; the scapegrace peer who cheated when it suited him like a professional Captain Sharp: which was the real man?

Quite before she was prepared for it, she was moving in his arms, gliding along as effortlessly as a leaf in the wake of his powerful step. They moved as if they had danced together a hundred times. She knew at once that she had been right about him. He was a superb waltzer. He took the music inside himself and made the rhythm part of his breathing, moving by an internal design that neither pushed nor pulled the beat. She, too, moved inside the melody, in silence and delight and trepidation. She heard him sigh and knew he felt it, too—the sense of rightness.

There was plenty of time for her to notice a dozen delightful disturbing things; the crisp texture of his robes, the whiff of sandalwood, the heat that permeated his clothing, the powerful strength of his body held in check, the tensing movement of his muscles where her hand rested on his shoulder and in the hand that moved from her waist to her back. The music seemed to follow them along the dark path, into a place where nothing existed but this moment, and this man, and the dark dangerous lure of the waltz.

She was not certain when the music ended. Perhaps the final notes hung in the air a long time. Perhaps they had been silenced long before he finally stopped in the path of moonlight slanted across the walk. Suddenly they were no longer dancing but standing within a shared embrace.

She held her breath as he reached up to touch a corner of her mask near her ear, where it was attached by a ribbon. He traced the edge of it, his touch pushing tiny sparks of feeling along her sensitive cheek until he reached the corner of her mouth. “You are even more beautiful than I hoped,” he said softly, the deep resonance of his words strumming some sympathetic chord of understanding in her. His finger moved to her mouth and traced her upper lip with infinite care. “I know now why you hide these lips,
Bahia.
They make me ache to taste them. And now …”

He gathered her to him slowly, tenderly, as if he felt most protective toward her in the moment of conquest. And then his mouth covered hers and she forgot every other thing in the world.

She had been kissed by him before. Yet nothing had prepared her for this kiss.

The shock of sensation quaked along every nerve ending as his lips parted over hers, offered first the heat of his breath and then the hot length of his tongue. She gasped, reaction setting in like tremors along her spine as he traced her lips with his tongue and then teased hers with the tip of his. Then the kiss deepened, their mouths melding into one long, wet, hot expression of passion.

When he ended it, dragging his cheek along hers, she felt the faint prickle of whiskers beneath his smooth skin and exulted in his masculinity. Everything about him seemed gloriously male and potently alive.

As he bent his mouth again to hers, something came roaring to life within her. As with the first time he kissed her at Plymouth, possessive, primitive feelings of need and desire burst through the defenses she had spent a lifetime building, and scalding “wild” Holton blood flowed through her. Everywhere the warmth flowed, her body shivered, brought to an almost unbearable awareness of itself and, to her astonishment, she felt an answering shudder in him. How wrong! How wrong she had been to fear this sweet longing.

An almost overwhelming urge seized her to wrap her arms about his neck and climb him like a great strong oak, to set her teeth in his lower lip, to drown him in kisses so sweet that honey would ever after taste bland. The urge to touch him was too strong to resist.

Reaching up, she caught his turban and tossed it aside. Then she grabbed handfuls of his hair and brought his mouth down hard on hers. She heard him groan in response, and then his arms tightened, crushing her painfully. But there was pleasure in the pain, as well as a need so strong to experience everything at once that it was all she could do to keep from begging him for more.

She did not resist when he pulled her gown away from her shoulders, when he pulled it down her arms, freeing her breasts, one of which he cupped in the warmth of his palm. He closed his thumb over her nipple and rolled it gently along the length of his forefinger as he kissed her. No longer conscious of where they were or that they might at any moment be intruded upon, she moaned with pleasure.

When he bent his head to taste her, she arched under his mouth whispering, “Yes! Please!” His tongue made slow hot circles on her skin, and then he took one peak in his mouth.

In another moment, she knew, he would have her spread on the path, and she would not resist. In a few heartbeats he would have her skirts about her hips and his trousers about his knees, and—

With an expulsion of breath that sounded very nearly like a curse, he lifted his head and pulled her tightly to him, so that her head was pressed to his chest, bared by his open shirt. The hammering of his heart was deafening.

“Not like this,” she heard him say, the rumble in his chest more real than the words as he slid her dress back up onto her shoulders. “Not here.”

No, not like this,
her mind echoed though her body shuddered at the abrupt denial of sensation. But, oh, she would not have denied him. Not even that.

She moved from his embrace with a shaken and new awareness of herself as a woman, and an understanding of the power that this man possessed. It was so beautiful that for one awful choking moment she thought she would burst into tears.

She looked up to tell him what she felt and saw his face. His sun-bronzed skin was bleached by the moonlight to a dull matte, but every angle of his features was starkly etched by the passion she had inspired. And all at once she realized what she had done.

“Dear Lord!” She turned and ran, one bare foot making slapping sounds as she hurried away.

Away! Away! Away! Her mind urged flight though she did not hear him coming after her. A dozen embarrassing possibilities now reared their heads. What if her aunt and the Frenchman had come looking for her and had found her half naked in a man’s arms? It would not have mattered, if they had discovered that her lover was the Earl of Ramsbury. But what if other masqueraders had been spying on them, watching while they …

She almost missed the sound of running boot steps, so loudly did her own heart beat in her ears. But as she reached the top of the path, she heard a man’s shout of surprise followed by scuffling and then the muffled sound of blows. She turned back at once.

In a distant slat of moonlight, she saw that Lord Ramsbury had been set upon by three men.

Though the match was decidedly uneven, she suspected he might have made a better showing of himself had he not been hampered by his robes. They crouched and circled about him like a pack of hounds cornering a bear. Then as one of the men suddenly charged him, another of them circled behind him, grabbed the edge of his burnoose, and heaved it over his head. The third man moved in quickly and, working together, they quickly subdued the earl.