Girl in the Beaded Mask

England, 1922

David Carlisle believes no woman would want to marry the broken and isolated man who has returned from the trenches of France. Especially vivacious Lady Louise Hatton, better known as Lulu—the one woman who makes his heart begin to thaw with her bright smile.

What David doesn't realize is that Lulu has been fantasizing about him her whole life. And at a scandalous masked ball, she's determined to show David just how badly she wants him….

I was so excited to have the chance to write a story set in the 1920s! I've been fascinated by the era ever since I was a teenager—I blame
The Great Gatsby
and old silent Louise Brooks movies. The music, the fast cars, the cocktails, and above all the gorgeous clothes! It's a fascinating time, filled with enormous change and upheaval, dashing men, and spirited, independent women. It's the perfect setting for a romance.

Before I jumped into David and Lulu's story, I watched silent movies and various versions of
Gatsby
over and over, and did a lot of reading. Here are a few great sources I came across:

Nathan Miller,
New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America
(2003)—my story is set in England, but this book was huge help in tracing trends and fads of the era

DJ Taylor,
Bright Young People
(2007)—an account of the high life in between-the-wars England

Humphrey Carpenter,
The Brideshead Generation
(1989)

Ronald L. Davis, ed.,
The Social and Cultural Life of the 1920s
(1972)

Marion Meade,
Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin
(2004)

Lucy Moore,
Anything Goes: A Biography of the Roaring ‘20s
(2010)

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

1922

“Mum is going to absolutely kill you if she catches you with that,” a lazy young voice said, punctuated by the slow turning of a magazine page.

Lady Louisa Hatton—known by everyone as Lulu—looked down at the cigarette between her fingers. It was dyed a stylish peacock-blue, and sent curls of silvery smoke out the open window into the warm summer breeze. It looked terribly chic and sophisticated, but… “And she would be absolutely right. They're perfectly vile. I'll have to learn to be glamorous without them.”

She extinguished it in the crystal bowl set on the window ledge. The foul thing disposed of, she tightened the sash on her dressing gown and turned around to face her younger sister. Jessica lay sprawled out in the middle of Lulu's bed, her feet propped on the carved headboard as she read the latest issue of
Town Talk.

Town talk—that all seemed terribly far away in the middle of a quiet country summer. Her London debut season seemed ages ago, even though it had just ended. Beaded gowns, tea dances, trips to the theater, masquerade balls…and the disappointing, fumbling kisses from men behind screens and potted palms. How could something be so exciting and so dreary at the same time?

She had waited so long to be grown up, to be part of the real world at last. She was so tired of being pushed to the side, of being “protected” from things considered “unpleasant” for her own good. But being a woman wasn't all it was cracked up to be, either. She still wasn't
really
allowed to have fun.

And the young men she met at those carefully orchestrated dinners and dances—they weren't what she had hoped for, either. Years of reading stuff like
Jane Eyre
and those delicious sheikh novels from America didn't prepare her for the truth of English courtship. For young men whose palms were damp as they danced with her, who talked on and on about cricket and house party pranks. They weren't Rochester or Mr. Darcy. They weren't…

Well, they weren't
him.
They weren't David Carlisle, which was so silly since she hadn't seen David in nearly four years. Even before that, all those summers when he would come to Hatton Hall to visit his school friend, her poor brother William, she had only been Bill's pesky kid sister to him. He teased her, laughed at her, loaned her books, and then went off to dance with beautiful debutantes.

But Lulu built a whole dream around David Carlisle, with his crooked smile and bright blue eyes. He became her ideal, and she was sure that once she really grew up, once she
was
one of those debs, with their satin gowns and upswept hair, he would see
that they were meant for each other. No one was as handsome and smart and sophisticated as he was. No one made her feel the way he did when he just looked at her.

Then the war came, and all her girlish dreams were just one of the millions of lost things. After the Armistice, David visited Hatton Hall once more, to tell them about Bill's last days. He wasn't the same David at all. His eyes were dark and haunted, and he walked with a stick. The left side of his face was red with scars. He had kissed Lulu on the cheek and said, “You've grown up while I was gone.” But she could tell he was not really there, that he had left his old self far away.

She looked for him in London, hoping he would appear at some party or at the opera. He never did, and she heard little gossip about him.

Lulu pushed away sad thoughts of David Carlisle. It did no good to dwell on him and on all that was lost, on old hopes and loves. It was just summer here at Hatton Hall, stirring up memories. In London, where everything was new and blindingly bright, she could hide from the past. Here it was everywhere she turned.

“What's going on in
Town Talk
, then?” she asked brightly. She went and perched on the edge of the bed beside Jessica, peering over her sister's shoulder at the glossy photos of Bright Young People at various parties. Dancing in elaborate fake Watteau gowns, swimming on the French Riviera, riding in sleek cars, champagne glasses always aloft and painted mouths laughing.

“Oh, heaps,” said Jessica as she turned the page. “Or at least there was, until everyone left London for the summer. Is it always like this in the city?”

Lulu studied a photo of party-goers dressed as pinafored babies for a theme party, riding in giant prams. “Not under Mum's watch it's not,” she said. “London is all staid tea dances and the opera for a deb like me.”

“I shouldn't like London anyway,” Jessica said decisively.

“Wouldn't you?”

“No. I'm sure I couldn't take Angel there and I can't live without her.”

Angel was Jessica's favorite pet, a smelly lamb she dressed up in little jackets and took around on a silk cord lead. “It's true Mum wouldn't let you take Angel to London, which is too bad. She'd be a big hit at parties.”

“Would she? Maybe London wouldn't be so bad after all then.” Jessica gave her a shrewd look. “But you didn't seem like you'd had much fun there when you got home.”

“I had fun,” Lulu protested. “It just wasn't entirely what I expected.”

“And now you're back at Hatton Hall, where nothing happens at all.” Jessica suddenly sat up straight, staring down at the magazine. “Or maybe sometimes things
do
happen.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm talking about Lord Finch-Granley's summer masked ball, of course! At Granley Park. It's only a few miles away, and it's…” Jessica turned the page. “Next week! Oh, I've always wanted to see the Granley Ball.”

“You and everyone else.” Lulu snatched the magazine out of her sister's hands to see the article for herself. The Granley Ball was famous, not only in the neighborhood but also throughout English Society. Lord Finch-Granley, who had also once been a friend of Bill's, had been holding his “start of summer” party every year since the end of the war, and it was legendary for its lavishness and style, for the wild times to be had there. Invitations were hotly sought-after.

Not that an invitation was required. Plenty of people just piled into cars and
went.
There was always copious amounts of food and champagne to go around.

“Mum would never let me go,” Lulu murmured. Her mother was always pursing her lips when she talked of the “goings on” at Granley Park, which was never a good sign. And their father always went along with her. It made life easier that way, he claimed.

She turned the page to read about who was expected to attend the ball. Lords and ladies, of course, and writers and film stars, shady American businessmen, musicians, maybe even a European prince. There were photos of a few of them, shining with jewels and wide, white smiles. Of course they smiled—they were going to have loads of fun at the Granley Ball, while she stayed home and played mah-jongg with Mum.

Then a small image at the bottom of the page caught her attention. It was
David,
dressed in a sharply cut white suit and leaning against a Bentley. His face was shadowed by the brim of his hat, but she could tell right away it was him. The grim set to his jaw and the expressionless look on his chiseled, handsome face were just the same as when she last saw him on that sad day here at Hatton Hall.

A slender woman in a dark satin drop-waist dress and feathered cloche hat clung to his arm. Unlike David, she smiled happily for the camera.

And will the Granley guest list include the elusive, reclusive and oh-so-gorgeous David Carlisle, seen here with Lady Elizabeth Ashley at a rare appearance at the races?
the caption said.
We're betting the merriment can lure him out of isolation at last!

David was going to the Granley Ball?

Feeling all in a daze, Lulu put down the magazine and rushed over to her dressing table to study her reflection in the oval mirror. She had at last managed to persuade her parents to let her bob her hair, and the dark red waves curled around her ears and the nape of her neck. Her wide green eyes shone back at her with sudden hope and excitement. She was fashionably slender under her silk robe—surely she could be just as pretty as that Lady Elizabeth what's-her-name!

And the hateful freckles over her nose, long the bane of her life, could be powdered away.

Maybe, just maybe, if David saw her again he would realize she really
was
grown up. That she could be the one to help him live again at last. It was a silly scheme, a real long shot, but she had to try it.

And she knew just what to wear while doing it. The perfect armor to battle for David's heart.

“I have to find the Poiret,” she said, and whirled around to pull open the carved doors of her wardrobe. All her London clothes, unworn since the return to Hatton Hall, hung there. A jumble of creamy satin, inky chiffon, shining rainbow beads, fur trim and delicate lace ruffles. She found a box at the very bottom, and threw the lid back.

“Yes,” she said. “This is definitely the one.”

Jessica leaped off the bed, clapping her hands. “Are you going to sneak out to the Granley Ball? How exciting!”

“Yes,” Lulu answered. “Yes, I really think I am….”

David Carlisle sat by the window in his dimly lit library, a half-full glass of whiskey in his hand. He didn't see the sunset outside that streaked the sky with glorious pinks and oranges, turning the overgrown gardens to a shimmering gold. He didn't hear the click of the door as the housekeeper peeked in and then scurried away again, leaving a dinner tray on the table outside.

He stared down at the invitation on the window ledge. The white card was so heavy the warm summer breeze didn't stir it. The black engraving was dark and stark.

A midsummer masked ball. A night of champagne, music, gardens crowded with tipsy revelers in feathered masks. Noise and light and heat. Nothing sounded worse.

David took a deep drink of the whiskey, rough and hot at the back of his throat. But it didn't make the card disappear.

Most people knew better than to send him invitations now. When he first came home from the war, his mother still lived here at the abbey with him and she urged him to go out to balls and dinners, to meet people—especially marriageable young ladies. She wanted things to go on just as they always had, in the orderly, pretty, Edwardian world she grew up in. Eventually she gave up and moved to the south of France.

Her world was gone, and no amount of parties would erase what had happened in the trenches of France. Nothing could bring back the friends he had lost, or his old self. And no young lady in her right mind would want to marry him.

As he sipped at the whiskey, the image of one lady in particular came into his mind and she wouldn't go away. Lulu Hatton. For some strange reason she often came to him at weird moments, the vision of her bright smile and vivid red hair. The sound of her laughter. She had always been laughing, always rushing out to grab life with both hands.

She had been a part of his life for years, the kid sister of his Eton friend Bill Hatton. A cute, funny girl who followed him around and played ridiculous pranks on him.

When he was in the horrors of France, that hell of mud and blood and rot, the memory of Lulu and the joyous life of Hatton Hall was like a sunny dream he could take out and hold on to. A lifeline.

But then, when the war was over and he had hobbled home with his scars and nightmares, he made himself do his duty and go visit Hatton Hall to pay his condolences over poor Bill. He had barely stepped out of his car when the doors opened and Lulu ran out. The sun was brilliant on her autumn-colored hair, even brighter against the stark black of her dress. To his shock, she had run down the steps and thrown her arms around him, holding him tightly.

And there, in her embrace, he felt his frozen heart begin to thaw just a bit. But he wasn't ready to let go of the numbness. He couldn't heal, not then—maybe not ever. So he held her away and said something about how she had grown up.

He hadn't seen her since, except in glossy photos in magazines. Lulu at dances, at flower shows, at tea parties and tennis games, surrounded by eager young men.

Soon she would probably marry one of them, and have a brood of rowdy, red-haired children at some country estate, and she would be happy. And he would still be here at the abbey, watching her in the magazines.

David put down the empty glass and reached for the invitation. A handwritten note was scrawled across the bottom of the card.

David—I know you'll say no, as you do every year, but do come this time. Enough of being the Hunchback of Notre Dame! Your friends miss you. P.S. Lady Elizabeth Ashley will be there. Sincerely, Bertie.

David laughed ruefully. Bertie Finch-Granley had been another friend of David's and Bill's at school, a funny, flamboyant character who forgot his own war experiences in wild parties. His midsummer masked ball had become legendary.

But Lady Elizabeth was not the lure Bertie thought. Giving in to the whim of going to the races with her had been a mistake. Better he should stay home and play the Hunchback.

He reached for his walking stick and rose from his chair to go out the glass doors onto the terrace. The sun was just sinking below the horizon, leaving the gardens shrouded in a shimmering dark blue haze. Even in the shadows he could see the overgrown flower beds and the cracked marble benches, the silent fountains. The abbey was crumbling around him.

He made his way down the gravel pathway, crushing the weeds with his stick. What would Lulu say about such a place? Maybe she would like it. He remembered her love of Gothic novels about haunted castles and fair heroines in peril.

It seemed he
did
need to get out in the world. Hiding had solved nothing, had not erased the memories. Maybe noise and crowds would. The excursion to the races had been a mistake, but Bertie was a friend. He should pay more attention to his friends.

And besides, he could wear a mask to this particular ball.