Moonlight Masquerade (17 page)

A log split in the fireplace, crashing down
into the grate in a shower of sparks, waking the Earl of Hawkhurst
from his reverie. He looked around the study, trying to
concentrate.

“What day is it, Lazarus?”

The servant looked up from his polishing to
peer questioningly at his master. “Why, it’s Tuesday, your
lordship,” he answered, unable to believe the man didn’t know
something as simple as that.

“No, no,” Hawkhurst corrected. “I mean, what
date is it? I seem to have lost track.”

Lazarus held up the small brass,
full-bottomed vase and huffed a breath of warm air at it, then
attacked the piece with his polishing cloth. “Oh, that, sir. It’s
the fifteenth of March, I believe. Yes, that’s it, because
yesterday was my cousin’s birthday, and that’s always been on the
fourteenth. You might wish to take a walk in the garden before I
serve luncheon, sir. There’s a hint of spring in the air
outside.”

Christine had been gone for nearly a month.
Strange, he thought, frowning. It seemed longer than that. A
lifetime. “Are you going to be much longer, Lazarus? I’d like to
get started on my exercises.”

“A few minutes, at most, your lordship,” the
servant replied, setting the vase back in its appointed place.
“You’ll be wanting the rope again today, sir?”

Vincent nodded, rising to begin the
exercises he could do without waiting for Lazarus’s assistance.
Walking over to the side of the room, he put his left hand out
confidently, knowing his fingertips would have no trouble finding
purchase against the wall. He watched as his fingers climbed the
wall, his elbow barely bending as his hand reached straight out as
it climbed, his fingertips nearly shoulder high before the pain hit
him, before his shoulder and chest muscles did their best to tie
themselves into knots.

He was doing well, but he had to do so much
better. Sometimes he could live with his slow recovery but other
times, times like this, he wanted to curse the fates for his
snail-like progress.

Yes, he had come a long way from those first
awful days, when it had taken everything in him just to hold the
back of his hand against this same wall and use the knuckles of his
clawlike hand to elevate his arm the pitiful distance of three
inches. Another man might have been satisfied with this increased
achievement, even proud. Vincent was only growing more impatient
with every passing day. He wanted, he needed, more.

“Here’s the rope, your lordship. Are you
sure you want me to do this again? I really don’t like to, sir. It
seems to hurt you so much.”

“You’re a good friend, Lazarus,” Hawkhurst
told the man, talking one end of the three-foot-long rope and
transferring it to his left hand. He wrapped the rope twice around
his hand to help secure it, then walked over to where Lazarus was
already clambering up on top of a low stool. “Take the other end
and begin to pull it up. Gently now, Lazarus, for I wouldn’t wish
to unman myself by crying out in front of you.”

Lazarus took the end the earl held out to
him and slowly began raising it, up, up, until his hand was higher
than his head. As he raised the rope Vincent’s arm lifted with it,
first straight out in front of him, and then slightly higher. As he
felt the first hint of resistance, the servant stopped, only to
have his master urge him on. “Higher, man, higher. Lift my arm
higher before you lower the rope. All right, now again. Lift it
again.”

Vincent’s arm was raised and lowered, past
the point of his shoulder, his muscles screaming as they were
stretched as they hadn’t been in nearly five years. It was a
painful exercise, repeated six or more times a day, but it was the
only thing Vincent could think of to help limber up his muscles. He
couldn’t lift his arm on his own. He would be performing the
exercise ten times a day, a dozen, if Lazarus had not dared to put
his foot down and refuse to help him.

The rope was raised ten more times before
Hawkhurst signaled that he’d had enough, but he wasn’t done.
Relieving Lazarus of the rope, he let the free end drop, then
stepped on it with his left foot. He held his arm out as straight
as possible and then lifted it up until the rope was taut, pulling
on it with all his might, trying to stretch it. The veins on his
neck stood out, his scars burned like white hot brands on his face.
Lazarus turned away, not wanting to watch his master in such
obvious agony.

“Terrible, isn’t it?” Vincent quipped
through gritted teeth. “I have less strength than a babe in arms.
But it won’t always be like this. With your help, Lazarus, this arm
is going to come back to life, whether it wants to or not.
Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“Yes, your lordship,” the servant agreed
sadly, picking up his polishing cloth before heading for the door.
“But then this Rome place didn’t have Miss Christine Denham to
consider, did it?”

Vincent stopped trying to stretch the rope,
allowing it to slip through his fingers, onto the floor. “Miss
Denham knows nothing about this, Lazarus,” he said, puzzled. “Oh,
wait a moment. Did you think she rejected me because of my arm, and
that I’m going through this hell only to please her? To try to win
her?”

Lazarus hung his head, avoiding Hawkhurst’s
eyes. “Yes, sir. I did, sir.”

“And here I’ve been thinking that you were a
bright fellow, Lazarus,” Vincent chided, shaking his head.

Fearful that his lordship was angry, the
servant rushed into speech. “I know she’s a very nice woman, your
lordship, or at least she always was to me, even if her aunt is a
bit queer, and I know that it’s because of her being so nice that
you’ve given off wearing those cloaks and going about Hawk’s Roost
only at night like a damned owl—I mean...”

“No, no, don’t stop now,” Vincent prompted,
clearly intrigued by the man’s free speech. “Please, go on. We’ve
passed the point of servant and master these past few weeks. Speak
to me as a friend, Lazarus. I find I have much need of
friends.”

For a few moments Lazarus seemed to consider
whether or not his lordship could be taken at his word. The Quality
were a strange bunch, he knew that from his past experiences, and
not unlikely to be sweet as pie to him one minute, just to throw
him out for insubordination the next, and without so much as a
reference. But in the end, he yielded to his desire to speak.

“It’s just that Miss Denham left here in a
mighty huff, your lordship, and there’s not been note nor letter
since. The way I figure it, she decided she couldn’t deal with you
the way you are, even if you two were getting, um, rather fond of
each other. I didn’t like that she left you that way, your
lordship,” he ended solemnly. “But women, especially pretty women
like Miss Denham, can be fickle as the very devil!”

Walking across the room to put his arm
around Lazarus’s shoulders, Vincent told him, “You say Miss Denham
left here in a huff, my friend. You are only half right. To be
truthful, I threw her out. It was the only way she would go. She
couldn’t care less if I had one good arm or three. She thinks she
loves me, poor darling. She has nothing to do with why I’m killing
myself this way—or at least she doesn’t have everything to do with
it. I’m doing this for me, Lazarus, because I want to do it. Do you
understand now?”

Lazarus looked up into his friend’s face,
Hawkhurst’s words pleasing him. “I understand now, your lordship,”
he said, grinning. “You love her too!”

A
unt Nellis had
vowed sorrowfully again and again that it could never be done. It
was impossible. There was no conceivable way she could have her
dearest niece Christine (“Why, yes, dear Lady Wentworth, that’s my
brother’s girl—the pretty, dark-haired one over there, sulking by
herself in the corner”) knocked into shape in time for opening
night at Almack’s.

Or could she?

Two cherished vouchers for this exalted
bastion of eligibility had been procured through an old friend’s
sister-in-law’s nephew, who had at some earlier time run tame in
one of the patronesses’ country houses, and although it had cost
Aunt Nellis dearly in terms of her small store of favors owed she
felt the expense would have been fair at twice the price.

But did Christine appreciate this gargantuan
sacrifice? Did she understand that she had been singled out as one
of the few, the very few, deemed important enough to be allowed to
sip warm lemonade and eat stale cakes alongside the cream of the
London
haut ton
?

Did she fall on her dearest aunt’s neck in
unbridled delight, raining kisses on her while profusely
proclaiming her deepest thanks? Did she collapse into the nearest
chair, fanning a lace handkerchief at her flushed cheeks, nearly
overcome by the honor, the glory, the absolute wonderfulness of it
all?

As Aunt Nellis was to think later in the
privacy of her room—did pigs fly?

Christine did not immediately soar into high
flights of ecstasy—or anywhere else, for that matter.

On the contrary, that ungrateful child, that
viper at her bosom, that sullen, pouty-lipped changeling who
couldn’t possibly be her heretofore faultless niece, merely tossed
her ivory cardboard voucher onto a plate of stale, half-eaten
cucumber sandwiches and announced baldly, “Well, I sincerely hope
you haven’t pinned all your hopes and dreams on my becoming a
roaring Sensation for you, Aunt Nellis, for I shan’t do it. I hate
London.”

Nellis closed her eyes, hurt even as she had
known she would be hurt. After leaving Hawk’s Roost, the older
woman had suffered gamely through nearly a week of stony silence
from the girl without complaint, for she knew Christine believed
herself to be suffering in the throes of her first blighted
love.

Once the dam of silence had at last been
broken, she had then patiently listened
ad nauseum
to
Christine’s complaints, her self-pitying whining, her sarcastic
comments and general nastiness directed at the world at large and
London society in particular.

She had lain awake nights, plotting ways to
lure her niece to the modiste, the glovemaker, the milliner, and
the bootmaker, only to fall into a fitful sleep and suffer
nightmares that had her niece being presented to the king in last
year’s sprigged muslin.

She had cajoled and pleaded and made
concession after concession, as a devoted, loving aunt should. But
enough, by heaven, was enough and Aunt Nellis was not going to sit
still for it anymore. The girl was actually thinking of turning
down entry to Almack’s!

It was sacrilege, that’s what it was!

“You hate London, you hate London,” her
much-abused aunt retorted, finally losing her temper, and not much
caring that her double chin was prone to wobble most unattractively
when she allowed herself to become agitated. “Do you have any idea
how ridiculous you sound, Christine? How childish? If you were a
few years younger, I vow I would box your ears.” She took two steps
in her niece’s direction. “As a matter of fact, I think I just
might!”

Could Christine have heard aright? Threats
of violence from a woman who had raised her voice in anger at her
no more than three times in her memory, a woman who never so much
as rapped her niece’s knuckles? Clearly taken aback, Christine
lifted her head to look up into her aunt’s face. She expected to
see anger. What she found there was despair.

“Oh, Aunt Nellis,” she was stung into
saying, “you have every right!” She jumped up to throw her arms
around the woman, kissing her firmly on the cheek. “I’ve been
horrid, haven’t I? You have sacrificed so much, and I’ve been so
wretchedly ungrateful, thinking only of myself. Can you ever
forgive me?”

Aunt Nellis stood very still, trying to
understand this latest development. Just as she was beginning to
believe she had every right to be overset, the girl had jumped up
and put her arms around her, agreeing with every word she had said.
How was a woman to know how to deal with such an abrupt turn of
events? It was terribly confusing.

“Yes, you have,” she woodenly answered at
last. One particular memory came to mind, unbidden, and she decided
to give vent to it before holding it in did some terrible damage to
her spleen. “Most especially last week at Lady Victoria’s soiree,
when you laughed at Lord Huxley as he was most kindly explaining
the progress of the war to you and mistakenly placed Switzerland
beside the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Actually, Aunt, I believe he said Austria,”
Christine corrected, laughing a bit at the memory.

“Whatever, Christine. Please don’t interrupt
while I am trying to make a point. The man was mortified, and has
been spreading rumors ever since that you are nothing but a
mean-spirited bluestocking. You have been going out of your way to
thwart me, Christine. I had such high hopes for this Season.”