The Black Mask (9 page)

Rose paused on the threshold as she entered her aunt’s bright and cheerful morning room. Amidst the daffodil-yellow walls and delicately spindled furniture covered with straw-colored satin, her admirers did indeed look overwhelming, as though she’d wandered into a convention of giants. She took a deep breath and smiled a welcome. There were only four of them, after all.

Colonel Wapton, rising to his feet with alacrity, only just managed to save a Sevres vase from toppling over. Mr. March looked like an overlarge puppy in a small kennel, hoping to be taken for a walk. Mr. Allen, newly elected member of Parliament, was a very earnest young man with large hands and feet. As he’d been elected on an agricultural ticket, he seemed to think it would be a betrayal of his principles to have new clothes tailored. Therefore his hands looked even larger because his sleeves were slightly too short.

Young Lord Duchan was extremely well turned out. Regrettably, the extremes of fashion did not flatter his square torso and heavy thighs. His shirt points reached to his ears, and his mouth was half muffled by a snow-white cravat.

Rose liked them all very much. She encouraged Mr. Allen to overcome his shyness and discuss his principles. She enjoyed hearing the latest news of young Lord Duchan’s abundant brothers and sisters. Mr. March liked best to sit and gaze at her in awestruck admiration, which was always pleasing. And Colonel Wapton could make her laugh, causing the other three to look daggers. She liked them all and couldn’t imagine being married to any of them. So far, she’d managed by exercising a great deal of tact to keep them from proposing.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be here yesterday when you called,” Rose said, to a chorus of deprecation. She waved them all to their seats and held court on the sofa. Though she laughed and chatted in what she fancied was her usual style, she’d arranged herself so she could keep an eye on the gilt clock ticking merrily on the mantel. She’d instructed her aunt’s cook to send up the tea tray fifteen minutes early. They’d drink one cup and be on their way in a little less than half an hour. Rose wanted the room to be clear by eleven. If Sir Niles should deign to drop in, she wanted no distractions.

Aunt Paige had promised to come down to help, but she was distracted, busy attiring herself against the arrival of her own admirer, General O’Banyon. So far, she’d rejected two gowns and was nearly in tears over the choice. Rose, too, had known unusual indecision over the choice of her clothes this morning. She didn’t dare speculate on what that meant.

Finally, at ten minutes to eleven, the large men exited in a straggling line. Colonel Wapton and Lord Duchan tried to outlast each other, but when Rose stood up and thanked them for entertaining her, they had no choice but to leave in tandem.

Rose heaved a sigh of thankfulness as the door closed. Going to the mantel, she rang for the maid to take out the tray. “Please bring a fresh pot in fifteen minutes, but only two cups.”

Looking up into the mirror hanging at an angle on the chimney breast, Rose wondered if the blue foulard had been the right choice. It had looked all right upstairs, but against all this yellow, didn’t it look a little insipid? Well, it was past praying for. If he came at all, it would be soon. She didn’t want to keep Sir Niles waiting. She wanted him in the best possible and most malleable mood.

The knock at the front door seemed to reverberate in her heart. Trying to achieve an easy pose, Rose leaned an elbow on the mantel, crossed to sit on the sofa, retired to an armchair with an improving book on her knee, all in the time it took Sir Niles to enter, doff his hat, and be escorted to the door.

The butler bowed him in and himself away. Niles saw Rose, sitting bolt upright on the edge of an armchair, her color high and her eyes round with expectation. She had apparently been reading.

“I trust I don’t disturb you.”

“On the contrary. I’m so happy you could come.” She rose and came to meet him halfway, her hand prettily extended.

Another knock at the front door made him drop her hand a little more quickly than Niles had wanted to. He actually hadn’t wanted to let go at all.

Rose gave a little laugh. ‘You’ll be flattered to know you are more punctual than the military, Sir Niles.”

“One of your admirers, Miss Spenser?”

“No. My aunt’s, if you please.”

With a graceful gesture, she invited him to sit on the sofa. She joined him there. He breathed in her scent of carnations and wondered at her restraint in not using rose water. Any other girl with her name, he felt, would have been unable to resist.

He wondered why he’d come after all but vowing to send regrets. Riding with Buzzy, he’d told himself he could see Rose that evening and discuss whatever it was amidst a crowd of people. Surely that was more sensible than seeing her alone. During his bath, he’d mentally sketched the note he’d send her with his regrets. At breakfast, he’d called for pen and paper, only to tear up the thing between tying his cravat and putting on his waistcoat. Then, though he’d told Baxter he was going to his club, he found himself at her door. It was like being under a spell which sapped one of all self-control.

“Sir Niles,” she began breathlessly. Then the door opened and she smiled apologetically. “Tea?”

Her little fuss with the tea table, with cups and sugar, and urging him to try one of the cook’s special cakes, gave him the chance to study her more closely. A little blush came and went on her cheeks as she noticed his glance. “It’s always too warm in this room on a sunny day. I think it must be the color of the paint. Shall I open a window?”

“Pray don’t trouble. Unless you wish me to open it for you?”

She shook her head, a lock of silky dark hair falling from her upswept arrangement. It looked as if it would curl around his hand like a friendly kitten. Niles willed himself not to reach out. He liked her in blue, with the matching ribbon threaded through her hair.

“More tea? A little more sugar?”

If she had brought him here so boldly in order to continue their flirtation, why was she treating him like a crotchety Dutch uncle? Next she’d be fetching a pillow for his aching back or a footstool for his gouty foot.

“Miss Spenser, in your note you mentioned some serious matter you wished to discuss. May I know what it is?”

“I hope you don’t think me too forward, Sir Niles, asking to see you alone this way. I thought for a long time before taking this step, considering your past reputation and my future.”

“Yes, I wondered if you had considered that. I thought about it too, but the tone of your note to me seemed to compel my compliance.”

She smiled directly into his eyes, and Niles caught his breath. Then a tiny frown of puzzlement nestled between her charmingly arched brows. “Why is your reputation so bad?” she asked unexpectedly. “You don’t seem to me so much worse than other men. I have been about this world a little now, and I am aware that many men foster irregular relationships.”

Could she read the shock in his eyes? Niles hoped not, yet Rose faltered a little and then hurried on. “I mean ... one can hardly fail to be aware of such things. The royal dukes certainly take no pains to conceal their liaisons or their baseborn children. There are many such. There are even those who flaunt their ... their mistresses on their arm in public. I don’t see why you should be singled out as a particularly wicked man. On the contrary, you seem ...” She closed her lips tightly.

“Comparatively inoffensive,” Niles finished for her.

She nodded, a twinkle appearing in the depths of her eyes.

“I do try to live it down,” he said wistfully. “But the
ton
has a long memory for folly. When I first came to London a dozen years ago—has it been as long as that? Let me see. I’m thirty now, almost thirty-one.
Yes,
quite a dozen years. How old I suddenly feel.”

“No one would assume you were as old as that,” Rose said.

Thank you. At any rate, when I first came to London, I fell into some devilish scrapes—I beg your pardon.”

“Don’t. You should hear how Rupert speaks when he forgets I’m a girl.”

“That confirms a great deal I have suspected about your brother. How could anyone forget you are a girl?” Niles read her rejection of the light compliment in the way she shrank back almost imperceptibly.

He sipped his tea to give her time to recover her poise. “I was telling you of my early indiscretions. I don’t know that they were so much worse than the average young hothead finds in town. Perhaps, if anything, London is a touch milder now. The great hells have closed or been converted to gentleman’s clubs. The great houses ...”

He suddenly found it necessary to clear his throat. If it was impossible to forget that Rose was a girl, it was yet so easy to talk to her that he was tempted into saying too much. She didn’t need to hear of the great whorehouses that had flourished in his youth.

‘The great houses? Do you mean Carlton House?”

“Yes,” Niles said, grasping at this way out of his difficulty. “Prinny’s first great monstrosity. I think it could stand as the symbol of license that flourished then.”

The Pavilion at Brighton is not so very staid.”

“But it’s all show. Carlton House was more genuine, less of a hothouse bloom. He never should have torn it down.”

“You enjoyed your first Season in town?”

“We did, ma’am. I had a cousin, you see. Almost a brother. Certainly the best boon companion anyone could ask for, with one slight exception. He had a genius for getting into scrapes and for pulling me in after him. I would start out trying to save him from his folly and wind up, more often than not, with the blame—the fame and the infamy as well.”

Rose laughed. “Poor Sir Niles. Who is this engaging fellow?”

“His name was Christian. Whether that name was given to him in pious hope or as a joke of the devil remains a question in the family to this day.”

“
Was
Christian? You mean he is ...”

“We both went into the army when the Peace of Amiens fell to bits. I came out a man devoted to peace and the leisure arts. Christian perished.”

Rose turned her face away. “My condolences, Sir Niles.”

He slid his hand over hers. ‘You would have liked him. All the ladies liked him.”

For a moment, she let her hand stay motionless beneath his. “Was there no special girl in his life?”

“No one for either of us. But I often thought the right girl could have gentled him. Made him less wild, less desperate. You see, he had no money at all, and it troubled him. He saw worse men rise to the top of their profession just because they had fortunes and he had none. He wouldn’t take help from anyone.”

And so he was tempted, and so he fell, but Niles didn’t want Rose to know that. Let her think of Christian as Niles remembered him. Mad, heedless, full of fun, and a respecter of no person.

Niles took his hand away, but the pressure-memory of his touch stayed with Rose. He had spoken with such tenderness and understanding of his friend.

Surely he’d react the same way when she spoke about Rupert.

“Anyway,” he said, “that is half the story of my evil reputation.”

“Only half?” she asked, blinking hard, hoping he didn’t notice the tears in her eyes.

“Only half. When I returned to London as an officer, well, I had little reason to practice restraint.”

“Because you were afraid of being killed?”

“No. We never gave it a thought. But we were heroes, and everybody treated us well. Ladies were mad for scarlet coats, and whether we were barracked in town or the country, lasses came for miles to flirt and to dance. I remember a family of five sisters— well, the older two were interested in some wealthy neighbors, but the three youngest were the most arrant flirts in the county. Any officer was fair game.”

“And you didn’t flee in horror?” she said in mock surprise.

“Not at that time. There were, however, other girls who took things more seriously than I anticipated. Though no fathers came after me with shotguns, it was a near run thing a few times.”

‘You don’t learn quickly, I take it.”

“Not at that time, no. If the campaign in the south hadn’t needed more officers, I should probably be married with a healthy family by now.”

“Do you regret you are not?”

“At this moment, I
can only be grateful.”

Rose stiffened. “Please don’t feel you must support your reputation with me, Sir Niles. I don’t care for flirtation.”

He bowed his head. “Forgive me. After so much time, it’s become a reflex. Like standing up when a lady enters the room.”

“That surely is to show respect. Flirting with me does not.”

“I am chastened, Miss Spenser.”

“You are forgiven, Sir Niles.”

His smile held such understanding, such warmth of humor, that Rose truly, truly felt she could talk to him about her consuming anxiety over Rupert. He, too, had known someone who seemed to take unholy delight in worrying relations. Not that Rupert was ever terribly wicked. But he did not worry noticeably, which left her to do it for him.

She took a sip of her tea to moisten her mouth. It was not hot enough. “I shall ring for some more tea,” she said. “Then I shall only take up a very few more minutes of your time.”

“My time is...” he started to say when the morning room door opened.

Hurst, Lady Marl ton’s butler, entered, despite Rose’s disapproving glance. “I beg your pardon, Miss Spenser. I hesitate to disturb you.”

“It’s quite all right,” Rose said, because she couldn’t very well remind Hurst she’d asked not to be disturbed, not in front of Sir Niles.

“Colonel Wapton has called again.”

“Again?”

“He believes he has left an item behind.” Hurst let his gaze roam over the room. “I don’t espy it. The gentleman himself asks permission to search.”

“Certainly,” Rose said as graciously as she knew how, though she feared a tiny sigh of annoyance escaped her lips. She cast an apologetic glance at Sir Niles and saw his pose had stiffened. The contrast with the easy posture he’d had before was so great she almost thought someone had sneaked in and replaced him with a statue of himself. Only his eyes were alive, and they were frowning.