Unmasked

“Well, never mind, never mind.” Lady Faye’s pale blue eyes bulged. “More importantly you are heir to a Marquisate.” Her gaze hardened slightly. “You must meet my daughter, Major Falconer.” She smiled, a cold smile that did not reach her eyes. “I was a child bride, of course, and Lydia is but seventeen and only just out.”

Nick had no desire to meet the schoolroom daughter of a matchmaking mama, but he bowed politely and Lady Faye drifted off, no doubt to hunt up her daughter and present her like a sacrificial lamb to the new arrival.

“I’m sorry about Faye,” Charles Cole murmured, taking Nick’s arm as his cousin’s wife drifted away on a cloud of nose-numbing perfume. “My cousin Henry always was an abject fool when it came to women. You remember Henry? Then you’ll know what I mean. But she could at least have waited until you were through the door before lining you up as a prospective son-in-law.”

“Someone should warn her that I am not good son-in-law material,” Nick said, a little bitterly. His parents-in-law had never reproached him for his treatment of Anna but his remorse was sharper because he knew he was culpable.

Charles sighed. “If you are solvent and have all your own teeth, then you are eligible, old chap.”

Nick gave a groan. “Tell them I’m penniless, for pity’s sake, Charles.”

“I could do that, but then I would be lying. And what about the Marquisate?”

“Put it about that my uncle has disinherited me, or something.” Nick laughed. “I’m sure he would do if he could. He finds me very unsatisfactory—doesn’t approve of his heir working for a living. Speaking of which, I am here to work, Charles, not to be distracted by debutantes.”

“So I understand.” Charles threw a rather theatrical look over his shoulder and Nick realized that he was probably going to make a poor conspirator. “Hawkesbury sent a letter before you. Might have known that Rashleigh would continue to cause trouble from beyond the grave.”

“Naturally. He never had any consideration.”

“Where is Anstruther?” Charles asked, looking around. “Is he not with you? Now he really is ineligible, poor lad. Faye won’t be throwing Lydia in Anstruther’s way, not now that his father has disgraced the family name.”

“Dexter arrives tomorrow,” Nick said. “I left him in Skipton, smoothing over matters with the constable.”

“Of course, of course.” Charles looked furtively excited. “I must say this business has certainly enlivened my summer. Usually I find the country a dead bore. Now Hawkesbury says…” Charles drew closer and whispered loudly, “You are to fill me in on the details and I am to offer you all aid I can in catching the Glory Girls.”

“Right,” Nick said, trying not to laugh.

“But tonight—” Charles turned as the ballroom door opened and several couples spilled out into the cool of the checkered hall “—tonight you are to meet my guests and mingle. Who knows, you may discover something useful.”

Nick nodded. “Of course. I—” He stopped abruptly.

The front door had opened and two late guests, both female, were being ushered into the hall by a deferential footman. One was a beauty of maybe seven or eight and twenty. She could command a room. As imperious in her own way as Faye Cole, the arrogant tilt of her blond head demanded that everyone should look at her and Nick thought that most men would be only too willing to comply. She was dressed in a shockingly low-cut ball gown of scarlet that barely covered her nipples and looked as though it had been dampened for good measure. Very bold, Nick thought, with all the goods in the shop window. He heard Charles sigh.

“That’s another of my cousins, I’m afraid, Lady Hester Berry. The perils of a large family…”

But Nick was not listening. He was looking at the other woman. She was hanging back behind Lady Hester and he could see from the way in which her gloved fingers gripped her evening bag that she was nervous. She looked younger than Lady Hester, a little pale, small but voluptuous, her hair covered by a fashionable turban, her body swathed in an expensively modest gown that nevertheless clung lovingly to every one of her curves.

Nick stared. He had seen those curves recently covered in no more than droplets of water.

She turned her head and met his gaze. He had thought that her eyes were black until the lamplight struck across them and he saw the flecks of green and gold in their depths. The recognition hit him then so hard and so fast that he almost lost his breath. It could not be a coincidence. Surely, surely this was the girl from the Hen and Vulture? She had been wearing a blond wig then, and a mask, but the one thing that she could not disguise was the unusual color of her eyes. He stared at her, admiring the curve of her cheek, the sensuous fullness of her lips—not stained a harlot’s cherry-red tonight but a tempting pale pink—and the vulnerable line of her neck. He was almost certain—as sure as he could be without kissing her—that it was the same woman.

Her gaze widened slightly as it met his and he knew in that moment that she had recognized him, too, though whether as the man she had kissed in the tavern or as the man by the pool—or both—he could not be sure. He watched her and waited coolly for her reaction.

It was not long in coming. She raised her chin and gave him the most perfectly calculated cut-direct that he had ever experienced. She looked through him as though he simply did not exist.

Nick’s lips twisted with appreciation. She was a very cool customer indeed.

But could this oh-so-proper lady truly be the notorious Glory, the harlot from the tavern? She was certainly the naked nymph from the fountain.

And he had the advantage. His sudden appearance must inevitably have shocked her, no matter how well she concealed it. So now was the time to make a move before she had the chance to rally her defenses.

“Who is that?” he murmured, and heard Charles sigh again.

“I told you, old fellow, that is my cousin Hester—”

“No,” Nick said. “The other lady.”

“Oh.” Charles sounded taken aback, as though no one should be able to see another female in the room when Hester was there to dazzle. “That is Mrs. Marina Osborne. She is a neighbor of ours.”

Mrs. Osborne. Nick’s eyes narrowed. She sounded extraordinarily respectable.

“She’s married?” he asked.

“No.” Charles sounded wearily amused, as though Nick was not the first person to ask. “She is a widow—a rich and most devoted widow. They say she buried her heart with her late husband.”

Nick smiled. A rich widow. What a perfect cover for the questionable Mrs. Osborne. She had a husband to lend his name and respectability but, conveniently, not his presence.

“They always say that about apparently virtuous widows,” he said.

“Sometimes it’s true,” Charles said. “You are a cynic, my friend. And you have absolutely no chance whatsoever if you are planning to fix your interest there. She is reputedly as cold as ice.”

Nick thought once again of the tempting beauty of Marina Osborne as the drops of water caressed her naked body.

“We’ll see,” he said. He straightened his shoulders. “Introduce me.”

CHAPTER THREE

Indian Jasmine—Attraction

“THE MOST GORGEOUS MAN in the room is staring at you, Mari,” Lady Hester Berry whispered. “I do believe he intends to make your acquaintance.”

Mari knew. The second she had entered the hall she had been aware of the man standing to Charles Cole’s right. She had been conscious of every gesture he made, every glance in her direction. She had seen him look at Hester, then look at her, and then—extraordinarily—continue to hold her gaze as though no one else in the room existed.

Such a thing had never happened to Mari before. One of the many reasons she loved having Hester as a companion was that Hester was the most perfect camouflage. Mari was accustomed to being looked through, over and around by men who were searching the room for Hester. She welcomed it. That was not to say she had no suitors of her own. There were plenty who admired her fortune if not her person. But she was mainly accustomed to men trying to charm her solely so that she would speak well of them to her friend.

This dark stranger broke every rule. He had looked at Hester and then he had looked at her and he had not looked away again. In that moment Mari had known, instinctively, since she had not seen him clearly, that he had been the man beneath the willow tree in the garden and that he had recognized her as the naked nymph swimming in the fountain.

A second later, as he stepped into the light, she had also known—with a certainty that made her heart drop to her satin slippers—that he had also been the man in the tavern in London the night that Rashleigh had been killed. He was the man that she had picked up whilst she had waited for Rashleigh to come, the man she had kissed.

He looked different, of course. That night he had been dressed somewhat ambiguously. Yet she had sensed as soon as she had seen him that it was a disguise rather than his true persona, for there was something hard, intense and entirely masculine about him that he had not been able to disguise. It was something that, to her shock, had called to all that was feminine in her.

She shivered beneath the folds of her silver shawl and drew it a little closer around her. The kiss had been a mistake. An aberration. Normally she hated kissing. It disgusted her. She seldom even touched another person. Such closeness made her fearful. Which made it even more extraordinary that she had forgotten all her own rules when she had kissed this particular man.

She had spent the months since meeting him trying, unsuccessfully, to forget the kiss, to forget him. When Rashleigh had appointed the Hen and Vulture as their meeting place she had known she could not sweep in wearing her widow’s weeds if she wished to remain inconspicuous. So she had chosen Molly’s fetching disguise but as soon as she had arrived at the club she had realized her peril when a drunken dandy had tried to pick her up. She had looked around the club for another man whom she might use as decoy, as protector, and her gaze had fallen on him. But as their conversation had progressed she had realized she had a tiger by the tail.

There had been something about him that had intrigued her, attracted her. She had never felt like that before in her whole life and it had been heady, like a draught of the strongest wine, tempting her, calling to her wild side. A part of her had been incredulous and disbelieving that after the way Rashleigh had treated her she could ever feel like this, and it lured her into further indiscretion. When he had leaned in to kiss her she had panicked for a moment, afraid that she would feel all the revulsion that she had felt for Rashleigh, her skin crawling, the fear threatening to close her throat. But it had passed in an instant and instead of disgust she had felt a sensation that was sweet and strong, sweeping her past hesitation. She had brought his lips down to hers, led by instinct, wanting to explore the taste and texture of him. The quick rush of desire that had flooded her had taken her by surprise and, when she withdrew from him, she had seen the echo of that passion and that surprise in his eyes, too, and her world had reeled.

He was a dangerous man, a man who could almost make her forget the past. She had thought that she would never see him again, that she could forget what had happened between them. She had been wrong.