“YOU’VE DONE WELL, for the most part.” The word came grudgingly, and not without the caveat at the end. Still, Charlotte would take what she could get from her mother-in-law.
“Thank you, madam.” The week had been both grueling and exhilarating. Best of all, Marcus had been there throughout, at her side, complimenting her, helping her, entertaining her and their guests. Each event had gone well, the guests seemed pleased, and each morning the dowager had even dared to peek at the newspaper to see what the society page had to say about the previous day’s adventure.
Cilla’s Venetian breakfast had gone particularly well. And interesting friendships had formed throughout the week. Lord Trelawney and her father spent much of their time together, a development she hadn’t anticipated. She had never seen her father in the context of having friendships. Business colleagues, yes. Acquaintances, plenty. But friendships? Never.
“You’ll be down soon? Guests will be arriving for the ball.” The dowager took a moment to adjust Charlotte’s sleeve. “Don’t forget your mask.” And she was gone in a swirl of purple satin and black beads. Charlotte hadn’t been best pleased when the dowager had entered her dressing room unbidden. The purpose of a masquerade ball was to keep your identity secret until the midnight reveal, and now her mother-in-law would know her by her dress.
Charlotte checked her reflection in the standing mirror, turning slightly. The green dress with gold lace was one of her favorites, and she’d been saving it for a special occasion. Miss Franny at Antoinette’s had outdone herself. She had been able to fashion a Venetian-style mask to match the gown, and Charlotte picked up the green-and-gold confection, putting it in place and tying the green ribbon. She felt exotic and mysterious with most of her face concealed.
Glancing at the clock, she decided she had time for a quick trip to the attic before she needed to be downstairs. There wouldn’t be a traditional receiving line of guests, but there would be a promenade, which she couldn’t miss.
Pippa sat in a chair before the small fireplace, dressed in a concealing night rail and slippers, her glossy hair tumbling over her shoulders. She turned toward the door when Charlotte knocked and entered. Her bruises were fading toward yellow and green now, and the swelling had disappeared. Aunt Dolly had removed the stitches along her hairline, and the wound appeared to be healing well.
A wistful look crossed Pippa’s face as she took in Charlotte’s dress and party mask, but it was quickly quelled. She replaced it with an expression of ennui. “I’ll be leaving in the morning. I’m much better, and I feel like a prisoner, caged up here. Like being stuck in the Tower of London.”
Charlotte held on to the doorknob. “Where will you go? Will it be safe for you? Please say you’ll stay awhile longer.”
“I can’t. I’ve stayed too long as it is. If I don’t get back soon, the madam will give away my place. I’ll lose my clients.”
Charlotte knew she needed to go carefully, that Pippa would lash out if she felt she was being judged. “The decision is yours, of course, but I want you to know there will always be a place for you here. You don’t have to go back to that life.”
“Maybe ‘that life’ is where I am meant to be. We might both be daughters of an earl, but only one of us reaps the benefits.” Pippa sounded weary, for once not combative but open and raw. “I appreciate the refuge, but I know my worth. There is one thing you can do for me though.”
“What? Anything.”
“Let my mother stay here when I leave. Give her some of that training and find a place for her to live and work.”
Amelia had come with Pippa, and now that her daughter didn’t need such close nursing, she’d begun helping in the kitchen, discovering a flair for making desserts.
“I’ll see that she is taken care of. I promise you. I do hope you’ll reconsider. You deserve better. Your worth isn’t determined by the manner of category of your birth or by your past.” Your worth comes from the God who created you and the people who love you. Though Pippa had been at Haverly House for nearly a fortnight, Charlotte hadn’t gotten to know her much better. If she left now, Charlotte felt she’d be lost to her forever.
How Charlotte wished her sister would be willing to accept her love … and God’s love. God’s love was unconditional, a truth she had learned early to rely on. She clung to the fact now. Even if she and Marcus never attained true love in their relationship, God loved her.
If Pippa could realize God’s love, would she also realize she didn’t need to sell herself to men?
Thoughts of her sister sobered her as she descended the three fights to the first floor. Marcus had hired an orchestra for the evening, and music swelled out of the ballroom. Guests entered the hall downstairs, and the staff took their wraps. Charlotte went down the last flight to the ground floor, searching the masked guests, wondering which was which, though some she knew right away. General Eddington couldn’t possibly hide those whiskers, and the fluttering hands were an instant clue as to her mother’s identity.
Charlotte melded into a group of people, listening more than talking so as not to give herself away. Where was Marcus? He’d kept his costume and mask secret from her, as she had from him.
But she was confident she would know him from the way he moved, from his touch, should they dance together at some point tonight.
The orchestra conductor had been deputized as the master of ceremonies for the evening, and he stood at the head of the stairs and tapped his baton on the banister. “My Lords and Ladies, and ladies and gentlemen, if you would please form two lines, ladies on the left, gentlemen on the right of the hall, we will now have our promenade. Pair up as you reach the bottom of the steps, ascend, and then make one circuit of the ballroom together before parting to stand along the sides.”
Charlotte hoped everyone understood the directions, before remembering the dowager had insisted upon putting those directions into writing in the invitations, along with instructions for when identities would be revealed.
As she took the arm of the masked gentleman opposite her, she admitted to studying him, comparing him to the guest list. When they reached the ballroom and she found her place along the perimeter, she watched every man. Some were easily ruled out as too short, too round, too gray haired to be Marcus. As part of the concealment, the chandeliers had not been lit, using only the wall sconces for illumination, and the atmosphere in the ballroom bordered on spooky.
She loved it. Just as she’d imagined. The intrigue, the curiosity. Their guests laughed and chattered, and many smiled broadly. She could tell people were disguising their voices somewhat to avoid detection. Should she attempt that? Or perhaps it would be best for her not to speak at all?
A laugh climbed her throat. If her mother could hear her thoughts now. Actually contemplating saying nothing at a social gathering.
Speaking of her mother, the woman with the fluttering hands had entered the room, and that was Charlotte’s father with her. He wore a pale-blue satin coat and breeches and a silver mask that matched his hair. Silver buckles on his shoes winked in the faint candlelight. As always, his willingness to spend money when on display in public knew no bounds. Even mother’s gown was more up to date than usual.
The conductor went to his music stand, replacing the musician who had stood in for him, and took over.
The first dance was a quadrille, and Charlotte took her place, studying the others in her formation, careful to keep time, a pleasant smile on her face. There were enough dancers to form four full lines. The dowager must be thrilled and already writing in her mind the bits of praise she would submit to the dailies tomorrow.
“You look most fetching tonight, Lady Rigdon,” one tall man said as their hands met and they turned a slow circle.
She gave him what she hoped was a mysterious smile and nodded, feeling the waft and weight of the ostrich feathers that decorated one side of her mask. He thought she was Lady Rigdon? Her disguise was working well.
Where was Marcus amongst the guests? As the evening wore on, she moved through the ballroom, the refreshment room, the card room, and the retiring room. So many people, all bent on concealing their identities, playing little games with one another. But not her husband? Surely he couldn’t be eluding her, or so well-disguised that she couldn’t pick him out. She would know him by his hair alone. She continued on, determined to find him and enjoying herself immensely.
When she spied her father drawing a lady she knew wasn’t her mother into an alcove, whispering into her ear, her stomach tightened. It was too real, seeing him in that mask, pretending to be one thing when he was really another.
Her appetite for the masquerade dimmed. She turned away.
Don’t be silly. It’s a party. Don’t let him steal your joy. You are building something good with Marcus, and your father doesn’t come into it. He is responsible for his own actions, just as you are for yours.
She tried to preach the truth to herself, to hold on to the happiness she had felt, but it wasn’t easy. She also wasn’t going to allow that behavior to take place under her nose. Not in her house.
Pretending to trip, she laughed, stumbling into the alcove. Her father held the woman’s hands, and Charlotte tilted her head. “My, my, isn’t it a lovely party? The duke and duchess have certainly put on a show tonight, haven’t they?” She threaded her arm through the woman’s. “I’m parched, aren’t you? Let’s see if we can find some punch.” Though the woman resisted at first, and her father harrumphed, there was little they could do without causing a scene.
She led the woman back to the refreshment room and left her at the punch table, accepting a cup from a footman and staring around, bewildered.
A masculine hand drifted down Charlotte’s arm all the way to her fingers, clasping hers, and when the fingers squeezed, she looked up into the black velvet mask that surrounded gray-blue eyes.
“My dance, Your Grace?”
She recognized him in an instant. Without a word, he drew her to the ballroom, where a waltz was just beginning. Her father forgotten, she went into Marcus’s embrace, so much more at ease than the first time she had danced with him, so much more confident, both in herself and in him.
He swung her to the music, and she didn’t have to concentrate on the steps. Instead she looked into his eyes, realizing in a flash that her “maybe someday” had arrived.
She had hoped that maybe someday she would come to have more than a passing affection for the man she had married. Maybe someday she would even approach love. But love had arrived. He did not have to try to woo and win her heart, because he already had it. Somewhere between their first hand of whist and this waltz, she had given it to him freely and fully. Marcus had chosen her as his bride, had not tried to change her into something of which society would approve, had encouraged her to read and think and do unconventional things. He knew of her sister. He knew and approved of her desire to rescue women from prostitution. He knew, and he respected her.
On top of all that, he had the ability to melt her very bones with one caress, one look … the way he was looking at her now …
How could she not love this man? If she had filled out a checklist for God, she could not have assembled a more perfect gift of a husband. Gratitude filled her heart.
He drew her closer, whispering in her ear, and she closed her eyes. “You look beautiful tonight. Then again, I think you always look beautiful. I’ve thought it since the first night I met you.” His voice was low and husky, brushing across her skin, calling up a memory …
Her eyes popped open, and she stiffened. “What did you say?” The memory jangled in the back of her mind. The darkness, a concealed face, being told by a man for the first time that she was beautiful.
It couldn’t be. It was absurd.
Bits of information coalesced and formed into a theory. A theory she tried to thrust from her mind.
He could throw a knife. She’d witnessed it herself in this very house.
He was absent at odd hours.
He kept his comings and goings secret.
No. She didn’t believe it.
A smile teased his lips, though his eyes narrowed behind the black velvet. “I said you are beautiful. Why are you so surprised? I’ve called you beautiful before.”
Her footsteps faltered, and her hand went limp in his. Could it possibly be? And if it was, what did it mean?
“Hawk.” She knew the moment she said the name aloud that it was true, and he understood that she knew.
Her husband had been leading a duplicitous life.
She knew. In one instant, his worlds collided.
The light faded from her eyes, and her shoulders slumped. Then she stiffened and jerked out of his embrace. Another couple bumped into them, and he reached to steady Charlotte. She reacted as if his touch burned her.
“Don’t.” Her fierce whisper cut the air and went straight to his chest. Turning on her heel, she walked away, threading a path through the guests.
Marcus stood rooted to the spot for a moment. Then he headed after her. Could he remedy this? What explanation could he give that wouldn’t compromise his mission as an agent for the Crown? What could he tell her that she would believe?
He could deny everything. He could lie to her. Tell her she was mistaken, and what had she been doing running about London in the middle of the night and putting herself in a position to need rescue by a stranger? Turn it back on her.
No. He couldn’t lie. He wouldn’t. Try as he had to keep the truth concealed, to keep his life neatly separated, if one of his carefully constructed walls had come down, he wouldn’t try to rebuild it with falsehoods.
She hurried down the stairs, her dress trailing on the treads, and he knew where she was headed.
His sanctum.
Hers now too, it appeared. He caught up with her just as she was closing the door, and he pressed his hand flat on the panel to prevent it.
“Leave me alone.” She shoved, but he was too strong, and she gave a cry of exasperation, backing away. “You lied to me.” With an angry jerk, she wrenched the ties holding her mask, loosening several of her pinned curls in the process. Flinging the green-and-gold mask at him, she whirled away, clenching her hands at her waist and staring at the bookshelves.
He caught the mask as it whacked him in the chest. “I didn’t, you know. I never actually lied to you.”
“Don’t parse words with me. There is such a thing as a lie of omission. You concealed your identity that night in St. Giles. And you’ve been doing the same ever since. You knew who I was, and you never said a word.” Her voice was thick with tears, and each word hit him like a hammer blow. Charlotte never cried. “But you’ve been leading a double life the entire time, skulking out of the house to do who knows what. Just like my father—” Her voice broke, and she swiped angrily at her cheeks before moving to stare out the window into the dark night. Faint gaslight from the pole on the corner illuminated her face.
Marcus took a deep breath, calming his racing heart. “Charlotte, are you going to allow me to explain?”
“What possible explanation could there be? You don a disguise and leave the house for hours at a time, disappearing without ever saying where you’re going or when you’ll be back. Like my father, you behave as if a wife has no right to know what goes on in her husband’s life. My mother warned me to expect this. That all men strayed, keeping secrets, putting their wives in a box of ignorance and expecting them to be content. But I thought you were different. Honorable. What a fool I was.”
A straight shot of a gall couldn’t have been more bitter than her words.
He tossed her mask on the desk as he rounded it. Standing beside her, he cupped her shoulders, gently turning her to face him. Slowly he pulled the ribbon holding his own mask in place. “Are you finished?”
She glared up at him, lashes wet, eyes blazing in the faint light. “What else is there for me to say? I should have known better. God doesn’t give someone like me good gifts. I thought I had finally received His best when I married you, but it’s all been a lie. You are not who you say you are, and I am left the last one to know.”
“Stop it.” He gripped her shoulders. “You’ve had your say, and now I’m going to have mine. You’re right. I did keep the truth from you, but not through some sinister attempt to hide a mistress or a penchant for chicanery. I have been and always will be faithful to the vows I spoke.” He wanted to hug her, to apologize for the hurt he’d caused, to kiss away the anguish in her eyes, but he must get the words out first.
He drew her to the desk chair, seated her, and knelt before her, taking her limp hands into his. He had never imagined himself kneeling in contrition before a woman, but he was contrite. Not at what he had concealed but that she had been hurt by the revelation.
Now, where to begin?
“You were clever to tumble to it. I am Marcus, the Duke of Haverly, and I am also the man you met that night in St. Giles, Hawk. But I don’t don that persona in order to conceal a mistress.” He squeezed her fingers, but she didn’t return the gesture.
“Why should I believe you? You’ve been lying to me for weeks.” The anguish in her voice was like a punch to the heart. “I … I cared about you.” The words ripped from her throat, and the worst was, she used past tense. Did that mean she had cared once and no longer did?
“Charlotte, the truth is, I am an agent for the Crown, a spy, if you will.” He’d never said the words aloud in this house, and even now, he whispered. “Hawk is my code name, and I was in that tavern in St. Giles that night to meet with an informant.”
She lifted her chin, giving him an “is that the best you can come up with?” look.
He leaned close, praying she would understand and believe him. “I’ve been employed by the War Department and the Intelligence Service since I was a first-year student at Oxford.” How much should he tell her? How much was safe for her to know? How much could he say and not betray the oath he’d taken along with the job of agent?
She studied their hands in her lap, silent for a long time. “If that’s true, why didn’t you tell me? Didn’t you think I should know? Or did you think I couldn’t be trusted?”
He sighed. “Surely you can understand why I didn’t talk about it. What kind of secret agent would I be if I advertised? My mother doesn’t know. My father and brother never knew, nor even suspected. No one in society knows, with the exception of my immediate supervisor. Not even Whitelock knows.”
The hard set of her shoulders eased, and he saw her turning things over in her mind. The next few moments would be critical.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
He closed his eyes, praying for understanding but determined to tell the truth. “Charlotte, my dear, for right or wrong, no. I never planned to tell you. I intended to shield you from both the knowledge and the danger that comes with knowing. You’ve heard my views. I like to keep things tidy, compartmentalized, if you will. My private life, my public life, and my secret life all should stay in their own boxes.” He eased her closer, grateful when she didn’t object. Her face was just inches away, and he longed to draw her into his arms. “I will admit, I was a fool to think that having a wife wouldn’t change anything. My boss tried to tell me. Whitelock tried to tell me. But I wouldn’t listen. I was afraid that if I let a wife get too close, it would divert my focus and possibly endanger me while I was working. I thought if I gave away my heart to a woman, it would make me weak and ineffective.”
He wanted to stop, to not reveal too much, but he needed her to understand his ratiocinations on the matter. “I saw it so many times on the battlefield. Men whose hearts were still at home, pining for a wife or fiancée. They weren’t committed and vigilant, and for many it cost them their lives. I vowed then that if I should ever marry, I would keep the parts of my life separate. I would be more disciplined.”
This time she met his gaze, the hurt blazing in her beautiful green eyes. “You’ve succeeded. You’ve kept your heart thoroughly disciplined, haven’t you? You’ve kept me in the dark. You never intended to tell me who you really were. If I hadn’t guessed, I’d still be unaware. What is it they say? Ignorance is bliss? Perhaps it is. I was certainly blissful before I found out, thinking we were building on a firm foundation of trust.”
The sorrow in her voice pierced him, but what else could he have done? He had sworn an oath. Telling all and sundry put not just his life but the lives of others in jeopardy. And he had a job to do. There was an assassin to find.
This was exactly why he hadn’t wanted to mix business and pleasure.
She rose, forcing him to scoot back as she put the desk between them.
“You’ve stated your position and made mine in your life clear. You want a placeholder, someone to host your parties and protect you from undue attention, but not someone who interferes in your important business. Not someone to trust with your secrets. I understand now. And I will keep to your wishes. But you will also keep to mine. I need some time to adjust to my new circumstances. Therefore I ask that you leave me alone—day and night. Compartmentalized, just as you want.”
His heart turned to lead, heavy in his breast. He missed her already. “For how long?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t think straight right now. Perhaps having involved my emotions and made the foolish mistake of falling in love with my husband has caused me to lose focus, like one of those soldiers of whom you spoke. All I know is that I need time. Please give my regrets to our guests. Tell them I was not feeling well and have retired for the evening.”
She went out the door, and he let her, stunned into immobility.
She had fallen in love with him?
He had no time to process this possibility, because the door opened again. His pulse leapt. Had she come back?
Sir Noel entered, closing the door behind him. Marcus tried not to let his disappointment show.
“Sorry to crash in uninvited to the party, but this can’t wait.” He was already digging for his pipe, pacing before the cold fireplace. He still wore his cloak and hat, and Marcus dragged his mind away from his wife and tried to focus. Clearly something momentous was afoot.
“We’re close, Marcus. So very close.” He clamped hard on the bit of his pipe. “You’ll need your cloak. Partridge sent word that he’s found your missing informant. He’s watching the man’s hiding place now to see he doesn’t get away, but he sent a cabbie with a note for me to bring you at once.”
“Partridge found him?” Instantly alert, Marcus pushed the chair out of the way and rounded the desk. Coyne, the elusive informant who had missed his last several check-ins. Coyne, who was a clerk on the London Stock Exchange.
“Yes, and we must hurry.”
Marcus had his hand on the doorknob, when he remembered. He was in evening dress, and he had a houseful of guests. His wife had retired to her room, feeling betrayed, and they were moments from the masquerade reveal up in the ballroom.
“Come along. There’s no time to waste.” Sir Noel nudged his shoulder from behind.
Marcus opened the door, calling to the footman in the entryway to fetch his cloak and to take a message to his mother to step in as hostess for the rest of the night.
As he swirled the cloak around him, he glanced up the stairs one last time. Should he run up and at least tell Charlotte where he was going? Explain his absence?
“Come, man. What are you waiting for? This is the breakthrough we’ve been searching for. I can feel it.”
At Sir Noel’s urging, Marcus headed out into the night. But while his mind raced ahead to the interrogation of his informant, his heart was somehow abovestairs with his wife.