Love With the Perfect Scoundrel Page 15

  “It is my name—my mother’s name. Even you must agree that I had no choice but to find an alias.” He couldn’t bear to tell her that the original name she knew him by was even farther removed from the truth. “So, is Manning still searching for me?”

  She avoided his gaze. “Well…he increased the reward. Mr. Jenkins used to announce the new incentive each year, when a runner or two would visit the boys’ side. They thoroughly canvassed the west wing every month the first year you disappeared. I still can’t imagine how you were able to secure passage to the colonies. I was certain you’d been lost to the filth in the rookeries.”

  “I tried that route for a few weeks, but was lucky enough to find a job as cook’s helper on a privateer’s ship. Seems a press gang abducted half the crew.” He continued dryly, “So all those endless hours preparing every boy here for a mariner’s life proved useful in the end. Our Mr. Jenkins was an excellent master.”

  “Well,” Mrs. Kane said with a frown. “As I’m sure you can guess, there are few who mourn him. I’m sorry for what he did to you and many other boys, Michael. For the beatings, the horrid apprenticeships, the meager food and coal Mr. Jenkins sold to line his own pockets. I’m sorry for so many things.”

  “No. You musn’t be. If not for you, so many more of us would’ve died. You were a mother to each and every one of us as much as you could be.”

  “If you truly consider me as such, then you must do as I ask.”

  He shook his head. “The eldest boy can serve as choirmaster at the event. He has two days to practice.”

  “But the entertainment is to take place at a private residence. There’s absolutely no chance of anyone recognizing you. For goodness sakes, Michael, it’s been an age since you disappeared. You barely resemble the boy of five and ten I last saw. You know there won’t be runners mingling with the guests.”

  Preoccupied, he looked away and abstractedly rubbed the edge of his hat. “You’ve not asked me yet if I did it.”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “Perhaps you do.”

  “You’ve forgotten that I know Rowland Manning and I knew his awful brother, a bad seed in every respect. Every boy who worked there said Howard was a thief. I’ll never believe Rowland Manning no matter what he or anyone says.”

  “Thank you,” he murmured, gratitude in every syllable.

  “But, I should warn you that his enterprise has thrived. Indeed, Manning has expanded in an astonishing fashion and enjoys the Prince Regent’s favor. But, you’ll be happy to know that after Mr. Jenkins died, I was finally allowed an audience with the board of governors. The new master takes up his duties in a fortnight. He’s cut from an entirely different cloth than Mr. Jenkins.”

  “I’m happy to hear it,” Michael said quietly. “But not happy to hear the other whip-loving bugger is prospering, damn Rowland Manning’s soul to hell.”

  “Michael!”

  “Pardon me, Mrs. Kane. And no, I see that look in your eye. I’ll not do your bidding to earn forgiveness.”

  She looked at him silently for a long moment. “You know, I debated with myself as to whether I should tell you this, but I’ve run out of arguments. When the Countess of Sheffield came here three days ago—”

  He interrupted her with a start. “The Countess of Sheffield? What in bloody hell was she doing here?”

  She ignored him. “She said she had recently made the acquaintance of someone who had been raised here. And me being a woman of sharp intelligence and great perception—”

  “And obvious modesty,” he drawled.

  She continued without drawing breath, “And modesty, you ungrateful wretch. Well, the lady was maddeningly evasive but did admit that the person who influenced her decision to hold a benefit was someone who was newly arrived to Yorkshire from the colonies.”

  The sweat on Michael’s brow turned cold. “She’s the one giving the masquerade, isn’t she?”

  “Well, it was but a moment before I guessed our unwitting aide had been none other than the mysterious Mr. Ranier. And by the look on your face, I’m correct, am I not? Well, what I think you should do is—”

  “I’ll do it,” he said under his breath.

  “What’s that, eh?”

  “I bloody well said I’d do it. But don’t get any fine ideas about continuing this farce. I’ll lead the boys this one time, and you’d best start praying for an early arrival of the new master, for I’ll not risk my neck unmasked here before any pitying people of Quality come to hear the Messiah in the chapel.”

  “And I’d never ask that of you,” she soothed. “Oh, and Michael?”

  “Yes?”

  “Allow me to tell you what a fine, grown man you’ve become, albeit an awfully tall one,” she said, a smile crinkling the paper-thin skin around her lively dark eyes.

  “Mrs. Kane?”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell me just one thing.”

  She waited, her boundless reserves of patience radiating as always from her kindly expression. “Yes?”

  “Did she look happy?”

  Mrs. Kane tilted her head and Michael endured her scrutiny. “Why do I suspect that you’d like me to reply that she appeared as miserable as you do right now?”

  He sighed heavily. Was there a female alive who could answer bloody questions without offering their own ridiculous opinions?

  Chapter 11

  Sheffield House had never looked quite this lovely, Grace thought, surveying the great hall and ballroom as she welcomed the last dozen guests flanked by Quinn and Georgiana. The pungent scent of laurel and evergreens freshly cut to signal the season wafted through the air to mingle with the perfumes of the guests. Against the pale limestone columns and the light marble floor, a flurry of colorful silks, satins, and velvets presented an astonishing tableau of costumed humanity.

  And Grace was proud. Not a single person had declined an invitation. Entrenched traditionalists had postponed early departures to their vast country houses to partake of the colossal entertainment just before Christmas. It was not often a private masquerade was in the offing in town. And this was nothing like others Grace had attended—insipid affairs with everyone dressed of the last century in moth-eaten frocks and towering, powdered horsehair wigs.

  No, this was a true masquerade. Tigers and savages and even a somewhat tallish Napoleon paraded about while footmen, dressed as servants to a maharaja, stroked the air with palm fronds.

  It was exotic and fantastic.

  The whispered taunts Grace had endured last month still echoed in her mind. And so she had taken great pains to produce an event so extraordinary that half the mocking words would be stilled on the lips of the more wretched members of the beau monde. The other half would be subdued by the combined power of Ata and the dowager duchess’s friend, Lady Cowper, who possessed boundless consequence as one of Almack’s famous patronesses.

  Ata had called in a multitude of favors in exchange for the promise of a night to remember. Yes, Grace’s easing back into her niche in society was as carefully orchestrated as a coup d’etat.

  But it was all worth it. And more important, it would aid the foundling home substantially.

  “Come,” she said, addressing Quinn and Georgiana, who were dressed as an ancient Egyptian pharaoh and his queen. “I’m desperate for some champagne. Then we’ve got to go inside that ballroom and begin.” She fell naturally and regally into the role she had been bred to, that of a great hostess.

  “Grace, I don’t know how you managed all this in such a short time.” Georgiana’s dark eyes appeared huge framed by the black wig’s thick fringe.

  Quinn tucked each woman’s arm against his own and chuckled. “I’ve recently learned that once Grace has gotten an idea in her head, there’s no stopping her. And this plan was better executed than half the peace treaties in Europe.”

  Grace disregarded the compliment and straightened her Grecian-inspired gold tunic before touching her hair to make certain all the many strands of p
earls were still threaded through her tresses. “Botheration. I feel like a thousand snakes are perched on my head.”

  Georgiana smiled. “Don’t worry so.”

  Grace tilted her half mask back into place and grasped a glass from a passing footman dressed as someone from the bazaars of Persia. She downed the contents and tried to ignore the tickling in her nose. She grabbed another before entering the ballroom. Quinn was still chuckling and Grace could swear he said something about shocking changes in character.

  Grace faced the vast swell of the crowd inside and strove for a measure of cool insouciance. With a nod to a servant behind a huge gong, she signaled him to strike the huge metal pan. The shimmering sound quieted the crowd of nearly four hundred guests. All of the members of the Widows Club moved to hover about Grace, Georgiana, and Quinn as the crowd looked toward them with an unmistakable air of malicious curiosity.

  “Thank you for coming tonight. Before I introduce a wonderful surprise this evening, I ask all of you to toast the guests of honor—my very dearest friends, the Marquis of Ellesmere and his new bride, whom many of you have not yet met. Please raise your glass to Georgiana Wilde Fortesque, the beautiful Marchioness of Ellesmere, and to the marquis!”

  There was a moment of silence before Lady Cowper lifted her glass followed quickly by her purported lover, Lord Palmerston. Grace heard Luc exhale in relief and mutter, “Thank God, once again, for Emily and Palmerston.”

  And then one by one, a few of the others who had obviously partaken in enough spirits shouted “Here, here!” There was not a single cutting comment. Even from the corner where the Duchess of Kendale regally stood with her sycophant entourage, there arose not a whisper. Grace had mistakenly counted the pretty duchess as a close acquaintance until she understood it was she who had spurred rumors of Grace’s rupture with the Marquis of Ellesmere.

  “And since this is the traditional season of giving,” Grace continued, staring at the Duchess of Kendale and raising her glass again, “I am certain all of you will open your hearts and your purses to contribute generously to the Hospital for Exposed and Deserted Children. Their choir is here to offer evidence of the goodness housed behind those walls. Following this, the ball will commence!”

  In almost comical unison, with only a few jaded titters, four hundred masked gentlemen, ladies, and beasts turned expectantly toward the vast orchestral balcony far above the gilded ballroom. A quarter acre of young boys of all ages, clad in simple black vestments, faced a choirmaster garbed similarly, with the addition of a black cape, black Venetian tricorn and face mask. He reminded Grace of one of the hordes of revelers she had witnessed during Carnevale in Venice the season after Luc had married Rosamunde.

  High above them, the master lifted a baton and deftly signaled the choir to begin. An ocean of pure, innocent voices swelled in unison and burst forth in a wave of one of Handel’s scores, almost too beautiful in its intensity. For long minutes it seemed as if every last person in the ballroom was struck dumb by the performance, until a voice rose alone in the beginning of a familiar long passage, and then cracked horribly.

  Grace’s heart lurched in sympathy. The poor boy. His voice betrayed that he had reached the awkward age of an adolescent teetering on manhood. But then her heart filled with something more than sympathy.

  The smooth, rich voice of an adult took over, an octave lower than the boy who had faltered. She tried to regulate her breathing as she scanned the crowd. Where was it coming from? It seemed to reverberate from every wall.

  It was the voice of her dreams. The one she had heard while perched on a massive horse cradled in the arms of the man who had saved her from herself.

  Michael.

  And he was in London. Here. In her house.

  Good God, he had probably been here for hours, closeted with the choir in the musician’s chamber beyond the balcony’s doors.

  Good sense deserted her, as did her good posture.

  Luc’s haughty figure slipped beside her. “What is it? You’re trembling.” When she failed to respond, he grasped her arm and draped it over his own.

  Spellbound by his haunting soliloquy, Grace tried desperately to regain her composure. The chorus of boy’s voices joined his at the crest of joyous music as it drifted to the finale.

  A deafening sea of applause broke out as the last notes faded. And then, despite the many calls for an encore, the master ushered the boys from the balcony while a drift of musicians took their place and struck the first chords of a minuet.

  Luc shielded her. “Please tell me this is not about who I think it is…Grace, if you are half the countess I know you to be, you will snap out of this fog you’ve entered and remember you’ve a goodly portion of the most important people in town before you and you’ve spent a bloody fortune to lure them here. Come, everyone is waiting for us to lead them into the dance.”

  Grace looked up into Luc’s stark sapphire eyes behind a devil’s mask and wished she was anywhere else. “Then let’s not disappoint them,” she replied, cool reason returning with each word. She allowed him to escort her and within moments a flock of couples joined them. Crocodiles paired with ballet dancers while pirates bowed before swans.

  Her long years under society’s harsh scrutiny stood her well. Woodenly, Grace soldiered on through the movements of the minuet.

  “You know,” Luc tightened his grip on her hand, “if I discover that bastard is here, I really will kill him this time.”

  “Of course you won’t,” Grace replied, finding her voice. “It is my privilege, not yours.”

  He exhaled. “Thank God. I’d hoped you wouldn’t be missish about this. I should have trusted you’d let good sense prevail.”

  They bowed and curtsied their way through the dance until the bitter end. At that precise moment, a gentleman dressed as a bear snagged Luc’s attention, and Grace disengaged at the edge of the floor nearest the doors.

  She made her way inelegantly past all the colorful characters. It was a terrible squeeze until she disappeared behind the ornate double doors. Removing the suffocating half mask and hiking her gown high, she dashed up the back stairs to the private musician’s chamber.

  The boys, uniformly thin and too pale, were so very quiet inside. Their eyes were like saucers as they filled plates with hearty foodstuffs, all under the watchful gaze of the matron and another young woman.

  Grace’s skin prickled hot as she scanned the room again. All at once she realized he was not there. And at the same moment the elderly woman from the foundling home rushed forward.

  “The boys performed beautifully, Mrs. Kane,” Grace said in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. “I must thank you again for accepting my invitation.”

  “The honor was all ours, Lady Sheffield. May I present Miss Victoria Givan? She is our singing teacher at the moment, as the boys’ master died not two months ago.”

  A lovely auburn-haired woman curtsied, her gaze trained on the floor. “We are so very grateful to you for your generosity, ma’am.” Victoria Givan finally dared to look in her direction, and Grace could not help but stare at the most vivid green eyes she had ever encountered. Miss Givan was an out-and-out siren.

  “I’m so glad I could do something to help all of you,” Grace murmured.

  Mrs. Kane carefully examined Grace over the tops of her spectacles. “I had wanted you to meet the choirmaster too, but he’s already taken his leave of us, my lady.”

  Grace noticed Miss Givan glance toward the open window. “Then I shall depend on you to thank him for me when you rejoin him.”

  Miss Givan appeared very ill at ease, while Mrs. Kane replied, “Of course, Lady Sheffield. Victoria and I should gather the boys and—”

  “Oh, please, I beg you to stay. They’ve not had enough time to enjoy the dinner. And we shall have baskets to take back with you. By the way, you will also receive a great boon of contributions from this evening, Mrs. Kane. I shall personally deliver the monies to you.”

  “Thank you
, ma’am, for giving us such a hopeful, happy season to remember.”

  Grace edged toward the door, her smile frozen in place. Just before she fully turned to leave, Mrs. Kane wandered toward the open window and murmured something.

  “What did you say?” Grace halted.

  “Oh, pardon me, my lady. I was just saying it’s unusually warm tonight—so balmy after that cold spell.” Small gusts of air rippled the edges of the curtains. “It would be a perfect night for a stroll in your lovely garden, don’t you think?”

  Grace cleared her throat and uttered a few inane niceties before excusing herself to dart back to the lower level of her townhouse.

  She rested her hot forehead on the cool limestone in a private corner. He was not in the garden. Mrs. Kane had not been trying to tell her something.

  She was being ridiculous. It was just that she had boiled long enough to concoct the perfect stew of words to ladle over that man’s head should she ever have the opportunity to see him again, and she itched for the opportunity. She tugged at a door leading to her garden and hurried into the darkness.

  Stud on a leash, indeed.

  The tittering voices of a few guests drifted from the balcony. The man had very clearly said he did not want her to stay with him nor had he wanted to go with her. He had wanted a brief affair—a temporary slaking of desire, not an entwining of hearts.

  She would never have agreed to it if she had known the intensity of the emotions once desire was roused. She had been far more comfortable in her regulated existence.

  Grace leaned against one of the stone archways covered by espaliered fruit trees and closed her eyes. She did not want to go back inside. Oh, she knew she would. Eventually.

  She would gather up her tangle of emotions and fold them back into their proper places like the gowns of summer placed between fragile tissues and then locked in the trunks resting in the attics.

  Grace finally noticed the sounds of her favorite waltz, drifting from the open sets of French doors above her on the balcony. Her eyes still closed, she swayed to the music, and trained her thoughts on the rest of the evening. She would dance with Quinn for the supper dance. And then she would dine with—