Chapter Two
Greyson Stanhope, Fifth Duke of Stanhope, was quickly regretting accepting the invitation to the annual Spring Masquerade.
In the years prior, he’d had the pleasure of being assigned the costume of a Medieval knight, a Greek god, a pirate, a red-coated officer in His Majesty’s army, an Italian count, and a Tudor lord in tights and a flattering codpiece.
This time, however, he experienced a strong desire to remain home.
“Must there be such high heels on these shoes?” he grumbled while staring down at his tortured feet.
His valet, Michaels, brushed a bit of lint from his midnight-blue velvet coat and tails. “They are the shoes in the style that was ordered, Your Grace,” he replied flatly.
“I cannot believe anyone thought these were comfortable.”
“Fashion is rarely about comfort,” said Michaels as he adjusted the waterfall of flouncy lace at Grey’s throat. “Just ask anyone who wears a corset, male or female.”
“You wouldn’t be speaking from experience, would you?”
Michaels shot him an arch look that would probably have gotten him fired in any other household, but Grey was not most employers.
He had always been a man who treated others as they treated him—especially when it came to loyalty—and Michaels had proven his worth several times over throughout the years.
“So amusing, Your Grace.” His tone was so dry it was a wonder the water in the nearby pitcher and washbasin did not evaporate.
“You used to laugh at my jests.”
“You used to be a great deal more amusing.”
Grey rolled his eyes and inspected his reflection.
Whether he cared for it or not, this was the costume he’d been assigned.
He couldn’t very well cry off now, not when the invitation had been accepted long ago, and everyone knew this was one of the events of the Season.
Everyone who was anyone would be there, and the current Duke of Stanhope had always been in attendance.
He couldn’t very well break with tradition, no matter how much he disliked his fancy dress.
He supposed part of his reticence and dour mood came from the fact that this was the first time he would be attending without a mistress or paramour.
The Duke and Duchess of Benton had always been kind enough to pair him with whichever lady he had an arrangement with at the time.
Even though they recognized one another, it had always wound up devolving into a naughty game of “strangers in the dark”—a game whose merits Grey often touted to whoever would listen.
Even if it was pretend, there was something exciting about a stolen, passionate embrace in the shadows at a party, or slipping away for a mostly-clothed tryst in the chilly, moonlit gardens.
There was little chance of that tonight since he’d recently broken off his relationship with the widow Gracechurch.
He’d considered allowing their arrangement to last until after the masquerade for precisely this reason, but he’d simply had to put a stop to things when she’d begun discussing changing the curtains in his parlor.
The conversation had come too close to planning a future for Grey’s tastes, and he’d put an end to the discussion and their relationship in one fell swoop.
This meant his expectations for that evening’s excitement were low.
Michaels continued fussing over the finer details of Grey’s attire, adjusting his sea-green-and-gold-thread waistcoat and the ostentatious ruffles at his wrists.
“Did you have a pleasant ride in the park this afternoon?” his valet asked.
Grey narrowed his eyes at the light tone and deceptively polite question.
Were it anyone else making that inquiry, then Grey might have believed its sincerity.
“I believe you know bloody well how this afternoon’s ride went,” Grey ground out. He wasn’t too pleased at being forced to relive the unpleasant experience, the public embarrassment of it.
“Oh? How would I know that?”
“Because you always seem to know everything, even if it is none of your business.” He didn’t think it was his imagination when he saw the corner of his valet’s mouth twitch.
“Lady Emmeline won today’s round, did she?”
Gray rolled his eyes heavenward as if seeking support.
The feud between the Stanhopes and the Lowins had simmered for three generations, dating back to the second Duke of Stanhope and the third Duke of Goffin.
The hatred between the families had been born many years before Grey, Lady Emmeline, or their siblings had been born.
The Stanhopes had been raised in an environment of enmity toward the other family that had caused their shame.
For Gray, the murder of his grandfather nearly put an end to the Stanhope title; Grey would not have existed had his grandmother not already been carrying his father, the future fourth Duke of Stanhope, in her womb.
The Lowin family had bribed, lied, blackmailed, and done whatever other shady dealings they had to, to help their patriarch escape the punishment he deserved.
The Stanhopes had nearly collapsed from the loss; their very existence as part of the ton had teetered on a dangerous precipice because of the ruthless, bloodthirsty actions of the Lowins.
Their lot did not improve even after the inheritance was secured with the birth of Grey’s father.
It was years before he’d been able to take on his role, and the title had been in shambles.
He’d spent his entire life trying to rebuild all they had lost and had worked himself into an early grave because of it.
And Lady Emmeline Lowin dared to hate Grey when her family had been the ones who’d nearly toppled his.
She acted as if Grey’s very existence was an affront to her sensibilities.
For his part, Grey couldn’t stand the chit either.
She was too outspoken, too full of herself, too much of a know-it-all for his liking.
She had no compunctions about speaking ill of Grey, despite his lofty title.
She was maddening—the embodiment of the very worst of the Lowin line.
Grey disliked her snobbish brother, but he detested the Lowin girl.
She seemed to go out of her way to increase his misery at every opportunity; that afternoon in Hyde Park had been no different.
“I heard Caesar had quite a bit of mud on him,” Michaels said. “The grooms spent hours bathing and brushing him.”
Clearly, Michaels had yet to discover Grey’s discarded greatcoat, hessians, and other garments he’d worn on his ride, or else he’d be complaining about that mess. It would serve him right for his impertinence…and his not-so-subtle enjoyment of Grey’s humiliation.
“That is what they’ve been hired to do,” said Grey, a bit more bitterly than intended.
It was crass and not at all how Grey felt about his staff, but it was the expected sentiment, and he simply did not have it in him to continue on with the banter—not when he still had a very long night ahead of him.
“Just like I’ve been hired to find and somehow clean the pile of reeking, filthy clothes you squirreled away, like a boy too ashamed of his stains to allow anyone to see it?”
Blast.
“What did the Lowin girl do this time?” Michaels asked knowingly as he held up different timepiece options from which Grey was to choose.
He gestured dismissively at the gold one, and it was swiftly attached to a chain and affixed to Grey’s waistcoat. “Nothing she hasn’t done a hundred times already; the harpy takes unnatural joy in my misery.”
“I don’t recall you returning home soaked through with mud a hundred times.”
Really.
Grey was going to punch the man sooner or later…just wallop him across the jaw.
“She took it too far this time,” Grey replied through gritted teeth. “I could not allow her insults to fly by unchallenged.”
“Insulted your manhood, did she?”
“The chit has no sense of decorum! No boundaries!” He threw his arms wide in exasperation.
Grey would never understand why the Dukes of Goffin and their Lowin relatives acted as if they were the victims in this feud when Grey was the one whose grandfather had been killed.
This truth had never stopped them from tossing verbal barbs at the Stanhopes, lobbing insults at every turn, performing cut-directs, and generally doing everything in their power to make the Stanhope existence unpleasant.
Grey and his sisters were nearly always preoccupied with the delicate dance of which ton events to attend and which to avoid.
“And may I ask how, precisely, did that translate into both you and your horse being covered in stinking mud?”
Grey barely stifled a groan. He didn’t want to describe how he’d encountered Lady Emmeline on a ride of her own that afternoon; how she’d been in the company of two other young female companions and a groom riding at a respectable distance behind.
It would have been so easy for both of them to ride in their opposite directions and come out unscathed, but that in and of itself felt like an insult to his grandfather’s memory.
Lord knew why Lady Emmeline felt the same.
The last thing he wished to admit was that, against his better judgement, he’d slowed Caesar’s pace when the women had hailed him. Despite what the Lowins might believe, he was a gentleman at his core, and he was honor-bound to assist a woman in need.
He should have known better.
Lady Emmeline was the harbinger of chaos, not a victim of it.
Reluctantly, Grey had taken in Lady Emmeline seated side-saddle upon her bay mare.
The sea-foam green of her riding habit was just pale enough to still be acceptable for a young, unmarried woman to wear.
He’d learned that about her—that she so often toed the line of what was proper and was mostly unapologetic when she crossed it.