No RSVP
Gideon had decided not to attend.
There were two excellent reasons to remain in London.
The first was Beatrice.
She had all but ordered him out of her life, and for once, he had attempted to do as she asked.
The second was Groby.
Rumors surrounding the man’s claim had grown more troubling by the day. Some said his evidence was stronger than anyone had first believed. Strong enough, perhaps, to win.
But Parliament was on break, and for the moment, there was little Gideon could actually do.
Watch. Inquire. Wait.
All three had begun to feel useless.
His inquiries into the Ashcombe masquerade had stalled as well. Worse than stalled. The list of gentlemen who had attended five years ago had not narrowed. It had grown. Every new name made the answers feel farther away, and without more from Beatrice, Gideon had nothing solid enough to act upon.
So was his presence truly required in London?
The Season was over. Most of the debutantes had returned to their families’ country estates. For the moment, he no longer had to watch every terrace door and dark corridor, wondering which of Mayfair’s very fine gentlemen meant to ruin some innocent girl before supper.
And with Beatrice gone from town, the mutterings about her interference had gone quiet.
That ought to have reassured him.
It did not.
Silence was not safety. He knew that now.
The danger had not vanished simply because the ballrooms had emptied. It would move elsewhere—to garden paths, country lanes, house parties, inns, anywhere decent people looked away and called it manners.
And Beatrice had understood that before he had.
For all her recklessness, all her fury, all her maddening refusal to be sensible in any manner he approved of, she had seen the problem clearly. The way it cloaked itself in rank, propriety, and charm—and relied upon no one daring to name it.
If Gideon meant to do anything useful—truly useful—then he had to stop treating Beatrice as the problem to be managed.
He had to ask her.
Listen to her.
Trust her, damn it.
And she was at Dasborough Park.
Which was why, instead of hunkering down at Hawks Nest, or traveling north to spend the summer with his mother and sister as he’d done in the past, Gideon turned his horse toward Devonshire.
Regardless, Dash was his oldest friend. Practically a brother.
A man did not ignore such a celebration merely because the journey was inconvenient.
That was what Gideon told himself when he left London, but then barely escaped the city before he admitted the truth.
He was going for Beatrice.
God help him, she was all he had thought of for weeks.
Beatrice glaring at him across a ballroom. Beatrice rowing against the current. Beatrice with leaves caught in her hair and her lips wet and red from his kisses.
Beatrice beneath him on the sofa.
He had tried not to think of that last bit. Naturally, this ensured he thought of almost nothing else.
Five days in the saddle ought to have cooled thoughts of that nature.
Instead, with every mile he placed between himself and London, Gideon found those very memories returning with greater persistence.
Beatrice’s mouth. Her breath. The soft, startled sound she made when his hand slid up her leg…
By the third day, he had taken to dismounting more often than necessary.
By the fourth, he had stopped pretending the discomfort was entirely due to the saddle.
Ordinarily, instead of heading towards the village, Gideon would have turned his horse toward Dasborough Park without a second thought. Dash would have opened the door, poured him a drink, and found a place for him at the table.
Dash always had.
But there was a new duchess now.
And Gideon, who had arrived without invitation confirmed, without servant, without trunk properly sent ahead, and without any right to presume upon a newly married couple’s hospitality, stopped instead at the Arms and Stag.
Luck, it seemed, was on his side.
After securing the last available room, Gideon handed the evening clothes from his saddlebag to a chambermaid and set about washing the dust of five days’ riding from himself.
She promised to press the wrinkles from them “well enough, my lord.”
Well enough.
His valet, had the man been present, would have resigned on the spot rather than allow Gideon to appear at a ducal ball in garments deemed hopefully “well enough.” But Gideon had given him the summer months off, and a man could not very well summon his valet from leisure because he had decided, at the last possible moment, to chase a woman half across England.
By the time he mounted again and turned his horse toward the ducal estate, the sky had deepened into late summer blue.
Stars had begun appearing, faint at first, then brighter above the darkening line of trees.
Ahead, the house rose in the distance, all lit windows and golden glow, as though the whole estate had been set aflame for celebration.
Gideon tugged once at his cuff.
Ridiculous to be nervous.
He had faced down enemy soldiers, furious husbands, drunken friends, even a wild boar on one unfortunate occasion. He had no reason to feel uneasy riding toward the home of his dearest friend.
And yet his pulse was racing.
All the words he had rehearsed over the past several days scattered the closer he came.
I was wrong. But was he? About everything?
I should have trusted you.
True, but inadequate.
I have missed you to the point of madness.
Possibly.
At the front of the house, footmen were moving beneath the glow of lanterns, assisting guests from carriages and directing horses toward the stables. Music drifted faintly from inside, along with laughter and the warm hum of general merriment.
Gideon dismounted.
One of the footmen took the reins, then looked up and broke into a smile of recognition.
“Lord Hawkins. We did not think you were coming, my lord.”
“Nor did I,” Gideon murmured.
The footman blinked.
Gideon summoned a more appropriate smile. “Quite the celebration, eh?”
“Yes, my lord. His Grace will be pleased you are joining them.”
No doubt.
Dash would likely embrace him, mock him for arriving late, and demand to know why he had not sent word. But would he be so happy to hear what Gideon needed to confess?
And more importantly, would Dash’s sister be happy?
The true source of his nerves.
Still, he turned toward the open doors and gathered himself for whatever came next.
But what he saw caused his heart to skip a beat.
Guests were entering beneath the portico… in masks.
Velvet. Satin. Feathers. Painted silk. Black dominos and silver half-masks. A lady in green laughed as a gentleman adjusted a fox’s mask over his face. Another man, taller, wore something dark and horned.
Gideon’s blood went cold.
A masquerade.
How the devil had he not known this was a masquerade?
Beatrice had still not told Dash.
Dash did not know what masks meant to her. Ambrosia likely did not either. No one here understood that this charming summer entertainment might feel, to Beatrice, like stepping back into the worst night of her life.
A sick fear opened in Gideon’s chest.
All the fear he thought he’d mastered since she left London. It returned in an instant.
A footman at the entrance bowed and gestured toward a table arranged with masks for arriving guests.
“Masks are required, my lord. Take your pick.”
Gideon stared at the neat rows of satin and velvet.
For a moment, he could not move.
Then his gaze fixed on a simple half-mask near the edge of the tray. That of a bear.
He lifted it, held it for a beat, and then closed his fingers around it without putting it on.
“Thank you,” he said.
The footman hesitated. “My lord, the duchess wished everyone to—”
Gideon stepped past him into the house, the unused mask in his hand, and began searching the glittering crush for Beatrice.
The ballroom was magnificent.
There was no other word for it.
Candles burned everywhere—clustered in sconces, blazing in chandeliers. Light reflected off the polished floors and gilt-framed portraits, flashed over jewels and silk, and glimmered strangely over the masked faces drifting through the crowd.
The masks changed everything.
They lent the room an unreal quality. A shimmer of danger beneath the beauty. Ladies conversed from behind painted silk. Gentlemen bowed with velvet shadows over their eyes. A dozen couples turned through a waltz at the center of the floor.
Innocence masquerading as danger?
Gideon stood just inside the entrance, the black mask still clenched in one hand.
Not long ago, he could have admired the effect.
Instead, he searched for Beatrice.
And found her almost at once.
As though some part of him had recognized her before she came into view.
There.
His breath stopped.
She stood near one of the tall windows, half-turned from the crowd, speaking to a matron in peacock feathers. Her gown was silver, or something near it, like captured moonlight or the glint of light off a blade.
And her mask—
It was shaped like a fox.
Delicate, pointed, fierce. Silver to match her gown, with fine dark edging around the eyes and a narrow sweep of painted whiskers about the nose. It covered the upper half of her face, hiding her brow, her cheekbones, the line of her nose.
It did not matter.
He would have known her in any crowd.
By the tilt of her head.
The proud set of her shoulders.
The tiny notch in her chin.
The full, unsmiling curve of her mouth.
That mouth.
Five days in the saddle and apparently he had learned nothing.
Then, as though she felt him watching, Beatrice turned.