Chapter Six The Last Ball of Lady Evangeline #5
Marianne’s expression did not change. “And a gentleman’s warning is often merely a threat that has borrowed manners.”
His colour rose.
Behind him, Sebastian had appeared. Marianne saw him before Fenwick did, and she saw, too, the dangerous stillness that had entered his face. He was prepared to intervene. Prepared, perhaps, to do more than intervene.
Marianne did not want rescuing from a man whose chief weapon was bad breeding.
She lifted her chin slightly. “Good evening, Lord Fenwick. I fear Mrs Alderley requires me.”
Mrs Alderley, who had missed not a word of importance, lifted her trumpet. “Do I? Excellent. I have been requiring people for years, and they so rarely come.”
Fenwick bowed, stiff now, and withdrew.
Sebastian came to stand beside Marianne, his gaze following the younger man.
“I would have dealt with him,” he said.
“I did deal with him.”
“Yes,” he said after a moment. “You did.”
There was no resentment in it. Only recognition.
It warmed her more than his defence before Lady Honoria had done, because this time he had allowed the victory to remain hers.
“You heard the old gentlemen?” she asked softly.
“Not enough.”
“Mordaunt kept a duplicate book. Or they believe he did. A man named Cale may know where it is. One said you were sniffing where your father had the sense not to look.”
Sebastian’s face closed.
“I am sorry,” she said, before she had time to decide whether apology was wise.
His gaze moved to her. “For the information?”
“For the pain of it.”
He did not answer at once.
Then he said, very quietly, “Do not be sorry for truth. It is too rare a thing in this room.”
The music swelled again. Guests moved toward supper.
Lady Honoria laughed at something Ashmont said, and the sound carried like a little bell made of ice.
Marianne felt suddenly that if she remained beneath the chandeliers another moment, she would begin to understand too well how Evangeline had been trapped by beauty.
The light flattered everything. Even cruelty wore diamonds here.
Sebastian seemed to sense it. “There is air on the side terrace.”
“That may create talk.”
“The room is already creating talk.”
“True.”
“I shall stand at a respectable distance and look disagreeable enough to discourage romance.”
“That is your natural expression.”
“Then we are fortunate.”
She should not have gone.
She went.
The side terrace was not empty, but it was quieter.
A few guests stood near the open doors, cooled by the night air and the scent of rain rising from the garden below.
Lanterns hung along the stone balustrade.
Beyond them, the dark shapes of trees moved gently in the damp wind.
London’s noise seemed distant here, softened beneath music and glass.
Sebastian stood beside Marianne with enough space between them to satisfy propriety and not enough to prevent awareness.
For a while, neither spoke.
Then he said, “Evangeline loved balls.”
Marianne looked toward the glittering room behind them. “Did she?”
“She loved the music. The gowns. The flowers. The sense that anything might happen before morning. I thought it frivolous.”
“Because you were older?”
“Because I was dull.”
She almost smiled. “Were you?”
“I was responsible.”
“Those are not the same thing, though many responsible people hope they are.”
He looked at the garden. “I thought she mistook admiration for worth. Perhaps she did, sometimes. But standing in there tonight, listening to people make weapons of glances and pauses, I see that a ballroom is not frivolous merely because it is beautiful. It is a battlefield with better lighting.”
Marianne’s voice softened. “Lady Evangeline may have loved beauty without being foolish.”
He closed his eyes for one brief moment, as if the sentence had touched something sore and precious.
“Yes,” he said. “She may have.”
It was a small restoration. No document signed. No villain exposed. No money traced. But for a dead woman long remembered as reckless, even that mattered: to have her love of dancing returned to innocence, her pleasure separated from the punishment men had built around it.
A breeze moved across the terrace. Marianne looked down and realised one of her gloves had loosened at the wrist. She adjusted it absently.
Something crackled.
She stilled.
Sebastian turned. “What is it?”
Marianne slipped two fingers beneath the edge of the glove and drew out a folded scrap of paper no larger than a visiting card. It had been tucked into the glove from inside, so cleverly placed that she had not felt it until the movement shifted it.
Her pulse quickened.
Sebastian stepped closer but did not take it from her.
She unfolded the note.
The hand was not the blockish script of the threats. This writing was small, hurried and feminine, the ink slightly smudged, as if written in haste or fear.
Mrs Pike is not dead. Ask at the Blue Hart before Sunday.
Marianne read it twice, then handed it to Sebastian.
His face changed at the name.
“The Blue Hart,” he said.
“You know it?”
“An inn near the old coaching road north. Not fashionable. Not disreputable either. A place used by people who do not wish to be noticed leaving London.”
“Mrs Pike may be there?”
“Or someone wishes us to think so.”
Marianne looked back toward the ballroom, where Ashmont’s fair head moved among candlelight and Lady Honoria’s diamonds flashed like cold stars.
Somewhere in that glittering room, someone had come close enough to slip a note into her glove.
Someone who knew about Mrs Pike. Someone who knew they were looking.
Someone frightened enough not to speak openly, but bold enough to guide them.
A helper.
Or a trapper.
Sebastian folded the note carefully. “We leave now.”
“For once, Your Grace,” Marianne said, looking at the bright room where Lady Evangeline had once danced toward ruin, “I am inclined to agree.”
He glanced at her.
The faintest ghost of a smile touched his mouth, there and gone before it could become dangerous.
Together, they returned to the ballroom, where silk whispered, candles shone, and society continued its beautiful work of pretending not to see the things done in its name.
But Marianne felt the note’s words like a pulse beneath her glove.
Mrs Pike is not dead.
And somewhere beyond the warmth, the music and the shining cruelty of Lady Honoria’s rooms, the road north waited.