Chapter 2
Charlotte stood at the entrance to Viscountess Hervey’s ballroom and surveyed the masquerade crowd, or at least she tried to.
She’d attended any number of the viscountess’s tamer events over the years—several balls, a charitable fair or two, and once even a deeply regretted evening of poetry—but she’d never seen the room so dim before.
With only a scattering of candelabras here and there and the great chandeliers overhead completely dark, Charlotte could barely make out the room’s shadowy corners, let alone the figures kissing in them.
It was the ideal lighting, she noted absently, for terrible behavior.
For finding someone, the darkness was no help at all.
“Still hiding your face, are you, lad? We unmasked at midnight.” A red-faced man lumbered out of the gloom toward her, dressed as a Harlequin in pink satin with shiny black buttons down the front.
He crashed into her and his hot hand tightened on her hip, squeezing first in surprise and then with rather sweaty ownership.
“What do we have here?” he murmured, and yanked her closer, swamping her with an acrid, stale smell that was partly booze and partly his own unfortunate odor.
Charlotte flicked an impatient glance at the man’s face. “Really, Major Dumbarton, it’s bad enough that you dress like a pig. Must you act like one?”
She jammed her heel hard onto his foot but didn’t wait around to hear him squeal.
Instead, she whirled away into the press of people, her senses on high alert.
She’d reached her majority, been out five Seasons and was the toast of the town, and yet it wouldn’t do to be discovered out alone at Viscountess Hervey’s rather notorious annual masquerade.
So don’t get caught, Charlotte told herself, and walked on.
Most of the guests were unmasked now, and the room was a sea of black dominos and oh!
—Charlotte lit with pleasure—one woman wearing a domino in bright jonquil, with the rich luster of what she could identify from fifteen feet away as really fine Italian silk.
Other partygoers were in fancy dress, with all sorts of vicars, dukes dressed as duchesses, and quite a number of animals, including peacocks, tigers, butterflies, unicorns, and even a rather mournful giraffe, who had to keep one hand up to support his long neck.
Several women simply wore less and considered that a costume.
Charlotte gave a low, admiring whistle when she caught sight of the Comtesse D’Artois, whose gown was practically transparent and whose figure alone was enough to cause a carriage accident.
A young man in a black frock coat and a wide-brimmed black hat trotted toward the comtesse, his tongue hanging out like a puppy’s. Charlotte hooked him neatly by the arm.
“Dressing as a priest? Really, Marby, is that all you could come up with?”
“I say!” The Honorable James Marby spun toward her with a face like a thundercloud, replaced in an instant by a startled grin. Their family estates lay side by side in Sussex, and they’d grown up practically as twins. “Charlotte? Is that you? What the devil are you doing here?”
“Shh! You mustn’t say my name. I’m incognito tonight.”
“Yes, quite! Your secret’s safe with me, Char—I mean, good sir.” He frowned down at himself. “What’s wrong with my costume? I think it’s dashed clever! I’m dressed as a priest, but you see, in real life I’m nothing like—”
“Yes, my friend, in real life you’re a complete degenerate. Now, have you seen my—”
“Not half as degenerate as you. Are you here alone? Good God, and in breeches? Your grandmother will string you up by your thumbs.” The thought seemed to fill him with glee, until another thought struck and his cherub face paled. “Egad, what if she strings me up, too? I must get you home.”
“Don’t be tiresome, Marby. The rules for young ladies are ridiculous enough without you spouting them at me. Now, I need you to help me look for—”
“No. I refuse to be lured into your schemes tonight.” He must have been drunk on virtue for once in his life, or perhaps it was Lady Hervey’s rum-and-brandy punch. “But I tell you what, the Lord Mayor’s here dressed as a shepherdess. If you like, we can nick his bonnet before we go?”
Charlotte shook her head. “How you tempt me, but I haven’t the time. I’m sorry, dear Marby.”
“Sorry? What for?”
“For this.”
She gave him a hard shove and Marby went teetering backward into the crowd and—oh dear! Charlotte winced—into the glorious backside of the Comtesse D’Artois. The comtesse shrieked, Marby spluttered, and Charlotte plunged deeper into the ballroom with her black domino a swirl of shadow behind her.
Was it her, or was there a certain desperation in the air as she pressed through the crowd?
It wasn’t the ladies in the arms of other people’s lords, or even the couple sneaking up the stairs toward the wing with the bedchambers—after all, Charlotte could hardly find that shocking, when her parents’ marriage had been a famous cautionary tale.
But something about the overbright eyes and the grating quality to everyone’s laughter struck her as unhappy.
It brought her back to the feel of her mother’s long fingernails scraping rhythmically up and down her scalp on the long-ago nights after her father died.
Never love a man, darling. Never give him that kind of power.
Charlotte snagged a bottle of champagne from a passing servant and took a long swig as she approached the smaller chamber at the back of the ballroom.
She could feel her pulse beat harder and alarm bells clanging in her head.
This chamber was kitted out with a series of small tables, and brighter, with candles glowing in the sconces and the chandelier lit overhead.
The players, after all, needed to see their cards.
People crowded the gambling tables, the men sweating in their coats, the women’s diamonds winking and the plumes in their hair quivering with the excitement of hopes held too high.
Only one woman sat almost unmoving, her face so implacably beautiful that it seemed to draw the candlelight.
In the midst of the black dominos, she stood out in a gown of deep rose silk with full skirts that crested over the side of her chair in wide, perfect waves, so that even at the crowded table there was a circle of stillness around her.
Her expression didn’t change as she leaned forward to snap her card down.
The alarm bells in Charlotte’s head let out a shriek and went deathly silent.
She’d caught her mother red-handed.