Maid for the Duke (The Fated Fêtes #1)
Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
London, England
The ballroom buzzed with the excitement of a hundred costumed guests crowding its marble floors.
One could mistake this for a utopia: a shepherdess giggled as several fleece-clad gentlemen flocked to her side.
Beside them, a valet led his Queen of Hearts to dance.
And then there was May Carr, wrapped firmly in a servant’s invisibility, dogging her lady’s steps.
“I see refreshments,” said her mistress, Lady Justina, and seized May’s hand to draw her along.
“We are not in France anymore, My Lady.” May tried in vain to pull free. Their return to London meant a harsh reminder of its social pecking order. A lady’s maid could no longer play companion here. Not even if they were friends. “You must treat me as your servant, which I am.”
“Fret not, nobody is paying us any heed, see?”
Lady Justina was right. The room was crowded with masked revelers preening their feathers. May gulped. The press of people and the flutter of silk spun her head. That wouldn’t do—she had a full night of chaperoning ahead. She had to stay alert.
But Justina noticed, as she always did. “I am so sorry, May. Come, breathe.” She led the way out of the ballroom and into the corridor where the cacophony diminished. “Perhaps you should find a spot to rest. Wearing yourself thin would do no good.”
“But I am your chaperone!” May frowned. “How am I to leave you among these... lions?”
May scoffed as a passing guest in an animalistic mask roared at his friends before disappearing into the sway.
“Oh, please.” Lady Justina rolled her eyes.
“You know my mother would only thank you if gentlemen hounded me in your absence. This is why I’ve come here, is it not?
She wishes me to find a husband, and I shall.
There is no point in driving you to exhaustion when it would only slow me down and put the suitors off.
Do you see any other chaperones here? Now, shoo. ”
Justina’s hand slipped out of May’s grasp, and in another instant, her vexing friend and lady was gone.
For a moment, May contemplated venturing back into the ballroom to seek her mistress out, but the onslaught on her senses was no mere trifle.
Lady Justina was right; this was no ordinary ball.
Tonight, masked ladies and gentlemen danced, conversed, and strolled, protected by their anonymity.
May could either spend half the night searching, or…
get a mask and go unnoticed and unbothered for a few hours of precious freedom.
May grabbed an abandoned fox mask from a nearby table and started her search for a hole to burrow into.
The corridors were long, but room after room was already occupied by revelers, billiards players, and those who had already resorted to locked doors.
She was about to try the last door along the hallway when a woman in a fortune teller costume appeared in the corner of her vision.
“Spare a coin for a fortune?” she crooned, her milky eyes sweeping May up and down as she neared.
“I am sorry… I do not have any money.”
“No…” The woman eyed her strangely, then barked a laugh. “Not yet anyway, but you will… soon.”
Unsettled by the likely inebriated reveler, May muttered more apologies and desperately pushed on the door handle in front of her. It gave way, and she stumbled into what turned out to be a completely empty library.
Relief washed over her. This masquerade drew more odd characters than she’d realized.
A clock chimed an hour to midnight, but that was the only sound; no revelry reached her ears.
With a contented sigh, May settled into a leather chair and lit a candle.
An unthinkable luxury for a lady’s maid to a frivolous rule-breaking mistress, but that was only half of it.
The other half was that May enjoyed such privileges much more often than she arguably had the right to.
That’s what she got for living with her best friend. That’s what she got for being rescued.
There was a time when they were equal, back in boarding school.
A time when they vowed eternal sisterhood, taking a sacred oath bound by blood.
A promise to be there for one another. Back then, they both dreamt of bright futures, not knowing to restrict their longing and spare themselves the hurt.
Those were the times when a rector could still secure his daughter the same education as a lady.
Well, for a couple of years, at least, before it all went belly-up.
May’s father died, leaving her kinless and dashing his hopes of securing her a governess’ future.
May recalled standing at the school gate, salt strangling her throat, mourning a loss that could never be righted.
Was she crying for the father she hadn’t seen in years or for the life she would never have?
Then, Justina came out and took her by the hand. “I lost my father, too,” she said. May squeezed her fingers and did not let go. “But at least, I gained a sister.”
May did not know what Justina had said to her mother, but the marchioness offered her a spot at her daughter’s side.
It had been ten years since May took it.
There was not a day she regretted it. They grew into adulthood together.
Watching Justina search for love through the years, as she abandoned one suitor after another when they proved lacking, should have been a trial…
yet it made May cherish witnessing it all the more.
Justina always dusted herself off and tried again, undeterred.
At least one of them hadn’t lost her ability to dream big.
Not that May wanted that life. Ever since the death of her father and the mother she’d lost as a baby, May ached to feel at home, and Justina was the closest she’d ever got to that.
But May still held out the hope for more.
For a piece of the love she lost with her mother’s passing.
For a fragment of her mother to guide her, keep her company. And she was so close to getting it.
Three months more.
She’d save enough money by then.
The library door opened with a grating scrape. May straightened in her chair.
“Good evening, My Lady.” A tall stranger strode in with purpose. He locked the door and left the brass key protruding from the slit. “I do thank you for coming.”
He paused, head inclined as he… awaited her response? How brazen. May swallowed tightly. Holing up here all alone was all too careless of her, but who knew to expect such behavior in a well-regarded household?
A household that was hosting a free-for-all masquerade. May felt foolish. Little wonder that this man expected a night of no consequence.
Then again, he wore no mask.
As the man moved toward her, May rose from her seat so swiftly that the blood rushed to her head.
The distance between them had not yet crossed into the realm of offensiveness, but May felt dizzyingly tiny before the stranger’s proud, broad-shouldered stature.
He was at least a head taller than her, which was not hard, but it put her line of sight directly at his collar.
Even in the dim candlelight, she could see the precision with which his cravat was tied.
He wore no costume but a jacket so finely cut and flattering on his figure that it was undoubtedly expensive enough to rival the cost of her lady’s entire wardrobe.
Yet his clothes were understated, as if to make an unwitting eye mistake him for a man of no consequence. Impossible.
As if aware of May’s trailing gaze, the man adjusted the turn of his cuffs in a most businesslike manner and inclined his head.
“You might have surmised it for yourself already, but I do believe an introduction is in order. I am Elias Alexander Abigner, Duke of Southam, but for our purposes, you might call me Elias.”
May’s heart jumped into her throat.
The Duke of Southam? He could not possibly be!
The duke was one of the five richest men in all of England, known among the ton as one of the nobility’s most no-nonsense gentlemen.
And whatever did he mean by “our purposes?
? Introducing himself by his Christian name—just how familiar did he intend to get with her?
Here was a man bold enough to show up for a costumed ball in plain clothes and lock a woman in a room with him. Was this how he let off steam? And how was she to turn the duke’s attentions away?
Better feign cooperation. She curtsied deeply. “How may I be of service to you, milord?”
The duke paused at that, before the hint of a smile crept up his lips.
“Please, My Lady, be seated.” He gestured to the chair she’d abandoned. “Let us discuss this matter in comfort.”
She descended into it as slowly as she could, watching him all the while like a hawk. He seemed oblivious to her discomfort, pulling a futon to sit beside her. The candlelight flickered across his face, and now that he was not towering over her, May’s eyes widened.
The duke wore glasses. More worryingly, the duke was handsome.
He had luscious brown hair, which seemed to be the only thing to disrupt his buttoned-up appearance.
It fell languidly to one side, and the way the duke tossed his head when a strand obscured his vision told her that some things even he could not make fall in line.