“And you are?”
He was inside the carriage before he had finished reading it a second time.
The drive took eleven minutes and cost him a year of them.
He gave the coachman the direction twice, the second time more loudly, though the man had understood him perfectly the first. Nathaniel had built his life upon the principle that a well-governed house did not surprise its master.
That principle now lay in pieces upon the seat beside him, with his sister’s name written through it.
Selina Gray had lived beneath his roof for four days. In that time, she had uncovered a secret correspondent and was now travelling alone through the London darkness to retrieve the sister Nathaniel had not known how to reach.
Mrs Ottley’s house blazed at every window. It stood in a newer square, built with money that had not yet learnt to be quiet about itself, and the noise of the masquerade spilt into the street in a manner no house of the older sort would have permitted.
Three carriages waited at the kerb, their lamps burning and their coachmen asleep. One of them was his own. The sight of his horses standing outside that particular door stirred something in Nathaniel which he did not care to examine upon the pavement.
He gave his name and was admitted at once. His rank was sufficient invitation here, as it was almost everywhere.
A footman offered him a mask from a tray beside the door.
Nathaniel waved it away. He had not come to be concealed.
He intended to be recognised immediately and unmistakably, because the surest protection Georgiana could possess in such a house was the uncovered face of her brother in its corridors.
He found the supper rooms by walking towards the part of the house where the music grew faint. The passage beyond the ballroom was hot, poorly lit and crowded with people who had no intention of dancing. A girl in a scarlet mask passed him laughing, her hair coming loose about her shoulders.
He heard Selina before he saw her.
“And you are?”
The answering voice belonged to a man, smooth and amused. Nathaniel rounded the corner in time to take in the scene all at once, in a single ugly frame he would spend a long while failing to forget.
A masked man in dark green stood with one hand at the small of Georgiana’s back, guiding her towards the half-open door of a private room.
His sister, flushed and uncertain beneath a domino she had plainly borrowed, had turned at the sound of Selina’s voice.
Between the pair of them and the doorway stood Selina, unmasked and dressed in grey, her chin held at the precise angle Nathaniel had begun to recognise.
“The inconvenience standing between you and a scandal, sir,” Selina said.
The man in green laughed. “You misunderstand the evening, madam. There is no scandal here. There is only supper, and a young lady who has expressed a desire for quieter company than the ballroom affords.”
“I doubt that the young lady expressed a desire to be taken into a private room.” Selina did not move from the doorway. “Step away from her, Mr Rowland. You may preserve your dignity or your evening’s design. You cannot preserve both.”
The use of his name struck him like a dropped glass. The green mask turned fully towards Selina. Above it, his eyes sharpened, and his amusement thinned into something colder and considerably more interested.
“Have we met, madam?” He tilted his head slightly, as a man might before a portrait he could not place. “I confess that I am generally better with faces.”
“We have not.”
“No,” Rowland agreed slowly. He removed his hand from Georgiana’s back without appearing conscious of the movement.
“And yet there is much in a face that one does not choose. The set of the eyes. The manner in which the mouth holds itself when it means to yield nothing. I knew a family once whose mouths were set in just that fashion. Proud people. Matters did not end well for them.”
“You are telling me a great deal about the families you have known and nothing about the young woman standing beside you.” Selina placed herself squarely before the private room.
“I am Lady Georgiana’s companion. My business in this corridor is concluded.
You may return to whatever supper you arranged and eat it alone. ”
“You are very certain of your business.” He no longer smiled beneath the mask; his mouth had narrowed to a bloodless line.
“I am sufficiently certain of yours. You encouraged a young woman to correspond with you in secret, then brought her towards a private room in a house where no one would think to object. I require no greater understanding of your intentions than that.” Her hands remained folded before her.
“I have seen enough of such performances to recognise the opening act. A more accomplished man would at least have chosen a quieter house.”
Something ugly moved behind the green mask, visible for an instant before it disappeared. “You possess a bold tongue for a paid companion.”
“I possess a bold tongue for a man whose hand is upon a young woman too uncertain to remove it herself.” Selina did not turn. “Georgiana, take my arm.”
The girl crossed to her in three quick steps, the domino slipping from one shoulder.
Fright appeared in his sister’s face at last, an hour later than it ought to have done.
She took Selina’s arm in both hands, as a much younger child might have done.
Selina allowed it without once looking down at her.
Nathaniel stepped out of the shadows.
“Georgiana. Come to me.”
Three faces turned towards him. His sister’s crumpled with relief and shame together. Selina’s expression did not alter. Rowland inclined his head without haste, like a man who had already decided that the evening was postponed rather than lost.
“Wexford,” he said. “I had heard that you kept early hours. How fortunate for your sister that you abandoned the habit.”
“I do not know you, sir.” Nathaniel placed Georgiana behind his shoulder.
“No,” Rowland said pleasantly. “You do not. No one in this corridor appears to know anyone, and I find that most convenient for us all.”
Nathaniel did not answer. In committee rooms filled with men cleverer with words than with facts, he had learnt that the surest way to lose to such a man was to enter into trade with him.
He took Georgiana by the arm, caught Selina’s eye and turned them towards the entrance hall.
He did not look back, because looking back was precisely what Rowland wanted.
Rowland did not permit them a clean departure.
He followed at an unhurried distance, near enough to be heard but far enough away to claim that he merely happened to be walking in the same direction.
The entrance hall was not empty. A stout, unmasked matron in purple stood beside the great mirror with two other ladies.
Her attention fixed upon the little party the moment it appeared, for the arrival of a duke retrieving his runaway sister was undoubtedly the finest entertainment she had witnessed all evening.
“Miss Gray, is it?” Rowland called, pitching his voice to carry. “How curious. I once knew a Calvert with just that look. The very image. But Calvert is a common enough misfortune, and the lady is called Gray, so I must be mistaken. One so often is at a masquerade.”
The matron in purple turned her head. One of her companions leant towards her.
The names Calvert and Gray had been placed within the same breath in a hall full of attentive ears.
Nathaniel could almost see them beginning their journey from the mirror to the door, and thence into every drawing room in London before Thursday.
Selina’s hand tightened upon Georgiana’s arm and drew the girl a step nearer the entrance.
“You will forgive us, sir,” she said, her voice carrying precisely as far as his had done.
“Lady Georgiana has taken a chill from the draughts in these fine new rooms, and her brother wishes her taken home. I am certain that a gentleman so interested in faces will not detain three of them at the door.”
“I detain no one, madam.” Rowland had not moved a step nearer. He had no need to. “I merely observe.”
“Then observe us leaving.”
***
Nathaniel got them into the carriage. Afterwards, he could not remember precisely how. He remembered only that his hand had remained steady upon the door and his voice steady as he gave the direction, though neither seemed to bear any relation to what was happening inside his chest.
The matron in purple had followed them as far as the steps to watch them depart, just as another observer had watched from another flight of steps four days earlier. The two images settled one over the other in his mind and refused to come apart.
Georgiana wept quietly in the corner, exhausted, frightened and nineteen.
The borrowed domino still hung from one shoulder, and she lacked the presence of mind to remove it.
After a moment, Selina reached across, unpinned it and folded it over her own knees.
Then she sat back, composed, her hands resting upon the silk and her gaze fixed on the darkened window.
Nathaniel lowered the glass by two inches, raised it again, and discovered that his fear had gone nowhere.
“You should not have entered that house alone,” he said to Selina.
“And left your sister inside it?”
“You drove alone at night to a house frequented by that man. You entered unmasked and confronted him in a corridor where anyone might hear.” He held his hat between his hands and was slowly damaging its brim. “You placed yourself in danger.”
“Your sister was in immediate danger. I was not without risk, but mine was the lesser.” Selina’s voice was quiet and perfectly level, and it cut through the carriage more cleanly than his own. “As for my reputation, Your Grace, you are scolding me for spending something I lost eight years ago.”
The words entered him and stopped.