Chapter 23
The red gown fit her to perfection, as did the mask.
She slipped into the green salon. The note had come but a few minutes ago, asking her to join Victor there.
How could she resist when she could be anyone that she wanted?
How had she not understood that before? That she could pick her life up and put it down again, becoming anyone she wished.
Was that really true? Could she shed her past self?
Could she become a new person as easily as it was to put on this gown?
Somehow, now, she rather thought it was.
She didn’t have to wear the mask of her old self anymore because it didn’t fit.
Oh, dear heaven, she had been wearing it for so long that the edges had chafed and the ribbons had cut into her and now she was ready to break free. She had to because if she did not, she realized that the pain would only get worse and worse.
She’d thought if she left him and ran away as she always did that the pain would stop, but it had not. It had gotten worse, and she feared that if she did not change who she was now, that pain would only envelop her, consume her until she met a dark end that no sunshine could ever reach.
She slipped into the green salon, holding her fan, eager to see him. Glad to make amends, glad to apologize, glad to tell him that she loved him, that—
“My, what a different gown that is from the one I first met you in.”
She whipped around. “Allworthy?” she burst out.
“That’s right,” he said, striding towards her out of the shadows. His blond hair was pomaded back from his face, and his cheeks looked like two knife slashes. His blue eyes shown like diamonds in the light. His dark clothes reminded her of the devil’s wings.
“Lurking about, are we? Like a rat in the corner?” she drawled.
He frowned. “You are so—”
“What?” she challenged.
“Honest,” he said. His gaze searched her face. “Why aren’t you afraid of me now?” he demanded.
“Why would I be afraid of someone like you?” she asked. “You’re such a small person.”
His mouth tightened. “I was invited here, you know.”
“No, I did not know,” she said with a shrug, snapping her fan open and waving it slowly before her. “I thought the duke had better taste than that.”
“Dukes stick together. My father’s a duke,” he said.
“It has done little for you, except make you horrible.”
He stepped forward again. “Are you trying to make me hurt you?”
She narrowed her eyes, but then she forced herself to calm and said, “I can’t make you hurt me, sir. I am not in control of your limbs. I am not a puppeteer, and you are not my puppet. Anything you do is of your own volition.”
“You got me in trouble with my father,” he hissed. “He told me to leave you be.”
She arched a brow. “Struggle with obedience, do you?”
Allworthy strolled across the room. “Someone like you shouldn’t speak thus to me.”
“Must you be so boring?” she asked, pursing her lips. “Is this really all you’ve come for?”
“I heard,” he said, towering over her, which caused his blond hair to tumble over his brow, “that you were gaining quite the reputation. I was going to tear you down before this party. Put you in your rightful place. But my father said I should leave it be. But how can I let it stand? A mouse like you, getting the better of me? How dare you mock me? How dare you hit me with that parasol? But your group of friends, all male, of course, ran to protect you. But let’s see how you do without them here. ”
Her fist tightened around her fan. “If we must,” she said.
He smiled slowly before he darted forward, ready to grab her in his arms, but then she remembered…
And she smiled up at him. “You know, you’re right.”
He stopped. “What?”
“You’re right,” she whispered. “In the end, I could never win against a man like you and the sooner I understand that, the better.”
He hesitated. “You understand that?”
“Of course I do,” she said. “How fortunate I am that you summoned me here.”
He took another step forward. “Well said,” he ventured, his lips twisting in a smile, so foolish, so used to getting his way that he couldn’t see what was coming.
“And how fortunate I am to get to do this.”
Slowly, she lifted her hand and placed it gently on his chest, and then just as he began to lean into her, she lifted her fan and jabbed it right into his Adam’s apple.
He let out the strangest squawking noise and darted back, grabbing at his throat.
“Oh dear,” she exclaimed. “I haven’t killed you, have I?”
Before another word could be spoken, the Earl of Seaborough darted into the room. “My God, that was magnificent, but let’s make sure he isn’t dead.”
Victor crossed to Allworthy, looked him in the eyes, pulled his hands away from his throat, and said, “No, just winded.”
Allworthy sucked in breath. “I’m g-going t-to murder you both.”
“You can try,” Victor said, “but I think you should run home to your papa because it’s very clear that this young lady has bested you.
And from what you said, it seems that your father doesn’t want you here.
And when she’s my wife, she’ll be untouchable.
Do you understand?” Victor swung his gaze back to her. “If she ever agrees, that is.”
“Oh, I agree now,” she blurted before she blushed and added, “if only to infuriate him.”
“That’s not a good reason to marry me, but I’ll take it,” said Victor. “Pull the bell pull, my love. We must get a footman to help him out.”
She rushed to the bell pull by the fire, tugged it, and within a moment, there was a gentleman coming to take the duke’s son away.
Allworthy, eyes wide, unable to say another word, went with the footman.
“Do you think that we shall have to keep doing this?” She sighed. “Over and over? He doesn’t seem to learn.”
“Only if you stay in England,” he said softly.
She tsked. “Then I suppose I might have to get very used to wielding my fan and my parasol.”
“Do you mean it?” he asked, his voice full of surprise as he turned to her.
“Did you send me that note?” she asked instead of answering right away.
“I did actually, but I had no idea he would be here.” Victor’s lip curled with distaste at the mention of Allworthy.
She contemplated the door. “I wonder how he found out that I would be coming this way.”
“No doubt he bribed a servant,” Victor said.
She snorted. “He is such a fool. We are all fools,” she said, “in different ways, but I am grateful that I am not a fool with regards to you anymore.”
He hesitated, then he slipped his arms around her. “I was afraid for a moment, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been. You are far too capable to be hurt by a man like that.”
“You taught me well,” she said, tilting her head back, wondering when they would both cross over from banter to serious discourse, half afraid and half hopeful.
“I didn’t have to teach you. It was already in you,” he said. “I merely helped you free it.”
“You’ve helped me free other things too,” she said.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head, his brow furrowing. “It seems like I’ve hurt you,” he said, “over and over again, and I never meant to.”
“I know,” she whispered, lifting her hand and touching his lips. “We’ve both hurt each other. We both misunderstood each other. And I’ve been terribly, terribly willful.”
“You, willful?” he teased. “I, on the other hand, am an angel.”
She tapped her fan against his arm.
“Careful now,” he murmured, gazing deep into her eyes. “I know how deadly you are with that.”
She smiled up at him, tears stinging her eyes.
Tears of a very different sort. “Now let’s be serious,” she said.
“I have been in pain for so long and pretending that I was not. I thought that I was keeping it under lock and key, but I was not. I was simply keeping myself from joy and happiness and having any life of my own. You freed me from that, you know?”
“I thought you were going to run away,” he whispered. “And keep me away too.”
“I thought I was also.” She lifted her hand to the mask on her face. “But someone taught me that I can put down the past and pick up my future.”
“And who was this?” he asked, his gaze searching over her face.
“Fate,” she whispered.
“Fate?” he asked. “That’s most odd.”
“This house is odd. Everything about this is odd. But you know what? Fate is right. I cannot escape you. I cannot escape my heart or the way I love you.”
He pulled her into his arms. “And I would never wish you to. I cannot escape you either, but I’ve never wanted that. From the moment I spotted you in the garden with your ribbons tied about Cupid’s bow, I knew we were in for it,” he said.
“You are clearly far cleverer than I am,” she teased.
“How could it not be true?” he asked, his own eyes glimmering with tears as he stroked a lock of her hair back from her cheek. “What with those two launching us together?”
“I was not pricked by the arrow,” she pointed out.
“Nor I,” he said. “But, sometimes, perhaps one doesn’t have to be pricked by an arrow to know that love has arrived.”
“At least we won’t have to go on the great epic journey that they did.”
“I don’t know,” he groaned, holding her closer, until there wasn’t a breath of air between them. “This has already been a bit of an epic journey. Who knows what will come next?”
She lifted her hand to his face and to the black mask that was there.
She, for a moment, wondered if he’d been the person in her room, but she knew it was not him.
She didn’t know if she’d ever know who that strange man was who’d professed to be Fate, who seemed to have a soul that understood the world in a way that most did not.
“Here is to not knowing what comes next,” she whispered. “I have no wish to know because I don’t want the past. I don’t want the future. All I want, my darling Victor, is you, now, here in my arms, full of love.”
And then, as if he felt exactly the same and wanted to show it and not speak it, Victor kissed her. He kissed her with all the love that she had just described, kissed her as if no other moment would ever exist except this one.
For all time.