Moonlight Masquerade (16 page)

Reaching out his hand to softly stroke the
back of his knuckles against her cheek, Vincent said gently, “Not
good-bye. Never good-bye. You will always be in my heart.”

She reached up, trapping his hand against
her face. He was so dear to her, so necessary to her. “Then why,
Vincent? Why are you making me go? Don’t you know you’re tearing me
apart?”

His eyes were bleak as they looked at her.
“I know, my dearest, I know. But I must allow you your Season. I
must allow you to learn more about me than your own romantic
notions of this strange, reclusive earl who gave you shelter from
the storm. I must force you back into the world, the world I have
chosen to leave behind, so that you can be sure of what you want.
Please allow me to believe that at least I have learned from my
mistakes.”

“A Season! That’s my aunt’s wish, not mine.
It was never mine. I know what I want, Vincent,” Christine argued,
wrapping her arms tightly around him, pressing her head against his
chest. “Please, don’t listen to my aunt. Don’t send me away. I love
you!”

Tipping her head up by placing a finger
beneath her chin, Vincent stared at her for a long time, as if
trying to memorize every feature of her face. “Please, Christine,
don’t make this parting any more difficult for us than it already
is. Please, go now.”

“Aren’t—aren’t you even going to kiss me
before I go?” Her voice cracked with heartbreak.

Vincent smiled ruefully, shaking his head.
“I have been many things, Christine, in the course of my lifetime.
But one thing I have finally learned is that I am a complete
failure in the role of martyr. No, my darling girl, I will not kiss
you. I can’t.”

“Then will you come to London sometime, to
visit me?” she asked, already knowing the answer but, like a child
attempting to find some way to get what she wanted even after it
had been made clear to her that it was impossible, she would try
anything. But when she saw the bleakness in his eyes she relented.
“Oh, Vincent, forgive me. It’s your scars, isn’t it? But they don’t
matter now. You’re not even wearing that horrible cloak
anymore.”

“At Hawk’s Roost my scars no longer matter.
In London, they are everything,” he explained, his eyes sad. “As
you will doubtless learn before long if I can trust your dearest
aunt to ferret out the gossip, and I’m sure I can.”

Christine knew what he meant, but she also
knew it was fruitless to argue with him. He had made up his mind.
He was going to send her away, believing that the social round of
London and the scandal she was sure to hear about would serve to
make her forget him, or even despise him.

He was wrong, he was so wrong, and she had
to convince him. But how? Words meant so little. And there had
already been too many words. It was only action that would prove
anything to him now.

“I’ll go, Vincent, as you want me to,” she
told him just before she stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to
his before he had a chance to move away from her. Her heart was in
her kiss, her love for him eloquently, wordlessly expressed. Her
fingers spread against his chest, then slid upward to clasp his
shoulders, her mouth opening beneath his as his heart gave him no
choice but to take what she had offered.

He flung his right arm about her and drew
her hard against him one last time, the two of them communicating
silently, their simmering passion allowed this fleeting moment of
freedom. Then Christine slowly pushed herself away from him.

“I’ll not change my mind, Vincent,” she told
him, her voice steady, her course at last certain. “I will always
love you. But I will not come to you here at the end of the Season
as proof of my affections. You are not the only one to be laying
down conditions for our love. If you love me, really love me, you
will have to come to me in London. I won’t let you keep hiding from
the world.”

Vincent stiffened. “I can’t come to London,
Christine. It would bring back all the old hurts. I can’t punish
Fletcher that way, for one thing, and I don’t want to hurt
you.”

“Fletcher?” Christine wrinkled her brow,
trying to understand. “Oh, I think I know. Fletcher is the man who
beat you, isn’t he? Do you think he would try something else? He
wouldn’t dare!”

“No,” Vincent answered shortly. “He’s had
sufficient time for a dozen acts of revenge. I just don’t want to
bring back all his painful memories of his sister, and my face, my
very presence, would do that. And then the tongues would begin to
wag all over again. He’s been hurt enough. I can’t go to London,
even for you, Christine.”

Christine’s control broke. “I hate this man
Fletcher! I hate him!” she said fervently, her small hands drawn up
into tight fists.

“Don’t hate him, Christine. Fletcher Belden
is a good man.”

“Then I hate what he’s done to you. Surely
I’m allowed that? Why can’t you tell me what happened to his sister
if you feel it is so important that I know? Don’t you see, it
doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I love you!”

Vincent’s smile was sad. “Yet we have both
put conditions on that love, haven’t we? I once told you that love
was the greatest sin a person could commit. I had begun to think I
was wrong. Now I am not so sure.”

“Vincent, I—”

“Go, Christine, have your Season,” he
interrupted, taking her elbow once more and purposefully leading
her toward the doorway. “In June, when the last snow is only a
memory, we will meet again, somehow, some way, I promise. And your
aunt has agreed to it, at least for now.”

Christine turned to him one last time,
pressing her hand against his chest, to make one last plea. “Will
you at least say it? Will you at least give me something to take
with me on this terrible journey to London?”

Vincent didn’t have to ask what she meant.
“I love you, Christine,” he said, his voice little more than a
hoarse whisper. “I love you.”

And then he was gone, leaving her to climb
aboard the coach with only Lazarus to help her, carefully avoiding
her aunt’s eyes as she curled herself into the far corner, her head
rocking listlessly against the cushions as the servant gave the
order to “Spring ’em.”

London

N
ellis Denham
believed the narrow rented house in Half Moon Street to be
perfectly wonderful.

Christine Denham couldn’t have cared if the
house had been located atop a dung hill.

“Well, maybe I would have taken exception to
that
,” Christine conceded grudgingly, wrinkling her nose as
she sat curled in the window seat that overlooked the street,
determined to maintain her miserable mood.

She had been in legendary Londontown for
over a fortnight, and her mood had shifted from sorrowful to
pettish—or at least that’s what her aunt had told her before
daringly going off to Bond Street with the newly employed maid,
Harriet, in tow, leaving her stubborn niece in the care of the cook
who had been hired at the same time.

Ernestine Flam, a very large, beefy woman
whose idea of service had a lot to do with having her own meals
available hourly but little to do with being at anyone else’s beck
and call, had retired to the small kitchen on the ground floor the
moment the door had closed on Aunt Nellis’s back, leaving Christine
to her own devices.

Christine had immediately repaired to the
second-floor window seat, a handy vantage point from which she
could glare down at the passersby while silently condemning them
all for not being the Earl of Hawkhurst, come to declare his
undying love.

How she hated this city, this house, this
room, this bleak existence! And how, she thought, feeling slightly
embarrassed, she had made her aunt suffer for it.

She hadn’t spoken to the older woman all the
way to London—not a single word—which wasn’t easily done, as the
trip had taken them a full three days to accomplish. At first she
had been too upset, too brokenhearted, to utter a word. However,
once she’d had time to remember that Nellis had spoken with Vincent
while she, suffering silently, had been kept in the dark about it,
Christine had allowed herself to build up quite a grudge against
her devious though most probably well-intentioned aunt.

But when the woman had been so foolish as to
complain, quite vocally, on their very first stop, that Christine
had purposely forgotten her second-best bonnet at Hawk’s Roost,
Christine’s anger had known no bounds.

That anger had sustained her, keeping her
from remembering that it had been Vincent, and not her aunt, who
had banished her from Hawk’s Roost.

“And all for a silly Season in London,” she
complained, shaking her head. She looked down at the street again,
seeing the dirt and disorder and the multitude of nameless,
faceless people rushing hither and thither like ants hurriedly
preparing for a long winter. “Why should anyone in their right mind
ever miss this? London has all the charm of a pigsty.”

It was true that Christine hadn’t actually
seen London at her loud, sprawling best. The Season was not fully
upon the city, so that few of the really fashionable people,
showing off their furs and feathers and finery, were out and about
as yet. The hard winter had also taken its toll, and the muddy
roadways into London had been clogged with overloaded drays and
merchantmen eager to get their wares to market.

The houses their coach had passed were
stained all over with chimney soot, while ashes seemingly
ankle-deep were scattered about the flagways that overlooked the
clogged gutters. Half-naked children, their feet wrapped in rags,
had run alongside the coach, begging for pennies, while the smell
of horse manure and burning meat pies seeped beneath the doors to
assault Christine’s nose.

Even the sight of St. Paul’s, barely visible
in the descending twilight and ascending fog, had done little to
make Christine believe that her coming Season could be any more
palatable than a visit to the tooth drawer.

“It will look better to you as soon as the
weather clears,” her aunt had assured her, and Christine had turned
her head to hide a bitter smile, remembering an Aunt Nellis more
used to portending doom than delight.

“I’ll never forget the summer our roses were
so outstandingly beautiful,” Christine said out loud, using her
forefinger to smear small circles on the windowpane, her mind
traveling back to that pleasant, innocent time when she had never
heard of Vincent Mayhew.

The entire garden had been glorious that
year, with the roses particularly plentiful and hardy, but Aunt
Nellis, ever one to see the storm clouds behind every rainbow, had
fretted and fussed over each and every bloom, sure that disaster
was hovering just outside the garden walls, ready to strike at the
lovely flowers.

“It will probably rain for a week, rotting
those new buds right on their branches,” she had prophesied darkly
in early June.

“This August sun is far too hot. We’ve seen
the last good rose this summer, Christine,” she had vowed as they
sat on the stone bench in the early evening, admiring the latest
crop of glorious blooms.

“I understand dear Sir Algernon
Balderfield’s roses have been devastated by a blight,” Aunt Nellis
had informed her niece over a bowl of fragrant yellow roses as they
breakfasted on the terrace one morning in September. “Ours will
surely be next.”

And in late October, with the nip of autumn
in the air, as Christine lowered her head to sniff at the heady
fragrance of a flawless blood-red rose, Aunt Nellis had uttered the
final, damning prophesy, “Yes, they’re fine now—but wait until the
beetles come!”

Christine’s shoulders shook with mirth as
she remembered her aunt’s words, but her laughter stopped as a
tall, cloaked figure alighted from a carriage onto the flagway.
“Vincent!” she gasped, pressing both palms against the windowpane.
“Oh, Vincent, you’ve come for me!”

She watched as he stood looking up and down
the street, holding her breath, silently directing him to her door.
He took a step in the right direction, then turned to walk the
other way, stopping to mount front steps a set of two doors further
down the street.

“No, no! You’ve got the wrong house,” she
cried, hitting her fist against the glass. “Not there! I’m here,
Vincent, I’m here!”

A moment later the man reappeared, with
another gentleman beside him, to return to the carriage. As they
walked along, the tall man threw back his head to laugh at
something his friend had said and his hood slid away, to reveal a
full head of blond hair.

“Oh, Vincent,” Christine groaned, pressing
her forehead against the glass in defeat, tears stinging her eyes.
“How my life has changed. It seems that all I have left to do now
is sit here, waiting for Aunt Nellis’s beetles.”