Moonlight Masquerade (19 page)

Fletcher Belden! Christine’s head was
reeling. This was the man who had cruelly, wantonly taken a
horsewhip to her beloved Vincent? This was the sad, heartbroken
soul who had taken himself off to war in the hope of spilling his
blood all over the Spanish countryside? This was the man she was
supposed to hate?

She withdrew her hand, her fingertips
tingling where his lips had touched them. “I—I don’t know quite
what to say, Mr. Belden,” she answered at last. “While I deeply
appreciate your words, I must tell you that my affections are, um,
otherwise engaged. I’m so sorry.”

“Forget him!” Fletcher commanded with a
dismissing sweep of his arm. “Heaven knows I have, and I have just
heard of him. He doesn’t deserve you.”

It may have been dark on the balcony, but
that didn’t mean Christine could not see the twinkle in Belden’s
eyes. Tipping her head to one side, she sighed theatrically. “Alas,
Mr. Belden, I cannot. You see, I love him. I love him quite
desperately.”

Fletcher shook his head sadly, then
shrugged. “Well, no one can say I did not try, can they, Miss
Denham? So, your heart belongs to another. All right, I can accept
that. But does that mean we can’t be friends?”

Now Christine laughed out loud. The man was
insane! How could she possibly dislike him? “I would be honored to
be your friend, Mr. Belden,” she answered sincerely.

“Fletcher,” he prompted, leaning down to tap
her lightly on the chin. “Now, repeat after me:
Flet-
cher
.”

“Flet-
cher
,” Christine parroted, not
yet realizing that she was happy for the first time in weeks. “And
I am
Chris
-tine,” she continued, granting him the privilege
of her Christian name.

“
Chris
-tine! Oh, I knew you were
wonderful!” Fletcher congratulated her, holding out his arm so that
she could lay her hand on his satin clad forearm. “Now all that’s
left is to see if you can follow my lead in the waltz, and we two
shall become inseparable.”

“Are you such a wonderful dancer?” Christine
asked, allowing herself to be led back onto the dance floor.

“I am such a
terrible
dancer,” he
admitted with a grin, sweeping her into his arms. “I believe my
dearest mama must have been frightened by a performing bear.”

As they whirled about the room, his foot
more often than not finding her abused toes, Christine forgot that
she had planned to find Fletcher Belden here tonight—and then
ruthlessly use him for her own purposes.

It was nearing midnight of another
hard-fought day, but Vincent was still working, his left hand
clutched around a tennis ball, his fingers pumping as he tried to
squeeze the leather-covered object into submission. Beads of
perspiration stood out against his forehead as he labored at his
task, but he didn’t care.

He was making progress, real progress. His
arm was coming back from the dead. Christine would be so surprised,
so pleased.

“Christine.” As always, just the sound of
her name brought her face clearly to his mind’s eye.

Putting the ball back into the dish on the
table beside his chair, Vincent rose and walked over to his desk to
pick up a calendar and check the date.

“Almack’s has just reconvened for the
Season, with all its dragons in their glory as they exercise the
power of social life and death over this year’s crop of hopeful
misses,” he mused aloud, remembering the frenetic excitement of
Seasons past. “I wonder if Christine’s aunt has been successful in
procuring a voucher for her. She will be an instant sensation, I
just know it.”

Vincent dropped the calendar back onto the
desktop, wondering why he felt so depressed. He had wanted
Christine to go to London, to have a Season. Of course he had. Only
then could she make an informed decision concerning their future.
His future. She had given him so much, so very much. He owed her
that.

He walked to the window and looked out over
the moonlit garden, seeing the large, unbelievably ordinary
ballroom at Almack’s instead. The floor was empty save for
Christine, dressed in filmy white draperies, his pearls about her
slim neck. She was gliding gracefully across the floor on slippered
feet, her kid-encased arms outstretched to meet her partner, a
welcoming smile lighting her beautiful face.

A man appeared in the corner of Vincent’s
mental picture, tall and straight, and clearly anxious to have his
arms around Christine as the musicians struck up a waltz. As they
met in the center of the dance floor, Vincent could almost hear the
violins begin to play, and he watched impotently as the man whirled
Christine round and round the room, the two of them looking so
happy, so unaware of their audience.

“Damn me for the fool I am!”

Christine was in London, being toasted as
the sensation of the Season, while he was here, hiding at Hawk’s
Roost, playing with tennis balls!

He must have been out of his mind to let her
go! How could he have let her go? It had been a wonderful theory,
and very unselfish of him, but it was also the most insane thing he
had ever done.

“Lazarus!” he called out suddenly, all but
running across the room to ring the bell that would summon the
servant. “
Lazarus!
Pack my bags. We leave for London at
first light!”

W
ithin a week of
their first meeting, Christine and Fletcher were accepted as a
matched set wherever they went, and more than one enterprising
gentleman had placed a wager at his club as to the date their
engagement would be announced.

Everyone made much ado about the fact that
Fletcher Belden, “that poor, poor man,” was much deserving of the
happiness he appeared to have found, while, secretly, frustrated
mamas ground their teeth and rued the tragic loss of one of
London’s most eligible bachelors so early in the Season.

Christine was accepted everywhere, thanks to
her youthful beauty, the surety that wherever she appeared Fletcher
would not be far behind, and the general assumption that this
Nobody from Nowhere was the heiress to a substantial fortune that
had derived from a distant relative’s shrewd international trade,
West Indies shipping, or a gigantic diamond mine—depending on which
of the many gossips one chose to believe.

Whatever it was, her wealth was at least
three generations from the shop which, of course, made it perfectly
acceptable.

While Aunt Nellis went along from ball to
picnic to rout party as chaperone, blissfully unaware of the gossip
and believing that her niece had at last come to her senses and
forgotten that strange, ill-starred Lord Hawkhurst, Christine and
Fletcher were indulging themselves in a private game that had
little to do with romance and a great deal to do with having some
much-needed fun.

At least, that’s what Christine
believed.

She had quickly abandoned any thoughts of
pumping Fletcher for information about the incident with Vincent,
deciding once and for all that it was old news and best
forgotten.

In time, with her at his side to love him,
Vincent would forget the past, a past that included his obvious
adoration of a beautiful woman named Arabella. Christine wasn’t so
altruistic that she wished to hear Vincent ever wax poetic about
his lost love.

Possibly, when she was a happily married
woman with grandchildren crawling about at her feet, she would
indulge her husband in his reminiscences if he was of a mind to
share them, but not until then. Her mind, her thoughts, her hopes,
were all for the future.

What Christine did not know, but was soon to
find out, was that Fletcher’s mind was also on the future.

“Yes, your lordship, a masked ball. Lady
Wexford is trying to bring them back into fashion, or so I heard
from two gentlemen who were discussing it rather loudly last night
outside White’s,” Lazarus said, setting the tea tray in front of
his master. “It’s planned for three days time from now, and half of
London is invited.”

Hawkhurst watched as the servant poured a
cup of the hot liquid, absently making a steeple of his fingers as
he sat among the shadows in a deep burgundy leather chair in the
study of his Grosvenor Square mansion, the heavy velvet draperies
shut tight against the afternoon sunlight.

He had been in town for over a week,
entering the city after dusk in a closed, unmarked traveling
carriage, to sneak into his mansion under the cover of darkness.
The house had been in dust sheets ever since he had recovered
sufficiently from his injuries to escape to Hawk’s Roost over four
years ago, and it had been a shock to his system to enter the
dusty, stale-smelling structure and remember that the place had
once been his uncle’s pride and joy.

Lazarus and the small staff he had brought
with him from Hawk’s Roost had quickly set to work airing the
earl’s bedchamber, the kitchens, a few servants’ rooms at the top
of the house, and the small study at the rear of the first floor of
the mansion. His lordship had needed no other rooms, for he did not
plan to make his occupation of the place known and too much hustle
and bustle would have the news broadcast throughout the
ton
in an instant.

Not willing to travel about the city
personally, Vincent had been relying on Lazarus for news of
Christine, news the servant had taken it upon himself to greatly
dilute before presenting it to the man—especially when it came to
the stories linking the young woman to Vincent Mayhew’s greatest
enemy, Fletcher Belden.

Lazarus had seen this action as a kindness
to his master, a man he had begun to think of as a friend as well
as an employer, so that Vincent only knew that Christine was
experiencing a grand success in Society.

“A masquerade,” Vincent mused now, absently
accepting the cup of tea from the servant. “Oh, Lazarus, you know,
I am sorely tempted to—but no, I cannot. I promised her this time
on her own. It wouldn’t be fair of me to interrupt her fun. I only
want to be close to her, so that I might know she is all right. It
was never my plan to intrude, and so I told her aunt.”

Lazarus bit down hard on his knuckle,
clearly caught up in a dilemma. Part of him wanted his lordship to
remain happy in his ignorance, and another part of him wished for
the earl to go after the heartless, fickle Miss Denham, sweep her
into his arms, and carry her back to Hawk’s Roost before it was too
late. If his lordship were to be hurt again, it might be more than
Lazarus could do to save him.

“You could wear a domino, your lordship,”
Lazarus suggested at last, his decision made. “That way nobody
would know you, as everyone there will be rigged out in a costume
of some sort.”

“I would need a mask that covered my face
completely,” Vincent said thoughtfully. “No! I promised myself I
would stay away, and that’s just what I intend to do. There is more
than a month to go before the Season draws to a close. Then I shall
have you deliver an invitation to Hawk’s Roost to the ladies. I
shall have to wait, my friend, before I know my fate. This time I
shan’t rush my fences. Heaven knows the disaster I caused the last
time.”