Unmasking Deception, page 11
“As you see,” Minton replied, smiling to disguise his testiness. In fact, it unnerved him that Dom’s brother should appear moments after they were discussing the man himself.
“Nor I,” Lord Richard murmured with a mocking glance at where his arm should have been. “Perhaps you’d care to join me in the card room with a bottle of brandy?”
“Excellent notion,” Jarvey said, and Minton, with a last fulminating glance at his brother and Viola Dove, followed them.
They collected another army officer on the way into the card room and sat down. Jarvey seemed quite relaxed, but Minton’s unease was justified when, after his first losing hand, Lord Richard threw down his cards in disgust.
“My mind’s not on the wretched cards. To be honest, I wish my sister-in-law had simply canceled the ball.”
“No point in giving into talk,” his officer friend contributed. “No one has done anything wrong.”
“Except Dom,” Lord Richard pointed out. “What was he thinking of, bolting like that? There will be no leniency now.”
Minton and Jarvey avoided looking at each other during this exchange. But to Minton’s alarm, Lord Richard’s gaze suddenly landed on him.
“You were friends of his, were you not?” Lord Richard murmured. “Perhaps you know what was going on in his head.”
“No idea,” Jarvey said apologetically. “A law unto himself is old Dom. I mean Lord Dominic.”
“Then he has not been in touch with you since his arrest?”
“They’ve recaptured him?” Minton said quickly.
Lord Richard’s smile was thin, “I meant his original arrest.”
“No. He had no reason to contact us,” Jarvey said.
“Perhaps he assumed the magistrate would. Did he?”
“No,” Minton said shortly. “I see no reason why he would.”
Lord Richard’s eyes widened. “Really? And yet you walked home from your gaming hell with him and Crawley, did you not? At the very least, you should have been able to verify or dispute his version of events.”
Minton found himself trapped by the direct, merciless gaze. For the first time, it struck him that Lord Richard was more than a wounded man. He was a soldier who, before his injury, had slogged his way across the Peninsula and France, fighting battles and skirmishes and keeping his own men in line. That took a certain hardness, a certain determination. A certain perceptiveness that Minton did not like at all.
“Whatever happened or didn’t between Dom and Crawley, it did so after we parted from them,” Jarvey said easily.
“I see. So, you didn’t go on to Crawley’s rooms that night?”
“Why would we?” Minton said shortly. “It was late when we left the hell. And frankly, Dom was too drunk to play.”
“But not too drunk to slide a blade between a man’s ribs?”
“That would have been bad luck,” Jarvey said. “He was too drunk to know what he was doing, in my view. And there was never any spite in Dom.”
“No, there isn’t,” Lord Richard agreed. “And yet, he appeared to take Crawley’s money and his jeweled sleeve buttons. He’d never shown any criminal tendencies before.”
“Mystery,” Jarvey pronounced, shaking his head. “Who knows what was going on in Dom’s foggy brain at the time?”
“It seems no one troubled to find out,” Lord Richard observed.
“He’s your brother,” Minton pointed out, stung by the apparent accusation.
“Indeed. It is certainly past time his friends and family banded together to discover the truth. What do you say, gentlemen?”
“Always happy to help,” Jarvey said amiably.
“Indeed,” Minton muttered. “Though I don’t see how.”
“Oh, you already have.” Lord Richard smiled and summoned a passing footman. For a moment, his smile slipped as though the servant were too slow. But fresh glasses were quickly placed on the table, and Lord Richard picked up the cards.
*
It was true that no one noticed servants. Even other servants at such a busy event as this. It helped that extra staff had been engaged for the evening, but Dominic couldn’t help being amused to receive abrupt orders from menservants who had looked after his every need since childhood.
Obediently, Dominic collected abandoned glasses, and on his own initiative, circulated about the ballroom offering fresh glasses of bubbling champagne and refreshing lemonade.
He saw Viola as soon as he entered the room, waltzing with Sir Alfred Minton. Yet, oddly, it took a moment to recognize her. She held herself differently. The faint smile on her lips was civil but without the animation that made her eyes sparkle. Her face was curiously like a mask of Viola’s features.
But then, he could hardly blame her for that. Alfred Minton, as he recalled, was very fond of himself and talked of little else.
He wanted to snatch her away from him, protect her from whatever troubled or even just bored her. He wanted to make her smile up at him with parted lips, with that look in her eyes that made it impossible not to kiss her.
But he could not stand gawping at her all evening. He moved hastily onward and, at last, saw his father.
Swerving toward him, it seemed the old gentleman looked just as he always did, as though Dominic’s disgrace and unjust conviction, meant nothing to him. Only when he thrust the tray almost under the marquess’s nose did he recognize the new lines of age. Had Dominic caused those? Had they appeared before or after his arrest? He had to admit he had always been glad to annoy his parent, at first to persuade the marquess to buy him a commission, and then simply out of habit.
Dominic hadn’t killed Crawley. But his lifestyle had put him in the way of suspicion. What was the point in being furious about being misjudged as a dishonorable man when he had spent years acquiring and even relishing the reputation of a rakehell?
His father waved him away, though a couple of the important men with him accepted a glass without glancing at the footman who bore the tray. It amused Dominic on one level, but suddenly, he didn’t want to look at his father’s aging face. He didn’t like his own flash of insight and self-criticism.
Thrusting that aside, Dominic toured the room, served his sister-in-law, two of his brothers, and several other people who had known him since childhood, none of whom spared him a glance. Replenishing his tray with glasses of brandy for variety, he swept into the card room and was intrigued to discover Richard in company with both Minton and Jarvey at once.
Richard even summoned him with a careless gesture, and when he approached, glanced up—and had almost given the whole game away, staring in appalled recognition. Though he quickly recovered himself, and none of his companions as much as glanced at the footman, Dominic’s mischievous soul was delighted. He bowed gravely to his brother and swaggered off in search of Viola once more.
After all, Richard would now do his subtle best to throw Dominic out.
He found her easily enough, seated beside a middle-aged lady who bore enough resemblance to Viola to be her mother. A pretty debutante sat on her other side, while a fashionable young gentlemen stood by them in conversation. If anything, Viola looked even more uncomfortable than she had with Minton.
Concerned, Dominic abandoned his brandy glasses and replaced them with fresh glasses of champagne and lemonade from the table close by. Then he walked toward them, only just remembering to offer his tray to other wallflowers and dowagers on his way.
“Do you ride, Miss Dove?” the young man was asking Viola as he approached.
“Not in London. We have no horses here,” Viola replied with a hint of regret. Her mother nudged her none too gently, and Viola immediately smiled as though it had been a joke. “Do you enjoy riding, sir?”
The conversation, like many between debutantes at such formal events, was turgid. But what concerned Dominic, even more than the fact that Viola did not shine as she had even in a dank cellar, was the sheer discomfort that emanated from her. She hated this. So much so that when Dominic presented his tray, she almost snatched the nearest glass as soon as her mother had waved him away.
Of course, no one looked at him. No one saw him, not even Viola. So, as he straightened and moved away, he quite deliberately brushed her dancing slipper with the toe of his shoe. Her gaze flickered up in surprise. And that, he hoped, was good enough. But he could not look back at her, could not wink and nod to an alcove.
Stupidly, he wanted to throw down his tray and sweep her into a waltz, like the one in Maida Gardens. Even not knowing her, that had been fun. And whether outraged or amused, her whole face had been full of expression, of delight in her surroundings. He yearned to bring that joy back to her now.
Instead, he walked out of the ballroom with his tray and ducked into the curtained alcove beyond.
*
Viola could not believe her eyes.
The footman looked like Dominic.
Even bewigged and in livery, it was Dominic’s profile, Dominic’s easy walk, that was in no way subservient. It was almost a swagger.
She had never seen a servant swagger before. Except at inns where they were trying to impress their peers and had no expectation of being seen by their “betters.”
It could not be Dominic. He would not be stupid enough to come to his father’s house and parade his fugitive person in public! It was more likely to be some half-brother, an illegitimate offspring of the marquess who had been given a place in the household.
But he had brushed his foot against hers. That had to have been deliberate.
She was still wrestling with this oddity when the girl beside her rose, smiling, and the young man bowed. They went off to dance together.
“Viola, he would have asked you,” her mother said in despair. “If you would only try—”
Viola sprang up, took a gulp of champagne, and handed the glass to her stunned parent. “Excuse me, Mama. I must retire for a moment. I shan’t be long, so there is no need to come with me.”
She followed in the wake of the footman who looked like Dominic, skirting the dance floor and climbing the small, curved staircase to the passageway beyond, which was lined with curtained alcoves and portraits. Ahead, a footman stepped out of an alcove and glanced over his shoulder. The same one, and it was Dominic, she was sure of it.
She hurried after him as though she were heading for the cloakroom. Fortunately, the passage and the hallway beyond were empty. The footman, now halfway up the front staircase, glanced back at her, finger on his lips, as though he knew she was about to hiss something to him. Instead, after a quick glance behind her, she hitched her skirts and ran upstairs behind him.
On the landing, a liveried arm reached out of an open doorway and hauled her into a dimly lit room.
Barely pausing long enough to make sure the room was empty—it appeared to be a library on a grand scale—she jerked her elbow out of his hold and used it to nudge the door closed. At the same time, with her free hand, she reached up and wrenched off the footman’s wig.
Oh yes, there was Dominic, grinning at her like a mischievous schoolboy.
“What are you doing here, you utter madman?” she demanded in little more than a whisper.
“Looking for you, of course.”
“Well, I think if I danced with a footman, it would draw far too much unwelcome attention to both of us!”
“I’m serious,” he protested, walking across to a table in the window, where he poured liquid from a decanter into a glass. He glanced at her, eyebrows raised in question, and she shook her head impatiently. He replaced the stopper in the decanter and picked up the glass before he walked back to her.
“You are mad coming here,” she fumed. “Does Lord Richard know?”
“He does now,” Dominic murmured. “Look, don’t flap and fuss. No one sees servants, not at a gathering like this.”
“Not even the other servants?” she demanded, sure he had not even thought of that, for she doubted he saw servants either.
But he only shrugged. “My sister-in-law hires extra staff for large parties. They rarely know each other. Might we stop talking about that so we can have the discussion I came for? I don’t know how long we have before Richard tracks me down.”
“What is it?” she demanded, her gaze flickering to the door.
“You are angry with me.”
“Do you blame me? We hid you in our cellar, and you throw that all away by coming here.”
“I haven’t thrown it away, and we have agreed to move on from tonight. I want to talk about last night.”
“What about it?” she managed, though the betraying flush warmed her neck and face.
He took another sip from his glass and set it on the nearest bookshelf, capturing her gaze. “I said or did something wrong, something that made you angry, and I don’t think it was kissing you.”
“You shouldn’t have kissed me,” she retorted, though honesty compelled her to add, “I shouldn’t have kissed you either.”
“But that isn’t what made you avoid me.”
She stared at him. “You kissed me and dismissed me. I inflict myself on uninterested people every day. I will not make you one of them.”
He groaned. “Oh, God bless your innocent heart and my crass stupidity.” He stepped nearer and took her face between his hands. “That wasn’t a dismissal, Viola. It was my last gentlemanly instinct forcing me not to take advantage of you. If I prove my innocence, I have little enough to offer you. As it is, I shouldn’t even be speaking to you.”
For an instant, his mouth pressed to hers, and she seized his wrists, unsure if she was keeping him there or throwing him off.
“But there is more going on here,” he said softly. “What do you mean, you inflict yourself on uninterested people every day?”
She pulled away, turning her back on him, dragging a book from the shelf in a vain effort to distract herself or him. “I am a young woman of no fortune, charm, or beauty, clearly on the marriage mart. It is safe to say, I am not the most popular of the ladies making their entrance to society this Season. And yet civility compels people to speak to me, dance with me occasionally when they would clearly rather be somewhere else. With someone else.”
It was humiliating to admit as much to him of all people. But he had never been hers and never would be, and he must have seen…
“It is you who would clearly rather be somewhere else,” he said frankly, moving around her to stand facing her once more. He leaned his shoulder against the shelves, while she glanced up from the dancing letters on the page, peering at him uncertainly.
“I am doing my duty as best I can,” she said. “But you are right. I hate the whole concept of this marriage mart, displaying one’s wares for sale to the highest bidder. With every moment a trap for the unwary, the clumsy, who forget the ridiculous number of rules…”
“When you were dancing with Alfred Minton, when you were conversing with those two young people… I have never seen you so stiff, so lacking in the animation that makes you so…you.”
“I have to be so careful,” she whispered. “Or I say the wrong things, grow too lively, reveal my ignorance… I have to hide so much to achieve anything for my family. And I know—dear God, I know!—it is never enough.”
“Ignorance,” he repeated. “There are not many young ladies who would choose a treatise on fish to distract them.”
She blinked at the book in her hand. “Fish? I didn’t even look at it.”
“Is it about fish?”
She snapped the book shut and thrust it at him. “I don’t care.”
“But you don’t know either, do you? Can you read at all, Viola?”
She closed her eyes in shame and misery. Even in friendship with him, she was failing. “With peace and calm, I can, though very slowly. I see the letters differently, in the wrong places, so that the words make no sense. I do not see them in the right order. I didn’t even know that much, couldn’t read anything at all until Miss Mather came… She is the girls’ governess, and she has come across other people with the same problem. Some think we are stupid, but she does not. She has helped me to work out which letters become transposed and how to compensate in my mind…but it is slow, frustrating…”
“You are overcoming,” he said softly. “Nothing is more admirable than that.”
Her eyes snapped open of their own accord.
“Forget the rules,” he murmured. “You are not clumsy or ignorant, and your tongue, if wayward, is delightful. You were enchanting at Maida Gardens because you were yourself.”
In wonder, she let him take her hand and raise it to his lips. He turned it and kissed the inside of her wrist. A thrill passed through her veins, making her shiver. His eyes glowed excitingly, warm and enticing.
“For what it’s worth,” he said ruefully. “I wish I stood before you a better man.”
“And not accused of murder,” she added.
His lips quirked, and he bent his head, giving her time to avoid it if she wished. She didn’t. She even parted her lips, and at his first touch, her stomach dived. Butterflies soared as she melted into his arms and his mouth sank deeper.
She pushed her fingers through his hair, caressed his face, the strong column of his neck.
And then the click of the door had them springing apart. He moved in front of her, with no time to reach his wig before someone came in and closed the door.
Lord Richard regarded them without expression. “Miss Dove, should I knock him down? And don’t think I couldn’t.”
“Yes,” Dominic said ruefully.
“No,” Viola replied at the same time. “Though I thank you for the offer of protection.”
“Did you learn anything from Jarvey and Minton?” Dominic demanded.
Lord Richard shrugged. “They’re sticking to their story of leaving you and Crawley to walk off toward St. James on your own.”
“Do you believe them?”
“No. More than that, I think they are in this, whatever this is, together. They know more than they’re saying. And if we are to find out what that is before you are clapped up again and executed, I suggest you stop running around town like a free man without a care in the world. Come, let’s go.”
