Elisabeth Fairchild (9 page)

And Dulcie loved a man who always wore a mask, who lived life as a masquerade.

She gathered feathered skirts and hurried to catch up. The litter of life’s dreams whirled like the coppery gleam of scattered leaves on the path, life’s light fading. Was it time to admit defeat? To acknowledge Ramsay’s disregard? He paid little heed to her warnings. His brother’s trial--her open admission that she knew him for what he was—had not proven the turning point she longed for.

Vain hope. Vain longing.

The path took a sudden turn. A ruined Greek temple loomed, marble gods and goddesses cavorting. The garden swallowed her friends’ light, their movement. Hedges cut dark shadows, giant chess pieces interrupted in game’s midst. Rooks, knights, and kings are frozen--like her life--awaiting the next move.

At last, another bend in the path revealed a golden glow. Torches scorch the darkness. Light spilled from doors and windows flung wide-- ready for visitors--like Carlton House--the day they had met. She would never forget. One does not forget when destiny and mortality meet face to face.

Music swelled from Tristam Hall, strings and brass beckoning. The past fell away beneath hundreds of candles buttery warmth. Wall sconces, candelabra and chandelier, pushed aside darkness with flickering fingers, exposing movement, masks, the glimmer of satin and silver.

With a breathy sigh Dulcie cast aside longing and surrendered to gilt-edged sound. The Hall’s white columned gallery echoed with harpsichord and violin, formal music lending semblance of order to a masquerade’s disorder. The interior of the hall was as masked as its guests, dressed up in zebra wood veneer, faux marble finishes, dolphin-legged fainting couches and glittering ormolu clocks. A pink mist of laughter and gossip veiled all hint of silence.

They met themselves in a huge mirror that ran floor to ceiling--two masquerade birds and their masquerade keeper against a brilliant, living tapestry of dancers.

Lydia adjusted her leather falcon’s hood, and smoothed glossy chestnut hair. Dulcie plucked at dark curls overshadowing her owl’s mask, her mind on other mirrors.

Puysegur’s mirrors. Reflections on reflections, sun-gilded dust motes dancing on air. She had reached for them with a child’s giddy delight, eery music playing. Mozart’s glass armonica, the ghost harp sang
.

Ramsay stirred the same spine-tingling, giddy anticipation found in reflection on reflection, in the wail of crystal voices.

“You look charming, my dear.” Jesses jingling, Lydia linked her hands through Dulcie’s and lifted them, spreading their masquerade wings. “In fine feather.”

Smiling, Dulcie waved her toward the costumed dancers. “Go. Dance. I shall entertain myself.”

A diverting collection of animals sauntered past: a horse, a cat, a giraffe who threatened the chandelier. Dulcie shook her head owlishly when he asked her to dance, thanking him politely. No point in trying to figure out who wore the thing. She know few of the largely military company that made up this festive menagerie.

Balls and masquerades--Lydia’s delight--were not to Dulcie’s taste. Since the riot, she grow uncomfortable in confined spaces, especially crowds of high-browed strangers who consider a shipbuilder’s daughter beneath their notice. Lurking within her was the sense that what happened that day at Carlton House, could happen again.

The coach pushed. Bodies pushed.
She had stumbled, dizzy-- Both feet lifted from the pavement. The air had smelled of horseflesh and fear. It swirled with a sun-drenched, wine red, luminescence.
She had
fallen, scrabbling for purchase, fingers catching at a man’s thighs, a fleeting coat tail, a woman’s knees.

The crowd had parted, sun dazzling.

He had thrust forth a bright hand. Roger Ramsay!

“Care to dance, little owl?”

She turn, startled.

A fox bowed gracefully and held out fur-backed paw. Candlelight gleamed along the long-nosed, papier-machie mask that completely covered the gentleman’s face--his light.

“Or do you lurk in shadows to avoid such questions?”

The mask distorted his voice. Yet, something familiar in it stopped her from refusing outright.

A formal fox, his high-collared, swallow-tailed coat was of a style favored before the French Revolution. White lace frothed over wrists and throat. Embroidery decorated his waistcoat. A hunting scene. The irony brought a smile.

Emboldened, he lifted her hand. Paper mache fox lips kissed her palm. “If not a dance, then a garden stroll?”

The instant he touched me, blood raced from fingertip to shoulder, high and thin, like the sound of violins. “Ramsay!”

Chapter Fourteen

Tristam Hall, On the Thames 

He cocked his foxy head, the movement exaggerated, comical. Excitement rose like bubbling champagne. Ramsay. This clever fox could be no other. The mask overshadowed the blue of his eyes when he leaned close. “Will you come into the garden, Miss Selwyn?”

Would she? Could she?
She risked disgrace in so doing.

Rogering
Ramsay he was called in hushed tone, voices not meant for tender ears. Gossip hissed around Ramsays like water on flame. Callous names for gentlemen who possessed an angel’s light.

“Are you not enemy to the owl?”

“I promise not to bite. Come.” He turned on his heel and walked into darkness.

She hesitated, feathers fluttering, pulse taking wing. She had known this day would come. Since Carlton House. Since Hatchard’s Book Store. Since the night she heard his brother play a sad cello. And yet, now that the future arrived, all that is good, and obedient, and well-mannered within her, hesitated.

Violins sang high and sweet, like the lure of temptation. Dulcie took a deep breath, loosed a breathy sigh and set off after him, vowing to remember how this fateful, rebellious moment felt--the sound of ballroom slippers against the bricked walkway, the breeze cooling heated cheeks and throat. Breathless, she caught up, knowing all that she risked, knowing it was not the unknown that lured her into the darkness. The feeling of certainty deep within heart and soul led her after him.

Roger Ramsay reached out unerringly to tuck gloved hand into arm’s crook, fox mask inscrutable, his purpose unknown. Tension ruled her hand as it rested on the arm of London’s most notorious rogue.

The smell of the Thames filled the garden, cool, musky, faintly malodorous, a snake in the moonlight, unwinding like pent feelings, like the provocative, pulsing heat coiled deep within. Nature’s perfume fills her lungs in a rush. The future raced toward her, an earthy darkness, Ramsay and Dulcie, together at last.

A weasel and a goose went before them. A hedgehog and a horse stood star-gazing. Her foxy companion skirted them, tucked her more closely to his side, as if afraid she might slip away. He led her onto the garden’s chessboard, into a knight’s dangerous shadow. She, his pawn.

Dulcie’s pulse thundered. Fear and anticipation gathered like a storm. Her breath came fast. Father would not approve. Certainly Lydia would throw a fit. She had never allowed any gentleman to lead her astray, and yet she did not stop Ramsay, nor the future she so long awaited--a fox in the moonlight.

She broke the silence, words racing. “What would you have of me, Sir Fox, or should I call you by your rightful masquerade?”

The fox head turned. The man’s legs stopped. He drew her closer, to study her, while she read none of him through the foxy mask.

She kept her voice low, an owl’s wisdom. “
Monsieur
Gargoyle.”

His breath hissed, he lets go her elbow as if stung, and wrenched off the fox head.

His eyes, twin moonlit flashes, the set of his mouth serious, he seemed at a loss, jaw rigid, a nerve ticking beside lips that would not smile. The river’s musky breath flirted with red locks gone sable. The crown of his head shimmered, rivaling the moon, displacing darkness.

“You see right through me, Miss Selwyn,” he drawled, low-voiced, concern masquerading as nonchalance. “You are the only one in seven years to do so.”

He does not know the half of what she saw.

Through fox-red hair, a fur-backed glove passed. The glossy sheen of his forelock swung into his eyes, as it did in her dreams, where he bent to brush her cheek and temple with kisses--their glow warming her--igniting her--moonlight in the darkness.

She wanted to smooth his hair. Was it as warm and silken, as it looked? Of course, she cannot be so brazen. Dulcie turned her back on temptation, and plucked a handful of leaves. Sweetbriar perfumed the air.

 “How do you know me?”

“Your voice.” She wafted the leaves, breathing deep their sweetness. She could not admit how much his touch affected her, his light, his presence.

“At the hospital?”

She shrugged, lied. “Your posture.”

“And the Prime Minister?”

The leaves slipped her grasp, catching the moon, flickering downward in darkness.
The Prime Minister!
She closed her eyes, wishing she saw more, or less. It would be easier.

“Lions!” He circled her slowly, a fox hemming in its prey. “There were carved lions on the table where he bled to death.” Light bloomed above his head, intensifying with each word. “You knew! How?”

His bitterness backed her into the prickly wall of shrubbery. The thin wail of ballroom strings built to a bright and blinding crescendo. It did not occur to her to cry out. She wanted this, had waited for this.

“How did you know to tell me of a lion, a doorway and death? How did you know Jack would murder his friend? Why did you not tell me more?” The words come hard as blows, fast as a cracking whip.

She shook her head, speechless. The gruffness of his whispers set heart and feathers aflutter. The music shimmered to a stop, muted laughter and distant chatter strangely callous.

“I had no more to tell. I wish it were otherwise.”

“I do not understand. Help me understand.” He flung up fur-backed hands, a mythical moonlit creature. “You are possessed. . .”

She hung her head.
She was possessed.

“Of amazing potential.”

Dulcie stared into blue eyes gone midnight, overshadowed by a fox-tail forelock. The touch of fur against her cheek was as electrifying as Mesmer’s magnets.

Puysegur’s garden had been moonlight fogged. Water bubbled in Mesmer’s magnetizing machine--the baquet rods hummed in her hands, a child’s hands, shaken with potential, with scientific observation.

She had studied wide-eyed, French women who swooned with the magne’tisme, falling into gentleman’s arms, as she had fallen--into the crowd at Carlton House, against the shove of legs—into this rogue’s arms-mesmerized.

Ramsay had saved her, held her.

With bonds of emotion. Their past. Their future.

An amused moon smiled at her. She could not smile in return.

“My potential, as you would call it, falls short.” Regret bathed her like the sandalwood smell of him. “The Prime Minister lies dead. Your brother has killed a friend.”

“Yet he is alive, and I do not think he would be, were it not for you.” Ramsay’s head rose, as if to sniff darkness. Fox eyes glint, reflecting starlight, seeking secrets. “How do you see the things you do?”

Unnerved, she shrank back, so direct his question. “I--It’s difficult to explain.”

He paced a slow half circle, shadows consuming his face--a hunger in the darkness. “I am prepared to listen keenly this time.”

Her back to the thorns, pinned by his gaze, by the intensity of his interest, she tried to explain, “Images flash through my mind. Generally in connection with a person with whom I. . .”

He leaned forward, poised to snap up truth’s morsels.

 She frowned, unwilling to reveal herself. His eyes, given to the darkness, so deep she strained to see, were a remarkable place in which to lose herself.

“With whom I am close,” she said quietly.

His silhouette douses the moon. Head cocked, breath brandy-edged, he asked, “Are we close, my little bird? I daresay we might be . . .” He turned his head, closing the distance between them, each word a whispered caress. “Far closer.”

Dulcie inhaled sharply, remembering.

A woman screamed. The Guard shouted, horse rearing.

“Are you injured?” With brisk efficiency Roger Ramsay helped her up, enfolded her in his coat. Her breast brushed his sleeve.

It tingled with the memory of the flesh.

He had behaved as a gentleman should upon rescuing a damsel stripped half naked by an unruly mob. He had covered her, cared for her.

He laughed in the darkness, the sound almost as dangerous as the well of her desire. She knew that if she stepped out of the painful sting of the sweetbrier, she must step into the equally piercing pain his embrace would surely bring.

“I’ve a proposition, Miss Selwyn.”

The rise and fall of her feathered breast betrayed her agitation. He knew his power.

“You see, I want you. . .” His breath fanned her feathers. Her knees threaten to buckle.

A bell jingled. A voice cuts the darkness--Lydia insisting, “I know she is here with a gentleman fox. See! Here is his head. Dulcie!” Her voice leaps high, thin, worried. “Where are you?”

Before Dulcie could draw breath, Roger, eyes agleam, presses one fox gloved finger to her lips and loomed closer.

Thinking the rogue meant to kiss her, she closed her eyes.

“Another time, my dear,” he whispered, and stepped away.

Images flit through her mind, chimney swifts at dusk. His warmth absent, the night’s chill breath fluttered her feathers. He was gone--his light lingered, a faint trace of blue.

She went to face Lydia, who clung to her, rife with recrimination. “You must not be foolish, my dear. Wicked strangers will lead you astray.”

She had been harsher the day of the riot, her voice and manner particularly abrasive.