Page 55 of Beneath the Devil’s Mask (The Hidden Hearts Collection #4)

Mandell had suspected this day might come, when he would meet his former mistress again, Sara triumphant, at last breaching the doors of the society she had always craved, leaning on the arm of some poor fool she had snared to realize her ambition.

Mandell had expected to derive great amusement from the moment.

But he did not feel in the least like laughing.

Sara and Nick. How was it possible? How could they even have met? With Nick always so buried in his Parliamentary doings, Sara would have had to have arranged it, have deliberately sought Nick out, knowing him to be Mandell’s cousin.

The silence stretched out. Mandell was aware of Nick’s burning gaze upon him. He was forced to take Sara’s hand. Bending over it, he murmured for her ears alone.

“You bitch.”

“Thank you, my lord,” she muttered back, her teeth gritted in a smile. “That was exactly the sort of felicitation I expected from you.”

Sara slipped her hand from his grasp, only to be swept off by Lily to be introduced to the rest of the pack of cooing females. Mandell seized Nick by the arm and pulled him roughly to one side.

“You young idiot. What the devil have you done?”

“Fallen in love and gotten married, Mandell. Some men do, you know.”

“Not with some—some—”

“Take care,” Nick warned, his eyes blazing.

“Some female.” Mandell amended the epithet he had been about to apply to Sara. “Some woman that you cannot have known for long. Can you possibly have any idea of who she is, what her background might be?”

“I know Sara far better than you could ever imagine.”

Did you know she had once been my mistress?

Mandell had to bite his tongue. It would be unthinkable and cruel to blurt such a thing aloud.

For all his hard defiance, a hint of vulnerability lurked about the corners of Nick’s mouth, the trust of an idealistic dreamer.

Small wonder that Sara had found him such easy prey.

“Why, Nick?” he asked. “Why could you not have come and talked to me first before you did anything so rash as to elope?”

“Oh, yes, cousin, you are just the sort of tenderhearted fellow I would have sought to confide in about Sara. You would have told me to go take a cold bath or—or something worse.” There has been so much I have wanted to discuss with you, but you have never taken me seriously. No one ever has.”

He gave a shaky laugh. “Now it is too late. Everything seems to have spun out of my control. We just came from calling upon grandfather. He has cut me off completely and I don’t give a damn. As if I would ever want anything from him.”

Nick pronounced these last words with a savage vehemence that astonished Mandell.

“I love Sara, Mandell. She is the only thing I have to cling to in a world gone mad. So, if you have any insulting remarks to make about her, you had best be prepared to meet me with pistols at dawn. You always did say if we ever fought, it would have to be over a woman.”

“But not this one,” Mandell said. As he looked deep into Nick’s stormy grey eyes, he could see how well and truly Drummond was caught in Sara’s toils. He raised his hand in a gesture rife with frustration and hopelessness and started to stalk away. He was stayed by Nick’s hand on his sleeve.

“Damn it, Mandell,” Nick pleaded. “Even if you do not approve, can you not at least wish me well? That is all I am asking.”

Mandell shook him off.

“Congratulations,” he muttered. Unable to meet Nick’s eyes any longer, Mandell forced his way past the throng of Lily’s guests and strode out of the room.

Huddled on the stone bench in Lily’s garden, Anne stared at the lights that blazed in her sister’s drawing room. But the silhouettes that passed before the windows seemed to grow fewer and fewer. Most of Lily’s guests must have gone home.

How long had she been sitting out here? Hours perhaps.

Anne was not sure. After Mandell had bidden her good-bye, she had felt the need to escape before she was overcome by her emotions and disgraced them both.

Lily’s interruption had been fortuitous.

While her sister had distracted Mandell, Anne had been able to slip out through the French doors unnoticed.

Seeking the veil of darkness, the trees whispering about her like sheltering arms, Anne had sunk down upon a stone bench. A moonlit garden was such a perfect place for a stolen kiss or to sit in solitude and allow one’s heart to quietly break.

But strangely, the urge to weep had left her.

She remained dry-eyed, her heart numb. The unbearable ache of loss would strike later, but for now she sat perfectly still, feeling nothing but the cool night air upon her cheeks, listening to the rustling of the newly minted spring leaves, the distant clatter of carriages passing in the street beyond the garden wall.

Lily’s flowers had begun to bloom in earnest, but they would not reach their full exotic glory until early June.

Lily would have closed the house by then, preparing to join the fashionable crowd flocking to Brighton.

She had invited Anne and Norrie to join her and Anne supposed that they would.

Norrie would so love the sea. It would give the child something to look forward to when Anne told her that Mandell would no longer be visiting them.

No. She could not think about that just now.

Anne shifted upon the bench, wrapping her arms more tightly about herself, trying to concentrate on the more distant future.

After Brighton, she would retire with Norrie to the country and find some way to resume the placid life Anne had once known.

Given enough time, she could surely find a measure of contentment, could she not?

After all, she still had her daughter, and Lily, for all her flightiness, was a most affectionate sister.

But who would Mandell have? It was him she grieved for more than herself.

No doubt he would resume his rakehell lifestyle, likely find another mistress who would be .

.. what was the word he had used? Conformable.

Maybe he would even acquire that wife he had spoken of, the elegant, ambitious lady who would want nothing more from him than his name.

But he would be alone as he always had been. His nightmares would still come, with no one to soothe him as he slept, no one to understand.

Anne thought she would never forget the anguish in his eyes when he had said, I do not believe in love or forever after, but by God, Anne, you make me wish that I did.

Until that moment, Anne had never realized how close she had come to touching his heart.

It had made the parting from him that much more painful, more poignant, as she saw so clearly what they might have had together.

She had longed to kiss him, to hold him, to desperately find some way to give him back the part of himself that had been torn from him long ago by a terrible black night in Paris, by the enduring bitterness of an old man.

But she realized the impossibility of such a thing.

“I wanted to lead you from the darkness, my love,” she whispered. “But I could not do so. I fear you must find your own way back.”

Her eyes burned, and she was able to weep at last, but only a single tear that cascaded silently down her cheek. She dashed it away with the back of her hand. Glancing back toward the house, Anne saw that the lights from the drawing room no longer shone so bright.

Someone had begun to extinguish the candles. It must be even later than she had realized. She was a little surprised that her absence had not been noted. The furor over Mr. Drummond’s elopement must have absorbed everyone’s attention, even Mandell’s.

Lily probably assumed that Anne had retired to her room, and Anne was glad that no one had come in search of her.

She did not feel equal to facing her sister.

Lily had been too preoccupied with her own affairs these past days to notice much of what had passed between Anne and Mandell.

But Anne feared that Lily had observed enough tonight to ask Anne some awkward questions Anne had no desire to answer.

But she was not eager to find herself locked out of the house, either. Shivering, she noticed the air seemed cooler than when she had first ventured outside. Clouds sifted across the face of the moon, making the garden darker, no longer so soothing, somehow more unfriendly.

Anne rose from the bench, shaking out her skirts.

She prepared to follow the path leading back to the terrace steps when she heard the sharp snap of a twig.

Peering through the gloom, she thought she saw a shadow pass behind one of the trees.

Perhaps Lily had sent one of the footmen in search of her after all.

Surely she would have noticed someone coming down from the house. Anne fretted with the lace at the neckline of her gown, a sense of uneasiness stealing over her. She started when she detected the crack of another branch. This time the sound seemed to be coming from behind her.

She spun about, her heart thudding. “Is there anyone there?” she called. “John? Bettine? Firken?”

No one responded. The path threading through the plants and flowering shrubs remained empty. Feeling a little foolish, Anne ventured a few steps along the gravel walkway. As she neared the stone wall, she was disturbed to see the garden gate standing ajar.

Left unlatched, it had been blown open by the wind, she tried to tell herself. Except that the breeze was hardly strong enough to disturb the delicate branches of the rose bushes, let alone move a heavy iron gate.

The night itself seemed to stir around Anne, taking on a presence. She could feel the hair prickle at the back of her neck and experienced a strong urge to flee for the shelter of the house.