Page 6

Five

WAYLAND’S, LONDON - JUNE 5, 1816

XANDER

My hiding place was quite nice—I wasn’t too proud to admit it, but I was hiding.

Mother and Dav were in a competition, each determined to see who could expose themselves to the most ridicule in a single evening. Mother was winning, but only by the smallest of margins.

I should be chaperoning Davina—well, Mother ought to have been chaperoning Davina but she required a chaperone of her own. And I was just… exhausted. I felt absolutely every one of my thirty years and then some.

Annoyance hung around my shoulders like a particularly inconvenient cloak. Neither of them meant to add to my difficulties—at least not seriously. It was simply that they failed to think of me at all. I loved them both with all of my heart, and Celine, too, but I was attending a masquerade ball hosted by a woman I once intended to wed. And none of them had paused for a moment.

Juliet was proper and amiable as always, and kind—she was unfailingly kind—even when forcing my hand. But with continued whispers of my long-broken engagement and lingering stares from Beaumont’s speech yesterday, my already precarious situation felt at a cliff’s edge.

So when Juliet offered a safe haven, I snatched the opportunity with the desperation of a man dying of thirst and offered water.

Far from sparse, Wayland’s office featured a cozy fireplace surrounded by massive dark green leather chairs, with a drink cart against the wall between the door and the hearth. The opposite end featured an oversized mahogany desk. It was obvious he no longer made frequent use of the room. Matching empty shelves that surely once held ledgers lined one wall, and the desk was entirely bereft of paperwork.

At Juliet’s urging, I helped myself to the drink tray and poured a finger of the fine scotch. But before I could settle into one of the chairs to enjoy the relief of solitude and watch the dying embers until guilt at abandoning my family to humiliation and ruin overtook me, a sharp knock sounded.

I spun to face the door. The itchy sensation of trespassing lingered low on my spine even though I had been invited.

When the ornately carved wood swung open without allowing time for a response, breath abandoned my body in a rush leaving me lightheaded and fluttery.

The man was… lovely. There was no other word for it. Tall with a long, lean frame that was perfectly muscled. In the firelight, his hair shone a dark auburn. It was styled, but a few pieces escaped from the pomade to brush his forehead. A sharp, ruddy complected jaw with the barest hint of growth was visible below his domino. An impossibly soft and full lower lip was topped by a thinner but still enticing upper lip. But his eyes… They were a shade even I could not name. Not green, not blue, but so perfectly matched—enhanced—by his mask. The effect was breathtaking.

And he was within grabbing distance. I could catch his arm, pull him to me, and drag his lips to mine. I hadn’t had such a visceral reaction to a man since I was a green boy. When his throat bobbed, it took everything inside me to hold back a groan.

“Your Grace,” he said in a musical, honeyed tenor. So distracted was I, by thoughts of licking that throat, that it was a full beat before I made the connection.

He knew me.

That wasn’t surprising. Most of the ton knew of me. But I didn’t know him, and that was a travesty I could not abide.

“I’m afraid you have me at a loss, Lord…” My voice was higher pitched than I’d like, shrill.

The edge of his lip quirked up, and his gaze left mine, finding the drink in his hand. He raised the glass and took a sip, and I caught my first sight of his hands. Long, elegant fingers ending in blunt tips with well-manicured nails caressed the glass. The back of that hand was wiry—but strong. Christ, what could a man do with hands like that?

The glass slipped away, leaving a droplet behind on his burnished copper lip. He was trying to kill me—it was the only explanation.

“Mister,” he replied.

“Mister?” I repeated dimly.

A soft chuckle left him as he stepped back against the door, leaning against it just to fluster me further. “I do not know if I should be insulted that you find me so forgettable, or pleased that you’ve managed to forget what an arse I made of myself.”

“I beg your pardon.” The words escaped as one in a disgruntled rush.

“We’ve met.”

“Surely not. I would remember.”

“Apparently not,” he retorted before imbibing another sip. His impossible eyes were bright, amused when they met mine over the glass.

Usually, I loathed that, when people poked bemused fun at my generally flustered nature. But on him… it didn’t read as him laughing at me but more as though he found the situation diverting.

More concerning though, I’d met this man, this perfect specimen, and forgotten entirely. How? And why? And how? It should not have been possible.

“Remind me?”

He tipped back the last of his drink before inhaling through his teeth. “I don’t think I will. How often in life are you gifted with a second first impression?” There was something in his tone—a playful tease?

“I assure you, you make an exceptional second impression. Certainly enough to overshadow any forgotten first.” The statement was bolder than I usually would have allowed but still held a hint of plausible deniability.

With a thoughtful hum he pressed off the door and strode confidently to the drink cart where he helped himself to a rather fine scotch with ease.

“How are we to converse if I don’t know your name?” I added.

“We seem to be doing well enough at present.” He stepped over to one of the chairs and turned it to face the other before the fire. Wordlessly, he sat, legs stretched out in front of him. Those legs should have been too long to settle casually, but he managed it gracefully, with one straightened before him, and the other crossed over at the ankle. “Make yourself comfortable,” he added, gesturing toward the other chair with one elegant hand.

Eagerly, I clambered to sit before realizing I was angled toward the fire and not this man. With an awkward, rocking shuffle and a harsh scraping sound, I turned the chair to face him. It was entirely the opposite of his confident maneuver and I felt a flush curling up my neck.

“I really must insist on a name.”

His head cocked to the side with a secret smile. “You are not used to being denied, are you?”

I considered that for a moment. It was true, most material things that I wanted, I received. Usually in triplicate. But the real things, the important things, the most essential thing… That I could never, would never have. But that hadn’t been what he meant.

“Not really, no. Which is why you must tell me.”

“Tom,” he said simply.

I felt every bit of the intimacy when I asked, “Mr. Tom…”

“Just Tom. It is a masquerade. I won’t be the one to ruin the mystery.”

“I can hardly call you Tom while you address me by my title.”

“I’ll call you whatever you’d like,” he said, a pleased lilt in his voice. He couldn’t possibly mean… Surely, this was just an amusing conversation for him, not anything more.

I’d had a dalliance or two on the continent before my brother passed, visited a molly house once or twice, but I hadn’t been brave enough to try anything in town. In nearly a decade, I hadn’t had so much as a flirtation.

And never with someone who looked like that .

“Xander,” I said, opting for a casual tone, steering us toward slightly safer waters.

“ Xander ,” he repeated. And, oh was I wrong… These waters were too deep to stand, the current too sharp to tread. No one had ever said my name with such dulcet reverence. I wanted it breathed into my neck between kisses.

“Perhaps not,” I choked, desperate for distance.

“Too intimate?”

“Yes.”

“Very well, Your Grace .” Somehow that might have been worse. A bit of lusty gravel layered his tone now.

“Xander it is,” I half shrieked.

The effort earned me another chuckle. “If you insist. Lady Juliet sent me to bring you a drink. It seems she quite forgot about the presence of the drink cart.”

I was so distracted by the grin he’d finished the speech on that it took a moment to grasp the implication. Juliet. But she had instructed me to make full use of the cart. Which meant…

She had been Lady Juliet Dalton still when I told her my secret. She was, perhaps, the only person alive who knew for certain. My mother and sister suspected. Cee too. But I’d told Juliet in a fit of desperation when I could not offer her the release from our engagement that she’d begged for. She’d been unexpectedly kind when she learned the truth, at least before she forced my hand and left me no choice but to end it.

And she had sent this man up to the office in what I was beginning to suspect was an ill-considered matchmaking contrivance…

“Perhaps she thought I could use a friendly face,” I supplied, flailing for any other explanation than the one I was staring down.

“Something like that.”

“I should return downstairs. If you know who I am, then you know my mother and sister are surely wreaking havoc.”

“Ju—Lady Juliet will see to your mother. And I passed Lady Davina on my way up. Lady Grayson was trying to arrange a match between your sister and her brother.”

“Well then I certainly need to return.”

I couldn’t force my legs to obey my commands, to stand. Not when he was so close, and his eyes had tiny flecks of amber in the center.

“There are worse suitors. He won’t do anything untoward,” he said.

“It’s not him I’m worried about.”

His head tipped back into a laugh, a giggle really. It was so unexpected, so endearing a sound, that I couldn’t help but join him.

“I had a similar thought when I saw them. But if he’s anything like his sister, he’s more formidable than he looks.”

It was all the excuse I needed to do precisely as I wished, which was to sit and bask in this man’s presence.

“So you know Lady Juliet well enough for her to entrust you with errands. And you speak with familiarity about Lady Grayson and her brother.”

“This again? Come now, Xander. It’s a masquerade. Do not spoil the fun.”

I’d heard that my entire life. Dav was always complaining that I ruined everything. But after Gabriel was killed and father passed, one of us had to be responsible. And it certainly wouldn’t be mother or Dav.

Tonight, though, for one night, with this stranger… It was a masquerade. I could be someone else, someone carefree, someone I had only ever dreamed of becoming.

“All right. Tonight, I’m Xander. Just Xander. Only until the unmasking.”

“Agreed, just Xander. Until midnight,” he said in that same tone that sent chills up my spine. And then he leaned forward and held out his hand between us.

By the time I finally realized what he intended, he’d started to pull back. In a rush, I caught his bare hand in my gloved one and tightened my fingers around his. A gentlemen’s agreement.