Page 18 of Where Have All the Scoundrels Gone (Dukes in Disguise #2)

Chapter Eighteen

“I saw my brother this morning on his way out the door,” Lucy informed Bess over slices of seed cake. “He looked as if he’d slept about as well as you. Which is to say, not at all.”

Bess couldn’t help the way her pulse picked up and her hands shook, but she managed not to spill her tea. She took a sip. “Flattering, thank you, Lucy.”

“I don’t see how anyone in the Ton looks well rested, ever. What a mad schedule to keep. When we left the Winterton ball last night at three in the morning, it was still going strong! I was surprised you wanted to stay as late as you did.”

Bess hid the way her lower lip wanted to tremble with another sip of tea. “I suppose I’m growing used to Town hours.”

Up until three nights ago, Bess had to admit she hadn’t pressed Lucy to stay out late. When Lucy begged to leave a ball or party at midnight, before the supper was even served, Bess had acquiesced—ostensibly for Lucy’s sake, but secretly and shamefully, for her own. Because up until three nights ago, Bess had somewhere else to be.

A place—and a person—she couldn’t wait to get to.

I’d still want you if you were a mess. If the entire rest of the world burned down, I’d still want you.

But that was all over now. Bess pulled in a ragged breath and composed herself. She had finally regained enough of her senses to fear for what might happen if she continued seeing Nathaniel at The Nemesis, and she couldn’t go back now.

She had taken an incalculable risk over these last few weeks—to her reputation, such as it was, but more crucially, to her heart.

The way she had longed to throw herself, and caution, to the winds when he spoke to her like that. The way she’d wanted to rip off his mask and hers too, to trust that he meant it and wouldn’t turn from her even when he saw who she was.

But a voice in her head had pointed out that even if he knew it was Bess…he still wouldn’t truly know the truth of her past. There was no future with Nathaniel. She could not allow herself to forget it again. She had to be wise enough to let him go.

So for the past three nights, she had gone to parties and routs with Lucy, and encouraged her to stay out later, through dinner and the dancing that followed, hoping to make up for lost time.

Hoping to wear herself out, so she could finally sleep.

It hadn’t worked.

Trying to act as if she didn’t particularly care, she asked, “Where was Ashbourn off to?”

“Who knows. Off to rub his miserly hands together while oppressing the poor, I imagine.”

Tea sloshed over the rim of the delicate porcelain cup as Bess put it down with too much force. “That’s quite enough, Lucy.”

Lucy startled at the sharpness of Bess’s tone. “Bess! What? It was only a joke!”

“I’m sorry,” Bess said, taking a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have snapped. But truly, you do your brother and yourself no good by hanging onto these prejudices against him.”

And I can’t bear to hear you speak about him like that. As though he’s someone cold and grasping and uncaring. When in fact, he is just the opposite.

“Maybe I’m not being fair to Ashbourn,” Lucy admitted, though her teacup rattled in its saucer as she set it down. “Even if he’s been kind to me, in his way, it’s hard to forget how he treated us. But at least I’m trying to do what he wants. What you all want. I don’t know how much more I could be doing.”

Bess closed her eyes briefly. “I know.”

“No, you don’t know.” Lucy sat up, her blue eyes burning. “I am at home to every dull, insipid, smirking visitor. I go to every stupid ball and endless soirée anyone asks me to. I am polite and nice and proper and everything I must be to reflect well on Mama, and Gemma, and, and Father , and you, and Ashbourn! And it’s all so ridiculous and pointless and exhausting.”

“Oh, Lucy.” Bess reached across the tea table and took her friend’s hand. She was glad they were in the smallest, least formal of the sitting rooms at Ashbourn House, and not somewhere more public. There weren’t even any servants about. “My sweet girl. Do you truly hate it so much? I thought you were beginning to enjoy London now that we have seen so much more of it than the insides of ballrooms.”

“Some of the lectures have been interesting,” Lucy allowed. “But it’s not as if one can bring them up over supper after a Scotch reel. Anytime I’ve tried, I can see the gentleman’s eyes glazing over with boredom until I’m genuinely worried he’ll slip into a coma and drown in his soup.”

Bess suppressed a smile, not wishing Lucy to suppose she wasn’t taking the conversation seriously. “They can’t all be so uninteresting.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve yet to encounter one who was interested in hearing a woman talk about anything more complex than the weather.”

It was hard not to think of the way Nathaniel had listened when Bess spoke, in their little hideaway under the eaves. As if every word that fell from her lips was precious to him. As if he couldn’t wait to hear what she would say next.

Swallowing a knot of longing that felt horribly similar to grief, Bess cleared her throat. “The Season won’t last forever, it’s already June. We always intended to go home at the beginning of July. Can you not try to make the best of the weeks that are left?”

“Yes. Of course.” Lucy attempted a smile. “I had a letter from Gemma yesterday. She and Hal are so happy I’m here.”

“They want the best for you.”

“Yes. I saw the Duke of Thornecliff the other day,” Lucy said, jumping sideways to a new topic in a way that startled Bess.

“What? That absolute rotter, what did he say to you? What did he do? Where was I?”

“You were right next to me, at that mathematical demonstration and lecture, given by the Hungarian fellow with the receding hairline. Remember?”

Bess remembered doing her absolute utmost to follow the complicated rigmarole about a new kind of geometry and what it meant about the nature of all knowledge.

She’d been quite struck by the idea that someone could discover an entirely new field of mathematics that challenged what had been accepted as immutable fact for more than a millennium.

If that was possible, what other accepted facts and structures might be challenged now, and in the years ahead?

Somehow, Bess could almost imagine the conversation she might have with Nathaniel about it, if she were still meeting him at The Nemesis. In that big, canopied bed, sharing a pillow and the quiet, intimate space between them that came after their passions had been momentarily sated.

But she hadn’t seen Nathaniel in three days, because it was the wisest course and the only way to protect her foolish heart, and Lucy was still talking.

“Thornecliff didn’t do anything. I don’t think he even saw me there.” Lucy took a crumpet from the tea tray but didn’t butter it or take a bite, just stared down at it in her hand. Her fingers fiddled with the crispy edges, flaking crumbs off onto her plate. “Why is a man like that interested in the new mathematics?”

“He probably wandered into the Mathematical Society by mistake.”

Lucy left off shredding her crumpet and stood up from the table in a burst of energy. She paced restlessly over to the window and stared down into the back garden of Ashbourn House. “I wanted to march right up to him and ask him. Of course, I didn’t. I know better than to make a scene. You should be proud of me, Bess, I have finally learned a bit of wisdom.”

“I am proud of you, Lucy.” Bess watched her, concerned. “I always was.”

“I didn’t even kick up a fuss when Lord Finch trod on my dress hem at the ball last night, and ripped it enough to see a bit of my chemise. Not even when he leered and made a remark about how much I was starting to resemble my mother in her heyday.”

Lucy paced across the room, to the door. “I knew he meant some sort of insult about the scandalous gowns Mama used to wear to parties, but I didn’t push him into the punch bowl.”

Bess’s mouth was dry. “What did you say to him?”

“I smiled back and thanked him.” Lucy glanced over her shoulder at Bess, her hand on the doorknob. “I smoothed it over, the way you would have done.”

“I never meant for you to stand quietly by and let yourself be insulted!”

“But that’s the way the world works,” Lucy pointed out. “Men like Thornecliff and Finch and my brother have all the power and can say and do whatever they like. Women have to put on a smile and bear it.”

Bess felt ill. “Lucy, no, that’s not?—”

“I’m tired, Bess.” And she sounded it, weary beyond her years and dull like Lucy Lively should never, ever be. “I think I’ll take a short nap.”

Bess stood, bumping against the dainty tea table and nearly knocking over the teapot. Swearing, she sopped up the spilled tea with a scallop-edged napkin and when she looked up, Lucy was gone.

Her stomach was in knots. Was this what she’d taught Lucy? By example, if not in so many words.

I smoothed it over.

Damn it all. Bess’s mind was suddenly full of Nathaniel’s low, gravelly voice telling her she didn’t need to make everything nice all the time. That she didn’t need to smooth everything over to make other people comfortable.

That he’d want her, even if it was a little messy. If she was a mess.

Bess shook herself free of her thoughts. She had to talk to Lucy. Leaving the soggy remains of their tea where it sat, Bess hurried to the door only to collide with the footman who was about to enter.

The footman, eyes wide, fumbled his silver salver and the folded, sealed letter atop it while Bess apologized for her clumsiness.

“Not at all, Mrs. Pickford,” the footman intoned, recovering his equanimity much more quickly than Bess. “There is a letter for you.”

Thanking him, Bess took the letter and darted into the hall, but Lucy was long gone. Bess bit her lip, debating whether to interrupt her nap with a difficult conversation she wasn’t sure how to approach in the first place.

It was difficult to teach what you didn’t know, after all.

Nathaniel’s soft, incisive words the other night had peeled back a protective layer of Bess’s psyche that had long kept her from examining her own tendency to put the comfort of others before her own.

And why was that such a bad thing, she’d argued with herself for the past three days. Wasn’t it supposed to be a good thing to take other people’s feelings into account?

Life generally ran smoother when there was someone smoothing things over, Bess had always found.

This, she saw now. This was why it was a bad thing. She could see it with Lucy in a way she couldn’t for herself.

No woman should have to put up with a man’s insulting, insinuating comments merely to keep the peace. Certainly not Lucy, as vibrant and unspoiled a creature as any ever created. It shouldn’t be Lucy’s responsibility to take everything she was feeling and thinking and stuff it down deep for the sake of getting along in a society that would ask that of her.

Maybe it was the practical choice. The sensible choice. But Bess could no longer see it as the right choice for Lucy.

Later, she promised herself. She would let Lucy rest for now, and later, Bess would talk to her. Tell her—there was more to life than being sensible. That she didn’t have to hide who she was in order to be happy.

That if Lucy wanted to go home to Little Kissington at once, Bess would take her.

Heart cracking and mind racing, Bess absently broke open the seal on the letter she still held and smoothed out the thick, creamy paper.

It wasn’t a letter, but an invitation.

The honor of your company is cordially requested at the Midsummer Masquerade…

Bess’s heart leapt. Her palms went damp as she read the invitation through again, and then again to be sure.

An invitation to a masked ball. That very night.

And scrawled across the bottom of the invitation, an unsigned, handwritten note.

I prevailed upon Madame Leda to be sure you receive this letter. Masks or not, there is nothing that happens in her club that she doesn’t know about, and no one she cannot find. Her discretion is legendary, however; have no fear that she will unmask you, to me or to anyone else.

Still, I beg your forgiveness for the intrusion on your privacy, just as I would wish to beg forgiveness in person for whatever I did or said to make you stay away. I’m sure you are right to stay away—but I saw a chance to offer you an evening outside The Nemesis, to say those words to you again but out in the world, amongst other people, and I had to make the offer.

I wish I could ask you to take off your mask and stand beside me in the sunlight. Perhaps we cannot have that. But we could have tonight.

Bess’s breath came so quick and sharp, the words on the page began to fuzz and swim about. Gasping for air, she leaned against the wall of the hallway.

What was he offering, exactly? What did he want? Did he mean, truly, that he wanted to know who she was and to let her know him, in return?

To stand beside him in the sunlight.

It was unthinkable, unfathomable, impossible—and Bess wanted it with an intensity that frightened her.

Putting aside those final lines as best she could, Bess considered what was actually on offer for tonight. A chance to be together out in the world, but with their masks still in place and their secrets still safely hidden.

Heart pounding, she straightened, mind racing ahead to what she would wear, how she would slip away to meet him at the place he named at the end of his note. All the logistics of doing what she’d sworn to herself she wouldn’t do.

Because Bess was going. Wise or not, prudent or not—she wanted. And damn the consequences. She was sick of protecting herself, and sick to death of denying herself.

Sick of smoothing things over for herself.

It was her heart. She’d break it if she wanted to.

* * *

In the end, it was surprisingly easy to get away. Lucy had retired to her room after tea, and she never came out again.

“Just a touch of the headache,” Lucy said through the door. “Nothing to fret over. Send my regrets to the Marchioness of Huntingdon, will you? It was kind of her to invite me to her musicale; I shall be sorry to miss it.”

Bess had promised to check on her later and hurried away to her own rooms with her heart in her throat to get ready for the masquerade.

Around nine in the evening, after peeking into Lucy’s darkened chambers and seeing the lump the poor girl made in the bedclothes, Bess pulled her hooded cloak more tightly around her shoulders and stole down the back stairs.

She made her way to the street and hailed a cab that took her to the address at the bottom of the invitation.

“You sure, miss?” was the cab driver’s doubtful response to pulling up at the Hungerford Stairs, a rickety-looking set of bricked steps leading down from the street level to the Thames bank. The pungent smell of the river at high tide swirled up to Bess, making her nose twitch.

“I’m sure,” she said, and paid the cabbie with coins from her reticule before alighting from the carriage.

Nearly sick with nerves and anticipation, Bess stood at the top of the watermen’s stairs and peered down into the murk below. Boatmen used these stairs as safe places to pick up and drop off the passengers they ferried across the Thames.

She was to meet Nathaniel here and they would go together to the ball being held at a mansion somewhere further up the river. But it was so dark and desolate, a damp chill pervading everything, and Bess shivered.

A scrape on the pavement behind her made her jump. Was someone there?

Suddenly a man loomed out of the fog.

Gasping, Bess took a step back before the confident grace of his movements and the breadth of his shoulders registered in her brain. She knew that form.

It was him.

He was masked, of course, as she was. But tonight, instead of the scarred, battered leather mask he donned to become The Berserker, he wore a domino of plain black silk, the twin of Bess’s own. He wore no costume save that of a noble gentleman of impeccable taste—stark black and white formalwear that set off his lean face and athletic proportions beautifully.

Bess’s heart beat painfully hard, but she lifted her chin as though she had not the slightest doubt of her own ability to match his magnificence.

And since she was wearing one of the gowns he’d bought at Mrs. Lister’s, she didn’t truly doubt it, although she’d made a few alterations to the original design in hopes that might keep him from instantly recognizing a dress he’d personally picked out for her.

He held out a gloved hand, and she took it, not allowing herself to tremble.

“You came,” he murmured, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm and leading her down the uneven staircase.

“Didn’t you think I would?”

“I hoped.” His voice was so deep, it resonated through Bess’s chest. “But I didn’t know.”

Bess held her breath. Would he ask her why she’d stayed away? She didn’t know how she would answer that question.

But he didn’t ask. He merely maneuvered her with care across the short ramp out over the lapping waves of the Thames riverbank to the boat tied up at the end of it.

The waterman, projecting an impressive air of unconcern at ferrying two masked people, shoved off from the makeshift dock as soon as they were aboard.

Bess wobbled her way to a seat in the rear of the low-slung wherry, which had been fitted with a canopy draped in gaily striped fabric trimmed with tasseled fringe. It was a largeish boat for only one waterman to row, but he set his back to it and skimmed them across the river easily.

With one hand on the top of the canopy, Nathaniel balanced himself easily against the rocking of the boat. His thick thighs flexed and tensed visibly in his tight evening breeches.

Bess felt heat come into her face and turned it into the evening breeze gratefully, hoping to cool down.

Silence stretched between them, broken only by the shush of the water lapping at the boat’s sides and the shouts of other watermen across the river, casting about for customers and challenging one another to feats of speed and daring as they piloted their light crafts between larger cargo vessels and under bridges.

Nathaniel had managed to find a waterman as taciturn as himself, Bess noted with some amusement. Other than the odd grunt as he handled the oars, the man was so quiet she could almost forget he was there.

Nathaniel drew her gaze like the moon drew the tides. He was all she could see.

“Where are we going?” Bess asked.

“Wycombe House. Most of the Ton moved their residences to Mayfair a century ago, but there are still a few old piles along the Thames from the days of your namesake. Queen Elizabeth.”

He said her name like a caress. Bess felt it all the way down her spine. “Aren’t you going to ask me where I’ve been the last few nights?”

His eyes were opaque, the color of moonlight. “Your time is your own. I have already pressed you too much.”

Frustration sharpened her voice. “What if I want you to press me?”

What if I want to press you, in return, for more than you could possibly give me?

Bess averted her face, blowing out a breath over the roiling waters of the Thames, but she could feel his gaze upon her like a weight. Like firelight. Warm and steady and all-encompassing.

“Whatever you want tonight, I’ll give it to you,” he said simply.

What she wanted…Bess hardly knew herself. She should not punish him for that. It wasn’t fair.

“What I want,” she said slowly, “is to dance and drink champagne and laugh and be with you. That’s all I want.”

“Then you shall have it.” He held out his gloved hand and pulled her to her feet as the boat nosed gently against an ornate set of stone steps that disappeared under the water and led all the way up the riverbank to an arched entrance in a stone wall.

Bess thanked the waterman as Nathaniel paid him, but all her attention was on the monstrosity of a crumbling house hulking beyond the wall.

The Tudor mansion had none of the airy grace of the white-columned houses that lined Grosvenor Square. It was dark and blocky, brick towers rising sharply into the night sky, their narrow arrow-slit windows ablaze with light.

Slippery with moss and damp, the stone staircase passed under the archway whose heavy iron-bolted door was swung wide to welcome guests in. Torches blazed on either side of the door, casting a smoky, dancing glow and beckoning Bess into…another world.

The paving stones wound away from the archway through a riotously overgrown secret garden, lush and shocking in the heart of dismal, fog-bound London.

Even in the torchlit darkness, the profusions of red and pink blossoms almost seemed to glow. Tangles of purple wisteria draped the crumbling stone walls of what must have once been a thriving kitchen garden. Beds of wild mint had overtaken everything, sending their fresh scent out into the air to mingle with the stench of the river and the smoke from the torches.

“Where are we?” she breathed, holding tight to Nathaniel’s arm. It was rigid under her fingers, tense with something she couldn’t identify.

“The Midsummer Masquerade,” he said grimly.

He doesn’t want to be here , she realized, her heart sinking like a river stone. Why did he bring me if it was going to make him miserable?

There was no one else in the garden, the party being well underway. Raucous music filtered out from the open balcony doors, nothing like the sedate Mayfair orchestra Bess had become accustomed to. Laughter rang through the air over a babble of voices and the stomp of dancing feet.

“If you didn’t wish to come, you shouldn’t have invited me.” Bess let go of his arm. All her bubbly anticipation of the evening had popped, sitting in her stomach like lead.

He frowned down at her. “You want to dance. We’re going to dance.”

Bess frowned back. “It’s no good if you’re forcing yourself through the motions,” she argued. “If you’re unhappy?—”

“I’m used to unhappiness,” he said, with a wry twist to his lips. “It’s my natural state. Less so when you’re near.”

“No one’s natural state is misery,” Bess said reflexively. “But it doesn’t follow, I suppose, that it’s always easy to be happy. It takes some doing, I find.”

His lips quirked, that secret half smile she’d never seen him give anyone else. “Perhaps. I never learned the way of it.”

“Maybe I could teach you,” Bess offered, catching his hand and feeling the immediate curl of his strong fingers around hers.

“How long do you have? It would likely take years of study.”

Sorrow shafted through her, but Bess kept smiling up at him. “We have tonight.”

A silent moment passed between them, heavy with something Bess didn’t want to examine. Another burst of uproarious laughter rolled out of the party up ahead, and Nathaniel’s expression turned serious beneath the mask.

“When we get inside, stay close to me.”

Bess swayed toward him, not precisely swooning…but not not swooning, either. “Where else would I wish to be?”

“I am not jesting. This place is not…respectable.”

“Less respectable than The Nemesis?” Bess laughed, but he didn’t crack.

“Much less,” he told her. “The Nemesis may be…unconventional, but with Madame Leda in charge, it’s practically a convent compared to Wycombe House.”

“Why? Who’s in charge here?”

“No one.” Nathaniel turned to survey the mansion neutrally. “It’s been given over to chaos.”

She had a sudden, startling sense of how much he must want to be with her, if he’d brought her here to this place he’d never ordinarily go.

“But someone must own the place,” Bess said, uncertain, glancing about the tangle of plant life choking the old stone garden path and the places where the wall surrounding the property had begun to chip and split.

“A very bad man. The Duke of Thornecliff. This was his family’s London home for generations, but he abandoned responsibility for the property years ago. It sits empty all but one night a year, when its doors are thrown open to revelers in masks and outlandish costumes.”

“Why?” Bess thought she probably sounded hopelessly unsophisticated, but she couldn’t conceive of a reason for the waste of a house like this.

Nathaniel shrugged his broad shoulders, contempt written across his face as clear as daylight. “Perhaps he wishes to desecrate his family home. He certainly has done his best to tarnish any possible legacy his name could carry.”

An unwelcome bolt of empathy for Thornecliff shot through Bess. Maybe the man was simply a villain, and there was no more to the story than that.

But Bess had found that, like misery, villainy was not anyone’s natural state of being. “His family must have been very cruel to him.”

The corners of Nathaniel’s mouth turned down in bemusement. “What would that matter?”