Marquesses at the Masquerade(15)

She hugged him, blinking back tears, and asked him to relay her goodbyes to Mrs. Barton and the servants. And then, in case a Bow Street runner might really be coming for her, she left in haste.

Rosamund found a cheap room in a boarding house and began visiting employment agencies and shops, seeking work anywhere that looked likely. But work was not easy to find for a woman with no references, and as the days wore on and her meager funds dwindled, she had to ration what she spent on food. When she was finally offered work as a seamstress, at wages that would barely allow her to feed herself, she ignored the irony and accepted the position with alacrity.

As the weeks ground on, hunger settled in as a permanent guest and her own clothes grew threadbare while she sewed new gowns for fashionable ladies. She’d been right about one thing, though: the memories of Marcus and her night at the ball became the one bright spot in her days, bittersweet though the memories were because of the knowledge that she would never see him again.





Chapter Six





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Marcus, who about to set out on a journey north to visit his grandmother, had just stepped into his coach and was closing the door when Socrates unaccountably jumped out of the coach. Before Marcus had even dismounted, his dog, who had previously never run anywhere if it was not toward Marcus, had raced a good way down the street.

Marcus took off after him, calling fruitlessly, trailed by a footman doing likewise. He was still some distance from the dog when a carriage turned the corner ahead at a smart clip. Socrates was but a few feet from its wheels, and Marcus barely had time to conceive of imminent and appalling disaster, when a woman stepped into the road and snatched his dog out of harm’s way with moments to spare.

The coach rolled on obliviously as Marcus reached the woman, who was still holding his wayward dog. She was young, though he couldn’t see her face because she was wearing a bonnet and her gaze was directed at Socrates. Her worn and faded frock and the dated look of her bonnet suggested slender means, and he took her for a servant of some kind.

“Excuse me, miss,” he said, approaching. “That’s my dog you just rescued from certain disaster. I can’t thank you enough.”

She looked up, and as his eyes met hers, he was struck by the entirely unexpected, and strangely intense, sensation that he’d met her before. And was that an answering light of recognition in her own eyes?

He hardly had time to formulate these thoughts, though, because she immediately directed her eyes woodenly to his chest. As this was a not uncommon reaction among the servant classes when encountering someone like Marcus, he took little note.

He tried for a moment to place her. Had he perhaps passed her on the street before, or glimpsed her working in the home of an acquaintance? He must have encountered hundreds of servants over the years. Or perhaps she simply looked like someone he knew.

However, he really had no time for such inconsequential considerations. He was about to leave for a journey to the home of his grandmother, who’d retired to her country home as the Season was coming to an end. It had been almost three months since the masquerade ball, and despite his continuing lack of success in discovering anything about Poppy, he couldn’t forget her. She popped into his head at all sorts of odd times—when he was eating breakfast, while riding in Hyde Park, at dinner with friends. Never mind how often she appeared in his dreams. He was hoping that his grandmother would be able to provide some thoughts as to the possible identity of the owner of the pearl necklace, and thus of his mystery lady from the ball.

“He was almost hit by that carriage,” the young woman scolded him. Marcus couldn’t remember the last time he’d been scolded by anyone, being that he was thirty years of age and a marquess. Her bonnet must have come loose while she was running after Socrates, because it now began slipping toward the back of her head. As she pushed it impatiently off, he saw her face better.

She was pretty, a slim slip of a thing with thick dark brown hair escaping here and there from a careworn knot and those eyes that interested him more than they should. They were brown with flecks of gold.

She rubbed her cheek consolingly across the top of his dog’s head, though Socrates seemed unbothered by the notion that he’d just escaped death. That his dog was not merely tolerating the attentions of a stranger but making no attempt to reattach himself to Marcus was astonishing, because the only other person Socrates had shown any real interest in since Marcus had acquired him had been Poppy of the Ball.

It seemed his dog had a fondness for females or, apparently, certain females, since Socrates had not taken a particular liking to Marcus’s housekeeper, nor any of the maids, his mother, or even, inconveniently, his sister Alice, who’d volunteered to take care of him while Marcus was away. Much as he would have liked to accept her offer, he could not in good conscience have done so, since experience had taught him that as soon as Socrates perceived that his master had left the house, he began howling and didn’t stop until Marcus returned.

So far, all of Marcus’s efforts to train Socrates into better behavior had been completely ineffective. But apparently, and inexplicably, Socrates liked this young woman. Perhaps this was because she’d rescued him, but Marcus had no time to puzzle over the issue, because he needed to be on his way. He had, though, just had an idea.

“I am keenly aware that he was in great peril and that you saved his life,” he said. “For which I am extremely grateful. He’s a good-hearted fellow”—considering what he was about to propose, Marcus thought it best not to mention the diabolical howling yet—“but, I’m afraid, young and untrained. He was in my carriage, and I was closing the door when he bolted out. I can’t think why.”