Marquesses at the Masquerade(92)

“I was affronted, but mostly I was amused.” She linked her arm with Tyne’s. “If we’re to find my escort, he’s the only monk in the crowd.”

The monk was Jeremy Benton, Lord Luddington, heir to an earldom. The Valkyrie moved in good company, though Luddington was a flirting fool.

“I expect Brother Monk will be among the last to leave. Shall I escort you home?” The offer was out in all its well-meant, bold impropriety before Tyne could call it back. Down the corridor, glass shattered and a roar went up from the crowd in the cardroom.

“I’ll need my cloak,” Madam Valkyrie said. “I can’t parade across London looking like this.”

“Not without your spear, you can’t,” Tyne said. “Take my cloak. What it lacks in fashion, it makes up for in warmth.”

He draped the fur cape about the Valkyrie’s shoulders and fastened the frogs. The cloak reached nearly to the floor on her, which would afford her both warmth and modesty.

A laughing footman ran past—full tilt—with two shepherdesses in pursuit.

“Time to leave,” Tyne said, offering his arm. “I believe that was Lord Malmsey impersonating a footman.”

“Interesting strategy. I should at least tell Brother Monk that I’ve found another escort.”

Tyne tripped the next escapee from the ballroom—a man dressed as a jockey—by the simple expedient of tangling the man’s boots in the handle of the sledgehammer.

“Find the monk and tell him the Valkyrie is being escorted home by a trustworthy friend.”

“I say, is that—?”

Tyne hefted his sledgehammer across his shoulders, like a pugilist stretching with an oaken staff. “Find him now, please.”

The jockey saluted with his riding crop. “Will do, guv.”

Tyne took the lady’s hand, lest some marauding pirate carry her off, and led her through the front door. The night air was brisk, the drive lined with waiting coaches and lounging linkboys.

“We’ll wait half an hour for my coachman to get through this tangle,” Tyne said. “Do you live far from here?”

Her hand was warm in his—apparently, Valkyries were no more inclined to wear gloves than Norse gods were. The familiarity of clasped hands inspired in Tyne a mixture of awkwardness and pleasure. He hadn’t held hands with a lady since he and Josephine had courted. He had forgotten the comfortable friendliness of joining hands. He stood beneath the wavering torches, telling himself to turn loose of his companion and trying to summon his coach forward with a wish.

He wasn’t a leering centurion or a frisky monk, and yet, dropping the lady’s hand would seem more gauche than pretending he was at ease with the presumption.

“I live not far from here,” Madam Valkyrie said. “We could walk the distance by the time your coach arrives.”

“Fine notion. Lead on, if you please.”

“You’re sure it’s no bother?”

How he wished she’d take off that dratted mask, but then he’d have to remove his own mask and reveal himself to be not a god, but rather, a shy marquess toting a sledgehammer through Mayfair.

“No bother at all, though I need a name for you. In my mind, you’re Madam Valkyrie, which conjures images of strapping shield-maidens and longboats with bedsheets flapping from their rigging.”

“You have a vivid imagination, Thor.”

“If I am Thor, perhaps you could be Freya?”

“A goddess. That will serve.”

They reached the foot of the drive, and Freya turned left, in the direction of Tyne’s neighborhood. This was coincidence, of course, not good luck, fate, or divine providence. Certainly not a sign from on high, or Valhalla, or anywhere else of any import. Nonetheless, in the lowly region of Tyne’s breeding organs, notice had been taken that he was in proximity to a female of marriageable age and interesting temperament.

“What made you decide to be a Valkyrie tonight?”

“I didn’t. I’m impersonating a friend, and she chose to be a Valkyrie. Why are you Thor?”

“The costume was simple. The cloak you’re wearing was sent to me by a cousin in Saint Petersburg. Crossed garters are a matter of some purloined harness, and the sledgehammer is borrowed. Add an old shirt and some worn chamois breeches and riding boots, and you have a god.”

Also a surprisingly comfortable ensemble. No cravat half-choking a fellow, no sleeve buttons at his wrists, no waistcoat that must lie just so under his exquisitely tailored evening coat. Perhaps wardrobe alone explained why the Vikings were such a cheerful lot.

“This thing on my head,” Freya said. “I feel as if I’m wearing a copper pot on my hair. It’s beastly uncomfortable.”

That Tyne should enjoy rare liberty from the tyranny of his tailor while Freya suffered seemed unfair.

“Let’s have it off, shall we? Whatever stewpot gave up its life to become your helm won’t be missed if it should end up in yonder bushes.”

“Please,” she said, dropping Tyne’s hand. “The dratted thing pinches behind my ears.” She tried to lift the helmet off, but some bolt or other caught in the collar of her cloak.

“Let me,” Tyne said, moving behind her. He explored along the edge of the cape’s collar with his fingers—gently and thoroughly—finding warm skin and soft tresses in addition to fur snagged on a joint in the metal. He ripped the fur and lifted the helmet. Calling upon long-dormant cricket skills, he tossed the helmet up and used his trusty sledgehammer to bat it off into the darkened square beside the walkway.