Marquesses at the Masquerade(95)
Though, how likely was that, when Lucy had bided under his lordship’s nose for months, and he’d done little more than hand her out of carriages and ask her to pass the teapot?
A linkboy trotted past, the lamplight giving an instant’s illumination to an aquiline profile and hair curling with the evening damp.
“We are to be prudent deities,” Thor said. “That ought to be a contradiction in terms.”
She liked him. Liked his lively mind, his subtle humor, his skillful kisses. If nothing else, this evening had proved that she could like a man and that there was more to passion than she’d known with her randy captain.
“I will be a prudent, impatient goddess for the next two weeks,” she said. “On that thought, I shall bid you good night.”
Lucy had chosen this house because a pair of widowed sisters lived here. They would neither hear a conversation on their porch, nor spare the expense of candles kept lit through the night. They would assuredly keep their front door locked, however, and thus sending Thor on his way was imperative.
He leaned down to kiss Lucy’s cheek. “Eleven of the clock, Vauxhall. Two weeks. Until then, I’ll see you in my dreams.”
He strode off into the darkness, pausing only to scoop up his mask. She watched him go, waited another ten minutes, then found her mask and hurried down the walkway toward home.
*
“Do my eyes deceive, or has the Marquess of Tyne made a social call?” Lord Luddington asked, ambling to the sideboard. “Hair of the dog or tea?” He lifted the glass stopper from a decanter and let it clink back into place.
“Neither,” Tyne replied, “though of course you should dose yourself with whatever medicinal will ease your present ailment. I trust you kept late hours last night, as usual?”
Luddington had been the sole monk at the previous evening’s bacchanal. Sole, but hardly solitary.
He pushed sandy-blond hair from his eyes and poured himself a tot of brandy. “The ladies at the masquerade were much in want of company, and my charitable nature had to oblige them. I didn’t see you there, but then, how can the blandishments of a masked ball compare with parliamentary bills regarding turnpike watermen?”
“Without those watermen—”
Luddington held up a hand. “Please, Tyne, no politics. I truly did overexert myself last night. The ladies were all agog about some chap who’d decked himself out as Thor. You never heard so much twittering and cooing about the size of a man’s hammer before, and nothing would do but they must compare… well, the night was long, so to speak.”
Tyne had already returned the sledgehammer to the stable. “Thor, you say? Not very original.”
“What would you know about originality? He had the hammer, the fur cape, the trews, the whole bit. Strode about the ballroom with his shirt half unbuttoned and sent the ladies into quite a stir. I reckon he went back to Valhalla with some toothsome shepherdess, for nobody knows who he was.”
“A good-sized fellow?”
Luddington peered at Tyne over the rim of his glass. “A bit taller than you, more broad-shouldered. More the strapping specimen, less the scholarly politician.”
Insult warred with amusement, though Tyne had time for neither. Miss Fletcher had requested an interview with him before supper, and Tyne dared not be late.
“You doubtless escorted a lady to the festivities. What did she make of the Norseman?”
Tyne posed the question while peering out the window to the garden behind the house. Daffodils were making an effort, and the tulips weren’t far behind. He waited, his back turned to his host, and hoped for a name.
“The plaguey female ran off. Some tipsy jockey told me she’d departed the premises with a woodsman or a barbarian of some sort, and my sister will tear a strip off my backside, for I didn’t see any woodsmen. Saw plenty of pillaging and sacking as the evening wore on, not that I’m complaining.”
“Your sister dislikes woodsmen?”
Luddington downed half his drink, then refilled his glass. “You don’t know Marianne. She entrusted some friend of hers to me, an acquaintance from finishing school, and then I lost her. Marianne frowns on brothers who lose her friends. I frown on me for losing her friend.”
“Then Marianne ought not to send her friends to masquerades, where the entire point of the evening is to lose one’s identity. You don’t know the name of the female whom you lost?”
Tyne had little acquaintance with Marianne Benton, though she’d made her come out a good ten years ago. If she was Freya’s contemporary, then Freya was a mature woman, a point that weighed in favor of keeping Tyne’s next appointment with her.
“I wasn’t supposed to know who she was,” Luddington said. “I prefer not to be burdened with a lady’s secrets—or a shepherdess’s—for even Boxhaven’s masquerades are not monuments to strict propriety. Next time he holds one, you should go, Tyne. Do you good to get out and socialize with a friendly nymph or two.”
Luddington gave him a bored look that suggested Tyne’s secret was being kept—for now.
“I’ll bear your suggestion in mind, though a hammer strikes me as a particularly inane fashion accessory when a gentleman’s usual purpose is to stand up with the wallflowers. Good day, Luddington, and next year, consider escorting a Valkyrie instead of a shepherdess. I’ll leave you to your hair of the dog and show myself out.”