Page 82 of Unmasking the Earl

“Doesn’t the place look splendid?” exclaimed Becca. “It will look even more spectacular after dark.”

It was the night of the ball, and they had just reached the front of the long line of carriages.

“The beauty fair lifts one’s heart,” agreed Cassie as she stepped down from their carriage under the imposing stone facade of Highmore House.

The flambeaux were all lit and glittering radiantly, just as she remembered from the previous ball. But how changed she was since that time!

She sighed, then realized she shouldn’t, as it made her breasts rise rather too precariously within the confines of the tightly-laced corset. Her waist was cinched in so much she had to make a real effort to breathe, and she sincerely hoped the dances wouldn’t be too lively, lest she faint clean away.

She wandered off to one side while the task of unloading her father’s Bath chair from the roof of the carriage was undertaken, and gazed up at the bright windows of Highmore, remembering the way she had felt all those months ago, on the night she first met Wycherley and his intriguing manservant. A young girl, full of hope and excitement, consorting with dashing rakes, dreaming and scheming over Julian…

It was from one of these windows she’d first spied Ned and felt that shocking thrill of attraction, that immediate connection between them. Her eyes misted.

“Well, I think you should have put a chemise underneath it.”

What? Cassie turned about sharply. That was Julian’s voice, surely? Was he addressing her, or…?

“Don’t be such a bore, Julian. You know you like to see what I have on display.”

Cassie’s hand flew to her mouth, and she stared in horror at the closed chaise which had just crunched to a halt behind their own equipage. Lady Lucy and Julian had arrived together in her chaise. And they were having an argument before the evening had even started.

“At least wear the fichu over it. You would not wish to take cold.”

“It’s a hot night! Oh, you’re being so dull, Julikins. I thought we had come out to enjoy ourselves.”

Julikins?

Ugh. Julian had always been hugely averse to the idea of pet names. If he now answered to Julikins, he must be truly smitten.

“I know what this is about. You wish to show yourself off in case Captain Wycherley is here. You want him to be jealous, to regret what he has missed out on by throwing you over for Lady Georgiana Talbot.”

Cassie pricked up her ears. It was public knowledge that Wycherley was courting Georgiana? Did this mean Ned had given the couple his blessing? That he’d finally forgiven the errant captain?

He’d seen sense at last. Or…had he done it…for Cassie?

No. Now she was just being fanciful.

She wished she knew what had become of Ned. Why had he not sought her out? Had she destroyed any chance they might have had of finding happiness together?

It was all too depressing.

But one should not be miserable at a ball. So she rejoined Becca and Papa to help supervise two impressively-built footmen in lifting his Bath chair up the steps.

After greeting their host, resplendent in a Louis XIV Sun King costume, they entered the ballroom. It had been decked out splendidly with all manner of flora, trailing ivy and vines, and swathes of evergreen bay and laurel.

Would she really be able to enjoy herself, despite the absence of the only man she wished to see?

Perhaps she should seek solace with some of her former admirers—perfectly suitable gentlemen she’d ignored because she had eyes only for Julian. She could try to win them back. A lady must marry, after all, and it might as well be while she was still young enough to attract a good catch.

There was Harold Spencer who had red hair, so he would be easy to see if he wasn’t in a costume wig. Perhaps Archie Carlisle was here, as well—the one who talked a great deal about angling. If she set her cap at him, she’d have to learn how to swim. And put worms on hooks. And wrap feathers round fearsomely sharp flies.

Carlisle was quickly crossed off her potential husband list. Neither he nor Harold Spencer had ever made her heart beat faster, as Julian had. No, there was only one other man who had ever done so, and he had made her heart pump so much harder.

She looked up from her bleak thoughts with a start. A tall man, very elegantly attired in a long black silk coat with embroidered waistcoat and black pantaloons, was bowing before her. His face was mostly obscured by the mask he wore, his hair hidden by a wig which was the masculine version of her own. He cut a very fine figure. A figure which—surely?—she recognized.

Scarcely daring to hope that it was really him, that it could truly be the Earl of Stranraer, she answered his bow with the obligatory curtsey—quite a task in such voluminous skirts—and inclined her head. Then she held out the wrist from which her little ivory dance card and pencil were suspended, for her prospective partner to claim his dance.

He took the liberty of supporting her wrist as he wrote his name.