The Black Mask (17 page)

Colonel Wapton glanced up at her, and the intensity of his gaze was like sunlight focused through a magnifying lens. “Keep it safe. Tell no one you have it. Do this for me, for one who admired you.”

“I will keep it because you are an officer in His Majesty’s Service,” she said. He winced as though she’d raised her riding crop to strike him. Puzzled and pained, Rose continued, “But pray come to retrieve this parcel as soon as you may. I don’t wish to keep it any longer than the few days you have promised.”

“If I don’t come for it in three days, you may destroy the contents. It won’t matter then.” More composed, he glanced again toward the figure on horseback down the path. Rose turned her head as well. Sir Niles sat like a statue, his horse under perfect control. When she brought her gaze back to the path beside her, the colonel had disappeared. Only the faintly waving branches of the bush beside her showed which way he’d gone.

“Men,” said Rose with newfound conviction, “are more confusing than French verbs.”

Aunt Paige looked up from her petit-point work. “What prompts this grand statement?” she asked with a girlish smile.

“Sir Niles.
You
saw him when we left. Wasn’t he in a cheerful mood?”

“So far as I could tell from the window, yes.”

Rose flung her beautiful hat onto an empty chair. “Would you believe he hardly spoke three words to me after ... after we reached the park?”

“That doesn’t sound like Sir Niles. He’s usually so courteous, even to excess.”

“Not today. I know it’s difficult to converse on horseback, but it isn’t impossible. Yet every to every gambit I tried, he would return nothing but single word answers. Not always the right word, either!”

“Perhaps he was preoccupied by something, business affairs or such like. All the same, he is usually more attentive, especially, or so I have noticed, to you.”

“Yes,” Rose admitted. “I thought so, too. Now I can see my mistake.”

“I thought you didn’t care for him. Isn’t he the most cold and unfeeling of men?”

“Yes, he is every bit of that. Even so, I thought, sometimes, that he treated me differently from other women.”

Paige made room for Rose to sit beside her. “Search your heart, Rose. Have you ever liked a man more than Sir Niles?”

Rose thought of a kiss freely given to a man of mystery whose face she could not see. It was a thrill that would live in her memory for as long as she had breath. And yet...

“Sir Niles isn’t as cold and harsh as I first believed,” Rose admitted softly. “He has, on several occasions, shown me amazing consideration.” She remembered the kindness of his eyes, how they laughed when she amused him, giving her such a sensation of triumph, and how intensely they dwelled on her when she longed for his understanding.

“On the other hand,” Rose went on, interrupting Paige before she could begin the words she’d opened her mouth to say, “he is terribly moody. I have seen him change within the space of a minute between charming, kind, all I could wish, to someone whose lightest word can chill my blood.”

“People do have moods, Rose. I have them myself.”

“Not like this. There’s no reason for these lightning changes. If there were, even if I couldn’t completely understand his reasons, perhaps then I would fall in love with him.”

“Oh, my dear ...” Paige said, her eyes wide. “You couldn’t try a little harder, could you? He’d be exactly the right sort of husband for you. He’s so generous, and the Alardyce fortune is more than sufficient to command the elegances of life. You’d never know a moment’s want or worry.”

“Not financially, I suppose. As it is, however, I could never trust myself to such a man. I should be too afraid.”

“You might change him once you were married,” Paige ventured.

“And if I couldn’t? What then? I couldn’t live on the edge of a volcano.”

“If he loved you enough ...”

“If he loved me, wouldn’t I know it by now? Who is it who said ‘love and a cough cannot be hidden’?”

Paige reflected a moment. “I think you are failing to account for Sir Niles’s reputation. He has so often shown disdain for marriage. Were he to propose to you, he would have to face a great deal of talk. Anyone would shrink-at first from such a step.”

“He’s no coward.”

Even in the midst of her preoccupation, Rose noticed Aunt Paige frowned at her response.

“It’s not cowardice,” she said, her voice rising. “We live in this world of gossip and social rivalry. It may not be an ideal world, but it is ours and we understand the rules by which it is governed. One cannot simply throw all that away without some due thought toward what a different life would mean. How is Sir Niles to build himself a new place in that world as a married man? I can’t see him giving up London society to be a gentleman farmer or a banker, can you?”

“But if you are in love,” Rose said, “as you obviously love the general...”

“Love isn’t everything when you are middle-aged as it is when you are young.”

“So you have said.”

The silence between them hummed with reconsidered arguments. Paige spoke first. “Have you considered that if you were to marry Sir Niles, Rupert’s debts would vanish? Sir Niles couldn’t press his brother-in-law for payment. Furthermore, the only thing that prevents Rupert from joining the army is your father’s adamant refusal to purchase a commission. Sir Niles could purchase any number of them and never miss the cost.”

“I am not likely to marry for the sole purpose of providing my brother with a commission. There are better reasons.”

Rose decided that, if she could not be honest about everything to everyone, she could at least tell the unvarnished truth to her favorite female relation. “I love you dearly, Aunt Paige. I could wish my mother entered into my affairs with even half your sympathy and affection. But I must tell you without roundaboutation that if you don’t marry Sir Augustus O’Banyon and embrace the happiness he can give you, I will think of you as nothing more than a fool.”

“Rose!” Paige shrank away in shock. “This to me?”

“Have you any reason to doubt his affections, except the speed with which he declared them? No, you have not. Do you know of anything against his character? Surely someone among your gossiping friends would have informed you had he a wife secreted somewhere, or if he’d given any cause for disquiet to the army.”

“No, I’ve heard nothing.”

“Then what else holds you back but fear of the unknown?”

‘The same thing, in short, that holds you back from Sir Niles,” Paige shot back.

Rose held up her hands, acknowledging a hit. “With one difference, Aunt. Sir Augustus has given you every evidence of affection including, as I believe you told me, a formal proposal of marriage. Sir Niles has not demonstrated a single such sign.” Yet even as she spoke, her ankle tingled as she remembered his firm, warm touch encircling her skin.

She ignored it. A tingling ankle, much like a stolen kiss at a ball, was nothing to base one’s future life upon. Rational and unbiased thinking would give her a firmer foundation for wedded happiness.

“Are you certain he has not made any such advance? His partiality for your company has been noticed even by less interested parties than your aunt.”

“He has never said or done anything even the strictest moralist could take exception to.”

Again, Paige laughed. “Shall I commiserate with you?”

Rose smiled shyly. She had sounded rather forlorn. “I have always been too diffident to encourage him. Not to mention, what would I do if he laughed at me?”

* * * *

In her room, Rose picked up the leather satchel which Hurst had carried up for her. Though prey to the gnawing tooth of curiosity, Rose knew it would be against: her honor to peek at whatever it was Colonel Wapton went to such lengths to conceal. He’d not given her permission to look inside.

Somewhat cavalierly, she tossed the satchel into the wardrobe and shut the door upon it.

Having had no sleep the night before, Rose had told Paige she was intending to rest for the remainder of the day and meant to take her noon meal in bed. As she undressed, she had cause to open the wardrobe several times to remove her nightdress and robe, to choose the clothes she would wear later, and to retrieve a chemise that had fallen down inside. Every time she opened the door, she fought with herself again over whether she should undo the clasp and look inside the leather case.

Her better self prevailed, but her baser nature wouldn’t let the matter go.

When her maid came up, Rose hailed her with relief. “I’ve made rather a mess,” she said, watching Lucy pick up her habit and underclothing.

“Never you mind, miss. I’ll have the horse hairs off this in a brace o’ shakes. Coo, you did look a picture riding off with Sir Niles. He’s ever so handsome.”

“Did you see us?” Rose asked.

“Oh, yes, miss. Me ‘n’ Cook was watching from the area window. If you stand on a chair and kind of peer to the left, you can see the street plain as plain. Ever so useful when you want to know how many to serve during morning calls.” Lucy cast a glance around the bedroom. “I’ll come for your boots when I bring up your nuncheon, miss. Her ladyship said how you’d want to take a bit of a rest this morning.”

“Yes, I’m very sleepy. It’s not too much trouble to bring me a tray?”

“No trouble, miss. But you’ll be wanting to get up later, no doubt. You’re going to the Duchess of Kent’s cotillion ball tonight, aren’t you?”

“Yes, after the opera,” Rose said and sighed. She felt all the more tired just thinking about another night on her feet.

“That’s what I told Baxter. Coo, he’s a one, he is. Looks like a piece of string dipped in tallow. No more flesh on him than on a stick. But he’s a jolly one—always laughin’ and crackin’ jokes. Wonder how he keeps a straight face when he’s talking to his master.”

“Baxter? Who’s he?”

“That Sir Niles’s valet. Valet? To hear him tell it, he runs the whole house.”

Rose sat up slowly, plumping the pillows behind her. “Sir Niles’s man wanted to know if I’d be at the cotillion tonight?”

“Yes, miss. I didn’t do wrong to tell him? He said you’d mentioned it to his master, but Sir Niles is that absentminded he forgot what you’d said. It’s all right?”

‘Yes, Lucy. Quite all right. Wake me at one, please.”

“A pleasure, miss.” She went out, her arms full of broadcloth and linen.

Why did Sir Niles want to know where she’d be tonight? Fresh from her conversation with Paige, Rose worried that maybe she was right. What if Sir Niles were planning some kind of proposal? At first, she dismissed the idea. Nothing prevented him from coming here and making his intentions known in the proper style. Sir Niles would never do anything so gauche as propose marriage at a ball.

A little while later, sleepily, she wondered if Paige could be right. If so, might not overwhelming passion drive Sir Niles into making a public declaration of his feelings? In that unlikely event, how would she respond?

Rose’s eyes closed as she sketched out a delightful scene in which Sir Niles halted in the very steps of a waltz to ask her to be his forever. As is the case in dreams, she could waltz perfectly, revolving in Sir Niles’s arms as the music played faster and faster. She fell asleep while still trying to determine whether it would be more enjoyable to accept him then and there or to turn him down and show the world how little she thought of him.

Sadly, neither scenario could come true without Sir Niles. He was nowhere to be found. Rose spent so much time scanning the opera house that she hardly watched the opera, barely noticing when the taller soprano pushed the smaller one into the orchestra pit. During the interval, only Rose’s social training kept her from being rude to several of Aunt Paige’s oldest friends.

“Sir Augustus can’t abide the opera,” Paige said as they resumed their seats. “A pity, when I love it so.”

“Is he meeting you later?” Rose asked.

“I haven’t the least notion. He never sent me so much as a line scribbled on the back of a card.”

“Men,” Rose said with a tiny sniff.

“Indeed.” Paige plied her fan a bit too rapidly. “Speaking of whom, wasn’t Rupert supposed to accompany us this evening?”

“He probably had another engagement,” Rose said, not thinking of her brother. “Or some good chap named Blank or Dash gave him a tip about a sure bet and he hurried off to waste his money.”

Three hours later at the cotillion, Rose stopped by her aunt’s chair and waited, smiling stiffly, until Paige looked up inquiringly. “This is the dullest party I’ve ever been to,” Rose said, hardly moving her lips. “Shall we go?”

“Considering that your dance card has been filled since the moment we arrived, I wouldn’t think you could be bored.”

“I am, though. Everyone’s talking, but no one’s saying anything I wish to hear.”

“You are too severe.” Paige lifted one shoulder in defeat. “It’s just as well. I’ve had a headache for the last hour from smelling the candles.”

“Sir Augustus never arrived?” Rose asked as they waited for their cloaks.

“No,” Paige said, pouting like a schoolgirl. “Sir Niles?”

“No, and I don’t care either.”

When they reached the house, Hurst met them at the door as usual. “If I may have a word, my lady?”

Though his carefully cultivated expression of bland efficiency was unimpaired, his voice was less perfectly controlled. Furthermore, when he turned toward the light to follow Paige into the drawing room, they saw a large rapidly purpling bruise on his forehead.

“Hurst!” Paige exclaimed. “Are you hurt? Sit down, man.”

“Thank you, my lady. I confess I feel somewhat shaken.”

“Shall I pour you some brandy?” Rose asked. The butler had been very kind to both her and her brother during their visit.

“No, miss. I took the liberty earlier.” He straightened his posture despite being seated and looked his mistress directly in the eye. “I regret to tell you we discovered a burglary, my lady.”

“A burglary?” Paige exchanged an astonished glance with Rose. “Good heavens, my jewels!”

Excitement began to bubble in Rose’s blood. “What was stolen, Hurst?”