knew her—and presumably Manley and his wife as well as their son had seen her a time or two. She rather fancied the nun’s costume that was presented for her review among a few other possibilities. It would cover all but her face from eyebrows to chin and would enable her to hide her bad arm.
“Hmm,” Jessica said when Mary tried it on. “Your face is still recognizable, Mary. We must add a mask—just a half one. Full masks are horrid things. It becomes hard to breathe, especially in a stuffy ballroom. Black, I think.” She added the mask to Mary’s disguise and took a step back.
“The bandit nun,” Gabriel said, and Mary laughed merrily.
“The bandit nun,” she said. “I like it. May I choose this costume, Jessica?”
Surprisingly—very surprisingly—her face had lit up with delight when Gabriel had asked if she had ever wanted to go to a masquerade. And when he had explained to her what the plans were for Lady Farraday’s ball, she had first looked very serious, and then had lit back up and looked like an excited child in anticipation of a treat, seated as she had been in that chair, which was many sizes too large for her. Her feet did not even reach the floor.
“Provided I will not have anything to do except sit and watch—until after midnight,” she had said, “I will do it. Will I be able to wear a costume?”
“It is imperative that you do,” Gabriel had told her, and she had smiled from him to Jessica and looked very pleased indeed with the world. “You will be quite safe, Mary. I will see to it.”
“I know you will,” she had said. “What an adventure I am having. Did I tell you that Ned and his elder son are staying at my cottage to look after my animals until I return? They are very kind. So is Ned’s dear wife for allowing him to do it.”
“Do you wonder that I love her, Jessie?” Gabriel asked that night when they lay in bed, relaxing after making love. Perhaps it was not the wisest thing to say of another woman to one’s brand-new wife.
“I do not,” she told him. “I think, Gabriel, she must be an angel. And what a foolish thing to say. How embarrassing.” She laughed. “But she must be.”
He turned onto his side and kissed her. Hard. And for perhaps the first time since returning to England he was consciously glad he had come. Even with all the challenges ahead, he was glad.
Gabriel chose a black domino for his costume, with a black half mask. It was neither an imaginative nor a very effective disguise, but that would not matter. He did not care if everyone recognized him—as everyone surely would—as long as Manford and his wife did not until midnight. He did not even care if he was pointed out to them as Gabriel Thorne. It was unlikely that after thirteen years they would know him just from the lower half of his face.
“Oh,” Mary, the little bandit nun, said when she saw him on the evening of the masquerade, “you do look splendidly handsome, Gabriel. Does he not, Jessica?”
“Be still, my heart,” Jessica said, smiling brightly at him and fairly rocking him back on his heels. She herself had already been looking disturbingly gorgeous in her deep pink domino and matching mask even before she added the smile.
“Mine could not grow stiller if it tried,” he said, his eyes fully upon her. “It has already stopped.”
Mary clapped her hands and laughed with glee.
“And as for you,” he said, “you look very fierce, Mary. Who has ever heard of a nun with a mask? She can only intend mischief. You must stop smiling, however, if you hope to frighten everyone.”
She did stop smiling. Suddenly, so did all of them. For this was it. The confrontation they had planned with such meticulous care together with Jessica’s family, who had insisted, against his better judgment, upon being involved. The most carefully thought-out plans, of course, often went awry. Everything depended upon Manley’s being there tonight. They had all done their part to see that he would be. There was nothing else they could do on that front but wait and see.
There was a knock on the sitting room door and Horbath reported almost immediately that her ladyship, the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, awaited Miss Beck in her carriage outside the hotel doors.
“She will be kind,” Gabriel assured Mary before escorting her