downstairs. “She can be a bit intimidating, but she admires your courage. She told Jessie so.” He worried about poor Mary, who had lived most of her life as a hermit, her companions almost exclusively of the animal kingdom. She was to sit for most of the evening between the dowager and her sister.
“But of course she will be kind,” Mary said, not looking nearly as nervous as Gabriel felt and Jessica looked. “She is Jessica’s grandmama, is she not?”
She had not yet seen Jessica at her aristocratic best. She probably would later tonight. But Mary would not be intimidated anyway, he suddenly realized. Her eyes would look past every barrier to the good that lay within any person she met.
Except when there was no goodness to be seen.
Manley Rochford was dressed as King Arthur, complete with a golden crown encrusted with paste jewels and a black mask. His wife—unfortunately, considering her rather plain, matronly looks, a number of guests remarked behind their hands or fans—appeared as Guinevere, also with a mask. Several people did not know them, but since most had come in the hope of catching a glimpse of them and perhaps making themselves known to them so that they would be the more assured of receiving invitations to the grand celebrations they were said to be planning, they were soon pointed out to everyone by those who did know.
Anthony Rochford was unmistakable in a billowing, all-enveloping domino and a mask that covered three-quarters of his face, for the entire costume was a glittering gold embellished with sequins. And who, anyway, could mistake that smile even though it proceeded from almost the only part of his body that was not covered?
Masquerades were always amusing, Jessica thought, for of course very few people went unknown to everyone else. The few exceptions were almost always those people whom almost no one knew anyway. She recognized friends and acquaintances wherever she looked. And family members, of course. And they were all here—except Harry, who had returned home to the country yesterday. Even Grandmama and Great-aunt Edith and Miss Boniface had come, partly because wild horses could not keep them away on this particular occasion, Grandmama had told her, and partly because they had undertaken the important task of looking after Mary until she was needed later, which might or might not happen. Mary sat now, resembling a mischievous elfin blackbird, between Boadicea—Grandmama—on her left and someone who was either a dragon or a giant robin—Great-aunt Edith—on her right. Miss Boniface, like many of the other guests clad in a domino and mask, hovered behind them.
Some members of Jessica’s old court found her out—it was not difficult—and swore to broken hearts and other silly things like the determination to challenge Gabriel to pistols at dawn. A few of them danced with her.
One thrilling moment came when the golden domino bowed before her, solicited her hand for a dance, congratulated her on her recent marriage, and proceeded to look tragic while they danced. In other words, his smile was not in evidence except when he looked at other women, which he did a number of times. He smiled with dazzling intensity at Estelle, who was partnered with Adrian Sawyer, Viscount Dirkson’s son. He smiled without ceasing when he danced the next set with Estelle and then swept her off in a flourish of gold to introduce her to King Arthur and Queen Guinevere.
A marquess’s daughter would do quite nicely, it seemed, when a duke’s was no longer available. The father was making much of Estelle, who made a very pretty mermaid, with feet that peeked discreetly from beneath her multicolored tail. Her mask matched it.
“I am crushed,” Jessica told Avery and Anna between sets.
She waltzed with Gabriel not long before midnight. He was tense and grim faced, she could see, though he did not miss a step. She was feeling the fluttering of nerves in her stomach too.
“One could almost believe,” he said, “that he is expecting to inherit a king’s title.”
“I suppose,” she said, “he has been something of a nobody for most of his life, Gabriel. And he had almost no expectation either until recent years. Both you and your cousin, not to mention your uncle, stood between him and the title—and fortune. Does he have money of his own?”
“I think not,” he said. “He was always eager to live upon the hospitality of my uncle and aunt at Brierley.”
“The unmasking is to happen after this set,” she told him, as