The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey Page 0,3
foyer.
If the house map his father had once drawn for him wasn’t an exaggeration built on years of exile, a massive ballroom lay beyond those doors. He had just reached a prime vantage point when the doors were flung open. Everyone turned en masse, chattering excitedly.
“Do you think she’s topped her Roman bacchanal?” a woman near him whispered to her companion.
“I do hope she’s brought back the opera dancers,” a man said, laughing at his wife’s mock censure.
“Of course her costume will be splendid. But I came for her chef’s efforts…”
Nick stopped hearing the people around him. They were drowned out by a sudden crashing in his ears, a roar that came from somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. Through the doors, he saw a throne. And on the throne, a queen.
Ellie.
Not a queen. An angel.
A devil.
His eyes blurred.
The servant who had greeted him before — perhaps the butler after all, despite his youth — cleared his throat. “The Marchioness of Folkestone welcomes you,” he announced, in a voice that wasn’t a shout but still somehow carried through the crowd.
Nick looked across the distance between them, over the heads of those who already moved down the carpet to greet her. The last time he’d seen her, she had worn orange blossoms in her red hair, his bloody cousin’s ring on her finger, and a smile that would have driven him to gut her if he hadn’t noticed, from where he lurked uninvited in the cathedral’s shadows, her downcast eyes and the uncertain tilt to her chin.
There was no smile now, but no uncertainty either. She wore a crown instead of orange blossoms and a golden velvet gown instead of sweet, innocent muslin. She looked regal, serene, just a little bored — a perfect match to her costume.
She hadn’t seen him yet, just as she hadn’t seen him at her wedding.
He smiled under his mask.
Tonight, she had no choice but to see him. And then…
And then he didn’t know, exactly, what would happen.
But this time, he would win.
CHAPTER TWO
Elinor Claiborne, the widowed Marchioness of Folkestone, didn’t see her doom when the ballroom doors opened. She didn’t even suspect that someone might thwart her plans. This night, for reasons that were a mystery to everyone else, was hers to command. Her guests saw it as a lively entertainment. But for her, it was a living painting, one in which all the players bowed to her artistic vision.
She was still confident in the spectacle she had created, even if her heart wasn’t entirely satisfied. The Folkestone ballroom was freshly decorated, redone for the fifth time in her tenure as marchioness. The walls were a light blue this time, with plaster half-columns and elaborate scrollwork to mirror the shape of the French doors on the wall behind her. The Tudor era guards were her addition — actors hired from the West End to look as perfect as possible with their pikes and helmets. And the guests who entered, two hundred lords and ladies from the highest reaches of the ton, were a river of jewel-toned velvet unleashed at her command.
Ellie sat perfectly still on her throne, slipping into her role — cool, unaffected, with a hint of steel. She usually enjoyed parties — and was grateful that she did, since there was precious little else to engage her time — but tonight she was on edge.
Her annual masquerade ball, coming at the start of a large, weeklong house party, would be Ellie’s last public display as the Marchioness of Folkestone. If she were cursed to bear the title and couldn’t bring herself to marry anyone else just to be rid of it, then surely it would be easier to bear it on some distant shore — somewhere with no memories left to torment her.
Her father’s sister Sophronia, the Dowager Duchess of Harwich, was at the head of the line, moving across the ballroom to greet Ellie with a speed that neither her age nor her extravagant gown could slow. “I trust you aren’t seeking a husband with this sudden display of respectability?” Sophronia demanded as she approached the throne.
Those who came to Folkestone this year expecting scarcely-clothed opera dancers or venues for tacitly approved rendezvouses would be disappointed — not due to some sudden change in Ellie’s morals, but to the presence of her less debauched siblings. Ellie drummed her fingers on the arm of her throne. “Did the Virgin Queen ever seek a husband?”
“Good,” Sophronia said. “I’ll grant you, I would be