Haunted Hearts

Chapter 1

Olivia Beacham, the widowed Viscountess Stratton, looked out her bedchamber window at a drifting fog. “It’s the perfect weather for tonight,” she told her little dark-haired maid.

“’Tis the perfect night for finding trouble,” Mary Kate countered.

“Oh,” Olivia said fervently, “I do hope so.”

Mary Kate, Irish Catholic, crossed herself and shook her head at her mistress. “Don’t be tempting wicked things what are out and about on All Hallows Eve, m’lady.”

Olivia took no offense at the warning nor did she scold the girl. Mary Kate had long since earned her loose tongue and the freedom of her Papist habits; the two of them were more friends than mistress and maid, no matter what the rest of the society would think of that.

Their need had been mutual: Olivia, so alone after so much death, the last being Stratton’s; Mary Kate, adrift after her shop-owner parents had perished in a fire. Olivia had advertised for a maid, and Mary Kate had been the first to come, falling at Olivia’s feet and weeping terribly while begging in her lilting accent for employment. No references. No experience. Any reasonable person would have turned her away without a second thought. Except, Olivia knew what it was to be an orphan, one who had the bare advantage of sometimes being remembered by her siblings, whereas Mary Kate had no-one. Olivia had hired her at once, and an irrevocable bond had been formed.

“Let me take down them two ruches on yer dress,” Mary Kate tried one more time.

Olivia turned to look again into her long cheval glass. She tilted a leg and admired a shoe and inch of stocking made visible where the fabric had been hitched up with needle and thread. It
was
shocking.

That’s why she shook her head.
I
want
to be daring.

She reached for her mask. She’d bought it the day after she’d opened her invitation to a fancy dress party. It was to be a masquerade, to be thrown on and celebrating All Hallow’s Eve, a pagan custom Londoners had centuries since foresworn.

Except for the black crepe hair-hood that would be pinned in place to cover her red-gold locks, raising the mask completed her costume. The mask was that of a cat: a black and white velvet cat’s face, complete with ears, eyeholes, stiff little whiskers, and a delicate feline mouth, all of which obscured virtually all of Olivia’s face. She watched her green eyes glitter back at her through the mask, the only facial feature that showed except a little bit of chin. The black and white spots of her mask were echoed by the colors of her skirts, along with a cloth cat’s tail that trailed behind from her waist.

It was not the cat theme of the ensemble to which Mary Kate objected, but the daringly tight and low décolletage and the way Olivia had requested the layers of her skirts be caught up, the two ruches at either ankle, revealing those so-shocking glimpses of stocking and little black slippers.

“Yer look indecent,” Mary Kate dared to say.

Olivia laughed instead of reprimanding. “I meant to.”

“And yer should put yer wedding ring on again, m’lady.”

Olivia looked down at her naked left hand and slowly shook her head. “I’m not married. My husband is dead.”

Mary Kate sighed and tried a different tack. “There’s plenty o’ other events to start yer return into society. Yer don’t need to be going to some affair what’s all about play-acting, and drinking too much, and who knows what manner of sinfulness--”

“I want some excitement,” Olivia said, her voice so wistful it made her servant fall quiet and bite her lip. “I’ve been in mourning for four years. Four years! First Papa passed, then Mama, and then Stratton.” She’d never gotten used to calling her ancient husband by his Christian name, Robert. “I’m only four-and-twenty! I spent two years married to an old man who never danced, nor dined out, nor freely welcomed callers. He all but slept ’round the clock in his final months. Since I agreed to accept Stratton’s hand I’ve only ever gone to two parties, and one of those was the wedding.”

Olivia knew she was being ungrateful. Lord Stratton had given her a home, a respectable reputation, security, and had kept her from being too much alone, even if their life together had been dull, dull, dull. He’d even, to a lesser degree, satisfied her unspoken curiosity about men’s bodies. It wasn’t his fault she’d never come to love him--although it was his doing that she’d not even come to like him much.

Mary Kate’s eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. The maid knew how lonely her mistress was. She was the one person in this world Olivia was sure loved her--and the fierce little dragon knew she could say most anything she felt needed saying. “But yer mourning ain’t over for two more months!”

“Pish.”

“Some people mind such details.”

Olivia gave a little shoulder shrug. “All the more reason to attend a fancy dress party. I won’t remove my mask. I’ll leave before midnight, when they’re traditionally doffed. No one will ever know the Widow Stratton was there--if they even have a thought to spare for me.”
Which I doubt. In terms of eligibility or desirability or visibility, in the eyes of the ton, I’m completely forgotten.

“What if someone recognizes yer voice? One of yer church or reading society ladies?”

Olivia smiled, liking her ready answer. “I speak creditable French. I shall put on ze accent,” the last sentence was inflected to demonstrate the effect.

Mary Kate seemed poised to argue further, but instead she sighed and her tensed shoulders fell; Olivia had won. That’d been how things were going to end anyway, but the small triumph only lent itself to Olivia’s growing giddiness.
I am going to a party! I am going to laugh, and flirt, and dance.

She put aside her mask to reach for a small purse. Taking that and Mary Kate’s hand, she pulled her maid to the second of two wardrobes. Opening the doors one at a time, she pointed to all the gowns hanging on their pegs. “Take those, all of them, and this.” She pressed the purse into Mary Kate’s hands. “Buy some packets of dye. All of these gray and lavender gowns are yours now. Dye them to happier colors, if you please. And cut up the black ones, or offer them for charity, or do what you will with them.”

“Those’re fine materials, those black ones. Surely yer want to keep at least one? Yer never knows--”

Olivia firmly shook her head, lips thinned out. “No more black. No more funerals or mourning. Not for me.”

The maid would have refused such a bounty, probably, if she hadn’t been aware of all the new dresses hanging in the second wardrobe. Gowns of gold and green and blue, designs more dashing than anything Olivia had worn since the two of them had met.

“Can I share ’em with Ginnie and Anna?” Mary Kate asked, referring to the other household maids, her eyes beginning to glitter with the thought of new gowns.

“Of course you may,” Olivia said. “And make use of anything you find in the linen cupboard. Buttons, and ribbons, and such.”

“Oh, thank you, m’lady!” Mary Kate lifted both hands, the purse clasped between her fingers. A grin of pure pleasure grew on her face--until another glance at her mistress’s masquerade garb made sure it was not long-lived. She narrowed her eyes. “I still think them ruches of yers oughta come down. It’d take me but a moment--”

Olivia laughed and swept up the mask with its hood she and Mary Kate had designed between them. “No, dear girl. It’s time to tie this in place. My wicked masquerade awaits.”

***

The intrigue of her disguise, the efforts at concealment, only added to Olivia’s growing excitement as her carriage neared the house of her All Hallows party host. Lord Quinn was a man whose interests caused whispers to float even to the ears of a woman who spent too much time alone--a titillating reputation that had only added to Olivia’s determination to finally break her soul-stifling mourning early.

When the carriage rolled to a stop, she took as deep a breath as her tight and low bodice would permit before she allowed the footman to hand her down. Even though she longed to expand her very narrow world, it had been a long time since she’d faced the prying eyes of greater society, even if they could only guess who she was behind her mask.

Still, Olivia began to all but float, her own daring--
finally, finally daring to be free!
--buoying her as she stepped up the stairs to the house, the night air cool where her bits of stocking peeked out from among her skirts. With every new moment of liberty she grew more and more giddy. Unfettered laughter, the kind that had made many scoldings come her way as a child, threatened to burst from her lips any moment. A sparkling sensation, not unlike champagne, ran through her blood. It raced into her limbs, giving her posture--had she but known it--a cavalier air that drew the eye.

As soon as she was inside, she whisked off her pelisse and relinquished it to a servant. Exposing her bodice’s bounty was rewarded by a lifting of the footman’s brows before he bowed her toward the butler. Even the butler, stiff with his stoic duties and obvious years of service, allowed one blink as she approached. Her hands did not rise to tug her bodice up, even though the impulse flickered for a moment. She had to suppress another impulse to giggle. Falling into line behind a man and woman who were dressed as Poseidon and Aphrodite, she observed that their clothes shimmered, and their inadequate masks revealed here was Lady Bettonstone and presumably her husband.

No names were announced and the invitation vellums were dropped into a lidded box after being glanced at, but the butler did strike a long staff upon the tiles with the entry of each arrival. Thus announced without a word, Olivia moved into the crowd. Since she had purposely arrived late, her host--a man she’d met exactly once at her home, when Stratton was yet alive--was no longer in position near the door as he would have been to greet his more timely guests.

She was instantly pleased by the crush, for it took her only a fleeting minute to feel as though she had blended into the throng of masked humanity around her.

Almost everyone was in costume--with the exception of a few ancients who, one must assume, decried such folderol--and it made an already unusual night seem all the more so by the variety and splendor of the costumes all around her. There were knights and damsels, kings and queens, devils and angels, pirates, conquistadors, Greeks and Romans, and quite some few rams and bulls. The ladies had chosen to dress as a butterfly, or fairy, or a simple goose girl, but nearly all wore sparkling gems in their hair, on their wrists, or gracing their throats. The styles of masks ran from just a bit of kohl sketched about the eyes all the way to complete headpieces, one fellow sporting a whole unicorn’s head, complete with a two-foot-long horn he seemed inclined to use with suggestive gestures.

On the other hand, there was a rather shocking lack of costume on some people, and other ensembles Olivia would never have donned no matter how much she longed to embrace one night with fewer rules. A man was dressed as a mummy, but his “wrappings” owed more to whitewash than to any coverings. Good heavens, was that his
navel
?

She turned quickly away--then slowly made herself turn around. She gave a tiny laugh, seeing that the navel had been painted in place atop some wrappings. But still…how to feel about such an immodest image, however false?

At last she did turn away, quite sure her cheeks were pink…and found she faced a long table groaning under an excess weight of elaborate flower arrangements and dozens of delicious-looking foodstuffs. Here was a roasted suckling pig, and there a plate of glistening oysters, buns savory and sweet, slices of squab in gravy, three tureens of fragrant soups, also nuts, sweetmeats, a quivering blanc mange, and so much more. The table was actually bowing under its bounty and flowery décor. It was overwhelming. Enticing. Bordering on sybaritic excess. It was only food…but still it gave Olivia the very kind of shiver she’d hoped to feel tonight.

A lady never over-sampled… But tonight she was no lady. Tonight she was a cat who would sample whatever took her fancy, and she would savor the indulgence until her tight bodice let her take no more.

Her filled plate was soon joined by a glass of sparkling wine she took from a footman’s tray. After a moment, she had to laugh at herself, because of course her mask made consumption difficult. She found a corner with a niche where she balanced her plate, and fed herself morsels with one hand sneaking under the mask’s edge that sat under her lower lip.

Perhaps too soon for her physical appetite--but not so for cravings after merriment and diversion--she abandoned her supper and the corner. Moving out among the throng, wine in hand even though she’d have a hard time sipping at it, Olivia circled slowly, looking for her night’s fulfillment, whatever it would prove to be.

Musicians played quietly from behind a large screen, their gentle tunes sometimes all but lost under the conversation of the many guests. Candles flickered in the chandeliers overhead and all around the room, raising the temperature enough that garden doors had been thrown open against the heat of the lighting and the crowd.