The Marquess Who Loved Me (2 page)

“My lady was most specific in the invitation about the preferred costume for this evening. Sir,” he added, with just enough doubt to set Nick’s teeth on edge.

“My lord,” Nick supplied.

The man colored slightly. “My lord,” he repeated. “My apologies. But still, the marchioness…”

Nick handed him his greatcoat, hat, and gloves, stripping them off with a predatory efficiency that made the servant flinch. The man almost refused, starting to gesture toward a cloak room. But Nick didn’t stop. “Send someone to air out my room. And tell me where to find the marchioness.”

“May I have your card, my lord?”

“No.”

He’d been in London five days and hadn’t ordered calling cards. It was likely an offense grave enough to have him tossed out of the House of Lords — but they would have half a dozen other reasons not to welcome him before they even reached matters of etiquette.

The servant swallowed. “If you would be so good as to wait just a moment, my lord, her ladyship will welcome all of her guests soon.”

He had stayed away from her for ten years. Part of him wished for another ten. Another part of him didn’t want to wait ten seconds. But he shrugged, let just enough displeasure show in his eyes to make the servant wince again, and waved a magnanimous hand. “Very well. I will find her myself after she’s greeted the guests.”

“Would you care for a mask, my lord? Not that you must take one, of course,” he added hastily, when Nick’s eyebrow slowly rose again.

He looked out over the crowd. Nearly all of the others wore costumes, not masks. Few would recognize him — few had known him, other than his fellows at Eton, and he’d seen none of them in over a decade. But if the servants were too dense to realize who he was, he would save the surprise for Ellie herself.

Maybe he would see something on her face to repay him for everything she’d done.

He turned back to the servant and took the mask he offered. He pulled on his formal gloves, obeying that social rule even if he cared for none of the others. And then he strode through the crowd, ignoring muttered huffs of protest as he elbowed toward the closed double doors on one side of the 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.

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 pleased to see you behave yourself after all this time. But I knew you had more sense than to relinquish the advantages of widowhood.”

She slid away before Ellie could answer. Ellie’s brother Ferguson, the Duke of Rothwell, and his wife stepped up to take Sophronia’s place. “Are there to be monkeys released into the crowd this year?” he asked. “Or have you hired some company to play Francis Drake and his band of pirates?”

She sighed as he kissed her hand. “I do not repeat myself, so no monkeys. They made a dreadful mess anyway.”

“A shame — when I heard of them in Scotland years ago, I almost begged Father’s forgiveness just so I could return to England and attend your parties. Tell me there shall be pirates, at least.”

“No pirates. Be glad, brother — at my usual parties, you might have seen your wife stolen away for the evening.”

Madeleine, his new duchess, grinned beneath her elaborate Elizabethan hairstyle. “I am quite happy with my lot, wretched as Ferguson is. But if there
were
to be pirates…”

She trailed off with a laugh as Ferguson whispered in her ear and dragged her away. Ellie resolutely turned back to the receiving line. But Madeleine’s laughter was a distracting hum under her perfect show of calm.

Ellie had always thought she wanted a carefree, unencumbered life — one she lived on her own terms, not her father’s or husband’s or anyone else’s. She hadn’t felt grief when her husband had died.

She’d felt relief.

But there was freedom…and then there was solitude. She liked to be alone. She didn’t need to surround herself with admirers to stay entertained, even if she did enjoy the social amusements London offered. The walls she’d thrown up had preserved her freedom perfectly, keeping her detached and untouched even when her house and calendar were full.

The cost, though…

Her eyes found Ferguson and Madeleine again. They stood a bit apart, sipping champagne — an island around which the crowd broke. There was no mistaking how united they were, even from this distance.

Ferguson’s hand slipped possessively to his wife’s waist. Madeleine smiled up at him, then leaned in to whisper in his ear. He laughed. Heads turned toward them, but he was too busy whispering back to care what others thought. He brushed a hand over Madeleine’s headdress and she swatted at him. They were complete together, somehow more than just the simple sum of two people.

She wanted
that
, with a harsh, bitter jealously that poisoned her every time she saw Ferguson and Madeleine together. Her fingers curled on her throne. Something ugly seethed inside her, clawing at her, reminding her.

She had once had what they had. She could have kept it, if she’d been strong enough — if she had recognized the truth of what she felt for Nick rather than the illusion of approval her father had offered.

And it was her fault that she would never have it again.

Ellie turned back to the next guest, her jaw firm. It all felt wrong, somehow. Not the dire wrong of an omen — she still didn’t know what waited in her foyer. But she had to find a way to silence all that regret. She had to stop.

Stop. Stop throwing parties like the noise could drown out her memories.

Stop throwing
this
party, every single bloody year without ever giving herself peace, on an anniversary no one remembered but her. The night that had once, long ago, seemed like a pure beginning, full of promise and light — but ultimately was the beginning of the end.

Did Nick remember tonight as she did, in whatever ancient bazaar or Mughal palace he was striding through right now? Or had he forgotten her so thoroughly that he didn’t even remember her enough to curse her name?

The receiving line stopped before her thoughts did, of course. Wasn’t that how it always happened? The musicians in the hidden gallery above the ballroom started the closing flourish of the processional they’d played during her guests’ entrances. She took a deep breath. No one had ever guessed that, beneath her reputation as the merriest widow in England, she hid a heart of ice. She wouldn’t let them see it tonight, either.

She would dance like she was made of fire. She would indulge in her annual cry at the end of the party, a harsh jag of emotion that, once a year, she couldn’t contain.

And then she would wake up, play the perfect hostess for the forty or so friends and family she already regretted inviting, and then shut up Folkestone and leave for the Continent. If she couldn’t stop the memories, she could at least change the pattern of them.

The ballroom doors began to close. This wasn’t Almack’s, but Ellie demanded punctuality at this party and was formidable enough to receive it. But just before the door shut, a man shouldered it open.

Her eyes narrowed. He wore a plain mask that her servants kept for rulebreakers. His impeccably tailored evening suit was stark black and white — a shocking declaration in a crowd of people wearing the velvet and brocade she’d prescribed. He strode down her carpet like he owned it — not a penitent apologizing for tardiness, or even a green youth too exuberant to see the danger he was in, but a man who simply didn’t give a damn what her invitation said.

If there was purpose in his stride, though, his speed was almost leisurely. William the Conqueror might have walked to his coronation like that, already king by destiny if not by law. Ellie leaned back in her throne, feigning indolence even though her stomach flipped and her heart sped up. Later she wondered if she’d known, then, that her doom was upon her…

But she didn’t. She was a woman, not an oracle. All she felt was irritation that someone might dare to ruin her perfectly-planned display — and the tiniest, unacknowledged interest in finding someone who didn’t yet toe her line.

When he reached her throne, she extended her hand. “You’re late,” she said.

“Later than you know.” He crossed his arms. Her hand became an embarrassing relic between them. “The Virgin Queen suits you, Lady Folkestone. Even if we both know the adjective doesn’t apply.”

She dropped her hand. Dressing as Queen Elizabeth was her own private joke; there were always suitors in the wings, but she never intended to marry again. But her voice still turned to ice. “There’s no place for you at this party if you’ve only come to give insults.”

His lips were savage under his mask, so sharply defined that she might have cut them there with a palette knife. “Oh, there will be a place for me. You should have trained your staff better, Ellie my love. Once the Trojan horse is inside the gates, there’s no stopping it.”

Her mind fired wildly when she heard the old endearment, the one she’d never thought to hear again. The caress, the dark promise in his voice sounded like something she’d heard a decade earlier from a mouth not yet reforged by hate. She leaned forward, her control breaking under the onslaught of memory. “Who are you?” she demanded.

He pulled off his mask and flung it at her feet.

The last time he’d flung something there, it had been a bouquet of flowers.

She looked down, expecting to see roses where the mask was — dead, brittle roses, the ones she’d kept until they’d crumbled to dust.

“Don’t say you still can’t bear to look at me,” he said.

“Nick,” she whispered.

Ellie never whispered.

She cleared her throat and forced herself to look at his face. He’d put on at least a stone of muscle in the last decade. It was little wonder she hadn’t seen the lean boy he’d been when he walked down her —
his
— carpet. But his face was taut and sculpted, with the same cheekbones and stubborn chin she’d painted any number of times. And his eyes were still a vivid, startling blue under the inky slash of his eyebrows — eyes that held darkness lurking within them now, even though he smiled.