When She Said I Do (30 page)

Button didn’t sigh, or twitch, or to his credit, even clench his jaw, though this was the twentieth time Ren had tried to wriggle out of his agreement to wear the “costume.”

Button did, however, put down the cravat he was attempting to press again, for one more try. He turned to Ren. “Mr. Porter, I have great sympathy for what you will confront tonight.”

Ren glanced at Mr. Button’s clear, unmarked face and then glanced away. “I doubt that.”

Mr. Button clasped his hands before him. “Mr. Porter, there are more ways to carry scars than on one’s face. I know a little something about being an outsider. I am the son of a tailor, but my father was a large man, fond of drinking and wagering on races and arm wrestling to prove to one and all that tailoring was a man’s work.

“I was not a usual sort of boy. I knew from a very young age that I was different. I am a person of talent and ambition. I am a brave man, much braver than I ever expected I should be. I am well connected with many friends. Now. Then, I was only a lonely boy who never seemed to walk in step with other boys. Or with anyone, really. In particular my father.

“I hid my differences as well as I could, for many years. I think if there is anything in this material world that will kill one’s soul, it is the act of hiding oneself. To be so fearful of rejection that one spends every moment alone, just to keep one’s secret … is that really so much better than taking the chance on rejection?”

“You’re talking about me now.”

Button slid him a glance. “I’m talking about all of us. Everyone has something they keep secret. Sometimes good, sometimes bad … although I think milady would probably argue that the good or evil—”

“Will be in the intent,” Ren finished for him, and they both chuckled.

Ren regarded Button. “You said you have friends now. What did you do differently?”

Button looked him right in the eye. “I stopped bloody hiding.” Then he shrugged. “Some people rejected me. Some people simply pretended I didn’t exist. A few, the best of them all, I think, accepted me just as I am and, furthermore, found value in me that I never knew I had.”

“I will not show my face.”

Button waved a hand. “No matter. It is a masque, after all. I meant it figuratively, of course. If you expose yourself to rejection, you are also exposing yourself to acceptance. You’d be surprised at who stays and who goes.”

She stayed.

For now.

Ren didn’t speak. He only eyed the little man with solemn consideration while his cravat was being tied, again. Then he turned to regard himself in the mirror. His face might still be a horror, but the rest of him had never looked so fine.

“I think, Button, that anyone would be blind not to see the value in you.”

Button smiled and spread his hands. “Well, but of course! I am, after all,
me.
”

Chapter 25

It was almost time for the guests to begin arriving. Cabot brought a cup of tea on a saucer across the busy ballroom to his master. Button took it with a smile. Everything about the little man was gleeful this evening, from the jaunty diagonal jacquard stripe of his ivory silk waistcoat to the bounce in his toes. He obviously had every confidence that his elaborate planning would bear great fruit.

As happy as he was to see his beloved master so certain, Cabot could only gaze about the bustling preparations with a gloom born of apprehension.

Button was a gregarious man. He would naturally think that the way to boost someone’s spirits and self-assurance would be to throw a grand party. Cabot, who was of a more introspective nature, suspected that Sir Lawrence might not be as receptive to the oncoming madness as Button hoped.

“Sir, are you quite sure you ought to have invited them?”

Button’s grin faltered slightly, but his nod was firm as his eyes followed a trim housemaid carrying a stack of cushions for the chairs arranged in cunning conversational groupings along the far wall. “Her ladyship urged me to invite my friends. What could be so wrong with that?”

Cabot did not pursue the topic. Friends. Enemies. It was such a fine line, in the end.

So he, as usual, stood at his master’s side. However, his habitually neutral gaze grew fond as he looked down at the neat part in his master’s thinning hair. Button, as usual, took no notice.

*   *   *

Callie held her mask by the ribbon tie as she left her room. It was a delicate slip of satin and beading, worked in a pattern of leaves around the eyeholes with a cluster of tiny satin blooms of lily of the valley at her temple. The sparkling glass beads did not clash with the emerald necklace, but seemed to make it gleam even more richly in concert.

“Callie.”

She looked up from adjusting her gloves to see Ren there awaiting her.

Oh, my.

He stood dressed in a very fine forest-green suit, perfectly cut and fitted, trimmed in just a tiny border of gold thread. It was the sort of thing fancied by princes and dukes … but more restrained. It said, “Yes, there are rumors that I have royal blood but don’t let’s go on about it.” By being just a hint ostentatious, it had the effect of arrogant grandeur.

The silk surcoat was just the perfect tone of deep green to set off Callie’s gown. The weskit was silk of a green so dark as to be black except when the light hit it just right, and the buttons had the glitter of true gold. His trousers were black and he wore boots, giving him a military edge.

Surprisingly, Button had left Ren’s wild auburn hair uncut and had simply tamed it back into a lordly queue. His mask … oh, Button had outdone himself on the mask.

It was a mimic of Callie’s, beaded as if made of leaves, only his was beaded in black and gold and the shimmering effect was of feathers. It turned his eyes dark, like the gloaming of the day. He was a nighthawk, a mystery.

There was no attempt to hide the scars. Ren’s mask covered no more than anyone’s would. Yet, with the severe dignity of the suit and the screaming drama of the mask, the scars upon his forehead and his cheek seemed … almost fitting. He seemed a warlord, a feudal king of old, a soldier and commander.

He looked gentlemanly yet dangerous. Perfect. Then Callie realized that he wore the medal and a medieval-style gold-cloth sash that denoted knighthood.

Ren watched as delight spread across Callie’s face and suddenly he felt ready to face the very legions of hell with her at his side armed only with the gold-knobbed walking stick Button had forced upon him.

“A weapon to defend your dignity,” Button had claimed. “Such a great many stairs—and such a regrettable opportunity to fall upon one’s knightly arse before all.”

Ren hadn’t dared admit that he was quite taken by the ebony stick with its gold ball grip engraved with the Porter family crest. Apparently not all of his vanity had leaked out upon those docks long ago.

He stepped forward. “You look … you look like spring itself.” She looked like life itself to him, like green growing things and fat laughing babies and the rise in a young man’s blood, but he hadn’t the words to tell her. He wanted to kneel at her feet. He wanted to toss her over his shoulder and lock them in his room for a month. Instead he bowed deeply, his hand over his heart.

She held the mask up over her eyes and dipped a curtsy so deep her nose nearly touched the carpet. “Why, Sir Lawrence, I swoon.”

Pleased, Ren straightened and tugged self-consciously at his cuffs. He held out his arm and she slipped her gloved hand onto it. “Our guests will be here soon.”

She smiled brilliantly up at him. “You look like a king. I like the medal. It suits you.”

He smirked. “If you like this one, I’ve a drawer full I can try on for you.”

She swatted his hand with her folded fan. “Don’t be improper. I have to concentrate on our guests.” Then she slid him a heated glance. “But you may wear them all for me … later.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “And bring the sword.”

Ren was laughing when he took his first steps into the world he’d left behind all those years ago.

*   *   *

Callie and Button had decided that it would be easier for Ren if they introduced him to the entire village at once. Therefore, the ballroom was already filled with brightly colored gowns and dark coats, all topped by an incredible variety of masks. There were homemade masks, sometimes of startling composition—Callie had never seen such a creative use of cornhusks!—and sometimes finely made creations of beads and feathers, though Callie doubted any were as purely elegant as hers and Ren’s. Button had obviously reserved the finest of his wares for the host and hostess.

It all made for a most startling moment when they entered the ballroom, for at once a hush fell upon the crowd and every face—that is, every mask—turned their way in the same instant.

Just as Button instructed them, they held quite still.

“Let them look,” the little dressmaker had ordered. “Let them look for as long as they like. They will stare. They will gape. Some of them, silly souls, may even gawk.” Button had beamed a benevolent smile. “Yours is not to hide away in shame. Yours is to impress and instruct. ‘Here are the master and mistress of Amberdell,’ your posture must say. ‘See us and know us for who we are.’”

So Callie draped her hand casually over her husband’s arm. No one would know by looking at her that her fingers pressed deeply into the muscle there, letting him know that she was with him.

If Callie hadn’t been attempting to reach bone with her fingernails, Ren might have forgotten she was there. When all those eyes swept to him, to his face, he had to fight the overwhelming urge to step backward, to duck right back through the double doors of the vast ballroom. As it was, he and Callie stood upon a stage created out of the first landing of the great curving double stairway that arched downward to the dance floor below.

With hazy distance, Ren felt Callie’s grip. It was a lifeline, a kite string of touch—well, pain, really—that held him to the earth. He tried to remember Button’s instructions through the roaring in his ears.

Impress. Instruct.

See us.

That was when Ren realized that if he could simply hold out for a few more moments, he would never have to hide again—not here, not in his home or on his estate or in the village nearby.

The weight of those years of secrets and shadows ahead of him had once bent him nearly to the ground. Now to realize that he might ride bareheaded about the grounds, that he might stop into the village post office to send a letter, that he might hire staff to ease Callie’s days—

Air filled his lungs, cool, fragrant air, not stale and humid from coming through black wool. Ren stood straight and tall, the glimmering sash of his knighthood smooth across his expanded chest.

At some instinctive moment—surely instructed by Button, who had quite the flair for the dramatic—Callie gave his arm a squeeze and began to lower herself into a grand curtsy to their guests. Ren matched her with a deep bow.

As they straightened, spontaneous applause broke out in random areas of the crowd. Soon, everyone, even the crustiest villager, had joined in. The thundering applause threatened to send Ren right back through the door, away from the noise, away from the faces, away from the crystals tinkling in the grand chandeliers above from the vibrations.

Callie’s ferocious grip kept him pinned like a butterfly in her collection.

He shot her a glance.
Are you trying to draw blood?

She met his quick glance with a loving glare.
Do not flee. Do not even think about leaving me here alone.

That thought, of her standing alone to face this mob, did more to fix him in place than any physical grip. If he could find it in him to protect her from falling off a window ledge, it seemed petty to desert her now.

So he bore the applause and the gazes and the gawks. Button was right about one thing. He’d earned these scars in service to the Crown. Just because his mission had been secret—hell, his very existence had been secret!—did not mean that he had to remain in the dark for the rest of his life.

He could stand here for a little while, and earn the right to walk in the light—in Callie’s light.

For she shone on this night. He could see it in the faces gazing up at them. First they fixed on him, on his face, on the visible scars, seeking, searching, wondering about the scars that remained hidden. Then, when the first startling impression of his marred face had sunk in, one by one their gazes turned to the incandescent woman at his side.

Pretty Callie, with her snub nose and dash of freckles, Callie of the countryside tramping and the kerchief-headed cleaning, had become exquisite Callie, goddess of spring and all things new.

A goddess with a bosom fit for a god’s delight.
Oh, my God.
Why had he not noticed before? How could he have been so caught up in his own nerves that he’d missed the fact that the riches of Callie’s bosom runneth over!

Fury flashed through him. He was going to kill Button!

Then Callie unobtrusively tugged him to the stairs and they descended into the ballroom. The walking stick assured their progress was stately rather than lurching. Henry and Betrice stepped forward from the grinning multitudes to greet them. Henry was distinctive in his rustic squire’s garb from an earlier century. As costumes went, it looked a bit more like a rummage through the attic. It suited Henry’s old-fashioned blustery charm to perfection.

Betrice looked very pretty in misty gray silk and a cat mask created of ermine fur. Callie exclaimed over the gown, praise which Betrice received with a strange discomfort. “It is an old gown.”

Callie blinked. She’d thought every woman in the village had ordered something new from Button’s shop. “Well, you look absolutely stunning,” she assured Betrice. “By far the prettiest lady here.”

Betrice eyed her with a slightly furrowed brow. “Have you no mirror, Callie?” Then her gaze slid to Ren’s chest. “Or should I say ‘Lady Porter’?”

Henry nodded emphatically. “Oh, yes. Lady Porter, indeed! May I be the first to offer congratulations, Sir Lawrence? When did you receive the honor?”