“You must stop,” she said finally. She was arching herself into his hand like a wanton cat, and yet an itchy, almost tearful feeling was coming over her at the same time.

He let his lips drift to her forehead, and kissed her there, and on her eyebrows, and on her nose.

“Why are you so affectionate?” she asked. “I don’t even know you.”

She felt the shock of what she’d said go through his body. “I feel,” he said a moment later, “as if I know you very well. Last night—”

“Gentlemen have these sorts of small trysts all the time,” she said, not harshly, but trying to be clear.

“I haven’t,” he said. “Perhaps I shall, once I’m married and my wife and I tire of each other.” There was a dreadful weariness in his voice that broke her heart.

“You won’t!” she said, running a hand along his cheek. He had pushed his mask up to the top of his head, where it was making his thick blond hair stand on end. “Your wife will come after you. She’ll never let you out of her sight.”

He pressed kisses on her eyelids, so she closed them, wishing that she couldn’t smell him so well. Because he smelled better than the roses, better than the drifting scent of thyme and rosemary.

“True, nonetheless,” he said.

“Not so. Why, all three of the young ladies I’ve chaperoned have made happy marriages. Josie is the only one left.”

“And you. You have to find a spouse as well. For yourself.”

She didn’t want to think about that, so she leaned toward him again, and he took up her silent invitation.

19

From The Earl of Hellgate,

Chapter the Fifteenth

My Helena now wears another man’s ring, sleeps in another man’s bed, calls herself by another name. But may I venture to hope that some small part of her heart remains mine? Some small part of her heart remembers dancing free…until I caught her, of course. Even then the dance continued. She knew…she knew at the time, Dear Reader, that she was to be married.Ah, dear Helena, should you chance to read my poor Memoirs, think of me!

M ayne finally found his fiancée tucked away in Lady Mucklowe’s study, chatting with a circle of young women who were sharing a plate full of small pasties and what looked like three bottles of champagne. They’d all taken off their masks and were laughing like hyenas when he walked into the room.

He was conscious of a feeling of acute annoyance. Why in the hell did he have to constantly search for Sylvie? Why couldn’t she stay in the ballroom? She was never in sight.Though to be fair, she didn’t engage in any sort of impropriety. Not Sylvie. Her touch-me-not air was so strong that sometimes he found it incredible that she had agreed to marry him.

The thought brought a smile to his lips. It didn’t even waver when she looked up at him with an unmistakably displeased expression.

“Mayne,” she said.

“Darling,” he said, picking up her hand and kissing it. “I’ve been searching for you. I was hoping to take you into supper.” Little Polly Cooper, who was suffering through an infatuation for him, giggled madly.

Lady Gemima grinned up at him. “Are you taking her away, Mayne? Because we’re finding your fiancée absolutely delightful.” Mayne never knew quite what to think about Gemima. She was beautiful, of course. But she was so intelligent that it was rather disconcerting. She had a way of making a man aware of his own faults without even mentioning them.

Sylvie’s eyes were sparkling as they walked out of the room. “I am making some friends here in London. I am so happy about this!”

He glanced down at her. “That’s wonderful, Sylvie. Gemima—”

“Oh, do you know her?” Sylvie dropped his arm and clasped her hands before her. “I find her of all the most interesting. So original. And her gown was by a male modiste, can you imagine? His name is…”

She chattered on. Mayne’s mind wandered. He hadn’t seen Josie in a while. He’d seen his sister dance by with a fair man who looked faintly familiar, but he couldn’t place him with a mask. He’d rounded a corner and come across Annabel kissing her husband, Ardmore, which was just like her. And she’d given him her usual impudent grin.

He didn’t think it was a mistake to worry about Josie. He had a funny feeling that she might not avoid improprieties as she ought. After all, her sisters had found themselves extraordinarily happy marriages by behaving in less than proper ways. Josie had almost certainly registered that fact.

Then he noticed with a start that Sylvie had stopped talking and was looking up at him.

“I’m sorry, my dear,” he said. “My mind wandered for a moment.”

“Your mind often wanders when I speak to you of important things,” she said with a bit of a snap in her voice.

He was surprised. Had she been speaking of something important? “Please tell me again. I promise to give it all my attention.”

Sylvie pouted, but then gave in and smiled at him. “I was telling you of Mrs. Anglin’s indiscretion. A most important topic, as I’m sure you’ll agree.”

“Absolutely.”

“Everyone is saying that she appears in those memoirs that everyone is talking about! Apparently she is portrayed as a character called something odd, Mustardseed or the like. Perhaps I should read the memoirs, but I read so slowly in English.”

“That’s an unlikely suggestion,” Mayne said. “Mrs. Anglin hasn’t the joie de vivre for that sort of high jinks.” Plus, though he didn’t want to say so to his fiancée, he was perfectly capable of recognizing his own life when it was written down in lamentably bad prose. To his memory, Mustardseed was Mrs. Thomasin Symonds.

Sylvie shuddered visibly. “I shall never touch her hand again ungloved, I assure you, after what I was just told. How she could lower herself!”

“There weren’t that many details, were there?” Mayne asked. He had thrown the book away unfinished, but all he could remember was a lot of talk about throbbing chests and hushed voices.

“Too many,” Sylvie said. “I found it all most distasteful, at least as Gemima was describing it.”

Mayne looked down at her and marveled once more at his fiancée’s perfection. She was like a white, white rose whom no one had touched, or soiled in any way. She rarely allowed herself to be touched without gloves. She would never treat him to a vulgar scene in which she burst into tearful protestations of love for another man. She would never allow a younger version of himself (or Hellgate) to lure her into a stranger’s bed.

She was his, and only his.

The very idea of it sent a bolt of passion through him.

“Shall we walk in the gardens?” he asked, hearing the huskiness in his own voice.

She glanced up at him, but appeared to see nothing amiss, because she nodded. “I am not in the least hungry,” she said. Like a bird, Sylvie appeared to eat only crumbs, and then only at the oddest times. He had never actually seen her eat a meal, for example. She tended to move things around her plate and then place her tableware on top, as if concealing the contents.

He strolled all the way to the far end of the garden. Most of the revelers had poured back into the house. It was at least two in the morning now, and the garden was dark and mysterious.