by Diane Gaston
Phillipa heard a man call her name.
She scented sea air and heard waves rolling on to the shore. She felt small and frightened and in pain. Her face hurt and she tasted blood.
She tried to move, but the wind had been knocked out of her. ‘Phillipa!’ the voice called again.
A man’s hands turned her on her back. The darkness had melded into dusk and the air was briny.
‘Wake up, my girl,’ the voice said.
She opened her eyes and her vision filled with the face of a man. A stranger to her, but she’d seen him before, in this exact way—or so it felt.
‘Phillipa, wake up.’ The face changed before her eyes, turning into Xavier’s face.
She gasped.
‘Are you hurt?’ Xavier’s hands were all over her, touching her arms, her legs, her torso. ‘Did he hurt you?’
This was not at the seaside?
No, it was London. She and Xavier had been walking home. This was not Brighton. She was not a little girl. This was Xavier with her.
‘I’m not hurt,’ she managed.
She tried to sit up. His arms embraced her and lifted her to her feet. He held her against him. ‘I thought you were hurt.’ He held her tighter. ‘I thought I had lost you.’
She remembered men jumping out of the darkness at them. She remembered fighting to be free.
But for a moment she’d been back in Brighton. She’d seen a different man lean over her. He appeared as real as Xavier appeared now.
She trembled. She’d seen something that was not really there.
Panic rose inside her, kept at bay only because of the strength of his arms. He comforted her. She was safe. Xavier held her.
He loosened his grip. ‘I must get you home.’
Supporting her weight with one arm, he led her out of the mews, past Berkeley Square to Davies Street.
Her head throbbed as she remembered he’d had to fight off two men. ‘Did they hurt you?’ she asked. ‘Did they get your money?’ Her reticule still dangled from her arm.
His voice turned low and fierce. ‘Not that miserable lot of ruffians.’
They reached her door and he embraced her again. ‘I should have prevented that attack. We should not have been walking at this hour. I was wrong to agree to this.’
If he had not been with her, what would have happened to her? There had been three of them.
Her heart pounded, anticipating what would come next. He intended to forbid her to come to the Masquerade Club. He would stop her performances right when she was learning about how to make the music most entertaining. He would take it all away.
She could not bear it.
‘Do not forbid me this, Xavier.’ Her voice trembled and her head ached.
‘It is not safe, Phillipa,’ he insisted. ‘You simply cannot take the risk.’
The hood of her cloak had fallen away, exposing her disfigurement. She pulled it up again and put the key in the lock, turning it.
He covered her hand with his. ‘Phillipa, do not come to the gaming house. Do not try it alone.’
She opened the door and turned to him. ‘May I have my dagger back?’
He hesitated, but finally handed it to her.
‘Thank you, Xavier.’ Impulsively she threw her arms around him. ‘You saved us both.’
To her surprise, he returned her embrace with one of his own. He held her against him so tightly it seemed as if he would never release her.
‘Phillipa,’ he rasped in her ear, as if wanting something more of her, but she did not know what.
She only knew she felt even more shaken when he finally released her and she hurried inside the house.
Chapter Four
Phillipa tossed and turned in her bed. If she drifted into sleep, her attacker returned, jarring her awake. Worse, in her dream, the attacker bore the face of the man she’d seen in her vision.
She must call it a vision. What else could it be? She’d seen something that did not exist. Not only seen, she’d actually been in another place, a place that smelled and sounded like the seaside.
Like Brighton.
Was she going mad?
She closed her eyes and made herself imagine the image of her real attacker. And then she purposely recalled the face of the phantom man. She could remember both, but remembering was not remotely akin to what she had experienced. Seeing the phantom face, feeling as if she were in another place, those were not mere memories.
Even now, safe in her home, in her bed, she trembled in fear. It made no sense to feel afraid now; she’d not been excessively afraid during the attack. Fear had not been a part of fighting off her attacker and refusing to give him her reticule. The terror had come when she fell and that phantom face appeared.
It had seemed so very real.
If it were not enough to worry about going mad, her head also hurt like the dickens. She rose from bed and, by the dawning light from the window, peered at herself in her dressing table mirror. Her forehead bore a nasty scrape.
Phillipa walked back to her bed and pulled off a blanket. She wrapped it around herself and curled up in a chair to watch the light from the window grow brighter.
Her maid entered the room quietly and jumped when Phillipa turned towards her in the chair. ‘My lady!’
‘I could not sleep, Lacey.’ Phillipa stretched. ‘I might as well dress, I suppose.’
Her maid helped her into a morning dress and stood behind her to pin up her hair as she sat at the dressing table.
The girl glanced at her in the mirror. ‘What happened to your forehead?’
‘It is nothing,’ Phillipa answered quickly. ‘I...I bumped into the wall by accident.’
The maid looked sceptical.
Lacey was younger than Phillipa and had been hired as Phillipa’s lady’s maid after the Westleighs arrived in London for the Season. How nice it would be if Phillipa could confide in her about how her injury came about.
‘I’ll just wear a cap today,’ Phillipa said as the maid pinned up her hair. ‘We need not mention my injury to my mother. No need to worry her.’ A cap should hide the scrape well enough. Besides, her mother never looked at her too closely these days.
The girl nodded. ‘Yes, miss.’
Once dressed, Phillipa went straight to her music room. She placed her fingers on the keys of the pianoforte and tried to release the emotions inside her. The keys produced dissonant, unharmonious sounds and her fear returned, as if her world were crumbling around her and she could not stop it, the same feeling she experienced when she fell.
Her music reflected the confusion inside her. No phrase complemented any other.
She became dimly aware of a rapping at the door, but she did not stop playing. Whoever it was would eventually go away.
Suddenly her mother stood before her, shocking her as much as if her mother had been a vision herself.
‘Gracious, Phillipa! At least play a tune. This noise grates upon my nerves.’ Her mother pressed her fingers to her forehead.
Phillipa and her mother had barely spoken since the quarrel that sent Phillipa in search of answers about her family. And led her to Xavier. Now she could not speak of what she’d learned without revealing that she knew of the Masquerade Club.
Phillipa lifted her hands from the keys. ‘As you wish, Mama.’
She softly played ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, reciting the words in her head—Tis the last rose of summer, Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone.
She’d not felt alone since Xavier allowed her to perform at the Masquerade Club.
‘When do Ned and Hugh return from wherever they are?’ She knew her mother would not tell her, but it might make her leave the room before noticing Phillipa’s bruise.
Her mother,
still straight-backed and regal though in her fifty-fifth year, pursed her lips before answering, ‘Please do not tease me about their whereabouts. I have no wish to have that discussion with you again.’
Phillipa continued to play pianissimo.
‘Do you come to Lady Danderson’s musical evening with me tonight?’ Her mother’s tone dripped with disapproval. No doubt she expected Phillipa to refuse.
She was correct ‘I think not.’
Her mother swept a dramatic arm encompassing the pianoforte and half the room. ‘Why not? I thought you loved music.’
Phillipa shot her a sharp look, but averted her eyes. No sense revisiting her mother’s displeasure at her retreat from society. ‘It is to be an amateur performance, is it not? Lady Danderson’s daughters and other young ladies and gentlemen of her choosing?’
‘It is,’ her mother admitted.
‘But she has not chosen me.’
Her mother cleared her throat. ‘That is true, but...’
Phillipa stopped playing. ‘I do understand it, Mama. The performers are eligible young people. She wishes them to show off to good advantage.’ Phillipa did not need to explain to her mother that she would never show off to good advantage. Her mother would be first to agree. ‘There is no reason for me to be there.’
‘Well, there is the music,’ her mother added.
Phillipa resumed playing and the final lines of the song came to her—Oh! Who would inhabit this bleak world alone? ‘I would not enjoy it.’
‘I will attend without you, then.’ Her mother turned away and then swung back. ‘Perhaps I will ask Miss Gale if she will come with me. She is at least a sociable sort.’
Miss Gale was the young woman Phillipa’s brother Ned wanted to marry. She was also the stepdaughter of Lady Gale, the woman carrying Rhysdale’s child, the woman who also came masked to the Masquerade Club.
‘Miss Gale will be glad of my company.’ It was her mother’s parting shot. She strode out of the room.
Phillipa’s head suddenly ached, but she moved her fingers over the keys, barely pressing them this time, searching for a melody, any melody to erase this unrest within her.
* * *
Xavier waited for Phillipa that night at their appointed place, at their appointed time. This time, however, he waited with a hackney cab.
He paced the pavement, rather hoping she would not show up, yet yearning to see her, needing to know for certain that her injuries were minor. A blow to the head could be deceiving. What if she had been truly hurt, like that long-ago time in Brighton?
He’d have failed her again, that was what. And this time it would be his fault.
The jarvey leaned down from his perch atop the coach. ‘How much longer, sir? My time is money.’
‘I’ll pay you for your time, do not fear.’ Xavier paced some more.
Her town house door finally opened and a shadowy, cloaked figure emerged.
Phillipa.
She glanced towards where he stood near the coach, pausing briefly to put on her shoes before heading in his direction. She showed no sign that she knew it was he and looked as if she intended to walk past him.
‘Phillipa,’ he called out.
She drew back.
‘It is Xavier.’ He stepped in her path. ‘I have a hackney coach.’
‘Xavier?’
He opened the coach door.
She looked uncertain. ‘You brought a hackney for me?’
‘I feared you might try to walk alone.’ Or be too injured to make the attempt, he added silently as he helped her climb into the coach.
She settled in the seat and pulled her cloak around her. ‘I did not expect this.’
Xavier sat beside her in the close quarters of the coach’s dark interior. He felt her warmth, inhaled the scent of jasmine that clung to her. Her face was shrouded by her mask, but he longed to see her for himself. Was she bruised? Did her injuries again show on her face?
‘Have you suffered any ill-effects from last night?’ he asked.
She did not answer right away. ‘A scrape on my forehead and little headache is all.’
‘That is all?’
There was something she was not telling him. He resisted the temptation to pull off her mask to see this scrape for himself. He also resisted the temptation to check her arms, shoulders, ribs, legs—all over her, as he had done the night before.
At the very least, he was tempted to hold her, like he’d done when she was a little girl and had been in need of his comfort.
The distance to the Masquerade Club made for a short walk and an even shorter ride. In no time the coach pulled up to the gaming house and they disembarked.
Xavier paid the driver generously. ‘You’ll earn that much again if you return in three hours.’
The jarvey grinned. ‘In that case, I will, sir!’
Cummings opened the door, nodded to them both and took Phillipa’s cloak.
‘Thank you, Cummings,’ Phillipa said, sounding more tense than other nights.
Xavier faced her. ‘Give me your word you will wait for the hackney coach. Do not leave without me.’
‘You have my word,’ she assured him.
Xavier watched her climb the stairs to the supper room, but he was not perusing her for possible injuries. He was admiring her form and grace.
He glanced away and noticed Cummings regarding him curiously. Cummings turned and disappeared with Phillipa’s cloak.
Xavier shrugged. Who ever knew what Cummings thought? Xavier crossed the hall in the opposite direction and checked in with MacEvoy.
‘Our numbers continue to run high.’ MacEvoy handed him the ledger where he kept count of the numbers of patrons attending and the amount of profits at the end of the night.
When Rhys returned he would look through the books and ask Xavier about the spike in patrons and profits. Xavier would tell Rhys about the pianiste who’d briefly performed in Rhys’s absence.
He simply would not tell Rhys the pianiste had been Phillipa.
MacEvoy added, ‘A woman asked for you.’
‘Indeed?’ Women often asked for him.
‘Don’t know her. She’s wearing a mask. I told her you’d be back directly.’ Most of the time MacEvoy recognised patrons, even when they wore masks. He knew the pianiste was the woman who’d called on Xavier that first day, but he did not know her real name.
Unless he had asked Cummings. She’d announced herself to Cummings. Both Cummings and MacEvoy probably knew Phillipa’s identity. Xavier would have to deal with that.
‘Thank you, Mac.’ He returned the ledger to MacEvoy.
Xavier’s next stop was the gaming room. He wound his way around the room, stopping to chat with patrons or the croupiers. He stepped to the side and surveyed the room, looking for signs of potential trouble. A reckless loser. Or an angry one. Or, a gaming hell’s worst trouble—cheaters.
A masked woman approached him. The woman who’d asked for him, he surmised.
‘Hello, Xavier.’ Her voice was low and lustful.
‘Ma’am.’ He was usually as skilled as MacEvoy in recognising patrons beneath their masks, but she was new to him.
She laughed. ‘Do you not know me?’
He smiled. ‘I make it a practice not to know anyone wearing a mask.’
Except Phillipa.
She touched his arm. ‘You must know me!’
He had no idea.
‘It has been an age. Ten years. But I have never forgotten you.’ Her fingers squeezed his arm in too familiar a manner.
Ten years? A dampening feeling spread over him.
Yes. He knew her suddenly. She’d nearly ruined her marriage, her reputation and the good name of his family when last he’d encountered her.
/> ‘But I do not know you,’ he said, untruthfully. ‘The mask disguises you. Your identity is safe here, I assure you.’
‘Xavier.’ Her tone turned sharp and her fingers dug tighter. ‘You would not forget me.’
Indeed he would not.
He’d been barely eighteen. She’d been two years older and unhappily married. She’d pursued an affair with him with all the force of a regimental attack.
And now she was back.
He was careful to remain no more than civil. ‘I assure you, ma’am. Those who choose anonymity may be secure in it.’ Illusory though it was. ‘I will not know you.’
She pulled him over to a corner of the room and pulled down her mask. ‘It is I. Daphne. Lady Faville. Surely you remember me.’
She had not changed. Same pale, unblemished skin. Same flaxen hair and wide-set blue eyes. A perfect beauty.
He put her mask back in place. ‘Of course I remember you, my lady.’ He remembered her desperate loneliness and her belief that an affair with him could alter her unhappiness.
‘My lady?’ She sounded as if she would cry. ‘Can it not be Daphne and Xavier between us?’
‘No, it cannot.’ He softened his expression, but glanced around the room. ‘Is Lord Faville here with you?’
Her eye sparkled. ‘Did you not hear? He is dead.’
‘I am sorry to hear it.’ He really ought to peruse the newspapers more carefully. ‘My condolences.’
She waved a hand. ‘I am out of mourning. I have attended some of the Season’s parties, hoping to see you. Then I learned you were here.’
She’d come looking for him. This was not good.
She smiled. ‘There is no one to stop us now.’
Xavier gritted his teeth. ‘Daphne, I am stopping it. You caused a great deal of trouble and pain to my family as well as nearly ruining your good name and your marriage—’
Her eyes lit up. ‘You called me Daphne!’
Oh, good God.
‘Enough of this.’ He held up a hand. ‘You are welcome here. To play the tables, or cards or refresh yourself in the supper room, but what is past is over.’
He strode away and did not look back.
* * *
