Nothing on Earth & Nothing in Heaven

by Susan Fanetti

  “Very well, Mr. Frazier. It shall be done.”

  The next afternoon, when William returned to his suite after a day spent at the London Library, he found his cleaned suits hanging neatly in the armoire, the door left open so that he could see that the work had been done. Three pairs of newly polished shoes were lined in perfect symmetry along the floor beside the armoire, and three boxes of laundered shirts and other items sat neatly atop the bureau.

  On the writing desk near the window, a sealed envelope and a cotton bag of coins sat atop a sheet of the hotel’s linen stationery, on which was written the note: Dear Mr. Frazier, our laundress found these items in the pockets of your black suit with scarlet jacquard lining—all his suits were black, but only one had the flashy silk lining of Carrother and Sons, on Market Street, in the coat—If you have any concern, please contact Mr. Burns or any member of the staff.

  The telephone message of the afternoon before; William had forgotten entirely about it. He was normally careful about checking his pockets when he undressed, but he hadn’t undressed himself last night, and the lady he’d entertained had stayed with him until morning. She’d been still in the room, in bed with him, when the bellman had arrived to collect the cleaning for which he had a standing arrangement. He’d been a bit abrupt to all parties involved, and had made an insufficient search of his pockets, clearly.

  He opened the envelope now and read the message—from Chris. After the details of name of caller and time and date of call, the message read simply, Miss you, old bean. Fancy another safari through the London wilds? Tomorrow night. Call or send a note; I’ll be homebound during the day.

  William grinned. Chris was avoiding his family’s home while his father and sister were in town, so ‘homebound’ meant lazing about in the club, drinking and smoking—which seemed to be the way his friend spent most of his days in London. The noble aversion to work confounded William. How did these men find fulfillment in such stultifying days? Especially a man like Chris, full of athletic energy? Or was it different in the country? Did they have more to do outside London?

  Still grinning, he went out to return Chris’s call. The ‘tomorrow’ of his message was today, and it might be too late for the ‘safari’ he’d had planned, but William was glad to hear from his friend—and to see that there were no hard feelings for the night of his sister’s dinner.

  “Come on, Will. Don’t be so glum. I thought you Yanks were full of adventurous spirit!” Chris tied his own mask around his head: a vague impression of some kind of horned animal, the mask white, and golden horns spiraling up from each side. Otherwise, he was in black tie, as William was, as if for a night at the theatre—which was what William had expected when his friend had offered him a night of theatrics and spectacle.

  Instead, they were standing outside an enormous mansion in St. James’s, the home of Lady Cordelia Spenhall, a dowager duchess and dignitary of London Society, one of the few nobles who made her home in London year-round. Her fancy dress ball was a highlight of every Season.

  Chris had told him all this on the ride over, as he’d finally confessed to their true destination, produced his oddity of a mask, and offered William a piece of black scarf to tie around his own eyes.

  He had not intended, nor would he have agreed, to attend a costume ball. Of all the absurdities of this ‘Season’ nonsense, this seemed especially laughable.

  But the beautiful stone manse flamed with light, the music of an orchestra and of a multitude of contented people rolled from the open windows and doors, and the world seemed to effervesce around them. Moreover, Chris was so obviously eager to share this with him, and he owed his friend some good will after his conduct at Lady Nora’s dinner.

  It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if his sister would be in attendance, but he kept his mouth shut. It shouldn’t matter if she were. It didn’t matter.

  “Very well,” he said and tied the mask around his head, arranging the eye holes so that his vision was unobstructed. “If I’m mistaken for a bandit, I hope you’ll intervene before I’m arrested.”

  Chris smirked under his mask—was it a gazelle? “I suppose that’ll depend on whether you’re lifting the silver at the time—and let a spot of romance into your thinking. You’re a highwayman, old bean, not a lowly bandit.”

  “And what, then, are you?”

  “A satyr, of course! Don’t you study the Greeks in America?”

  Yes, they did. William knew what a satyr was. He laughed. “Just don’t act like one.”

  “And again, it’s the American who doesn’t know how to enjoy himself.” Chris slapped a hand on William’s back and ushered him in through the wide, open doors of Lady Spenhall’s palatial mansion.

  It was the first London home William had been inside that had a true ballroom, into which guests descended via a wide, curving staircase. There was no one to announce their attendance, which William took at first as odd—he’d been announced nearly everywhere Chris had dragged him, excepting his own home—but it was a costume ball, and he supposed the effect would have been greatly diminished if each guest were named as they entered.

  He stood at the top of the staircase and surveyed the scene below. Two hundred or more guests, in elaborate costumes or, like himself, simply dressed formally and masked, mingled, partook of confections served by footmen carrying gleaming silver trays, or danced to the music provided by a fifteen-piece orchestra. Two walls lined with open French doors, and footmen stationed at each corner bearing immense, feathered fans, kept the temperature of the room below sweltering on this midsummer evening.

  William scanned the crowd, his focus narrowing, and he realized that he was looking for someone in particular. Every blonde head got his consideration, but from this height, he couldn’t determine which of those masked women might be the Lady Nora.

  There was some appeal in that, some freedom. They weren’t supposed to recognize each other, or behave as themselves. That was the purpose of a masquerade, was it not? Tonight, William was a highwayman, and Chris was a satyr. What was Lady Nora’s adopted identity?

  Chris tugged on his arm. “Will, you’ll not get off so easily. To attend a ball, you must be at the ball. Down we go.”

  “We have balls in America, too, you know.”

  Even through their masks, William could see the ironic twinkle in Chris’s eye. “Do you. Interesting.”

  They descended the stairs into the whirl and clamor of the ball. Chris ran off at once to cavort amongst the ladies. William stayed back, near an open door, and continued his survey of the guests. Now that the cover of the masquerade had occurred to him, he saw no reason not to seek Lady Nora out. She was the only of the ladies he’d met of any interest to him, and tonight he wasn’t a gauche American and she wasn’t an innocent lady in need of a husband.

  He found her when her partner in a waltz led her past him. All he saw was her back, but it was enough. She had a constellation of three small moles just at the base of her neck, and she danced close enough that he made them out clearly before her partner—dressed as Uncle Sam, ironically enough—led her inward, and she was swallowed up in the crowd.

  In that quick passing glimpse, he’d seen enough of her to hone his search. Her dress was white, with gold accents of some kind, sequins or crystals that glittered in the electric light. He hadn’t seen her mask, but it had a white plume that rose above her head in a graceful arc. So he narrowed his focus to white plumes and found her again in the throng.

  One tune ended, and another began, and she was turned over to another partner. William had the impression from Chris, and from the lady herself, that her Season had been a failure. If that was true, she was at least benefitting from the masquerade and squeezing some joy from one event if from no others. She was turned toward him in the dance, and he saw her smile. A real smile, full of ease and enjoyment. Lifted up to her partner of the moment. William felt an unreasonable bolt of jealousy to see that ease directed at another man.

  Her mask was
a white bird, its beak over her nose, its wings spread across her face. The plume was its tail. The gold accents on her white gown were vertical stripes of crystals. Her long gloves were shimmering gold as well.

  She was a bird in a gilded cage. A white dove, if he had to guess.

  William pushed into the crowd as the music transitioned again and made his way to her. “May I have this dance?”

  He hadn’t thought to obscure his voice or affect an English accent—which he would have done badly anyway—and Lady Nora recognized him at once. Behind that feathered white mask, her turquoise eyes sparkled. “Yes, you may.”

  Her turbaned former partner stepped away, and William took Lady Nora Tate into his arms.

  “You dance very well,” she said after a few steps.

  He smiled. “So do you.”

  “I had a dance master.”

  “And you think I didn’t?”

  Her own smile was pert and puckish. “Why would I think anything about you at all? You’re a stranger to me, are you not? A dashing shadow, all in black. Did you have a dance master?”

  “Of a sort. My mother. She was quite insistent that a man should know how to move with a lady and not merely drag her about the dance floor.”

  “I think I would enjoy your mother, were we to meet.”

  “I think she would enjoy you, too.”

  Her smile quivered and diminished, and William drew her a few inches closer, so that her bodice just brushed his coat. They made another few turns in silence, staring into each other’s obscured eyes. The room shrank around them until there was nothing but glow and hum beyond the circle of their own movement.

  He wanted to kiss her. In this ballroom, in this moment—and in her high color and parted lips, in the ease of her body in his hold, he thought he read the signs that she’d allow it. Possibly welcome it.

  But he refrained before the impulse became irresistible, and he found something he could say. His voice rumbled uncomfortably in his throat. “I thought the point of a costume ball was to dress as something you are not.”

  She blinked, and her mouth opened a bit more as she took in a quick breath. For that flicker of time, William felt her chest press lightly at the base of his ribs. They were closer in space than he’d realized.

  “Or to expose something that you are,” she murmured, her voice barely carrying above the music.

  “Has anyone yet recognized you tonight?”

  Everything in the world that wasn’t them stopped and went dark as she peered deeply into his eyes. “Only you, Mr. Frazier. Only you.”

  He was going to kiss her after all. He couldn’t resist the sorcery of her beauty and unhappiness.

  The music stopped again, and the sudden rush of quiet brought the world around them back to life. William blinked back to awareness and sucked in a breath as he understood how close he’d come to tarnishing Lady Nora’s reputation indelibly. How stupid that would have been. Stupid and reckless and selfish.

  Still, there was no one seeking to take the next dance, and he was glad for the chance to keep her to himself. He resolved to keep better control over his wayward impulses.

  But Lady Nora pulled away. “Would you escort me to my aunt? I feel a bit overheated.”

  “Of course.” Disappointed, and concerned as well for the bright flush that had suddenly flowered across her chest, he hooked her arm over his and led her in the direction she pointed, where the formidable Lady Collington stood, wearing a violet gown and holding a plain silver mask to her face.

  As they approached, she dropped the mask away and gave William an owlish look before turning to her niece with concern. “Are you well, little dove?”

  “I’m fine, Auntie. I simply need a rest.”

  “We’ll take some fresh air, then. Mr. Frazier, might you be so kind as to fetch us some punch whilst we step out onto the grounds?” Lady Collington was no more fooled by his mask than her niece had been.

  “Of course.” William turned to seek out a footman carrying the right kind of tray.

  When he’d hunted down glasses of the sweet, golden punch, he couldn’t find the Tate ladies. They’d intended to take some air, but the room opened onto Lady Spenhall’s grounds along two full walls. Deciding to start in a straight line from where he’d left them, William eased along the edge of the dance floor until he could forge a path to the nearest door.

  He passed Chris, dancing with a vivacious, ornately masked redhead whom William thought might have been the lady he’d learned whist from at Lady Nora’s party. Beatrix was her given name; her surname escaped his memory.

  Chris caught his eye, and he turned his partner and stepped close. “Having a good time?”

  “I am. So are you, it seems.”

  “I adore a safari!” Chris cheered and spun his partner away.

  William made his way to the open doors and stepped out into the night. Several small groups—ladies in clusters, chaperoned couples, even a few couples on their own—milled about the expansive grounds. A breeze had blown up and made the leaves chant. Loose rose petals fluttered along the grass.

  He found his quarry seated on an iron settee near the rose garden, at some distance from the house.

  “Your drink, my lady. I hope you’re well.”

  “Thank you.” Lady Nora took a glass from him and sipped—no, gulped—half the drink at once.

  Lady Collington stood before William could offer her the other glass. She took it from his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Frazier. If you’ll excuse me for just one moment, I simply must get a better look at Lady Spenhall’s new hybrid. Might I prevail on you to sit with my niece for a moment?”

  Puzzled, but hardly prepared to refuse a request he considered a gift, William offered the widow a courtly nod and gave her his hand as she stepped onto the garden path. He took her place on the settee, at Nora’s side. Lady Nora.

  “My aunt is not very subtle, I’m sorry,” Lady Nora mumbled without looking at him.

  “Seems like a family trait,” he said, his mind divided. He was confused as to why Lady Collington would want to leave him alone with her niece, and risk even that slightest hint of impropriety, when Lady Nora had been struggling to establish her reputation. But he was glad to be on this bench, sitting with her.

  But Lady Nora flinched at his words, and the liquid shook in her glass. Too late, William heard the unintended meaning in his half-considered statement.

  “Forgive me. I meant it as a compliment. You both seem to prefer forthrightness to subterfuge, and I admire it. But I have to say, I’m surprised she would walk away and leave us alone together.”

  “There are people all around us, and she is within sight, but no one is close enough to hear.” She sighed. “I think my aunt has given up on me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I may be … forthright, she believes she sees interest in you, for me, and she’s conspired to give you a chance to express it. A month ago, she would never have considered this, and she must think my father has given up enough hope to be made to agree as well.”

  He took no offense to that statement; he understood exactly why he was deemed ineligible among this set, and he was comfortable as an outsider. He was from new money, earned money. He worked. He was American, not nobly born. For William, all these things were assets of his identity, but among these people, they were deficits.

  Besides, he was only visiting, and not in the market for a wife.

  But the beautiful young lady at his side stared sadly into the glass in her golden gloved hand. As he studied her in the moonlight and the glow from the ball nearby, William’s chest grew so tight he thought his ribs might crack.

  He set his hand over hers where it lay on her lap, and her head shifted slightly, bringing her gaze from the glass to his hand.

  A trio of masked ladies skipped by, giggling.

  When they were out of earshot, Lady Nora asked quietly, “Are you?”

  “My lady?”

  Her eyes came up and fou
nd his. The white plume of her mask fluttered above her head in the summer breeze. “Interested. In me?”

  Yes. Oh yes, he was. Damn—he truly was. He could imagine feeling her bare body against his, his mouth on her skin. He had been imagining. The woman he’d had last night, attractive and skilled as she’d been, hadn’t dimmed those visions at all. In fact, dear God—he could imagine making Nora his wife. He could want it. He did.

  But no. He couldn’t. She was the eighteen-year-old virgin daughter of an English earl. He was the thirty-two-year-old scion of a California railroad baron, world traveled and world wise. Mere attraction, no matter how intense, did not a good marriage make. They came from two wildly different worlds. What—would he pack her up and drag her six thousand miles from everything she’d ever known, drop her into the middle of San Francisco, and expect her to be happy there? How was that any better than what her father had in mind for her?

  It wasn’t. It was worse.

  He’d left too long a silence after her tremulous question, and she took in a brisk breath. “It was wrong of me to ask such a thing. What could you be expected to answer? We’re strangers to each other, after all. Forgive me.”

  What was the right answer? He didn’t know, but he could see how his muteness hurt her. “My lady—Nora—”

  She stood; before he could as well, she gave him that damnable lie of a practiced smile and said, “Mr. Frazier, I thank you sincerely for your kindness and patience. Please excuse me.” And she walked away, alone, toward the ballroom.

  William stood stupidly and watched her go, feeling every bit the ass he was.

  But what would have been the right answer? What could have been?

  “I must say I expected a different result.” Lady Collington had bustled up to his side. “Do you like my niece, Mr. Frazier?”

  That, he could answer straightaway. “I do, Lady Collington. Very much.”