The Marsh Hawk

by Dawn MacTavish

  Halfway down the carpeted stairs and still protesting, Jenna froze on the step. A gentleman was watching their descent from the terrazzo floor below. Others were milling around him, but he appeared to be alone, a striking figure of a man, whom she assessed to be in his midthirties, with the most astonishing eyes she had ever gazed into. Long, dark lashes wreathed them, lashes that any woman would have envied; they gave him a dreamy, suggestive look. He was standing beneath a candle sconce, and the flames ignited the deep-set eyes behind those sweeping lashes, making them bluer than they had any right to be. His chestnut hair curled rakishly from a provocative widow’s peak. It was pulled back in a queue behind the stand-up collar on the dark gray cutaway coat of superfine that made him appear very tall. The embroidered white waistcoat, black pantaloons, Hessian boots, and meticulously tied neckcloth that completed him were no more than a blur in the shadow of those eyes. Everything else paled before the primal expression in them that almost caused her to lose her footing.

  Something stirred inside her, something she wasn’t prepared for. Her mother was tugging at her arm, still carping about the importance of good eating habits and the danger of falling down in dead faints for lack of them. Jenna scarcely noticed; those eyes watching her seemed to have charged the air between them and paralyzed her where she stood.

  “Who is that?” she breathed, aware now of the man’s broad jawline and sideburns framing straight lips that almost seemed as if they wanted to smile, but didn’t.

  As she spoke, a man and woman joined him. The woman, young and attractive, wearing blue organdy with a bonnet trimmed to match that complemented her blondness, put herself between the two men, looping one of her arms through each of theirs, and all three turned away. The subject of Jenna’s attention walked with a slight limp that in no way diminished his stature.

  “Who, dear? Where?” her mother said, her head oscillating ridiculously.

  “There,” Jenna whispered, nodding. “The one with the long hair.” The new short men’s hairstyles that had come into fashion and were all the rage in Town had not entirely taken the coast by storm. Some men still wore their hair rather long, as he did, drawn back loosely at the nape of the neck and tied with a silk ribbon, but that was the exception, not the rule, and an oddity among the aristocracy.

  “Why, it’s Simon Rutherford, Earl of Kevernwood,” Lady Hollingsworth said. She narrowed her eyes and honed in on her target with all the aplomb of a ferret. “I didn’t know he’d returned.”

  Jenna looked over in confusion.

  “He’s been abroad, dear, since the navy invalided him out. He served under Nelson, you know. I heard he was wounded at Copenhagen. See there, he’s limping.”

  “How is it that we’ve never received him?”

  “Lord Kevernwood doesn’t spend much time on the coast, dear. He has a town house that he prefers to Kevernwood Hall. I’m surprised to see him here, actually. He usually keeps to himself. There’s some sort of scandal connected with that family . . . something to do with Simon’s older brother, who died in India. Their father disinherited him, money-wise, long before he was killed out there—cut him off without a cent of allowance. It was something indelicate, dear, very hush, hush.” She pointed. “Look, Simon’s valet. See there?”

  Jenna followed her mother’s finger to a tall, slender, grayhaired man hurrying after the earl and his companions.

  “Simon must be staying the weekend,” Lady Hollingsworth chattered on. “How odd. He so rarely socializes. I’m sure Lady Marner will have a good deal to say about that. You know how she does go on.”

  The earl did not look back. The trio seemed to be heading for the dining hall, and Jenna dug in her heels.

  “I’m not going down, Mother,” she said. “I’m going back to my room and unpack. By the time you locate Emily, my feathers will be beyond repair. She has an eye for one of the footmen. There’s something you might want to address, before we have to hear all about that from Lady Marner.”

  Lady Hollingsworth bristled and spluttered, but Jenna paid no attention. She took advantage of her mother’s incredulity to escape and return to her chamber. The earl’s liquid sapphire eyes haunted her. Why had that look disarmed her so? And why should she be so distressed that he had witnessed her having a disagreement with her mother? She didn’t know, but her embarrassment was unshakable and deep nonetheless.

  That odd, unsettling thrill she’d experienced as those eyes impaled her came again, and a rush of heat sped to her cheeks as she unpacked her costume. She was prone to blushing. It had always been an embarrassment: the curse of her coloring. She wondered if she had done so earlier, and her heart leapt at the thought that she might have, and that he might have noticed.

  “Thank God it’s a masked ball,” she thought out loud, slapping at a few bent feathers on her gown.

  Moments later, one of the chambermaids appeared with a tray, and Emily followed on her heels wearing flushed cheeks herself. Jenna couldn’t tell if the girl’s color was result of an encounter with her footman, or an affray with her mother, since the latter seemed to be the order of the day.

  Emily disappeared with the costume, and Jenna pulled a Chippendale chair up to the gateleg table, where the maid had set the tray, and lifted the silver cover from a well-rounded plate of rook pie, braised vegetables, and an assortment of bread tidbits and cheeses. She poured herself a cup of tea from the service that accompanied the meal, and nibbled at some of the bread and Stilton. The butterflies in her stomach would not abide rook pie.

  Her costume returned no worse for wear, and two footmen arrived with a hipbath, which they set up in the dressing room off her bedchamber. Once the chambermaids had filled it, they left Jenna with Emily, who would assist with her toilette.

  The water was heavenly, silkened with oil of lavender, and rosemary. She sponged it all over her body, luxuriating in the fragrant warmth caressing her. She closed her eyes, but when she did, the earl’s image popped into her mind, and a hot surge revived the thrill he’d caused earlier and drove it up a notch. There was something excruciatingly exciting, and not a little frightening, about experiencing such a sensation naked in a tub of steamy, perfumed water. That it was the earl’s liquid sapphire eyes that triggered it and not Rupert’s dull hazel ones was disturbing. So disturbing that she fled the tub.

  Emily’s cheeks had returned to their normal color by the time she’d dried Jenna’s hair and helped her into the costume. Jenna was seated at the vanity trying to decide how to dress her long strawberry-blond mane in order to make it fit beneath the cowl, when her mother, costumed as well, entered from the adjoining suite. Lady Hollingsworth was supposed to be Helen of Troy, but looked more like she had forgotten to put a dress on over her slip, Jenna decided. The dowager was much too short and heavyset to carry the costume well, and the formidable divorce corset underneath that radically divided her ample bosom only made matters worse, propelling the overflow sideways.

  “Help us, Mother. We’re in a muddle,” Jenna said, suppressing a smile. “What shall we do with my hair? It’s too thick to put up, and too long to leave down; it will show below the cowl.”

  First Emily tried to find a solution, and then Lady Hollingsworth tried her hand. The modiste had created the perfect headgear for a baldheaded woman, Jenna thought, before they finally settled on a soft, flat coil at the back of the head held in place snood fashion by a bit of sarcenet.

  “Long hair is so out of fashion, Jenna,” her mother said, fussing with the results. “You should have cut it long ago.” She threw up her hands. “There’s nothing for it. When you unmask, dear, just pull the tendrils out around your face. The center part is quite becoming, and the waves are falling naturally at least. It will have to do.”

  Taking a full-length view in the cheval glass, Jenna had to agree that Madame Flaubert had outdone herself. The swanhead mask fit perfectly. The eyeholes were slanted at just the right angle to follow the natural curve of her silvery gray eyes, and her mouth and chin we
re visible beneath the beak. Decidedly, she was magnificent.

  Soliciting dances beforehand was waived for the evening, since part of the fun was to be attempting to identify one’s dance partner—which really didn’t promise to be all that difficult in most cases, judging from the gathering. Would Rupert recognize her? Jenna hoped not. She wanted to enjoy herself, or at least to try. Being in costume allowed her to pretend that she wasn’t the Lady Jenna Hollingsworth, who had done murder and was about to ruin the rest of her life as result of it; she was a beautiful, graceful swan without a care in the world, and she longed to spread her lovely feathered wings and fly.

  That delicious fantasy dissolved, however, the minute she entered the Grand Ballroom. The orchestra was playing a selection from Bach while the guests poured in through the archway, one costume more bizarre than the next. She spotted Rupert almost at once, dressed as a pharaoh, in keeping with the neoclassical movement that had become so popular among the ton. She hadn’t remembered until then that John Nash, who had perpetuated Robert Adam’s vision in decor, had begun redecorating Moorhaven in the Empire style incorporating concepts brought back by Englishmen who fought Napoleon during the Egyptian campaign. How could she not have noticed? There were evidences of the man’s revolutionary touch everywhere. Jenna wasn’t sure she approved.

  She managed to avoid Rupert for the moment; he had become surrounded by several members of the House of Lords, who had just arrived from London for the event. The betrothal announcement was to be made at midnight. It would be signaled by the arrival of a troop of footmen bearing silver trays laden with champagne glasses already filled for toasting. That, however, was still more than two hours away, and it was going to be difficult to hide dressed in the most conspicuous costume in the hall.

  The dancing began with a quadrille. A daring Viennese valse à deux temps followed by a gallop and then another quadrille would set the pattern for fourteen dances before a formal break for the announcement. Jenna danced the first quadrille with the Marquess of Roxbury. He was costumed as a magistrate, an older man, overweight and out of breath, who smelled of onions, and couldn’t keep his wig on straight. The experience was nauseating, and she was thankful that her stomach was practically empty.

  She didn’t know her partner for the waltz. He was dressed simply in a voluminous domino and mask, though most of the masks framed by the customary white satin-lined black hoods were spectacular and very inventive. His resembled a hawk. Many of the other masks represented birds as well. There were owls, falcons, ravens—feathered creatures of every species were well accounted for, one more resplendent than the next, and all sporting formidable looking beaks. But birds were not the only species on display. Jenna particularly admired a lion mask worn by Lord Eccleston, whose deep, gravelly voice gave him away. It was designed as a cowl much like hers and covered his head completely. He was her partner for the gallop.

  A duke, elaborately dressed as a potentate, was her partner for the second quadrille, during which she observed the ladies’ costumes, which ranged from pastoral milkmaids to fairy princesses in every color imaginable. The young, blond woman who had stolen the earl of Kevernwood away that afternoon, was costumed as a toddler in white organdy and lace, complete with ruffled baby bonnet and leading strings. It suited her. Watching her skip effortlessly over the floor with Sir Gerald Markham leading their set sent a disturbing pang of jealousy shooting through Jenna. The girl seemed so happy, so unencumbered by guilt. Not a care in the world.

  How dare she, when this is my ball, and I am so miserable? And who was she anyway? Someone who knew Lord Kevernwood well enough to link arms with him, that’s who. Yes, that pang was jealousy. Unmistakably. She wouldn’t have minded a bit if Miss Blondness had linked arms with her betrothed. Facing that fact was jarring at best.

  Rupert was still engaged in conversation with the Londoners. Would she catch a glimpse of the earl? Would he dance, considering his limp? When the quadrille ended, she glanced around the ballroom trying to pick him out among the guests, but there were just too many people at the gathering. What would it be like to glide over that floor in his arms? She fantasized their bodies touching—the warm pressure of his hand at her waist, moving her effortlessly over the polished terrazzo; the illusion was brought on by the orchestra having struck up another waltz, and her eyes were closed as she indulged in it, when a deep, sensuous voice from behind assailed her ears.

  “Will you honor me with this dance, my lady?”

  At first, she thought that voice was a phantom of her fantasy. But when she turned to be sure, she froze in horror as she faced not her delicious daydream, but her worst nightmare: a highwayman, in black from his tricorn hat to his polished Hessian boots, his blue eyes blazing through the holes in a glistening silk half-mask.

  She gasped, swayed, and spiraled unconscious into the man’s strong arms.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When Jenna came to, she was lying on a yellow, satin-striped chaise lounge in an antechamber off the ballroom. Rupert was stooping over her, alongside her mother, who was whimpering and fanning her furiously with Lord Eccleston’s donated handkerchief. The earl, who had removed the black half-mask and tricorn hat, stood behind the lounge. The blond girl was at his side, clutching the rigid arm that ended in a clenched fist against his well-turned muscular thigh, her face pressed against his shoulder as they all stared down at her.

  Jenna’s cowl had been removed, sarcenet and all, and her hair fell over her shoulders resting now on her breast, which began to heave with spastic breaths the minute her eyes focused on the earl in what remained of his highwayman costume. Those astonishing blue eyes glaring down at her had darkened to smalt. They met hers wearing a different look now, one of gravity and bewilderment.

  Rupert dosed him with a disdainful glance.

  “I told her to eat something,” Lady Hollingsworth whined. “She scarcely touched a morsel all day.”

  “How colossally stupid of you, Jenna,” Rupert said. Returning to his full height, he stood arms akimbo. “You’ve spoiled the masque!”

  Clearly nonplussed, Kevernwood stood ramrod rigid, his eyes oscillating between them. There was nothing readable in his handsome face. If there had been something, anything in those lashes-fringed eyes that bespoke compassion, Jenna would have melted under their gaze. Tears blurred his image instead. Though he’d unmasked, her terror was still with her, and she reacted more like a frightened sparrow than the poised and graceful swan that she appeared.

  “Kevernwood,” a gruff voice said from the doorway. It belonged to Lord Eccleston, absurdly carrying his lion’s head under his arm. Tall and broad shouldered, in his sixties, he was one of the Hollingsworths’ closest neighbors, and one of Jenna’s father’s oldest friends on the coast.

  The earl’s broad jaw shot upward in his direction in reply, and when Lord Eccleston motioned him closer, he disengaged himself from the clutches of Miss Blondness and strode toward him.

  The young man who had accompanied them that afternoon took the earl’s place at the girl’s side, looking confused. Jenna assumed that he must have been in the dining hall when she fainted, and had no idea what had occurred.

  Her mother was chattering in her ear like a magpie. Jenna scarcely heard. Her head was still reeling. It pounded unmercifully. Her cheeks were on fire, and she couldn’t meet Rupert’s eyes. It was all she could do to persuade herself not to jump to her feet and slap his petulant face.

  She glanced toward the doorway where several other men had joined Kevernwood and Lord Eccleston. All at once the earl’s head snapped toward her, and his eyes—those liquid sapphire eyes that had so mesmerized her—wavered briefly.

  His limp was more pronounced when his steps were brisk, as they were then, returning to her. She wasn’t afraid of him now that she realized he was neither a ghost nor a real highwayman. The flood of mixed emotions that coursed through her body then was so complex, however, that she nearly fainted a second time. Not the least of these was an overwhe
lming desire to be in his arms again; she barely remembered their touch. How cruel was providence. She had fantasized being in those arms, and when it happened she wasn’t even conscious to experience it.

  “My lady, please forgive me,” the earl murmured. “You must believe me, had I known, I would never—”

  “Well, you should have known, shouldn’t you?” Rupert snapped, interrupting. “Get out of that rig, Kevernwood. What could you have been thinking?”

  “How could his lordship have possibly known, Rupert?” Lord Eccleston defended, coming closer. “He’s only just come home.”

  Jenna nodded her awkward acceptance to the earl and attempted to rise.

  “No, don’t!” Miss Blondness erupted. “My lady, stay. You look frightful. Doesn’t she, Crispin?” She was addressing the young man at her side, the man who possessed the other arm she’d linked that afternoon.

  Jenna stared at them bewildered. Drat and blast! Who was this woman?

  “Forgive me, my lady,” the earl said, as though he’d read her mind. “May I present Lady Evelyn St. John, and her brother, Crispin St. John; they are my houseguests at Kevernwood Hall.”

  Jenna managed the correct amenities.

  All at once, Lady Carolyn Marner, tall and regal, and totally in character in her Valkyrie costume, parted the growing crowd gathering at the antechamber door, her dull-witted husband, just as totally out of character as her Viking counterpart, trailing at her heels.

  “Are you unwell, Jenna, my pet?” she intoned. “The marquess tells me that you swooned in the ballroom.”

  “Kevernwood here frightened her in that getup,” Rupert put in.

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean to, Rupert, dear,” she purred. Then close in his ear, though they all heard, she added, “How could his lordship possibly have known that her father was killed by a highwayman?”

  “Can we get on with this, or not?” Rupert snapped, throwing up his hands in a gesture of impatience. “The rest of us may as well unmask and have the announcement. We all look ridiculous.”