The Scoundrel's Daughter

by Anne Gracie

  “Oh no, you’re mistak—” But Mary had gone.

  Alice viewed herself in the looking glass. Mary—all the servants—had the wrong idea about Lord Tarrant and her. They were all expecting a betrothal announcement, and that wasn’t going to happen.

  She wasn’t dressing for him, she really wasn’t. She was dressing for herself. And so that the night wouldn’t be spoiled for Lucy. And Lady Peplowe. And because this was the only costume she had.

  Besides, she wasn’t even sure he was coming. Lady Peplowe might not have invited him.

  She stood in front of the looking glass and swished her skirts gently back and forth. A smile slowly grew. She did look quite unlike her usual self.

  She tied on the slender gold mask. Her eyes glinted mysteriously through the cat’s-eye slits. Her smile deepened.

  He probably wouldn’t even recognize her. If he came, that is.

  Half an hour later, Alice watched Lucy coming gracefully down the stairs. “You look wonderful,” she exclaimed. “I would never have recognized that as my old muslin dress.”

  Lucy, smiling, pirouetted on the landing, skipped down the last few steps and made Alice a deep curtsy. She was clearly looking forward to the ball.

  The dress was pure white—Mary had worked wonders—and it seemed looser, floatier and less structured than the dress Alice remembered. A Grecian-style pattern had been stenciled around the hem in gold, and gold braid sewn around the neck. Gold buckles were fastened at the shoulders, to which a length of gauzy, gold-edged fabric was fastened, floating about her, adding to the impression of a statue come to life.

  Around her waist Lucy wore a braided girdle of gold rope, with ivy and other creepers from the garden woven in. Her tawny hair was arranged in a vaguely Grecian style, loosely pulled back and bound in places with more gold rope. A headband made of fresh leaves crowned her brow. She wore a pair of light sandals and carried a simple white satin mask. Alice noticed with a jolt of shock that her toes were bare and her toenails were painted gold. It was very daring and wonderfully bold.

  The difference between this young, happy, excited girl and the sulky, badly dressed creature she had first encountered was heartwarming. It might have started as blackmail, and Alice still fretted about the consequences of that, but she couldn’t regret having Lucy come to live with her. Mary was right: Lucy had brought life and liveliness to all their lives.

  “You’re so clever! I never could have created such a costume,” Alice exclaimed. “You could have stepped straight out of a mural in a Greek temple. And you look beautiful.” It was true, too. Lucy glowed with health and youth and excitement.

  “We both look beautiful,” Lucy said.

  Alice helped Lucy tie on her mask and arrange her cloak over her costume, being careful of all the greenery, then they climbed into the carriage and were on their way.

  * * *

  * * *

  Alice looked around her. There was no doubt about it, Lord and Lady Peplowe knew how to throw a ball. Carriages lined the street, waiting to drop off their occupants. The front of the house was lit with blazing brands tended by liveried footmen, the dramatic leaping flames lighting up the night. A temporary porte cochere had been erected in case of rain, and a red carpet laid from inside the house to the edge of the road, ensuring that neither hem of dress nor sole of shoe need touch the common pavement.

  Inside people milled about, passing their cloaks and hats to servants—though not those people wearing dominos, who were mostly men. The crowd moved slowly up the stairs, where they were greeted by Lord and Lady Peplowe.

  Lord and Lady Peplowe looked magnificent dressed as an oriental potentate and his queen, in sumptuous colorful silks and satins, glittering with gold and jewels. Both wore large, splendid turbans, and Alice felt a little dull by comparison, but Lady Peplowe was extremely complimentary. “The perfect partner for you is waiting inside, Queen Cleopatra,” she said with a wink to Alice. “And any number of young gentlemen will be lining up to dance with this lovely Greek goddess.”

  Alice hoped so. Bamber’s deadline was creeping ever closer.

  They passed the receiving line, entered the ballroom and stopped to admire the scene. It was decorated with colorful silks draping the walls, potted palms and sprays of greenery placed at intervals around the room, and pierced-brass lanterns studded with colored glass throwing patterns of colored light across the crowd beneath.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” Lucy breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Alice had to agree. The Peplowe ball was going to be talked about for months to come. It was already “a sad crush”—the ultimate accolade.

  People were dressed in every variety of costume one could imagine. There were harlequins and pirates, knights of old, several devils with horns, Cossacks and Turks, Neptune with his trident, ladies in last century’s fashions, with high powdered hair and wide pannier skirts, creatures from mythology with strange heads and human bodies, jesters, medieval ladies with high pointy headdresses, Spanish ladies in mantillas, and dainty milkmaids and shepherdesses.

  Lucy leaned over and murmured in Alice’s ear, “No self-respecting shepherdess or milkmaid would be seen dead in an outfit like that.” Then she added with sardonic humor, “Maybe I should have come as a goose girl.”

  Alice followed her gaze and saw her nephew, Gerald, threading his way through the crowd toward them, a grim expression on his face. Not another quarrel, not again, surely?

  “Greetings, O divine lady goddess.” A young man dressed as a medieval page bowed to Lucy. His outfit was an unfortunate choice: his legs, clothed in white hose, were bandy and very skinny. But what he lacked in musculature, he made up for in confidence. “Grant me a dance, O Fair One. Are you Athena, perhaps, or maybe Aphrodite?”

  Lucy shook her head.

  “Artemis, perhaps? Or Venus?”

  “Venus was Roman, you cloth-head.” Another young man in a Viking outfit joined them. He bowed to Lucy. “Would you be Hebe, perhaps, goddess of youth and beauty?”

  At that point, Gerald, who was dressed as a Spanish bullfighter, arrived, just as the first young man said to Lucy, “I give up. Tell us, O Fair Lady, which goddess you are. And then grant me a dance.”

  Lucy pretended she was answering her pageboy admirer, but she looked straight at Gerald as she said, “I am no goddess, good sirs, but a priestess of Apollo.” Her gaze clashed with Gerald’s. “I am Cassandra of Troy, cursed to speak the truth but never to be believed.”

  Gerald’s jaw tightened. “About that, could I have a word, please?”

  “Hey, we were first,” the two young men objected.

  “Indeed you were,” Lucy cooed, and ignoring Gerald completely, she placed a hand on each young gentleman’s arm, and they strolled away.

  Gerald watched them disappear into the crowd, then turned to Alice. “She’s never going to forgive me, is she, Aunt Alice? Perhaps you could intervene on my behalf.”

  “You are mistaken in me, young man,” Alice said, a little irritated that she’d been so easily recognized. She supposed being with Lucy had given her away. But she didn’t want to intervene on Gerald’s behalf, so she clung to her current identity. “I am Queen Cleopatra, aunt to no one here, and you must sort out your own tangle.”

  “Indeed you must,” said a deep, amused voice behind her. “Take yourself off, young fighter of bulls, and make your own amends to yon cold and angry lady. I have an appointment with my queen.”

  “You have no such—” Alice began, turning. Her words dried up at the sight that greeted her.

  A tall Roman soldier bowed. “Mark Antony at your service, Queen Cleopatra.”

  Over his mask, he wore a gleaming gold helmet topped with a crest of red feathers. Over a short red tunic, he wore a leather cuirass that was molded to his powerful chest and hard, flat belly. A symbolic gold eagle covered his heart. />
  Instead of trousers he wore a kind of kilt made of strips of leather studded with brass medallions. It ended at his knees—his bare, brawny, naked, masculine knees.

  She dragged her eyes away, but couldn’t help wondering whether Roman generals wore the same thing under their tunic as Scotsmen were reputed to. She clamped down on the thought. She should not be thinking of such things.

  A short red cloak hung from gold buckles at his shoulders, dangling rakishly behind him. His tanned, powerful arms were bare, and a broad gold armband was clasped high on one muscular arm, while thick leather bands encircled his wrists. On his feet he wore red three-quarter-length boots.

  He looked powerful, barbaric and magnificent. The sight of him took her breath away.

  Mark Antony, Cleopatra’s famous lover. He couldn’t have known what she was wearing to the ball, could he? That gleam in his eyes told her otherwise.

  “Who told you?”

  He pretended puzzlement. “Told me?”

  “What I was going to be wearing tonight.”

  He laid a dramatic hand over the eagle on his breastplate. “There was no need for anyone to tell me, O Queen. It was in the stars—we are fated to be together.”

  “Nonsense.” She told herself he was just playing a part, but there was a note underneath the playfulness that sounded worryingly sincere. “It can’t be a coincidence. Somebody must have told you what I was wearing tonight.”

  “You’re right. It was a little bird.”

  “What little bird? Not Lucy?” She’d be very disappointed if it were.

  “No, your goddaughter didn’t give anything away, not knowingly at least.” He tucked her hand in the crook of his arm, and they strolled around the room.

  “If you recall,” he continued easily, “you had a troop of small visitors the other day—it is very kind of you to allow them to visit the garden whenever they want, by the way—and they saw certain gold-painted items drying in the summerhouse. Later, when they told me about their visit, they asked a lot of questions. Questions like ‘Who was Cleopatra, Papa, and why would she wear snakes on her head and arms?’ Which was interrupted by, ‘Shhh, it’s supposed to be a secret!’ which received the indignant rejoinder, ‘I’m not talking about the costume, just the lady. It’s history. We’re supposed to learn about history!’ ”

  She couldn’t help smiling at his vivid re-creation of the scene. “And so you put two and two together.”

  “And sent my valet out to scour London for a costume. You will be astonished to learn that uniforms for Roman generals are quite thin on the ground.” He glanced around and murmured in a secretive tone, “Don’t tell a soul, but this costume is actually Caesar’s.”

  She laughed. And feeling bold, she directed a pointed glance at his legs in the short tunic. “Don’t you find it rather drafty? That short skirt thing.”

  “Skirt thing?” He leaned back in feigned horror. “Would you call a proud Scotsman’s kilt a ‘skirt thing’?”

  She shrugged. “If I didn’t know what it was called, probably.”

  “This”—he touched the red fabric—“is called a tunic.” He paused. “And these dangly leather straps are called, I believe, ‘dangly leather straps.’ The official term, you understand.”

  “Ah, I see,” she said, attempting solemnity through a bubble of laughter.

  “As for whether I find it drafty, I don’t, here in this crowded ballroom—though I suspect it might be wise to eschew the more vigorous of the country dances. But on a windy day I suspect these dangly leather straps would come in handy. Protection in more ways than one.”

  They strolled on. “Do ladies find them drafty?” he asked. “Dresses, I mean.”

  “Our dresses are much longer.”

  “So they are, but what about ladies who have not yet adopted the newfangled underwear our late, lamented princess popularized . . .”

  Alice felt her cheeks warm. Princess Charlotte had scandalized some and thrilled others when she’d adopted the wearing of drawers. Most ladies wore them these days, but not the old-fashioned types, or those whose parents were rigid moralists, like Papa. The church considered the wearing of drawers by ladies as scandalous and immoral, drawers being items of clothes designed for men.

  Then there were people like Thaddeus, who subscribed to the medical opinion that drawers overheated ladies’ female parts and thus made it more difficult for them to conceive.

  Alice had worn her first-ever pair of drawers to Thaddeus’s funeral.

  “I have no idea,” she murmured. Deciding this conversation was heading into awkward areas—she still didn’t know what he was wearing under his tunic and wasn’t going to ask, and she wouldn’t put it past him to ask whether she was wearing drawers or not—Alice glanced around in search of some distraction.

  “Fretting about young Cassandra?” he asked. “That has to be a first.”

  “What is?” She constantly worried about Lucy.

  “Cleopatra playing chaperone to a priestess of Apollo.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, that young lady is more than capable of looking after herself.”

  “That’s not the point,” she began.

  “Looks like she’s occupied with young Thornton.” He nodded to one of the balconies at the back of the room, where Lucy and Gerald were standing, face-to-face, radiating tension. As they watched, Lucy flung up her hands and stormed off, leaving Gerald staring after, frustration evident in every line of his body.

  “Oh dear, I’d better go and—”

  A large hand closed around her forearm. “No, leave them to it. They’ve been circling around each other forever. Best let them get it out in the open.”

  “Forever?”

  He shrugged. “It feels like that anyway. Now come, let me procure you some refreshment, and then we shall dance.”

  “Shall we?” she said dryly.

  “Shall we not, my queen? And why would that be? Have I stepped on your toes in some way? Do you fear my tunic flying up? Worried about my dangly bits?” How she knew he was quirking an amused eyebrow at her under his golden helmet she couldn’t say, but she was sure he was. His dangly bits indeed.

  She wished she knew how to flirt back at him and maintain a witty, lighthearted conversation, but instead all she could do was blush and feel hot and flustered. But was determined not to show it. “A lady likes to be asked.”

  “Of course.” He swept her an instant bow. “My dear Queen Cleopatra, would you grant a humble soldier a dance?”

  She looked around. “I might. Where is he?”

  He snorted. “Minx. Very well then, will you grant me a dance?”

  “Yes. Which dance would you pref—”

  “The first waltz. And the second.”

  “But—”

  “I would take every dance, except there is some stupid rule about limiting oneself to two dances with one lady.”

  Alice decided not to argue.

  * * *

  * * *

  Lucy prowled through the crowd furiously, peering between the clumps of gorgeously attired people, looking for the culprit. Hah! There he was, the arrogant beast, in his sinfully tight black breeches and his glittery matador’s coat, thinking he looked so fine, surrounded by ladies all cooing and gushing. She marched up and poked him in the shoulder—hard. “How dare you drive away my partners!”

  Lord Thornton turned, rubbing his shoulder. “I didn’t!”

  Aware of his circle of admirers avidly listening, she allowed him to steer her a short distance away.

  “You didn’t, eh? Then why did Mr. Frinton and Mr. Grimswade both come to me in the last half hour and withdraw from the dances they had reserved?”

  He shrugged. “How would I know?”

  “Liar!” she snapped. “They both told me it was at your request—as my guardian’s nearest male relative!”
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  He didn’t answer, didn’t even look the slightest bit guilty.

  She poked him again, this time on the bead-and-sequin-covered chest. Matador indeed! She could happily throw him under a bull right now. “Understand me, Lord Thornroach, you have no authority over me. None whatsoever, and if you ever try to arrange my dances or any other aspect of my life again—”

  “What else was I to do? You refused me even one dance earlier.”

  “As is my right!”

  “I only took your waltzes.”

  Such smugness. She wanted to hit him. “They were my waltzes to give!”

  He shrugged again. “You don’t have permission to waltz yet.”

  “So? I planned to sit them out with the partners of my choice.”

  He snorted. “You planned to sit one out with Corney Frinton and what—talk?”

  “Mr. Frinton can talk. Sometimes. Anyway, what business is it of yours how we pass the time? I’d rather sit in total silence with Mr. Frinton than with an arrogant lord who thinks he knows everything.”

  He cocked an unimpressed eyebrow. “And what did you plan to do with Tarquin Grimswade? Listen to his poetry? I can assure you, it’s utter drivel.”

  “You introduced me to both those gentlemen as potential husbands. So what has changed? Or is it just a case of dog in the manger?” Hah! He looked uncomfortable at that little gibe. The hypocrite.

  “I simply wanted to talk to you. I’ve been trying to talk to you since that drive in the park, but you’ve been avoiding me—”

  “I can’t imagine why, when you’re such delightful company.”

  “And then tonight, when you refused me even one dance—” He broke off as the opening bars of a waltz sounded. “Let’s go outside,” he said, “where I can say my piece, you can berate me in relative privacy, and then we’ll be done.”

  Cupping his hand around her elbow, he escorted her across the railed terrace and down into the courtyard. Wought iron chairs and tables were arranged around the perimeter, large potted palms and other plants had been clustered to give privacy to the tables, and multicolored lanterns were hung here and there, giving the scene a softly foreign appearance. Everyone had made their way inside for the much-anticipated first waltz of the evening. The courtyard was deserted.