by Hazel Hunter
Was he angry with her for carrying on without him so brilliantly? It seemed so.
“Excuse me, my lord,” a nervous voice said from behind him. “You’re wanted downstairs.”
Greystone turned to see one of Pickering’s aides hovering just inside the chamber, a small bundle in his hands. He walked inside and took the mask, glowering as he held it up for inspection. It would conceal his face, just as his friend had promised. It would also make him look the fool, but perhaps that was exactly what he was.
Jennet Reed had survived him, and now he had other matters to attend to.
“Tell Pickering I’ll join him in a moment,” Greystone said to the servant as he gathered up his hair to tie it in a queue.
Once the man had left he stepped into the dressing room, moving aside the wash stand before kneeling. From the satchel he had hidden under the floor boards he took the only item of true significance he had brought with him to Renwick. It looked so ordinary; no one would give it a second glance. Pickering would call it the embodiment of hope, but it should have been dripping with the blood of all the men who had died so that Greystone might possess it.
What would happen if he took it into the bed chamber and tossed it into the fireplace? To do so would seal his own fate just as surely—but for a moment he longed for that finality. To be done with it all. To surrender himself to the darkness completely.
Remember your choice.
Greystone slipped his last hope into his boot, right next to the blade he used to cut throats.
Chapter 6
The moment the carriage drew within sight of Dredthorne Hall’s aged walls and lamplit windows Jennet felt the oddest sense of being watched by the mansion. Naturally she had seen the old house before tonight, but only in glimpses from her rig while out driving. As with all places of dark reputation Dredthorne seemed menacing, especially in how it loomed ever larger, blotting out the stars and moon. By the time their driver reined in the horses to stop before the wide steps of the front entry Jennet felt reduced to the size of a mouse gazing up at a mammoth.
I see you, Dredthorne Hall seemed to whisper. Come inside…if you dare.
“You are being ridiculous,” Jennet muttered under her breath.
Catherine turned to frown at her. “What was that?”
“The house,” she said, feeling silly now. “It appears quite, ah, ominous.”
“Of course, it does.” Her friend adjusted her mask. “Mr. Pickering likely rented the place precisely to set the correct tone for the ball. Atmosphere is everything these days, my dear. You should see what the Regent has done to the Pavilion at Brighton.”
Arthur Pickering likely thought it amusing to hold the masquerade in a house believed to be haunted by the souls of those who had died within its walls, Jennet thought. Although all of the deaths had been accidental, the gossips in the village had whispered of murders made to appear thus. She could see he had arranged carved turnip lanterns on every step, like so many little decapitated heads. Looking into their fiery eyes made her stomach clench as tightly as her gloved hands. Perhaps others would think it great fun, but to her it now seemed a ghastly notion.
“Are you not feeling well?” Jennet heard Catherine ask once they had alighted from the carriage. “You look pale.”
“I am a little chilled.” She dragged her attention from the wee grimacing turnips to regard her friend. While they had been talking with the Carstairs sisters and their escorts, a line of newly-arrived guests had formed on the steps. Politeness obliged them to move to the end of it, but they would soon be inside at the receiving line. “I should have worn my cloak.”
“I see I must inspect your wardrobe, and relieve you of anything that might tempt you to commit such a faux pas,” her friend chided as she stood on her toes to look over the heads of the guests in front of them. “I believe Mr. Pickering is greeting everyone. Look, he’s dressed himself as a straw man and put a sack over his head. Such an improvement.”
“Be kind,” Jennet chided. “This is not London, you know.”
As a black cat leapt from the shrubbery to dart between them and across the drive, Catherine drew back her skirts. “It certainly is not.”
Her friend’s disdain helped disperse most of her trepidation, but Jennet still kept a wary eye on the house. Two more couples called out greetings as they joined them, and she forced herself to smile and laugh as if they were meeting at the village hall for a country dance.
“My grandmother insists that this house is cursed,” one of the gentlemen told them in a hushed tone. “Every master of Dredthorne Hall is doomed to fall in love with a lady who spends the night. Once they are married, his wife in turn will either go mad or die within the first year.”
“What nonsense.” Catherine sniffed. “That could not possibly happen, unless Dredthorne’s masters have all been exceptionally gullible bachelors, and exceedingly boring husbands, of course.”
Jennet laughed along with everyone, but the remark brought back how she had been, immediately after being left at the altar. Anyone who had seen what she had done to her wedding gown would have regarded her as not entirely sane. Thankfully that brush with madness had been of very short duration, and never again returned. She had not been cursed by her duplicitous lover; she had been set free of him.
“Ladies, I have a notion to elude this curse,” Catherine was saying, “All we need do is avoid becoming engaged to Mr. Pickering, and leave well before the midnight hour.” She smiled at Jennet. “My dear friend here has become expert at both, so we must hope she demonstrates her talents.”
“Oh, the trick is quite simple,” Jennet told them. “Simply say no, and go.”
Once safely inside Dredthorne Hall Jennet eyed the receiving line. Of the four costumed hosts welcoming the arrivals, just one stood tall enough to be Arthur Pickering. Only he would be so ridiculous as to wear a sacking mask, and rough old clothes liberally adorned with bits of hay, in order to emulate a straw man. Yet the longer Jennet regarded him the more startled she felt. Why had she never before noticed how broad his shoulders were, or those bulges of muscle along his arms? Either he had stuffed more hay under his costume, or his tailor had been doing him a terrible disservice.
She bided her time, smiling and nodding to the other hosts before halting in front of the straw man and poking her fan in his ribs the moment he straightened from his bow.
“I do not appreciate your invitation, sir,” Jennet told him firmly. “The wording you employed quite scared my mother out of her wits. I insist you issue any future messages to me without the threat of curses on my family, or I will replace my fan with a club.”
The straw man took hold of her wrist, and drew her hand up to his mask to press it against the crookedly-sewn seam serving as his mouth.
Feeling the warmth and pressure of his lips through the sacking sent a jolt of sensation through Jennet. The heated wave sizzled along her skin before sinking deep into her breast. For a moment everyone around her faded into ghosts of themselves as she stared at Pickering’s bent, masked head and saw instead gleaming black hair tied neatly in a queue.
That kiss had been bestowed on what Jennet had considered the most exciting night of her life, and what she regarded now as the greatest mistake she had ever made.
At the time attending the annual village harvest dance hadn’t tempted Jennet, who preferred to stay home with her mother after the summer waned and the days grew shorter. She knew Margaret hated the cold, and without some distraction would grow melancholic. Together they spent the evenings sewing, playing cards or reading together. Often her mother would badger her on getting out to socialize, however, and on that occasion she had insisted.
“You have been shut in this house with me too long, my dear,” Margaret said. “I daresay Catherine Tindall and your other friends will be there. All of the young men in Renwick will wish to dance with you, I am sure.”
Jennet frowned at her. “Why are you so set on this, Mama? I have never been fond of
going out in society.”
“But that is where you can be with people your own age,” her mother said, sounding slightly exasperated now. “You need not worry about me. I mean to change the ribbons on my good church bonnet, and I have the new Edgeworth novel to read. I do hope it is as scandalous as Lady Hardiwick claimed. Now, please, go, and enjoy yourself.”
Held at the spacious hall in the heart of Renwick, the harvest dance attracted most of the younger set. Jennet hovered outside for a moment to peer in through the windows and see if Catherine and her friends had arrived. That was when she overheard the conversation among a group of bachelors who had congregated just on the other side.
“I vow I saw her driving herself here,” one of the young men said. “She is wearing dark velvet, and comes alone. I hardly ever see her out in society. I must ask her to dance as soon as she makes an appearance.”
“Do you mean Jennet Reed?” another man asked, his upper lip curling. “As dour as a dowager, that one, and twice as prim.”
Jennet recognized her disparager. He had made a nuisance of himself at another assembly, simply because she had refused to dance with him.
“She refused to dance with you, I take it?” a tall, dark-haired gentleman inquired, as if he had heard her thoughts. When the other man scowled, he said, “A shame, then, that the lady has good taste.”
She moved to the other side of the window to get a better look at her defender’s face, and saw it was William Gerard. She had been introduced to him years ago, while he had been on holiday from school. At the time she had been a skinny girl of ten with dark red braids and very little to say, mostly out of embarrassment. In those days Margaret had dressed her like a doll, usually in fussy lace gowns that made her resemble a moth cocoon with legs.
I like your eyes much more than my own, Jennet remembered William saying to her. Shall we trade?
William had changed greatly since that brief meeting. The lanky, polite older boy she remembered had grown tall and broad-shouldered, and dressed in the latest fashions for men without looking foppish. He greatly resembled his father in coloring and features, but did not share the baron’s perpetually stern expression. His dark green eyes seemed to smile even when his mouth didn’t.
Jennet felt mesmerized.
Of course, every unattached young lady inside the hall was discreetly watching the dark, handsome heir to the Greystone barony; William’s father was enormously wealthy as well as a peer of the realm. His son would someday inherit all of it, including a grand house in London as well as Gerard Lodge, a magnificent Georgian mansion on an expansive estate, making him quite the eligible bachelor. From the polished perfection of his appearance he also possessed, as her friend Catherine would say, town bronze.
She would go home this moment, Jennet decided, turning away. The last thing she needed was to spend the night mooning over a man she had met exactly once. Yet before she could take a step the door to the hall opened, making her step back.
William Gerard came outside, closing the door and blocking her path. Jennet pivoted, intending to go the other way, when his voice stopped her.
“Miss Reed.” As she turned, he bowed to her. “I have not seen you at church all month. Are you become a heathen?”
Jennet bobbed. When she lifted her chin to meet his gaze she started to reply, and then a shaft of light from the setting sun fell over them, gilding William with the softest, purest glow. He looked so resplendent in that moment she forgot her manners, her sensibility, everything.
“Where have you been?” she murmured, although her own words made absolutely no sense to her.
He looked all over her face. “Trying to find you.” He sounded as dazed as she felt.
The music and voices from within the hall dwindled away as William matched her silence and stillness with his own. Looking at him made Jennet wonder why she had ever bothered to do anything else. She imagined standing in that spot and gazing at him for years; she would not consider the time wasted. It could not happen this way, she thought in some distant corner of her mind, and yet it was. It had.
“You look so much like your father,” Jennet finally said, shocked again by how her voice sounded now, as if it came from her heart rather than her throat. “And yet, you are nothing at all like him.”
“You could not have offered a more perfect complement,” he said, smiling a little. “I miss your braids, but not the lace. Will you come and dance with me, Miss Reed?”
“I am not inclined to, Mr. Gerard, and with you…” She swallowed and cleared her throat. “Perhaps it would not be wise.”
“I would agree, but I cannot help myself. You bewitch me.” William took hold of her hand, bowing down to press his mouth against her knuckles. “Shall we be foolish, then?”
The memory of meeting William Gerard for the first time faded as the straw man straightened, and Jennet came back to her senses.
“You are an unrepentant cad, Mr. Pickering.” She turned and marched after Catherine into the reception room.
As the assembled guests milled around them, Jennet took in her surroundings. The oval room’s curving walls had been repainted a snowy white, but she could see hints of older, slightly foxed paint in the nooks and curls of the ornate molding. The hundreds of crystals on both of the grand chandeliers had been cleaned, but a few dusty cobwebs still decorated the upper tiers between the sparkling prisms, likely left for the haunting effect. Long tables draped in damask and linen held punch bowls filled with spiced cider, and pitchers brimming with mulled wine encircled by rows of polished silver goblets.
“You look splendid, my dears,” an older woman told Jennet and Catherine, and then leaned closer to say in a much lower voice, “If you mean to imbibe, you should know our host has prepared a retiring room on the second floor.” She hurried off to speak to another group of new arrivals.
“Ah, the rustic nature of country manners.” Catherine gave her a rueful look. “In London no one at a ball tells you where you may find a chamber pot. I suppose that is why we ladies refrain from imbibing.”
Jennet smiled. “Now that you know, you may drink as much as you like, but I would advise you keep to the cider.”
“If you find me in my cups, then you may send me home.” Her friend looked over at a group of young men and giggled. “But not too soon, please.”
They took a turn around the reception room so that Catherine could attempt to guess which of the guests they knew. Jennet silently corrected her speculations as she used her talent for observation to determine their identities. The vicar and his wife, both short of stature and staying well away from the wine, had dressed appropriately as a shepherd and shepherdess. The Brexley spinsters Jennet recognized from their costumes as Selene, goddess of the moon, and Eos, goddess of the dawn, also sisters. They had also retreated to a corner where they might watch and whisper to each other, which is what they did at every party they attended.
“I cannot believe that Rose Abernathy thought to dress as Marie Antionette,” Catherine complained as they finished their circuit, and glared back at the lady in question. “It is positively traitorous—and to wear a robe de gaulle to a ball, of all things. That dress is little more than an over-long chemise.”
Jennet surveyed Miss Abernathy, whose airy white cotton gown looked quite comfortable compared to the stiff silk of her own costume. She had also foregone the expected powdered wig in favor of a wide-brimmed straw hat decorated with a few silvery plumes. Yet she knew what lay beneath all that finery, thanks to the unpleasant encounter she’d had with her at the haberdasher’s shop.
“I believe she imitates a rather famous portrait of the queen,” Jennet told her friend. “I imagine young ladies who have not lost a relative to war still admire her sense of style.”
“I have reminded you of your poor father, how wretched of me.” Catherine gave her a rueful look. “I should not revile her. Someday this war will end, Jennet, and our men will come home victorious at last.”
“Until the n
ext war breaks out.” Jennet felt an odd sensation of being watched, and resisted the urge to inspect everyone near them. “Do you see Mr. Pickering?”
“Not since we came through the line.” Her friend stood on her toes and looked around them before she pointed at the front of the reception room. “There, he is just leaving.”
“I will return in a moment,” she told Catherine before heading after him.
She caught a glimpse of the straw man as she came out into the center hall, but as she turned to the right all she saw was a wall painted with a large, faded chinoiserie depiction of a garden beyond a white iron fence. As she turned away she saw a shadow appear on the painting, and went closer to discover a pair of door handles painted in such a way to look like part of the gate.
“Very clever,” Jennet murmured as she tugged on one handle, opening a door-size panel in the painting that led into another room. She stepped inside.
The scent of beeswax came from an elaborate silver candelabra in the center of the long dining table. It held a handful of candles that partially illuminated the remarkable décor of the room. Every wall had been fitted with a carved, inlaid panel of dark wood painted with murals. Between them very fine marble columns rose to the ceiling, giving an effect of standing inside a temple.
Jennet picked up the candelabra and carried it over to the nearest panel, which had been painted with a mostly-nude, very strong-looking ancient warrior holding three golden apples in his hand. Behind him three ladies resembling rather peevish nymphs glared at the back of his head. It reminded her so much of the scene with Rose Abernathy she smiled.
“I know precisely how you feel,” she murmured. “I had what they coveted, didn’t I?” Or at least she had for a time.
The door behind her creaked as the shepherd cautiously entered.
“Forgive me the intrusion,” he said, bowing to her. “I thought I might slip in unnoticed to admire the panels.” He glanced around, his mouth bowing. “Why, this is incredible.”
