Captain Rakehell (18 page)

“‘My dear Amanda,’” she read aloud, “‘I’ve taken the liberty of arranging our costumes for the masquerade this evening. Since we are to be the honored couple, I thought we should look the part. My mother and yours kindly assisted, and I have their assurance the gown and slippers will fit. We shall be the talk of the town, I’m sure. Your devoted, Charles.’” Amanda put the note aside and looked curiously at Andrew. “Why did Mama say nothing of this to me?”

“Because she and Her Grace wanted to surprise you,” he said, keeping to himself that Lord Hampton had kept his wife otherwise occupied to prevent her emptying her budget to Amanda. “Go on, open it.”

“Oh my!” She breathed, as she removed the lid, tossed it aside, and lifted a filmy white gown with twists of gold in the sleeves and the bodice out of its tissue.

It was a lovely thing, even to Andrew, who knew nothing of women’s clothes. At the sparkle that came into his sister’s eyes as she held it against her, he glanced at Marie and winked.

“What’s this?” Amanda draped the gown carefully over the back of the chair and withdrew from the bottom of the box a delicate string of golden coins.

“It’s a girdle, m’lady,” said Marie, coming forward to take it from her. “Goes round you like this.”

“It’s Roman, then.” Amanda raised a dubious eyebrow as Marie roped the coins around her. “You knew about this?”

“Had to, didn’t I,” she replied guilelessly, “since I’m the one who dresses you. Should be something for your hair, too.”

There was, a thin gold circlet, which drew another gasp from Amanda, and smoothed the suspicious pucker from her brow. As she went scurrying to her glass to admire it, Andrew breathed a sigh of relief.

“She’ll be right as a trivet now,” Marie murmured, patting his arm as she went to help Amanda with the circlet.

Andrew left, and quickly made his way downstairs. At the sound of his footsteps in the foyer, the study door sprang open, and Lord Hampton appeared on the threshold.

“Yes?”

“Yes.” Andrew smiled.

“That’s one hurdle,” his father sighed. “Now if Charles can pull off the rest—”

“Don’t even think that he can’t,” Andrew interrupted feelingly, “or we may never get her out of bed again.”

“What costume did he send, by the way?”

“A gown in the Roman style.”

“Good God!” Lord Hampton’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “I shudder to think what Charles will wear!”

His brows took a similar leap that evening, when the Duke of Braxton, resplendent in a toga and crown of laurel leaves, strode regally across the foyer of his mother’s house to greet them. Even Andrew suffered a moment’s shock behind his mask, but Amanda laughed, lightly and gaily, for the first time in two days.

“Charles, you look marvelous!”

“I do, don’t I?” He grinned, tripping over the hem as he turned a circle in front of her. “But how on earth do you walk in a skirt?”

“Very carefully, Charles. Now tell me who we are.”

“Because everyone is crying us heroes, who better to be, I thought, than Caesar and Calpurnia?”

“Then so we shall be.” Amanda gave her cloak to a footman and took the duke’s arm.

Her filmy Roman gown shimmered in the glow of the chandelier, and the girdle of coins tinkled like small bells. As the Emperor of the Tiber led his Empress away, he glanced a quick nod to the Gilbertsons over his shoulder.

“At last,” Lady Hampton remarked, “I understand why everyone calls Charles His Dottiness.”

“At
last
,” Lord Hampton sighed, then whispered to his son, “D’you suppose that means he’s done it?”

“Let us hope,” Andrew muttered, and as yeoman to his Lord and Lady of the Manor parents, followed them into the ballroom.

He thought to catch Charles alone, but the crush was even worse than at Lady Cottingham’s, for the whole of the
ton
had turned out to congratulate Charles and Amanda. The costumes were mostly rich and elaborate so the ladies could flaunt their jewels, which only accented the elegant simplicity of Amanda’s gown.

Mindful of the pike he carried to complete his costume, Andrew wove his way through the crowd looking for Teddy, appropriately dressed as a jester. He found him at last and roared with laughter, for he sat glumly, his legs folded beneath him and his chin in his hands, at his mother’s feet. The Duchess of Braxton was dressed as a medieval queen, and held in her hand a leash attached to the loose collar buckled around the neck of her court fool.

“This ain’t funny,” Teddy said, the bells on his hat jingling as he glanced up at him sourly.

“But it is your just desserts,” Andrew replied unsympathetically, and took up a yeoman-like stance next to the duchess as his parents approached.

“And there will be no throwing spokes in anyone’s wheel this evening,” Her Grace said sternly, and gave the leash a shake, “for I shall know where you are at every moment.”

“Eugenia,” Lord Hampton said to her anxiously in a low voice. “Was Charles successful?”

“I’m not at all certain,” she replied worriedly.

“He received a message shortly after the guests began to arrive, but I’ve no idea what it said.” She sighed, surveying the packed ballroom. “I suppose we should begin the dancing or people will begin to wonder.”

Her Grace nodded to the orchestra leader, who’d been awaiting her signal, and the music began. It was a waltz, and the floor cleared, but for Charles and Amanda. Though Caesar stumbled once or twice—whether over the steps or his toga, Andrew couldn’t tell—there wasn’t so much as a twitter from the crowd. His empress smiled up at him fondly, indulgently, yet somewhat wanly.

Andrew heard it, and felt a rush of gooseflesh up his back as the opening bars repeated, and other couples swung onto the floor in time to the music. He glanced around quickly, but because no one else seemed to be reacting, he thought he’d imagined it—until Lucifer burst through the open French doors that gave onto the terrace.

His piercing whinny and the clatter of his hooves on the marble floor drew a bleat of jarring, screeching notes from the startled musicians, and a round of shrieks from the crowd. When he rose halfway on his hind legs, laid back his ears, and bugled deep in his chest, the dancers scattered. All but Charles and Amanda, who turned to face the stallion and the man in the black silk mask on his back.

His sister’s lips moved, and though Andrew was too far away to hear the words, he knew she murmured “my dearest darling.” Behind her, his laurel wreath askew, Charles stood grinning from ear to ear, until Lucifer danced sideways, and Lesley drew his rapier. The ring of the blade drawing free of its scabbard brought a gasp from the guests, and a stricken look to the duke’s face.

For a moment, Lesley held the rapier at his side, then tossed it into the air. It turned end over end as it fell, the light from the chandeliers sliding up the blade and winking on the hilt. When it landed with a clatter a safe distance away, Charles sighed audibly and went limp with relief.

“Bennett, shouldn’t you do something?” Lady Hampton twittered nervously. “I thought it was Lesley we were expecting.”

“It is, Cornelia,” Lord Hampton growled, and Andrew heard the clap of his father’s hand over his mother’s mouth.

Then Lesley tugged off his mask and flung it toward Amanda, his name rippling through the crowd on a murmur of disbelief. A tremulous smile quavering on her lips, she picked it up and ran it lightly through her fingers, her glimmering eyes fixed on Lesley’s face. For a moment there was only the jingle of Lucifer’s bit and the clash of his hooves on the floor, then Amanda was running toward him, the guests were gasping in horror, and Teddy was leaping and whooping at the end of his leash.

Grinning and leaning down from his saddle, Lesley caught her in one arm and swooped her up in front of him. With a shrill whinny, Lucifer spun toward the doors on his hind legs, giving Andrew a glimpse of the shining smile on his sister’s face before he leaped away into the darkness.

Pandemonium broke out in his wake, but mostly among the Earnshaw and Gilbertson families. Dumbfounded as the guests were by the shocking abduction they’d just seen, they were even more taken aback when the Duchess of Braxton hiked up her skirts and shouted to the orchestra, “Play something lively!”

She cast off Teddy’s leash, and Andrew threw down his pike. Lord Hampton whirled the duchess in a giddy circle, Charles tossed his laurel wreath into the air, grabbed a stunned Lady Hampton and pranced her around the floor.

While Andrew and Teddy, linking elbows and laughing, jigged about like two drunken sailors, Lesley reined Lucifer beneath the beech tree in the farthermost corner of the garden, where a lantern lit and hung from one of the lower branches made a soft pool of tallowy light.

“No more masks,” he said firmly, untying the ribands securing the one Charles had sent with Amanda’s costume.

He loosened the tight coils Marie had put in her hair as he did so, then tossed the mask away, and tenderly cupped her face in his hands.

“I love you, Amanda Gilbertson.”

“I love you, Lesley Earnshaw.”

“Even though I deceived you? Twice?”

“Yes,” she replied, a mischievous glint coming into her eyes. “But there’d better not be a third time.”

“Never again, my darling,” he promised, and kissed her.

It was the kiss he’d never thought to give her, the kiss that had tormented him until Charles’s messenger had found him earlier that day at their father’s hunting box. Being there had been torture; torture he’d thought he deserved, and that now made the quiver of Amanda’s mouth against his even sweeter.

“My dearest darling,” she sighed contentedly, once he’d released her and folded her into his arms.

“I was terrified you wouldn’t come to me when you saw it was my face behind the mask,” Lesley murmured into her hair.

“I might not have,” Amanda admitted, tipping back her head to smile at him, “if Charles hadn’t told me it was you, and Mr. Fisk hadn’t explained your pact with him.”

“But how did Charles—”

“He recognized Lucifer.”

Beneath them, the stallion snorted and stamped his hooves.

“You are aware, are you not,” Lesley asked with a grin, “that this is the second time I’ve compromised you?”

“And
you
are aware, are you not,” Amanda returned happily. “that you absolutely
must
marry me this time?”

“Oh, definitely,” he returned agreeably. “It’s why I made sure the whole of the
ton
was present to witness your ruination.”

“You are a wicked man, Lesley Earnshaw,” Amanda laughed.

“I
was
a wicked man,” he corrected her. “For tonight is the last time Captain Rakehell will ride.”

“Before you go, captain, I have one last question.” Amanda smiled up at him playfully. “Just exactly where were you wounded?”

“Why, Waterloo, of course.”

“Not
that
where.” Amanda made a face at him. “The
other
where.”

“Never you mind, for now.” Lesley kissed the tip of her nose and chuckled. “You’ll find out on our wedding night.”

Copyright © 1989 by Lynne Smith

Originally published by Fawcett Crest

Electronically published in 2005 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228

     http://www.RegencyReads.com

     Electronic sales: [email protected]

This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.