Midnight Masquerade (7 page)

As there had been nothing but persuasions brought to bear on her, she twitched guiltily. “You know perfectly well what I mean.”

“I’m afraid I do not.”

“How could I refuse when—when I . . .”

“When you are well over twenty, and no one else offered, you mean?” he goaded.

“That’s not true! I had plenty of offers my first season.”

‘‘But that was many seasons ago.”

“Plenty since too! Twombley offered last season. And never mind saying he’s an old man, Belami. He’s only ten years older than you.”

“Yes, dear heart, but I already am ten years your senior, nearly.”

“Seven years.

“Seven and a half. Did you have anything to do with this curst robbery? Did you arrange it to embarrass me because I didn’t come to the party?”

“Certainly not! I was delighted you stayed away.”

“I would have been here if I’d had the least suspicion of this robbery.”

“Of course you would. The least aroma of crime or any indecent behavior will always draw you like a fly to carrion, whereas common courtesy to your fiancée and your family are neglected. Birds of a feather roost together,” she finished, flouncing her shoulders.

Belami listened punctiliously, his face showing no emotion but boredom. When she finished, he asked, “Why does Bidwell dislike his uncle Carswell, do you happen to know?”

“I have no idea.”

“The relationship, if I recall aright, is on Lady Carswell’s side. Lady Carswell used to be a Bidwell. She’s dead, of course. Why would Bidwell think he is to get Carswell’s money? Only an in-law sort of relationship.”

“Pronto knows more about it than I do. Why don’t you ask him? When he’s finished verifying that your mother is still sound asleep, I mean.”

“You don’t want to marry me, Deirdre, and I don’t want to marry you. That is why I put about the story I was dipped, to call Charney off.”

“Then why did you offer for me?”

“Why did you accept?”

“I claim temporary insanity,” she said. “I have no objection to your sharing the excuse. We are both sane now, however.”

“You’ve had three weeks of studious neglect. It was enough reason to return you to sanity before now.”

“I couldn’t jilt you. It would look horrid.”

“No, it would not much tarnish the glow of rectitude that enshrouds you. Your reputation would benefit from a suggestion of levity, my dear, whereas a gentleman can less easily call off.”

“Yes, especially when he already has a string of jiltees to his discredit.”

“I never jilted anyone. A misunderstanding arose between me and Miss Mersey.”

“The misunderstanding being that she thought a fiancé would call upon her occasionally, and not call on quite so many other ladies.”

“I meant to be here before midnight last night,” he said in a mildly apologetic tone.

“Midnight? You knew we arrived three days ago! You should have been waiting for us, as you did not see fit to offer us your escort.”

“I offered to accompany you.”

“You knew my aunt wouldn’t let me come alone in a curricle with you. That’s the only reason you offered.”

“If I am such a dangerous fellow that I couldn’t control my base impulses for a half day in an open carriage, why did she encourage me to dangle after you?”

“Because she thought a good wife would cure you of your . . . ways.”

“I am touched by this solicitude on Her Grace’s part, and on your own, as I am left to assume you shared her views. It is misguided solicitude. I have no intention of changing my ways. A ‘good wife’ rarely drives a man to anything but distraction, but I suppose one must appear to accept that you actually believed that bit of impertinent nonsense. I wonder if your concern would have been as great if the sinner did not come with a fortune and title.”

“Believe what you like—it is immaterial to me—but I tell you now that despite the fortune and the title, I will not marry you. My turning you off at this moment is impossible. It is tantamount to saying I accuse you of stealing my aunt’s diamond. I don’t know whether you had anything to do with it or not, but after the affair is settled, our engagement will be terminated as noiselessly as possible.”

“And I will thank you, as quietly or as noisily as you wish.”

“You are entirely welcome, I promise you.”

“And we are still left with the riddle of how we ever got engaged in the first place,” he said wearily.

“The sooner we can solve this case, the sooner we can become unengaged. I mean to speak to Bidwell and see if I can learn anything from him. He and Chamfreys were out of the room at midnight.”

“Good enough. I’ll speak to Lenore.”

“I thought you would,” she answered with a sardonic grimace which he mistook for a smile.

She arose and strode briskly from the room. Belami arose with her, then sat down again, looking after her. The item that caught his interest was her walk. Deirdre didn’t walk like a prude, as one would expect her to. She undulated, her hips weaving from side to side like a real woman. So far as he could tell, the only feminine bones in her body were in her hips.

Ah, well, it would soon be over. He’d be rid of her, once and for all. Bidwell or some man-milliner like him would marry her. They could undulate together. Bidwell walked like a woman too. Odd that she chose to go and talk to Bidwell. What was there to learn from him? They already knew he was Carswell’s nephew and heir. This was just an excuse for putting herself in his way, now that she had jilted himself. She certainly wasn’t wasting a minute. That at least she shared with other women. She could have waited till they had announced the termination of the engagement.

With an injured air, he went abovestairs to accost Lady Lenore. Such an errand would normally put him in humor, but there was a scowl on his brow as he bolted up the stairs, two at a time.

Chapter 5

Deirdre ran Bidwell to ground in the hallway in front of the ballroom door. He was called handsome by society, though there was an effeminate air in him that made the word hard for her to accept. Pretty came closer to describing him. He had brown hair, waved and worn rather long in the poetic style. His eyes were blue, with long lashes. He was dandified in appearance, wearing a jacket that carried more wadding than really suited his narrow waist and thin legs. His build was not much like Belami’s, but she supposed that with a sheet over the jacket, he would look larger than he was.

“Good morning, Bidwell. Investigating the scene of the crime, are you?” she asked, approaching him with a friendly smile.

“Just so, Miss Gower, just so,” he answered with his sweet smile. He had lips like a girl, she noticed. Or was it that the more masculine lips of Belami were still in her mind? “I missed all the excitement last night.”

“That’s too bad. You retired early, did you?”

“I went abovestairs for a rest before midnight, but came back down in time to join the search. How is Her Grace holding up under the strain?”

“Nobly, as we all expected she would,” she told him.

“A pity about her insurance lapsing. I little thought when Carswell mentioned it to me a fortnight ago how dire the consequences would be.”

“Ah, yes, your uncle was her agent. Well, my aunt’s loss may prove your gain.”

“There is no saying. We don’t jog along so well as we ought. We never did hit it off.”

“Why was that, I wonder?” she asked. They walked along the hall as they spoke.

“He’s no blood kin to me. I was living with my aunt, old Miriam Bidwell, at the time of the marriage. I was only a lad. I’d been raised by Aunt Miriam. I felt resentful at his usurping my place with the old girl. She was like a mother to me.”

“Carswell failed to fill the role of father?” she inquired, displaying a casual commiseration.

“Hardly! I was packed straight off to school. I went to them for holidays regularly till Aunt Miriam died. I haven’t been back since. That was two years ago.”

“But you and Carswell meet from time to time?”

“Not by arrangement, but only by chance.”

She wondered what he lived on. He didn’t work. His own father had presumably left him something. “Perhaps you and Carswell would go on more smoothly if you had joined him in his business,” she suggested.

“He would have been richer in any case. A shocking bad manager.

“The insurance business is risky.”

“So it is. But enough gloomy talk. I see Belami has arrived.”

“Yes, he’s at breakfast.”

“What time did he arrive?”

“Late last night,” she said vaguely.

“I daresay he is taking the affair in hand. Our thief is intrepid, to pull off his stunt under Belami’s roof. He’ll get caught certainly. Don’t you think?”

“I hope so.”

“Has Belami made any startling discoveries?” he asked. The question struck her as significant, as dangling for information, yet it was also a perfectly natural question under the circumstances.

“I don’t believe so. Not yet.”

“I will be perfectly happy to help him in any way possible. I shall tell him so as soon as I see him.”

“He’ll appreciate that.”

“Oh, I am eager to find your aunt’s diamond, even if my uncle doesn’t have to stand buff.”

They finished their tour in front of the doorway to the room where the sheet and stocking had been discovered.

“I must go and see my aunt. She’ll be eager to learn if there is any news.”

He bowed and stood waiting while she left. After a minute, her head peeped around the corner of the stairway to see where he went. He was gone. She didn’t think he had time to go anywhere but into the small study where the thief’s things had been hidden, but this didn’t tell her much. If he had been seen coming out with them in his hands, that would have been meaningful, but Belami, the genius, had made that impossible.

With nothing more interesting to do, Deirdre decided to go to the library till lunchtime. She scampered quickly around the corner in case Bidwell should come out and catch her in a lie. Much of her time was spent in libraries of one sort or another. They were better company than her aunt and her friends. She pulled a book from the shelves and sat at an armchair by a window, with the book open on her knee in case Belami or anyone should glance in, but she was not reading. She couldn’t have told you what book she held. No, she was cogitating on life.

The aspect of her own private life that most preoccupied her was Lord Belami, though she would sooner have lost the last tooth in her head than admit it. She told herself firmly that she despised him. He had insulted her, publicly insulted her by his lack of attention both here and in London. She had been humiliated in front of her friends, and he had done it on purpose so that she would break off their engagement. Furthermore, he had told her so.

There was clearly no hope of going through with it after this. It would be back to her aunt’s library and the dull round of nothings on Belvedere Square till another Twombley came along to rescue her. It was madness to have thought she could live with Belami. She should never have accepted him. She knew that when he asked he was under some duress. There had been no warmth, no enthusiasm in his words.

Well, she had been under duress too. If the threat of Twombley wasn’t duress, what was? Belami may have been unreliable, unstable—in short, a womanizer. But at least he wasn’t personally repulsive. The necessary intimate side of marriage with him would have been possible. Indeed, she had looked forward to it with lively curiosity. She would learn at last those secrets known to the Widow Barneses and Lady Lenores of the world.

Soon her mind had wandered off to the bedroom upstairs, where Belami was this instant with Lenore Belfoi. Deirdre had spoken disparagingly of that dasher, but in fact she admired her with all her heart. Such charm, such easy manners and grace, such beauty, and such skills in making the most of it with batting eyes, insinuating voice, and fluttering fan. She would forget that Belami was this minute in her bedroom, holding Lenore in his arms, kissing her. She felt a tingling sensation on her own lips, such a tingling as she had never felt before Dick kissed her, that evening in her aunt’s conservatory. Her head was still reeling a quarter of an hour later, when he had proposed with those stilted phrases, so different from the impassioned words used earlier. And she, a confirmed ninnyhammer, had accepted.

People thought she was a cold girl, but she knew that beneath the ice there was a fire. If she let the ice be chipped away, it would roar out of control and consume her, so she continued to be the prim and proper Deirdre Gower. “Hidden passions,” Dick had said that night in the conservatory. But he had ferreted out her secret, had opened a chink in the icy door, and she had taken many a peek inside the door since.

While she sat with her book and her thoughts, Dick prepared his most ingratiating smile, and went tapping at the door of Lady Lenore Belfoi, who was
aux anges
to receive a bedroom call from her handsome host. She had arranged a carefully tousled coiffure and put on her prettiest lace bedjacket in preparation for Chamfreys’ visit, but was not tardy in ordering a servant off to delay him once she laid her lovely eyes on Belami.

“Good morning, Lennie,” he said, lounging in with no discomfort at being in a lady’s boudoir. He looked for a chair, but she patted the side of the bed invitingly, and he was not slow to proceed to it.

“I didn’t steal it, darling, if that’s what brings you calling at this farouche hour,” she said, by way of greeting, in her husky voice. Lady Lenore had a voice like a foghorn—low and misty. He adored it.

“Farouche? No, it is nearly nine-thirty. Nine is farouche; nine-thirty is only inconsiderate. Anything before nine we shan’t even discuss. It is too barbaric.”

“Are you here to play Bow Street, Belami, or . . . something else?” she asked with a sultry peek at him from beneath her lowered lashes.

He reached forward and kissed the tip of her nose. “Bow Street,” she decided aloud at this tame token of affection. “If that’s all you came for, you won’t mind if I have my coffee while it’s still tepid?”

He handed her the cup that rested on the table beside her bed. Then he sat and watched while she sipped daintily. He was intrigued why a husband should display so little interest in a wife of Lenore’s obvious charms. Black hair and green eyes were a stunning combination. She had a heart-shaped face, a perfect nose, perfect teeth, which sparkled behind a set of perfect rosebud lips. Her body was similarly flawless. And with all this, she was neither ill-natured nor stupid. She was one of the few women in the country a man ought to be able to find happiness with, yet to the best of his knowledge, Lennie and Belfoi never spent so much as a week together from head to toe of the year.