The Black Mask (11 page)

“It’s like Romeo and Juliet,” she said, tactfully choosing a romantic precedent.

“Oh, I do hope not. I should hate to take poison.”

“No, she stabbed herself after Romeo drank the poison.”

“I believe you’re right. Well, that’s love for you.”

Now was patently not the time to trouble her aunt with her or Rupert’s problems. She would have to think of some other way to nullify those pledges. Perhaps if she wrote to their father herself, pleading Rupert’s cause once more, he would relent and permit Rupert to enter the army.

Though it would not end Rupert’s obligation to pay Sir Niles, it would serve to keep Rupert from falling more deeply into debt. His pay would not be great, but it would be something more than he had at present.

“Is Rupert dining at home tonight?” Aunt Paige asked.

“I haven’t any idea. Perhaps he said something to Hurst.”

“It’s only that the general has asked me to accompany him to dinner at the Great Pulteney Hotel. I don’t think he’d mind if you joined us.”

“No, thank you. Two’s company; three’s none.”

“But if Rupert isn’t home, how shocking that you should eat alone.”

“I shall dine in state, Aunt. Besides, someone must eat here, or your cook will give notice.”

Rose went on thinking about Rupert while Aunt Paige chattered away, mingling gossip with paeans of praise for her new friend. Rose needed only to nod and hum an encouraging sound from time to time.

If only there were some way to delay the necessary payment until Rupert could manage to assuage his debits. If only someone could take Rupert’s vowels and hide them until he could pay. He could still acknowledge the obligation while being uncertain of the exact amount. Surely no honor code would be more than lightly bent by such methods. The intent to pay would still be there; only the time of payment would be in doubt.

Might as well wish for the sea and all its treasures. She didn’t even know where Sir Niles kept his important papers. Whatever notion had crept into her thoughts about searching his house during an evening’s party had to be, however reluctantly, set aside. Only a professional thief would even begin to know where the most common hiding places were. She could only think of under the bed, and Sir Niles had already said he had every intention of moving his jewels to some other location.

“I received the most diverting invitation,” Aunt Paige said suddenly. “I think Augustus will escort us if I ask him.”

“Go where, Aunt?”

“Catherine Yarborough’s masquerade. Vulgar idea, but rather daring, too. Wednesday next, which is lucky. It will take us several days to create costumes and have them ready.”

“What will you choose?” Rose felt a stir of excitement. Had she already grown so jaded with the pleasures of London that it took something like a masquerade to rouse her enthusiasm? She hoped not. She had so much still to enjoy, so many daydreams to yet fulfill.

Aunt Paige turned to the dressing table mirror and turned her head appraisingly from side to side. She seemed to be trying to see her profile in full. “Augustus suggests Antony and Cleopatra, but I think we should choose a subject that is a little more staid. I’m not a Bird of Paradise, after all.”

“What about me?” Rose said, bending her knees to bring herself within the mirror’s frame. She squinted a little, trying to picture herself in some other guise.

‘With your dark hair and fair skin, I could see you as a Spanish Infanta or Catherine of Braganza. I have a string of pearls we could weave into your hair. It would be vastly pretty.” Aunt Paige went to her jewel box and opened the lid. “That jogs my memory. Augustus says I should put my most valuable jewels in the bank for safekeeping at least until this Black Mask maniac is captured.”

“Maniac?” Aunt Paige had always shown a certain ironic fascination with the burglar’s exploits. This was a change of front. Rose wondered if it were the general’s influence.

“Haven’t you heard? He’s struck again.”

“No! Who?”

“Some sort of City fellow. Apparently he’d amassed a stunning collection of famous jewelry. Very influential families, they say. Must have sold off their treasures secretly and had them replaced with copies.”

“And the Black Mask stole them?”

Aunt Paige pursed her lips and shook her head, apparently at the fetter-like bracelet she held in her hand. “Ghastly. How did women ever wear these things a hundred years ago? I should have the stones reset. They’re quite pretty opals, though I’m not fond of opaque stones.” She turned her head and smiled at Rose. “I’m sorry, my love. No, they say the Black Mask didn’t get away with anything this time, not so much as a penny piece.”

“A pity to take such risks for nothing.”

Paige shrugged slightly. “I’d follow Augustus’s advice were I not perfectly sure the Black Mask has his sights on grander treasures than I possess. Though both my husbands were ever generous, I don’t have the sort of incredible jewels a true collector or a true thief would find interesting.”

“I wonder how he knows which people do have such things?” Rose wondered.

“Come and sit down here, Rose. Let’s try these pearls.”

Still abstracted, Rose easily sat still while her aunt, and soon her aunt’s maid, tried first one arrangement and then another of her hair. Finally, Aunt Paige stood back. “Definitely a Spanish princess.”

Rose glanced up. They’d performed a wonderful transformation, parting her hair in the center and pulling each side up under a sheer white veil, a drape of milky pearls contrasting with Rose’s dusky waves and falling in a swoop across her forehead. “I don’t look like myself.”

“That is the idea behind a masquerade, Rose. To be someone else for an evening. That’s why they so often turn into bacchanals. People forget who they are. Clergyman become rakes, rakes become devils, chaste girls become ... well, I think we can trust dear Catherine to keep her party from going even an inch over the line. She’s rather a stickler for the proprieties.”

“That’s just as well,” Rose said. She put down the hand mirror with which she’d been admiring the back of her head. “But I don’t think I’ll be a Spanish princess.”

“No?” Aunt Paige said, exchanging a disappointed glance with her maid.

“No. Though the style you’ve given my hair is wonderful and will do for my other idea.”

“Which is?”

“I shall attend as the Malikzadi, complete with ruby.”

* * * *

In the five days that passed, Rose saw very little of Sir Niles. Once again, she had come to catching only glimpses of him at parties. At a huge picnic, she saw him playing croquet with a crowd of flower-like young ladies, apparently receiving instruction. He sent her a wry salute with a mallet.

On another occasion, he’d asked her to dance rather late in the evening. She’d felt strangely triumphant when she’d showed him that the small ivory plaque of her dance card was entirely covered with the names of more punctual and thus more fortunate men. Her triumph fell rather flat, however, when he seemed not to mind a particle.

Twice she sat near to him during refreshments, not that he noticed. Both times, he had been talking to— or, rather, listening to—a vivacious young blonde with fascinating green eyes. Between the blonde’s never-slowing tongue and the proximity of three out of four of Rose’s largest admirers, she did not exchange a single word with Sir Niles. She vowed, however, to wish him happy the next time they met. Rumor had it the blonde would be Sir Niles’s fate.

Yet by the time Wednesday came, she’d passed on to a new flirt and was heard to say Sir Niles’s reputation was fully deserved. Rose hoped he was ashamed of himself, but doubted anything could pierce the armor of his self-esteem. She hardly imagined a disappointed woman’s influence could serve where the whispers of the most important people in England had failed.

In her desire to avoid Sir Niles, which seemed only to lead to her seeing him everywhere, Rose almost failed to notice that one of her admirers had unaccountably taken himself off. Despite his previous interest in her, Colonel Wapton had ceased to call.

She wondered if Sir Niles’s rudeness to him had tainted her with unpleasant associations. But she soon discovered the colonel had all but ceased going anywhere.

The one subject on everyone’s tongue was, simply, the Black Mask. With Beringer revealed as a loathsome blackmailer preying like a giant leech on society, the debate over the Black Mask’s morals and intentions grew ever more intense. Had he intended the revelations he’d created, or were they accidents, mere by-products of burglary?

“I have no doubt about it,” the general declared at his first dinner
en famille
when
Rupert introduced the subject of the day shortly after the servants had carried in all the plates and wines for the dessert course.

Waving the jewel-like fruit tart he’d selected, the general made his point. “A man could uncover such deviltry a single time purely by accident, but to do so twice is beyond the bounds of coincidence. He must have chosen those two men precisely because he knew their secrets.”

“How could he?” asked Aunt Paige.

“He’s probably a confederate in their doings. A burglar would prove to be very useful in scouting the territory for a blackmailer in advance of operations. Incriminating documents, compromising billets-doux, secret sins hidden away. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find out this slaver fellow wasn’t to be one of Beringer’s victims and the Black Mask was supposed to collect the proof. A mistake on his part, I fancy, led to the exposure of this fat pigeon instead of leaving him ripe for the plucking.”

“Oh, no, Sir Augustus,” Aunt Paige protested. “I’m sure the Black Mask intended all along to uncover these evil deeds. Why, now that those two unpleasant men have been shown for what they are, if I were a criminal I wouldn’t sleep at night for fear the Black Mask meant to expose me next.”

“And what crimes do you have on your conscience, eh?” the general asked, leering genially across the table, his masculine appeal not a whit lessened by the smear of whipped cream on his upper lip.

Rose met Rupert’s eye and stifled a giggle behind her napkin. The general conducted his lovemaking in the most straightforward way. It should be shocking, but Rose could not choose but be diverted at his antics and pleased for Aunt Paige. She, dear thing, went about in a haze of happiness, hardly aware of her surroundings, especially when the general was near. Her lovely soft eyes misty with romantic daydreams, all but forgetting her duty to her niece and nephew, Paige looked a dozen years younger than the forty she admitted to.

Rupert shook his head, but winked at Rose before continuing. “I think the Black Mask has more than a little larceny in his soul, but does that necessarily mean he can’t do a bit of good in the world as well? Men like Beringer and Curtman are blots on England’s ledger. Blackmail’s bad as clubbing a fox, and as for slavery... well, I was glad to hear Curtman fled the country, Beringer won’t be so lucky—or so they say.”

“He’ll flee the country, right enough,” said the general with satisfaction. “And at government expense. He’ll be transported sure as a gun. No one’s going to listen to his excuses with the duchess weeping in the witness box.”

“Hasn’t he threatened to tell all he knows? One would think he had a thousand secrets from all those poor people he was threatening. I know I’d do anything to prevent my indiscretions from being known. I can’t imagine how the duchess can bring herself to talk about it, and in court, too.”

“That’s the worst thing he could do, dear Lady Marlton,” Sir Augustus said shrewdly. “He would lose whatever sympathy he had with the court. I’ve presided at enough courts-martial to know you’re halfway home if you win the sympathy of the court.”

“I shouldn’t imagine the judge will show him very much sympathy. I wouldn’t.” Paige said, cutting up an apple with bloodthirsty emphasis.

“Every little bit helps, m’dear. It’s a capital charge. Only the mercy of the judge can save him from Tyburn Tree.”

Rose was struck by a sudden shiver that forced her to put down her glass lest she spill the dessert wine across the shining expanse of mahogany dining table. “If they catch the Black Mask,” she asked, “won’t they hang him as well? He has stolen considerably more than many of those poor unfortunates who go to execution.”

“Aye, he has,” the general said, not unduly concerned. He spun the epergne before him slowly, searching perhaps for another fruit tart or simply mesmerized by the brilliant flicker of the candles in the gleaming silver. “But no doubt the court, should he ever face one, would consider leniency based on the good he’s done, whether inadvertently or purposefully. All the same, I don’t approve of a man taking the law into his own hands. We wouldn’t tolerate it in the army.”

“I, for one,” said Rupert excitedly, “doubt they’ll ever catch him. He’s shown himself too clever for those clodhoppers at Bow Street. My friends feel the same way, those who’ve given it any thought at all. The Black Mask brings a little excitement to living in town.”

Thank you very much,” Aunt Paige said. She could not maintain her austere expression for longer than it took Rupert to begin a stumbling apology. “Don’t be so silly. I know exactly what you mean. Talking about the Black Mask is much more interesting than the usual chatter about who is dancing, marrying, or on the outs with whom.”

Rose nodded. She could live happily for the rest of her life never hearing another word about Sir Niles and his latest conquest.

“Why, even fashion has started taking an interest in him,” Aunt Paige continued. “I was at my milliners when, lo and behold, she brings out a chip hat with a black veil and calls it ‘a la Masque Noir.’ It’s apparently the last word in style.” Seeing a lack of belief on the men’s faces, she applied to Rose for confirmation.

“Yes,
indeed. And when we went on to buy some lace, it too was of ‘the Black Mask style.’ I haven’t the least notion why. It was pink thread lace.”

The two men began to laugh. Rose and Paige looked at each other. Men laughed at the strangest things. “Come along, my love,” Aunt Paige said, dabbling her fingers in the lemon-scented water before her and wiping them on her napkin. “Let us leave Sir Augustus and Rupert to their port. I want to talk to you about your costume. It’s nearly finished. I think it will cause quite a stir.”