Haunted Hearts (2 page)

A woman covered in feathers--a nightingale?--threw back her head and laughed unusually loudly at something said in the group around her, not the polite titter Olivia was used to among her small circle of ladies.
Would I dare copy her?
she mused.

There was a man in pirate costume, sweeping a lady milkmaid through the opened doors, out into the garden. He was laughing, and the woman was blushing but not pulling back against his leading hand.

“Meow,” a man in a harlequin’s suit said as he swept by, grabbing Olivia’s attention. He stumbled, clearly already inebriated. Olivia began to bristle…but realized calls and trysts and a stranger’s masked stare, indeed everything tonight was exactly the mischief for which she’d asked.

“Meow,” she said back, smiling wide enough for the harlequin to see her lower teeth. She avoided his suddenly outstretched hand, laughing as she plunged away from him, not so much from being unsettled as from playing the coquette.

She floated among the crowd until she was sure the harlequin did not try to follow. She listened to this conversation for a while, then passed on to that one. People made room for her, and now and again a comment was thrown her way, but she merely murmured short, French-accented answers. The subject matters were plentiful, from governmental questions to latest fashions to sharp-tongued gossip. Dazzled by the others’ quickness of thought or strong opinions, Olivia contributed little. Wine in one hand, she’d brought the cloth tail around from behind, and swung it idly as she moved from group to group.

Eventually a man in a half-mask and a domino longer and more flowing than her own modified version asked, “Half the fun is guessing who people are under their masks, eh? But who are you? I declare m’self stumped.”

“I am only a
petit chat
,” she answered.

He eyed her pointy-eared mask and her tail. “I can see that, but who are you really?”

“I cannot tell.”

He pouted. “Well, I’m sure we’ll all remove our masks at some point. I’ll find out then, won’t I?”

She only laughed for an answer, thinking she would not be here for him to see. But the time of any unmasking had not yet been announced, the likely time of midnight was a long way off, and so she would enjoy herself for the time being.

She let her pleasure build, cherishing the ability to go and do as she pleased. She occasionally smuggled more tidbits from trays and tables about the room up under her mask, and managed to find enough unviewed moments to lift her mask a little and sip at her refilled wine. She admired the house’s lush boughs and sprays of cornstalks, apples, nuts, and a plethora of other harvest crops cleverly formed into table and wall decorations, noting the proverbial pineapples, obviously grown in some hothouse, that symbolized hospitality. All the while she laughed when something amused her, which was often. She felt a little light-headed from the wine, but also from the freedom and gaiety she’d made possible with her own actions.

Olivia spoke in her foreign tones for several minutes with an unknown Robin Hood. Like many of the guests, he was rather in his cups, but trying to be gallant.

“I say, you’re very pretty,” he slurred, standing closer than she was used to. She allowed this, just because it was rather daring to do so.

“But ‘ow can you say zat? You cannot see my face.”

“You have pretty light eyes, I can see them. What color is that? Green?”

“Blue,” she fibbed, just to see if he challenged her.

“Ah, blue. Yes. So, you see, you are very pretty. Blue eyes are always very pretty.”

He made her laugh twice before she bid him
adieu
, giving him a little wave with the end of her tail. Ignoring his protest, she moved to join a circle of ladies whom she discovered were doing their best to guess who their true love was to be. It was an old countrified custom wherein one pared a pippin, trying to remove the peel in one long continuous piece. The apple peel was then swung over the head three times, and tossed over the left shoulder. One lady gave a high-pitched squeal, claiming her peel had fallen into the shape of a G.

“Gordon,” Olivia offered with a French pronunciation. “Or Georges.”

“Ew!” said the pippin-tosser. “You cannot mean George Laskin?”

The other lady who had just tossed a pippin skin of her own said, “It doesn’t count anyway. Your peel was broken. But look, mine isn’t. I got a C.”

This led to a good-natured argument between the two, from which Olivia turned to see two other ladies, their heads leaned back and their faces twitching awkwardly as they strove to dislodge one of the two apple seeds they’d each placed atop either eyelid. Inquiry supplied that each seed had been named for a different desired sweetheart. Other observers laughed or called out advice as the ladies strove to see that their preferred gentleman’s namesake stayed in place while the less favored became the first seed to fall.

Another glance around the large room showed there were other such goings-on. How oddly charming. These were old games, some might even say servants’s foolishness, but these were a bit of sport the masters had chosen to play.

“What a strange party,” Olivia said under her breath, then giggled that she was present to see it for herself. Such curious sport, and attire, and behaviors. It was all more than she’d hoped for, on this night of her coming out anew.

She sauntered to an area where a lively set of gentlemen cried out comments as three others played snap apple, the latter leaping at some of the apples hanging from cords suspended from an overhead beam.

“Wait until it stops swinging!”

“No, you’ll just set it to swinging again. Stand in front of it, let it come to you,” Mr. Harrow, whom Olivia knew from church, advised. His sheep’s mask was in his hand, and perhaps the red mark on his chin suggested he’d already had an unfortunate turn at the game himself.

“I’ll take it in the eye!” protested his friend.

The three gentlemen were having very little luck achieving their goal of a bite, but perhaps that was because legend had it that the first to take a bite would be the first to marry. Olivia thought to join the raucous game--not that she had any plan of marrying again--but of course her mask would not allow it. After a time she wandered away, her smiling lips all but unseen behind the cat’s mask.

There was a young couple, openly kissing. Now, truly, that was too much. Olivia would never have let Stratton kiss her in public; indeed, she’d avoided as many kisses as she could from her aged husband. All the same, her gaze sneaked back to the couple, and she tried to imagine actually enjoying a kiss, as they clearly did.
Will I ever?

Sighing, she turned to spy her host. He was the center of a great deal of attention. Deservedly so, for his costume was splendid--though unsettling. He wore no mask. He had no coat--Olivia had only ever seen a man without a coat when she’d gone to bed with her husband or seen laborers in the fields. Lord Quinn wore a shirt, if one could call the very thin lawn construction a shirt, and anyway it was unbuttoned all the way down to where it met his costume. He wore no cravat, his throat shockingly exposed. There were two horns, short like a nanny goat’s, fixed in his dark hair. His lower limbs were covered with a suit sewn of variegated fur that might actually be from a goat, the creature he resembled. Well, “covered” was too generous a word: his calves and feet were bare--
bare!
--and there was but one angled strap of fur over his left shoulder and the shirt--and when he moved just so, his right nipple peeped through the ridiculously sheer fabric.

Olivia stared, appalled and fascinated.

For just a moment, in the flickers cast down from the chandelier above Lord Quinn, Olivia wondered if perhaps this was a truer image of the man and less a costume? He stood so…blatantly. So unashamed. Around the loins of this remarkable ensemble were cleverly draped and sewn fabrics fashioned to look like twining ivy and oak leaves. For a moment she named him a satyr, but then she shook her head, realizing he was--as evidenced from the smiling figure that had bedecked her invitation vellum--the Druidic god of the harvest, Samhain. Olivia recalled that Samhain had also been deemed the Lord of the Dead, and she shivered.

It was an extraordinary costume, and she had to admit it suited this exotic party Lord Quinn had chosen to host, and set the mood with its paganistic styling. She would make a point of speaking with him, of course. She must be polite. Even if the very idea of speaking to a partially nude man made her head spin, albeit not wholly unpleasantly.

She found a new glass of wine, and turned from the crowd for a half dozen quick sips.

When the music began again, louder now, she didn’t give a thought to restraining herself. Why should she be alone in that? She swayed to the tune, not caring if anyone should see. She was rewarded when a cavalier asked if she would join him for the dance.

“Why, ‘ow lovely,” she agreed at once. She set aside the near-empty wineglass and took his offered hand, swaying onto the floor at his side.

“You’re new, aren’t you?”

“New?”

“Among Quinn’s circle,” he explained. “Even though I can’t see your face, I know I would have remembered you had we met before,” he said, his eyes flicking down to the rounded tops of her breasts and tightly-covered waist.

She refused to take affront; she was, after all, the architect of her own appearance tonight. “Well, I know you, sir. You are Lord Tattingor.” It had taken her but a moment to see beneath his simple mask. For some business purpose or other, he’d called on Stratton at their home a time or two.

“By Jove! You do know me. But, you. You are French?”

“Per’aps,” she said airily.

The question in his eyes assured her, at the dance’s end, that he hadn’t perceived who she might be. She left his side with a laugh that refused him the right to stand and chat with her, floating about until another man claimed her for the next dance.

Perhaps it was her free laughter, or perhaps it was her bright accented chatter, or maybe even the challenge of trying to find out who she might be, but for whatever reason, she was asked to dance every dance. Between sets she had a throng of gentlemen about her, until she would laughingly bestow her hand upon the arm of the gentleman who she’d decided was to be her next partner. He would quiz her, or tease her, or whisper he had to know her name, but the only answer she would give was, “Lady Cat is name enough for me tonight.”

“But how shall I ever see you again if I don’t know your name?” a friar asked her.

“Per’aps you never shall.” Her mirth was so contagious, he was forced to laugh with her.

Finally she sat down, denying all offers, truly a bit unsteady on her feet. It was the wine, of course, not to mention the flattery and attention she’d been receiving. It was heady stuff for one who had been so cut off from society, this mischievous play, this hedonistic night of freedoms.

As she rested, her eyes darted about the room so she’d not miss anything. Feeling as greedy as a child in a sweetshop, she became aware of a stir at her side. She turned her head slightly to the right, then more fully, as she saw that the circle of gentlemen around her had parted. Someone was stepping up to her, and was being allowed through the crush in a manner that bespoke…something. Power.  Energy. Or perhaps it was the man’s costume: he was dressed as Louis XIV, an odd choice in this time of war with the French. But then her eyes rose beyond his golden shoes, his white stockings, the clothing made in the style of another century, his garb as golden as the shoes. There were fine falls of lace peeping from either sleeve and at his throat, and he wore a tall curly white wig. As she met his eyes, she saw he wore no mask.

His eyes were dark, clear, and unblinking. They made his face commanding, which when added to the slight smile of greeting on his lips, gave him a strangely authoritative presence that could well explain why the other men had fallen away to let him pass. Despite the old-fashioned wig, he was handsome, and not just because one imagined a “king” ought always be handsome. She didn’t know him at all, but that was not surprising, not after being hidden away for so long.

He made a motion, regal, in keeping with his outfit, to one of the men standing nearby, saying not a word. Nonetheless the man, Mr. Nantes, leaned forward to make an introduction.

“I…er…good sir, please meet Lady Cat,” he managed. Olivia glanced at the kingly man briefly, then around at the others, becoming convinced by the expressions on their half-hidden faces that no one else knew, any more than she did, who this gentleman was.

The man took the “introduction” at its face value, reaching for the hand she belatedly offered and bowing over it. As she pulled her hand back into her lap, she queried, “You wear no mask, sir?”

“I have no need. I am unknown here.”

“But you are English,” she said, not entirely certain; there was a hint of an accent in his otherwise perfect English, wasn’t there?

“I am.” He gave another half-bow to acknowledge the point. “But I have not resided in England since I was a child.”

So the accent was there indeed, if but a whisper. It wasn’t French. What was it?

“Where ‘ave you come to us from?”

He gave a small shrug of arms and shoulders definitely not learned in English ballrooms, but did not otherwise answer.

“May I ‘ave your name?” she asked.

“May I have yours?”

So she was back to party games. Olivia was happy enough to play.

“No, you may not,” she answered clearly, and though he might have to guess if she smiled, she allowed him to hear it in her voice.

“No?” he echoed, but then he was smiling, too. “You enjoy the true spirit of the masquerade,
mademoiselle
?”

Her married status meant he ought to have called her “
madame
,” but she liked that he had not--no doubt because she wore no ring.

“I do.”

He looked at her steadily, still smiling a little. She got the impression he was unsure of her, perhaps even a trifle annoyed. He surprised her, then, when he asked her to dance.