One Forbidden Evening

by Jo Goodman

Genres: Historical Romance; Regency Romance

Synopsis

In USA Today Bestselling author Jo Goodman's sizzling new tale of wicked desire and daring liaisons, the most unlikely couple embarks on an adventure fraught with danger-and a passion too powerful to deny... As a masked ball reaches its fever pitch, Cybelline Caldwell surrenders to the embrace of a midnight lover, a stranger who seals her fate. By morning the wanton seductress has been replaced by a determinedly sensible woman preparing to leave London...and its memories. Yet temptation follows. For Christopher Hollings, Earl of Ferrin, the notorious rake she so brazenly challenged, vows to show her that one night was not enough. It took some clever detective work, but Ferrin uncovered the identity of his mystery lover, surprised and intrigued to come face to face with Cybelline. Soon he discovers she is a woman of mystery-and a woman in danger, stalked by a ruthless enemy. Unable to erase the searing memory of Cybelline in his arms, Ferrin knows he must discover the secrets that shadow her days...for only than can he claim all of her nights.

Release date: October 9, 2013

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 364

Sample

London, June 1817

He was coming to bed. At last. She smiled sleepily and raised the quilt and coverlet just enough for him to slide in beside her. Her body conformed to the depression in the mattress, then again as he closed the distance between them. She could feel his warm breath on her face, the nearness of his mouth, a hint of whisky on his tongue as he kissed her.

“You work too hard,” she whispered. “You have been gone an age.”

“I’m here now.”

“Mmm. Yes, you are.”

Their kiss deepened. She felt him stirring against her, and she rocked her hips forward, cradling him. Her arms lifted, circled his shoulders. When he lifted his head she buried her face in the crook of his neck and breathed deeply. The hem of her nightgown grazed her calves and thighs as he raised it with his fingertips. His touch was light, intimate, and familiar. Her breasts swelled against his chest.

“I’ve missed you,” she said against his mouth.

“It is the same for me.”

Yes, she realized, it was the same for him. Sometimes she doubted it, but not just at this moment, not when his lips moved so sweetly across hers, not when the scent of him enveloped her and the weight of his body secured her.

“Of course it is the same for me,” he said, just as if he knew there were times when uncertainty plagued her.

Her fingers mussed the curling ends of hair at his nape. She felt him shiver, and it made her smile. His response was most surely an invitation to do it again, so she did.

“Ahh.”

She raised her head. It was too dark to see him clearly. She thought she could make out the fine line of his profile against the pillow, but perhaps it was just that she knew how sharply defined his features were. Of a sudden it seemed important that she see him. She could not explain it, understanding only that the fleeting desire had become need and she should not ignore it. She began to draw back, intending to sit up.

“No,” he said, catching her by the arms. His thumbs massaged her flesh as his grip tightened a fraction. He pulled her back, his touch insistent but still more gentle than not. “Stay here. Stay…close.”

Resistance, such as there was, dissolved. She allowed herself to be pulled back into his embrace. It was where she wanted to be, she told herself. Still, she said, “Permit me to light a candle.”

He chuckled softly. “Do you think I don’t know where to put my hands? That I cannot find my way around your body? I have not been gone so long as that, and my sense of direction has always been good.”

She sucked in a breath sharply as he palmed her bottom and brought her in full intimate contact with him once again. “Yes,” she said on a thread of sound. “Oh, yes.”

His mouth was on hers, this time engaging her tongue. She felt a fullness in her breasts, another in her heart. How careful he was with her, even when his own need was great. The kiss took on a languid, leisurely quality, and she was reminded of a kiss shared out of doors when they were but newly married. The manor was some distance behind them, the lake close enough to hear the rhythmic lap of water. On that occasion there had been sunshine and ducks preening on an outcropping of rocks. She could hear the snap of the rug as he laid it down on the uneven tufts of grass. A pleasant aroma rose from the picnic basket: warm bread and cheese and a skin of red wine.

Perhaps she should have been shocked that he would want her in the full light of the afternoon, but she was not missish or shy and wanted exactly the same thing. She lay on the rug in just the same fashion as she lay on the bed, one arm flung over her head, the other resting on his shoulder. Her gown was bunched around her hips and he was settled between her raised knees. She felt him reach between their bodies and cup her mons. His fingers wandered with purpose.

She was wet. He teased her with his fingertips, dipping, stroking. Her hips jerked. Her body sought him out. There was no shame in wanting this man…her husband.

He shifted position, resting his weight on his forearms. His lips nudged hers. The kiss was no longer so sweet or soft. Hunger made it urgent, hard. This was all right as well. He could have bloodied her mouth in service of this kiss and she would have welcomed so much fierceness. He did not always have to be careful with her; she would not break under his touch. It was the lack of it that made her snappish and fragile, separation that made her less resilient. She was a woman with a woman’s needs, and there was no shame in that.

Her tongue touched the ridge of his teeth. It swept the interior of his mouth. She sipped on his lower lip, then the upper one. Through it all her eyes stayed open. Had there been candlelight, she thought, she would be darkly reflected in his eyes now, the wide pupils like black mirrors. She would see her own desire and not turn away from it.

“Shh,” he said. “Shh.”

At first she did not understand, then she heard her own whimpers. The sound was at the back of her throat, a soft mewling cry of need and satisfaction. She could not help it. Did he think she could? It was not possible to remain so quiet when his mouth was moving across the curve of her neck, then sipping the skin at the base of her throat. She would be marked there. In the morning there would be a purplish stain where his lips had been, proof that he had come to her, proof that he had been in her bed.

She whimpered again, this time because his mouth was stamping the high curve of her breast. He did not chastise her this time. Instead he made a damp spot in the batiste covering her aureole. He drew the flimsy fabric and the rosy tip of her nipple between his lips. He flicked it with his tongue, rolled it between his teeth.

Beneath him her body rose in a perfect arch. Even with his weight on her, the small of her back lifted from the bed. Her heels pressed hard into the mattress. She thought the bed shuddered slightly, but perhaps it was only that she did.

He pressed his entry. The fullness of his erection was so welcome to her that she almost sobbed with relief. Her thighs clutched his hips and in all ways she was open to him. She thrummed with pleasure as he seated himself inside her. His own quiet was unnerving. Did he not feel it, or was it only that he refused to give voice to it?

She was on the point of asking him what was wrong when she heard his soft groan. It was all right, then. They were all right. Fear of not being able to pleasure him was immediately forgotten.

“You are my heart.”

Had she said it aloud or only thought it? Neither, she realized. The words had come from him. So right. So perfect. She had not known how much she needed to hear those words until they were said. How had he known? How did he always know?

“Please,” she said softly.

“What is it?”

But she had no words to explain what she meant, only this one word and the hope that he would understand everything. “Please,” she said again.

“Just so.” He began to move in her, slowly, with long, sure strokes that she could match with the rise and fall of her hips. “Am I hurting you?”

She realized that he had wrested a cry from her. “No,” she said quickly. Immediately she knew he was not convinced. His next thrust was not as forceful as his last. “No, truly you are not. It is good. All of it.”

He stopped moving. Waited.

She was not proof against his patience. She was impulsive, occasionally reckless. He was the essence of fortitude. In a test of wills that involved forbearance, he would always be the victor.

“It is only that it has been so long,” she said. “I have been waiting for you ever so long.”

“You fit me as closely as a glove.”

Unintentionally she contracted around him. “Yes.”

“I’m afraid I will hurt—”

She did not let him finish. Even in the dark it was not difficult to find his mouth with hers. Against his lips, she whispered, “You cannot hurt me, not like this. It is only when you are gone from my bed, from my life, that I am hurt. Do not make me wait again.”

“It’s as if you’re a virgin.”

This made her laugh softly. “I’m not.”

He sucked on her lower lip. There was a corresponding tightness within her. She squeezed him and he moaned, closing his eyes and releasing her. “God, but you will be my undoing.”

She locked her hands around his neck. “If you mean to flatter me, then I will count that as a good thing.” Her sigh was audible as he began to move again. Her bottom lifted, fell. She knew his rhythm and his strength. They had done it just this way many times, and familiarity heightened her arousal rather than diminished it. She knew what to expect and when. Her responses were as measured as his. Her breast filled the warm cup of his hand, and her nipple scraped the center of his palm. Her breathing sharpened.

And just when she thought he could not—or would not—surprise her, he withdrew suddenly and turned her on her stomach. He lifted her hips and positioned himself behind her. She rested her cheek against the pillow sham and reached for the bedhead, bracing herself. He came into her with a short thrust, then a deeper one. His hands kept her tightly joined to him while hers sought purchase.

“Yes?” he asked, his voice husky.

She nodded, then realized that in the dark it was no answer. Desire made her voice thick, the consonants sibilant. “Yes. Please, yes.”

Between her thighs, he stroked her. Heat and wetness made her receptive. Just when his touch was so insistent as to make pleasure teeter on the edge of pain, he eased back, rubbing the hood of her clitoris and not the uncovered nub. She felt him gauge her breathing and her movement, marking when she was controlled and when she was on the cusp of having none.

How well he knew her body, but no better than she knew his. She was aware of even the small changes that had occurred in his absence. The weight of him was perhaps a stone heavier. The breadth of his shoulders was wider by a fraction, the muscles of his upper arms more taut. He did indeed work too hard. His labors had reshaped his frame, roughened the pads of his fingers and the heels of his hands. He still fit her exactly as she remembered, or mayhap it was that she fit him.

She had come to learn her own body in contrast to the planes and angles of his. She was not so curvaceous except when his palms were cupping her breasts or bottom, or when his hands were resting lightly on her hips. When he embraced her it seemed that her shoulders were no more broad than they should be, nor her waist too narrow. Her head fit snugly under his chin.

Elsewhere, it was he that was fit snugly. A faint smile touched her lips. She was rocked forward, then she did the rocking, this time backward, pressing into him with the full roundness of her bottom.

She felt changes in her body, a tightness under her skin, a ripple across her belly. Her eyelids fluttered closed, though she fought to keep them open. Her lips remained slightly parted. There was fierce heat where there had been only warmth and the first crests of pleasure where there had been only unhurried, rolling waves.

She cried out, though she wished she had not. He liked her to be silent, and she did not wish to be indifferent to what pleased him. She sucked in her lower lip and bit down hard enough to taste blood.

“No,” he said. His mouth was against her ear, and he was spilling his seed into her. His hard frame spasmed, and his neck arched. “No,” he said again.

She did not know what he said no to. Was he cautioning her not to cry or not to stop her cries? Or did he mean it as a warning to himself, a last effort not to have this pleasure end?

“No!”

This last shout shook her. It echoed painfully in her ears, each repetition louder, not softer, than the last. She clapped her hands over her ears and felt the weight of him leave her. The blankets were torn from her, and she understood that she was once again alone in the bed.

The shouting in her head stopped abruptly. The silence startled her. What frightened her was that she could no longer bring the sound of his voice to mind. How could that be? How could she have forgotten the sound of her husband’s voice as if she’d never known it?

Her eyelids fluttered open in the same manner they had closed just a short time ago. The candle in the dish on her bedside table still flickered.

She had never been in the dark, only in her dreams.

The bedcovers were in disarray around her. Her night-shift was crumpled about her hips. One of her hands lay cupped under her breast, the other was tucked between her thighs. She removed it slowly, conscious of the dampness of her fingertips. The small friction of withdrawal was enough to prompt a contraction and a residual ripple of pleasure. Her hips moved once in helpless response. She jerked her other hand from under her naked breast and turned away from the candlelight, pressing her face into the pillow.

Tears welled in her eyes. She bit her lip and tasted blood quickly. So that part of her dream had been real, too.

Only he was not real. Her husband. She had betrayed him, she knew that now, for it was not her husband who had come to her bed. She had been alone, yet not. She had wanted it to be Nicholas who was with her, but how could he be? Nicholas was dead, and she had betrayed him with a stranger. She understood that it had happened only in her mind, that what pleasure she’d felt had been by her own hand, yet it still seemed like the worst sort of betrayal for even her dreams to have turned on her.

Five years ago today she had exchanged vows with Nicholas Caldwell. So it was on the anniversary of her marriage, not on the anniversary of his death, that she had allowed herself to entertain another lover.

At her sides her fists bunched and she wept in earnest. At last.

London, November 1817

If it was possible to die of boredom, Ferrin was of the opinion he was not long for this earth. Only minutes ago he had been contemplating murder. Not seriously, of course. Perhaps if he had been contemplating the murder of someone other than his own mother, he reasoned, he might have been able to think the deed through to completion. But murder his mother? No, it was just not done. Not even in his own mind, no matter the provocation.

He could, however, cheerfully throttle Wynetta. The masquerade had been her idea and everyone—save him—had pronounced it a splendid notion. He would have pronounced it corkbrained, but since his views on such things were well known, no one considered it necessary to consult him.

There was never any doubt but that he would throw in his lot with the rest of them. He was ever the easy touch when it came to matters of family, though he knew this would surprise his society and many of his acquaintances. That was just as it should be, else what was the point of cultivating a reputation for not suffering fools?

“I say, Ferrin, you’re a dark one, right enough. Are you going to make your play or merely scowl at your cards?”

One of Ferrin’s dark eyebrows lifted in a perfect arch; the scowl remained unchanged. “Why cannot I do both?” He tossed a four of spades toward the other cards at the center of the table and took the trick with trump.

Across from Ferrin, Mr. Porter Wellsley returned to the contemplation of his own cards. “Don’t know how you manage to do that,” he said idly, rearranging his hand. “Damned if you do not always make the right play.”

Ferrin led the next round with an ace of hearts. “Then count yourself fortunate that you are my partner.”

“Oh, I wasn’t complaining. Just don’t know how you do it.”

To the left of Ferrin, Mr. William Allworthy flicked his cards with the buffed nail of his index finger before choosing one. He didn’t look up as he spoke. “Enough chatter, Wellsley. This ain’t the ladies’ table.”

Wellsley was about to respond, but he caught Ferrin’s deepening scowl and thought better of it. He threw off a card and sat back, waiting for their fourth to make his play.

Mr. Bennet Allworthy folded his cards, tapped one corner of the slim deck on the table, then fanned them out again. He studied them as carefully now as he had upon receiving them. He glanced repeatedly at the cards already thrown down as though they might have changed their spots while his attention was on his hand. He never looked at his cousin.

Ferrin placed two fingers on Bennet’s wrist just as he was about to make his play. “Not the spade, Allworthy. Not when you still have a heart in your hand. You do not want to renege, do you? Wellsley might not be so generous of a nature as I and consider it a cardsharp’s trick.”

Bennet froze. Just above his carefully crafted neckcloth the first evidence of a flush could be seen creeping toward the sharp point of his jaw. He did not raise his eyes from his cards, nor did he shake off Ferrin’s light touch. “Is your lordship calling me a cheat?”

“Merely doing my part to make certain you don’t become one. Wellsley is credited to be a decent enough shot.”

Wellsley rubbed the underside of his chin with his knuckles. “Decent enough?” he asked. “Is that the best you can say about me, Ferrin? Damned by faint praise. That’s what that is. I’d do better by you, you know.”

Ferrin removed his fingers from Allworthy. He regarded his partner at cards from beneath his hooded glance. “That’s because I’m better than a decent shot.”

“What? Well, there is that.”

“Indeed.” Ferrin waved idly in Bennet Allworthy’s direction. “Play the heart and have done with it.”

For the space of a heartbeat three of the four players were aware of nothing so much as the music from the adjoining ballroom, the drone of too many guests crowded into the space, the flirtatious laughter of a few as new liaisons were made and old partners were dismissed. It was only in the card room that others seemed to sense a shift in the atmosphere. Voices dropped pitch to a whisper; glances shifted uncertainly toward the center table. No one made a play. For a moment, no one save the Earl of Ferrin breathed.

Mr. Bennet Allworthy dropped the ten of hearts on the table.

As simply as that, the natural order was restored. Ferrin collected the trick as if nothing untoward had taken place. Indeed, from his perspective, nothing had, except perhaps that for a few moments he had not been bored. He led trump, resuming play. It required only another minute to finish the set. He and Wellsley thoroughly trounced the Allworthy cousins. When it was done, no one suggested another go at whist. The cousins excused themselves and exited for the refreshment table in the ballroom, making rather too much of their parched throats by clearing them loudly and often.

“I shouldn’t wonder if they don’t trip over themselves in their haste to be gone,” Wellsley said. He shuffled the cards absently. “You were rather hard on Bennet, don’t you think? Playing trump out of turn might have been an honest mistake.”

Ferrin shrugged. “If you thought that was so, you could have come to his defense.”

“And pass on an opportunity to shoot someone?” He unbuttoned his frock coat and patted the pistol tucked into his breeches. “Not bloody likely.”

“A pistol, Wellsley?”

“Part of the costume.”

“What part? I don’t recognize your intent. Save for that much abused hat you are wearing, you are dressed as you always are.”

“I’m a highwayman. You did not notice the disreputable twist of my neckcloth?”

“Disreputable? I do not think it can properly be called that when your valet has merely failed to tie the mathematical.” Ferrin’s coolly colored glance dropped to the pistol. “Never say it is primed.”

“Do you take me for a fool?” Wellsley immediately thought better of his question and held up one hand, palm out. “Pray, do not answer that. It’s lowering enough that you did not take me for a highwayman. Mayhap I should have forsaken the highway for the high seas as you have. A pirate would have been just the thing. Which do you suppose the ladies find more dashing?”

“You are welcome to put that poser to them this evening.”

“Don’t tempt me, Ferrin. I might.”

Ferrin merely grunted softly.

Wellsley cocked his head toward the ballroom. “You find all of this tiresome.” It was not a question.

“It is obvious, then. Bother that. You will warn me, will you not, if some member of my family wanders in this direction? They will take exception to my ennui, and I cannot watch the doorway easily from here.”

“Indeed. You will get a crick in your neck.”

Ferrin laid the flat of his hand against his nape and massaged the corded muscles. “I already possess the crick. I am hoping not to break the thing.”

“Poor Ferrin. Your family is such a trial to you.”

“Can you doubt it?”

Wellsley regarded his friend a moment longer before he spoke. The eyes that held his study were glacial, yet there was a hint of something that might have been amusement. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “sometimes I can. It occurs on occasion that you could be naught but a fraud.”

“Careful. I will not hesitate to run you through.” Ferrin’s hand dropped to his cutlass. “My sword trumps your unprimed popper.”

Heads turned in their direction as Wellsley gave a bark of laughter. “Just so.” He continued to shuffle the cards. “How did you know Bennet had a heart remaining in his hand?”

“Because he told his cousin.”

“Told William? Are you quite certain, Ferrin? I didn’t hear such an exchange.”

“Because while you were contemplating my scowl, Bennet was tapping his cards on the table. One for hearts. Two for diamonds. Three for—”

“I get the gist of it.”

“See? Perfectly discernible to even the meanest intelligence when one is not preoccupied.”

“Did you just insult me?”

Now there was no mistaking the amusement in Ferrin’s ice-blue glance. “If you are uncertain, then there is no harm done.”

Grinning, Wellsley handed over the cards. “Do not be so sure. I am of a mind to get a little of my own back.”

“By all means. You must do as you see fit.” Ferrin began to deal the cards, setting up two dummy hands just to keep things interesting. When he was done, he fanned open his cards and examined them.

“What is to be done about the Allworthy cousins?” asked Wellsley.

“What do you mean, what is to be done?”

“They are cardsharps, Ferrin.”

“They are dullards, and they are not so deep in the pockets that they can do much damage at the clubs.”

“I am not sure the amount of the wagering matters. I was thinking that someone less forgiving than you will surely call the pair of them out. Do you want that on your conscience?”

Ferrin was uncertain how the consequence of the cousins’ cheating had become his concern. “What would you have me do? Spread the tale of what was done here so they will become pariahs in the card rooms?”

“That would do nicely, yes. Save them from themselves.”

“At considerable damage to their reputations. One or the other of them will call me out, and we shall be precisely at the juncture you are bent on avoiding, save I will be the one facing a pistol at twenty paces. If that is your plan for revenge, you are deuced good at it. I will choose my words more carefully when I am speaking of the meanest intelligence.”

“Thank you, but I have some other revenge in mind for that slight. One with a more certain outcome than you and one of the Allworthys in a field at dawn.” He held up his hand when Ferrin looked as if he intended to object that there would be any doubt about that outcome. “There is always doubt, Ferrin. Your opponent might turn too soon. Your pistol might misfire. Allworthy—whichever cousin throws the glove—might be on the side of the angels that day. When I cast about for revenge, I want complete assurance that there can be but one end.”

“I believe you make me afraid, Wellsley.”

Wellsley threw down a card in the manner a man might toss the gauntlet. “Good.”

Chuckling, Ferrin turned over a card from one of the dummy decks, then laid his own card. “How many shepherdesses do you think are here tonight?”

“I counted six, one of them your sister Imogene. Will she be put out, do you think, that her costume is not at all original?”

“She is the only one carrying a crook with a blue bow. In her mind it is enough to set her apart from the rest of the flock. Besides, she is married and not set on making the same impression upon the guests as Wynetta. It is Netta’s debut, after all. Or nearly so. She made her come out at the Calumet affair a few weeks ago.”

“I danced a set with her, remember?”

Ferrin did not, but he didn’t say so. “Good of you. She was frantic she would go unnoticed.”

“Not possible. Your sister is quite lovely, a diamond really, though I suppose that’s escaped your notice.”

“Hardly. I admit that it surprises that you find her so.”

“I will not inquire what that means. It’s bound to be an uncomfortable conversation.”

Ferrin nodded. This evening his sister was Cleopatra. A black wig covered her cornsilk-colored hair, and she’d darkened her brows and lined her eyes. The effect was as dramatic as she was. Never shy about holding court whether she had admirers or only her family around her, Netta was immediately taken with her role as queen. It did not matter in the least if they were young bucks in togas, Corinthians wearing armor, or gentleman courtiers from two centuries past, she gathered them to her like children to a bake-shop window. Early in the evening he’d stood with his stepfather and watched her effortlessly charm her company. In contrast to Sir Geoffrey, who nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other, Ferrin was all admiration. The success of this sister, his stepsister really, meant that she would be off the marriage mart quickly and that he would have to suffer but a handful more of these occasions. Ian and Imogene, his stepfather’s twins, were both married four years ago at twenty. If Wynetta accepted a proposal this Season, then it was left only to Restell, another stepbrother, to succumb to leg-shackling. Unfortunately, Restell was not as interested in the state of marriage as he was in the state of his affairs. For reasons that Ferrin could not entirely comprehend, Restell was determined to pattern his own life after Ferrin’s, or rather what he imagined Ferrin’s life to be. As Ferrin was still unmarried at two and thirty, it occurred to him that Restell would require rescue and intervention for years to come if he was not to bankrupt the family with his gaming or be at the center of a scandal with his paramours.

Ferrin wondered if settling his stepfather’s four offspring in good marriages was merely preparation for what lay ahead. At twelve and eight, his half-sisters Hannah and Portia were already twice the handful that Wynetta had ever been—or was likely to be. For all that Netta could have trod the boards at Drury Lane with her penchant for dramatic sighs and asides, she still was possessed of a keen mind and a sensible disposition. Hannah and Portia were not. His youngest sisters were intelligent, he supposed, but hadn’t sense enough between them to find shelter in a rainstorm.

The fault for that lay at his own dear mother’s feet. Sir Geoffrey Gardner had always impressed as practical, if somewhat romantic. Ferrin’s mother, though, was a flibbertigibbet, and he could no longer ignore the signs that Hannah and Portia were strongly influenced by her. He was already calculating what it would cost in six years’ time, and four years after that, to see that these sisters found decent partners who could take them in hand but not abuse their generous though silly natures.

A bloody fortune, he thought.

“What’s that?” Wellsley asked, drawing another trick toward him. “Did you say something?”

“Did I?” Ferrin had not realized he might have spoken aloud.

“We’re not making a wager here, are we? I thought you said something about a fortune.”

“Can’t imagine what you heard.” Ferrin picked up his tumbler of whisky and sipped. “Your play. Go on.”

Wellsley’s dark glance drifted momentarily from his cards to a point past his friend’s shoulder. He did not allow his eyes to linger on the doorway but applied himself to choosing a card and schooling his features. He placed a seven of spades on the table.

“Aha! So it is true! Lady Arbuthnot did not mistake the matter when she said I would find you here!”

Ferrin was about to make his play when every hair at the back of his neck stood at attention. Many a grown man so neatly caught out by his mother might have dropped the card he was holding over the table, but Ferrin managed to slip it back into his hand and set all the cards down as though nothing untoward was taking place. It was no good reminding Wellsley that he’d agreed to give him fair warning of any family members approaching. This had been done of a purpose. The look he speared his friend communicated that it would have been kinder to allow him to face the Allworthy cousins at daybreak than to have his mother bear down on him unaware.

“Enjoy your revenge, Wellsley,” he said under his breath. He doubted he’d been heard. Wellsley was chuckling, in every way enjoying himself. With a last sour look in his friend’s direction, Ferrin got to his feet as his mother came to stand beside his chair. “Mother. How good you are to make your way round to the card room. You will perhaps join the play?”

Lady Marianna Gardner, the former Countess of Ferrin, and now the wife of Sir Geoffrey, regarded her eldest child as if he had the sense of a bag of hair. She had to look a considerable distance upward, as she was a diminutive woman and he stood half a foot taller than most of the men of her acquaintance. This never mattered, of course, as she had once suckled him at her breast before being persuaded to give him over to a wet nurse. The bond that had been forged on that occasion was still very much intact, at least in her mind. “Join the play?” she asked in hushed accents. “Can you really have made such an outrageous utterance?”

“He did,” Wellsley said. “I heard him.”

Her ladyship turned a gimlet eye on Mr. Wellsley. “And you will not repeat it, for I have no doubt that it is your unseemly influence at work here. Did I not recently say as much to your grandmother? You are a scapegrace, Mr. Wellsley. I have always thought it unfortunate that I like you so well, but there you have it. I cannot account for it myself.” Before that worthy could answer, her head swiveled sharply to her son. She was supremely unaware that Ferrin had to draw back to avoid being tickled by the long ostrich plume fixed in her turban.

“You do not mean to spend the whole of the evening in here, do you?” she asked pointedly. “It is not done. I cannot help but think you have forgotten you are the host.”

“I believe I have provided a great deal of the ready as well as the location,” Ferrin said dryly. “In every other way I am well out of it.”

“Oh, this is too bad of you. What will people say? And your sister is working so hard to make a success of the evening. It will surely be noticed that you occupied yourself playing cards. Nero fiddled while Rome burned. People remember that.”

“I will fetch my fiddle directly.” Ferrin observed his mother beginning to push her lower lip forward. This was but the opening salvo. The weapons that she kept in her arsenal included the moue, the tear, the trembling pout, and the tremulous voice. These were generally more effective than her reasoning, which Ferrin found nonsensical and a trial to his gray matter. “You are looking quite splendid tonight. The plume is particularly charming.”

“Thank you.” She allowed the silver half mask she held over the upper portion of her face to fall away and reveal her full pleasure of the pretty compliment. “You will join us in the ballroom, will you not?”

“Of course, Mother.”

“My friends delight in seeing you. I fear they do not know many rakes. They are quite fascinated by your manner.”

“I see.” He bent forward so there was no danger that he could be overheard. “May I roam freely or will you want to parade me on a leash?”

This time when her ladyship lowered her mask it was to snap it sharply against her son’s forearm. “You are the very devil,” she whispered.

Grinning, Ferrin straightened. “You are mistaken, Mother. Tonight I am a pirate.” From beneath his tricornered hat, he pulled down a black silk patch and fixed it over his right eye. “See?”

“The very devil,” she repeated. There was no censure in her tone, only affection. She touched his cheek and smiled, perfectly content with this outcome. Turning to go, her ladyship paused when she glimpsed Wellsley standing at attention on the other side of the table. “And you, Mr. Wellsley, you are of an eligible age, are you not? Well past it, I should think. As is Ferrin. Do not squander your inheritance in one sitting at the card table with my son when there are so many young women in the next room willing to relieve you of it over the course of a lifetime.”

Before Wellsley could make a reply, Lady Gardner presented her back to him and made a grand exit for the ballroom. Wellsley sunk back into his chair and looked up at Ferrin. “I need libation.”

Ferrin nodded, waving over one of the footmen. He finished the last finger of whisky remaining in his tumbler and gave it over. “Two more of the same,” he said. “None of the punch from the fountain, please.” When the liveried servant was gone, Ferrin took measure of his friend. “Will you be all right? I cannot tell whether it is astonishment that put you back in your chair or relief.”

“Both, I think.” Wellsley tossed his hat on the table and used four fingers to rake back his hair. The effect was to lend him more in the way of a disreputable air than the disheveled neckcloth. “She said she likes me well enough, so that is something, I suppose.”

“Well, of course she likes you. Why wouldn’t she? You have £12,000 per annum, a townhouse in London, an estate in the North, a family with as few rascals as one can properly hope for, and a countenance that does not stop clocks. God’s truth, Wellsley, I can’t think why I haven’t proposed.”

Wellsley’s staccato burst of laughter had heads turning in their direction again. He collected himself, straightening in his chair just as the drinks were brought to them. He raised the tumbler, saluted his friend, and drank deeply. “Dutch courage,” he said, setting the glass down. “Mayhap Miss Wynetta will take another turn on the floor with me.”

“The queen of the Nile? You will have to cut through the throng to get to her. Will you take my cutlass?”

“No. I do not think that will be necessary.” He returned his hat to his head and relied on Ferrin’s judgment to let him know when he’d achieved the proper roguish angle. With most of his bright-yellow hair covered, it was left to him to disguise his face. He withdrew a scarf from beneath the sleeve of his frock coat, folded it in a triangle, then used it to hide his nose, mouth, and squared-off chin. “Well?” he asked, getting to his feet. He removed the pistol and aimed it at Ferrin’s chest. “Stand and deliver.”

“Convincing. You will not credit it, but I am quaking in my boots.”

“Good. Now let us see who—” Wellsley stopped, his attention caught by the figure who had stepped forward and was now framed in the open doorway.

Seeing his friend’s gaze fixed on the threshold of the card room, Ferrin thought his mother had returned. “Never say she has brought reinforcements to drag us out.”

Wellsley merely shook his head.

Seeing something akin to reverence in his friend’s eyes, Ferrin was forced to turn and see what manner of creature could inspire it. He was aware of a niggling hope that it was Netta.

The queen standing at the threshold was not the woman-child Cleopatra, but she was immediately recognizable to him and every other man in the room. They were all staring at Boudicca come to life. The heavy mass of flame-red hair, the brightly dyed orange tunic and thick blue mantle, the twisted golden torc at her throat, and gold bracelets on her left wrist and arm proclaimed her as the fierce warrior queen of ancient Britain. Lest anyone doubt it, she carried a spear a head taller than she was.

Wellsley started to take a step forward, but Ferrin managed to rise and insert himself directly in his friend’s path. “You do not even like redheads,” Wellsley whispered from behind.

Over his shoulder, Ferrin said, “I am prepared to reevaluate. One must, you know, when presented with new evidence. It is in the nature of scientific inquiry. Do you know her?”

“If I did, I would go to my grave with it.”

It was just as well, Ferrin decided. She was Boudicca, and more than that he didn’t need to know. Like the torc at her throat, the brooch that held her mantle closed, and the bracelets on her wrist and arm, the mask that covered her upper face was hammered gold. Gold threads were woven into her tunic, and her bodice shimmered in the candlelight as she drew in a deep breath. Ferrin had the odd notion that she was steeling herself for battle. She had yet to hold the glance of any one man, but she had paused long enough on the threshold to examine all of them.

He stepped forward and closed the distance between them. “My queen,” he said, making a courtly bow. “There is someone in particular you are seeking? A pirate, perha. . .