“Miss Knightsbridge,” he said, holding his hand out for her card.
Cassandra had no doubt of the voice, it was rich and deep. “Lord Hampton?” she asked, handing it over.
He nodded as he put down his name for the dance before supper. Why that dance? Was he not aware of the talk? Had he not heard of the print? Would not this cause even further talk?
He handed the card back to her and bowed before moving away.
“He must not have heard that he has caused you trouble by escorting you from the park,” Sybil said. “I suspect it is not as widely spoken of as you feared. Now, I wonder why Lady Blakeley masked Lord Hampton as an old vicar?”
“Iwonder how Lord Hampton addressed me by name before we had even spoken. How did he know it to be me?”
Before Cassandra could speculate on how Lord Hampton knew her as the fawn, a fierce-looking pirate approached and requested her card. He hastily filled in his name, quickly followed by a gentleman wearing a mask of a savage-faced boar, another wearing a mask of gold coin, then a knight, and finally a replica of a Waterloo medal. Though her card was filled in rapid succession, none of the gentlemen stayed to speak with her, though some had put down their names on Sybil’s card too.
There was finally a pause and Cassandra glanced down at her card to see who they were, almost terrified she would find Mr. Conners in the mix.
She did not find Mr. Conners, but the list of names left her cold. Hampton, Dalton, Lockwood, Ashworth, Grayson and Cabot. Every single gentleman named in the pact.
Was she the subject of some joke between them? How else to account for it? She’d never even been introduced to Lords Dalton, Grayson or Cabot, and they’d not bothered to accomplish that nicety before writing their names down.
Cassandra scanned the room and noted Lord Hampton’s vicar in conference with a man masked as a jester. The jester looked back at her and she turned away.
They spoke of her, she knew it. She could feel it in her bones. Perhaps she ought to seek out her aunt and they might claim an illness and leave. Whatever transpired here, it felt dangerous. She felt a sense of impending doom, though had she been asked to explain it she did not know what she would have said. Many a lady might be delighted to find such illustrious names on her card, but in light of recent events…
The jester had crossed the room in a moment and stood before her. “Miss Knightsbridge? It is Burke, of course you must have guessed the jester’s mask would be my own. It seems my blasted cook and the stories I tell of him have made a fool of me.”
“Lord Burke!” she said, not quite knowing what to make of it.
“May I?” he asked.
She handed over her card and Lord Burke filled in his name for the last dance that had not yet been taken. Her evening was claimed, and it was claimed by every gentleman in the room who would be a duke someday.
Cassandra did not know the meaning of it, but she was beginning to be terrified of discovering it. If it had caused talk to be escorted home by three gentlemen of the pact, what would be the result of this? It would not go unremarked. She might hide behind her fawn’s mask for now, but it would come off at supper.
*
The evening hadseemed interminable to Cassandra. She had opened the ball with Lord Dalton. He seemed a rather intense sort of person and she began to see how he might be styled as a pirate. He did not explain himself, other than noting that had he been born without funds he might very well have taken up the profession. She had asked him if he liked masked balls, that seeming an entirely innocuous question. He’d said he did not like them but should, as it was a kindness to others that his disfigured face remained hidden. She had stayed silent after that.
Lord Lockwood had been rather frightening to behold, his mask composed of some sort of rough fur that stuck out at all angles, and frightening tusks protruding. His conversation had been far more lighthearted than his appearance. He speculated he’d been made a boar for his penchant of barreling ahead before thinking. It had nearly got him killed in the war and he still hadn’t rid himself of the habit. On the other hand, he’d rather be known as a boar than a bore.
Aside from those comments, he’d asked her a few questions about Sybil. Cassandra speculated that she might even divine some interest on his part and felt sorry that Sybil was determined to avoid the gentlemen of the pact,andthat Sybil’s father had a hatred of his own father over a long past card game. If Lord Lockwooddidhave some partiality for Sybil, it was an entirely lost cause.
Lord Ashworth accounted for his mask of gold coins by claiming he was a keen gambler. His father had been dead set against it until he saw how much money his son had brought back into the estate.
Lord Cabot had appeared reluctant to account for his mask being the Waterloo medal, until finally admitting that he perhaps talked of the war and its battles a bit much for the female taste. He had seemed vastly grateful when she remarked that the impact of war could only be rightly felt by those persons who had participated in it and everybody else should not presume to comment.
Cassandra had not expected Lord Hampton to account for being portrayed as a vicar. In truth, she was rather surprised he’d come at all. Very like Lady Montague’s snake, she would have thought he’d have looked at it, tossed it aside, and then sent his regrets.
As they waited their turn to move through the steps, he said, “It seems each year Lady Blakeley sets out to teach me a lesson. I suppose I am to know that I am too serious this time.”
“Do you mark yourself as such?” Cassandra asked, rather surprised that she’d not had to initiate the conversation and rather relieved it was not on the subject of dogs or kennels.
“Perhaps,” Lord Hampton said. “Perhaps more so since the war. Too many lives wasted in battle for any sort of frivolity to feel entirely comfortable.”
“My father would agree regarding the lives wasted,” Cassandra said. “He says it’s all well and good to be blindly patriotic, but that is cold comfort for a farmer who’s lost his only son.”
“One of the tenants on my father’s estate had three sons and lost them all. It makes one wonder over the rightness of having survived.”
Cassandra was struck with the lord’s words. She had become used to various gentlemen speaking of the war in heroic terms of this or that battle as if it were a story, or Lord Burke making it all sound like a joke.
