A loud knocking on the door pulled Kitty from her reverie. She waited with anticipation for Hidgson to answer it. She would very soon discover how she was to walk into Lady Blakeley’s ballroom.
After what seemed an hour but must only be a minute, a footman opened the door and Hidgson came through with four beribboned boxes.
“Lay them on the table, Hidgson,” Lady Penderton said.
Hidgson looked far more animated that was his usual countenance. Kitty was aware that the entire household waited with bated breath to discover the contents of the boxes. Lady Penderton said they were firm in their belief that the masks were a direct reflection on themselves. They would not rest until they knew their fates.
Hidgson laid down the boxes and slowly walked toward the door. Exceedingly slowly, Kitty thought. Two of the footmen were standing just outside, looking as if they hardly knew how they got there. Nobody was doing anything usual.
“Hidgson,” Lady Penderton said kindly, “you’d best stay in case we need something. You may leave the drawing room door open.”
Hidgson stopped in his tracks and did his best to hide his smile, as he had long advertised the opinion that a butler ought not smile more than four times a year.
Kitty was handed her box and opened it hurriedly. The entire morning had been one long wait, she would not delay longer.
The mask was sequined and the design was of two very wide purple eyes that sparkled in the sunlight pouring through the drawing room windows. The lashes were of the same color and broad, like the petals of a flower. “It is lovely,” Kitty said, “but what can it mean?”
“Those eyes look as if they’ve seen a ghost,” Frederick said.
“When you have gone to enough of Lady Blakeley’s half-masques, you will be quicker in divining her meaning. I believe I know it—read the note, Kitty.”
Kitty unfolded the small paper included in the box.For the lady who studies flowers. Fondly, Lady B.
“Flowers. Eyebright,” Kitty said. “The mask is eyes made bright?”
“Just so,” Lady Penderton said. The baroness turned to her son, who was tearing open his box. Kitty suppressed a smile. It was possibly the only time eyebright had been mentioned that Frederick had not teased her over it. He was far too taken up with discovering how he would be portrayed.
He pulled out the mask and said, “It is a depiction of an empty chair. Blast! She finds sitting next to me is akin to sitting next to an empty chair! I really did try to be amusing!”
“I very much doubt you are correct in that assumption,” Lady Penderton said. “I find you very amusing.”
Frederick scrambled to unfold the accompanying note. His shoulders relaxed and he heaved a sigh of relief. “It says: Empty chairs all round, as no lady sits out thanks to Frederick Dell.”
“She has observed your good nature at more than one ball,” Lady Penderton said. “She once commented to me that every hostess in London must seek out Frederick Dell, as his efforts surely must stop tears in retiring rooms and otherwise bruised feelings.”
“Does it ever really come to that?” Frederick asked. “Crying because one has had to sit out?”
Kitty did not thinkshewould cry over it, but then, she had not experienced it. It certainly would be uncomfortable to be so publicly left behind.
“It most certainly does come to that from time to time,” Lady Penderton said. “It is not the lack of dancing that stings, it is the many pitying eyes while the lady sits that does it. Now, let me see what your father and I have got.”
Kitty was just as interested as her mother. Lord Penderton did not attend very many functions, but he was a particular admirer of Lord Blakeley’s liberal politics so he would rouse himself, and even don a mask, to encounter the gentleman.
“Ah yes,” Lady Penderton said. “I am to be Gaia and your father is Zeus. He is the god of the sky and I am mother of the earth. She writes: Like a kite on a string, every philosophical man must be pulled down to earth for dinner eventually.” The baroness clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, how very apt!”
Kitty let out a breath she did not even realize she’d been holding. They were to arrive to Lady Blakeley’s masque unscathed.
Chapter Twelve
Sir John Kullehamnd,as he currently called himself, sat in his empty drawing room. He held the book in his hands, though he did not read it. He had memorized every page and found that just holding it gave him comfort.
When he’d first discovered the book, he’d realized it had been sent to him by God to lift him from his misery. He’d spent his life educating himself, ready to take over his father’s small estate in Peterborough when that gentleman passed on. He intended to increase the family’s holdings and take his place in fine society and, therefore, he must be educated, erudite, a person of standing that one wished to have at one’s table.
As fate would have it, his father had not managed well. The old man might have done better had his wife still lived, as he remembered his mother as a sensible sort of person. As it was, his father had made disastrous investments and was deep in debt. No possible mortgage would cover the mountain to be paid. All of that, and the fact that the estate must be sold, was unknown to him until after his father was laid in the ground.
What was he to do if he was not to be the master of the hall?
He was a landowner with no land.
