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“Thank you kindly, but I am not particularly desirous of anything at this time.”
“Then I wish you a pleasant evening, and perhaps we shall dance later.” He bowed and moved away in search of another possible partner.
Henrietta sighed and let her eyes drift over the crowd, wondering idly if Daniel might ask her to dance this evening. If he had not changed his mind about attending, that was. It was courting difficulty and discovery to have such close contact with him, she knew, but she still hoped it might happen at some point.
Ironic that the one man she might wish to recognize her was also the only guest here that was unlikely to guess her identity.
She had turned down two more prospective partners and was contemplating a glass of wine, or perhaps one of the delicate pastries on the sideboard when movement caught her eye, from the other side of the room.
A man—recently arrived by the look of it—was moving through the crowd with slow, cautious steps.
Her heart skipped a beat, and her mouth went dry as she took in the details of his appearance.
Firm, upright posture, with the straight back and squared shoulders that characterized a very familiar military bearing. Dark hair, longish, but not long enough for the fashionable ‘tail’ many gentlemen sported, combed neatly with crisply formed, short sideburns. Broad shoulders and a lean waist, both well framed by a dark evening jacket with subtle highlights and breeches of much the same color, the fabrics displaying a subtle sheen as he moved. His face was covered, save for his mouth, with a silvery mask with darker thread tracing over it. He was much too far away for her to see his eyes, but she didn’t need to see them to know they would be moss-green, deep, and intense.
Daniel Thynne.
She watched him edge his way through the crowd, skirting different groups deftly. Every motion was stiff, and she could see, even from her vantage point and despite the mask, the aloofness of his expression, almost as still as the stone he loved to carve.
He was clearly uncomfortable in the large gathering, though she suspected she was one of the very few that noticed. Or rather, one of the few who recognized the mood behind the rigidly set shoulders and slightly compressed lips.
She took one step forward, moving to greet him, then checked herself, uncertainty warring with her desire to speak to him again.
What could she say? As far as he knew, she was just another young lady of the ton. She could not greet him with any familiarity, and how would she explain her recognition of him, when to his knowledge they had never met? Never even attended the same event prior to this evening?
Perhaps she could play a well-meaning young woman, ignorant of his identity but desiring to help relax a man who seemed slightly adrift in the midst of a masquerade? Or a friendly young woman playing at guessing the identities of other guests, puzzled because she could not place him?
She realized she was staring and looked down, biting her lip in an unaccustomed moment of indecision. She wanted very much to speak to him, and yet...could she stand to have him regard her as a stranger?
“Henrietta!” A familiar female voice made her look up. Eva was waving from near the door, having clearly just arrived with her family. Henrietta waved back, painting what she hoped was a convincing smile upon her face. She looked again to where Daniel had been, wondering how she might manage to maneuver them all together without being too obvious about it.
He was no longer in the spot she’d last seen him, and a scan of the room yielded no results and no sign of the straight-backed and dark-haired Marquess of Salisbury.
Henrietta suppressed a groan and turned back to greet her friend.
Where could he have gone? And how am I to handle this when I’ve never been less inclined to make introductions between two people?
* * *
He was beginning to regret his impulsive decision to accept Jackson’s invitation to this thrice-blasted masquerade. He hadn’t considered that Jackson was one of the premier peers of the realm, and thus his invitations would be some of the most accepted. Neither had it occurred to him that Jackson had only recently reentered society himself; that he was nearly as much a character of interest as Daniel.
The only welcome part of the whole affair was the mask that obscured his face, and the fact that the masquerade meant no one was announced, and therefore, no one had been informed as to his identity.
Despite that, there were entirely too many young women trying to catch his eye. And he’d fielded no less than a dozen inquiries since he had arrived in the ballroom.
He had thought himself ready to immerse himself in society again. He was rapidly discovering that he was not nearly as ready as he had thought he might be. The press of people, the crowd, and the noise. His composure was slipping, and it was all he could do to remain courteous as yet another individual whose name he had no hope of guessing addressed him.
He needed a drink. And a moment to catch his breath.
He spotted a small, recessed area, mostly in shadow, and moved toward it, intending to settle there with the wall at his back until he had regained his equilibrium. He made it without incident and moved gratefully into the dimmer and quieter atmosphere.
The alcove was actually a small hallway, almost more a passage than a hall, with an air of gentle disuse. Too narrow for providing service to the main room. It looked as though it might have been a sort of corridor for servants, but if so, it was not being used in that capacity now.
He moved back into the shadows until he was fairly certain he could not be seen, then sighed and leaned against the wall, reveling in the relative quiet and lack of people.
He let his eyes roam over the crowd. Well, over what little could be seen through the narrow doorway. He was just catching his breath and contemplating a drink and perhaps making his way to one of the salons to see what games were being played for the evening, when two young women stopped close to the corridor he was in.
They clearly hadn’t seen him for their conversation never faltered. He was about to turn away and consider his options for egress again when he caught a fragment of the conversation that made him stop and settle into place with bated breath.
