If this florid fortune-teller had been born a Romany, Jennet would dine on her velvet domino.
Beyond the reception room lively dancing music played. Jennet looked for Catherine, only to see her friend engaged by a handsome young man a short distance away. Before she could catch her eye Catherine took the man’s arm and walked with him in the direction of the music. She should follow them, she thought, but glanced again at the fortune-teller, who now had both of the young debutantes hanging on her every word.
Unlike the Romany, who were the cleanest people Jennet had ever encountered, this traveler had a line of grime under her chin, and black-rimmed fingernails.
Jennet seethed silently as she watched the reading progress. The woman’s exaggerated gestures and frequent leanings over the table seemed more suited to the stage than the telling of fortunes. The manner in which she dealt out the cards seemed highly suspect as well. When the fortune-teller took one of the girls’ hands in hers and leaned closer to whisper to her, Jennet recognized her game.
Oh, this would not do.
She watched until the fortune-teller finished the reading, and the giggling girls left the table. Only then did she approach. “Good evening, Madam.”
“Milady. I am Masilda,” she said in a stilted accent, and gestured toward one of the chairs. “Please, join me, and I will read the cards for you, for free.”
“I should pay you something for your trouble.” Jennet reached down as if to hand her a coin, and then reached into the fortune-teller’s wide sleeve. As the would-be Romany stiffened, she pulled out the bracelet she had seen her slip from the girl’s wrist. “Or perhaps not. You appear to be doing quite well for yourself.”
Masilda recoiled, and scowled. “That I have never seen.”
“Fortunately, I have.” She nodded in the direction of the two debutantes. “This bracelet belonged to that young lady’s grandmother, who left it to her after she passed away last year. She was quite proud to show it to me when last she wore it to church. She would be heartbroken to discover it stolen.”
“I stole nothing,” Masilda protested. “It must have fallen from her arm.”
“As I imagine many such baubles do in your presence.” Jennet looked into the thief’s eyes, and let her own go steely. “Mr. Pickering did not hire you to steal from his guests. I suggest you leave at once, or I will summon the footmen to escort you directly to the magistrate.”
The fortune-teller grabbed the tarot cards and shoved them into the front of her bodice as she got to her feet.
“You watch, me fine lady,” Masilda said in a harsh Cockney accent, her lips curling into a sneer. “Before this dance is done, you will see your own death.”
Jennet would have laughed as the fortune-teller scurried out of the reception room, but the thieving charlatan’s prediction gave her pause. Unlike the rest of the Reed family, she herself had never been reckless. Indeed, she now devoted herself to living a very quiet life free of heedless impulses. Her demise, eventual as it had to be, had never greatly concerned her. Jennet had imagined dying only at an advanced age, possibly of boredom, definitely alone.
Only she did not wish to die alone, or tonight at the ball. But why would Masilda predict such a ghastly thing? Had she hoped to scare her in retaliation for being exposed as a thief?
“How do you do, Miss Reed?” a man said from behind her.
Turning to behold a tall highwayman ably disguised by a grinning mask, Jennet dropped into a polite curtsey. Too scattered in thought to surmise his identity, she said, “You have guessed my name, sir. Are we acquainted?”
He bowed in return before he pulled up the mask, revealing his long, narrow face and placid brown eyes. “Arthur Pickering, at your service.”
She regarded his costume. “Were you not earlier dressed as a straw man, sir?”
“No, that was an old friend. I thought you might have guessed when I greeted you at the door.” He glanced at the fortune-teller’s table. “I fear there will be no more readings tonight. One of the footmen reported seeing the Romany lady fleeing the house.”
“That woman was as much a traveler as I am.” She showed him the bracelet as she related what the fortune-teller had done, and her own threat, adding, “I expect it was high-handed of me to order her to leave, but I did not wish to create a scene unpleasant to your guests. I daresay you would have done the same.”
“Indeed, and I thank you for your diligence.” Pickering’s expression grew sly. “You are rumored to be quite the diviner, Miss Reed.”
“I am nothing of the sort.” Still, she had chased off his would-be fortune-teller, and Jennet felt some obligation for that. “However, if you will bring to me playing cards, I will stand in for your entertainment and provide some readings for your guests.”
He beamed as he reached into his cloak, and withdrew a boxed deck. “I have anticipated your generosity.”
Greystone took up a stance at one side of the reception hall where he could watch every entrance and exit while keeping his back to the curved wall. The chandeliers shed pooled light, allowing him to stand in a pocket of shadow. That position also gave him the perfect vantage point to watch Jennet Reed as she sat down by the hearth. She had seemed genuinely surprised to discover Pickering behind the highwayman’s idiotic mask, which gratified and annoyed him.
Staring at her as much as he wished made him want a dark, empty room and that long, lovely throat clasped between his hands.
To shut out the sight of her, Greystone closed his eyes, which proved a grave mistake. From the locked and chained trunks of his memory escaped an image of a meadow filled with daisies and dandelions just beyond the gardens surrounding his family’s country home. That afternoon had been one of the best of his life.
In the center of the fragrant, colorful profusion of blooms Jennet sat on a blue and green plaid, patiently watching as he finished unpacking the picnic hamper. He had been talking of the improvements he wished to make to the lodge, and a hot house he meant to build. When they married, he had explained, he wished Jennet to have the strawberries she loved whenever she liked. Then he had looked up to see her frown, her face flushed and her green eyes sparkling as if with temper.
You think it too frivolous, Miss Reed?
Strawberries are very nice. Jennet reached for his hand, and boldly twined her fingers through his. What I want most is you, Mr. Gerard.
That shameless confession had proved his undoing. He had pulled her into his arms and kissed her, and the taste of her lips had made him even wilder. She had not protested or struggled; she returned his passion with an equal measure of her own, just as she had under the kissing bough at Christmas. If the baroness had not walked down from the lodge to join them a few moments later, Greystone would have surely taken her right there in the flower-speckled grass, under the bright July sun. He remembered how his mother had laughed as they quickly ended the heated embrace.
That can wait until the two of you are wed, my lad.
He forced his attention back to the other guests, all of whom he easily identified despite their masks. He saw childhood friends now grown into adults, many paired off as couples. They seemed to him so blissfully unaware of anything beyond their modest scope. Greystone also realized that life had gone on in Renwick without him, which gave him a curiously empty feeling. None of Pickering’s guests would ever know what William Gerard had become, or why, and that was as it should be. Still, for a moment he wished he could truly unmask himself in every sense of the word. It would horrify them to know the truth, but it would change their perception of the woman he had so ruthlessly abandoned.