Was he angry with her for carrying on without him so brilliantly? It seemed so.
“Excuse me, my lord,” a nervous voice said from behind him. “You’re wanted downstairs.”
Greystone turned to see one of Pickering’s aides hovering just inside the chamber, a small bundle in his hands. He walked inside and took the mask, glowering as he held it up for inspection. It would conceal his face, just as his friend had promised. It would also make him look the fool, but perhaps that was exactly what he was.
Jennet Reed had survived him, and now he had other matters to attend to.
“Tell Pickering I’ll join him in a moment,” Greystone said to the servant as he gathered up his hair to tie it in a queue.
Once the man had left he stepped into the dressing room, moving aside the wash stand before kneeling. From the satchel he had hidden under the floor boards he took the only item of true significance he had brought with him to Renwick. It looked so ordinary; no one would give it a second glance. Pickering would call it the embodiment of hope, but it should have been dripping with the blood of all the men who had died so that Greystone might possess it.
What would happen if he took it into the bed chamber and tossed it into the fireplace? To do so would seal his own fate just as surely—but for a moment he longed for that finality. To be done with it all. To surrender himself to the darkness completely.
Remember your choice.
Greystone slipped his last hope into his boot, right next to the blade he used to cut throats.
Chapter 6
The moment the carriage drew within sight of Dredthorne Hall’s aged walls and lamplit windows Jennet felt the oddest sense of being watched by the mansion. Naturally she had seen the old house before tonight, but only in glimpses from her rig while out driving. As with all places of dark reputation Dredthorne seemed menacing, especially in how it loomed ever larger, blotting out the stars and moon. By the time their driver reined in the horses to stop before the wide steps of the front entry Jennet felt reduced to the size of a mouse gazing up at a mammoth.
I see you, Dredthorne Hall seemed to whisper. Come inside…if you dare.
“You are being ridiculous,” Jennet muttered under her breath.
Catherine turned to frown at her. “What was that?”
“The house,” she said, feeling silly now. “It appears quite, ah, ominous.”
“Of course, it does.” Her friend adjusted her mask. “Mr. Pickering likely rented the place precisely to set the correct tone for the ball. Atmosphere is everything these days, my dear. You should see what the Regent has done to the Pavilion at Brighton.”
Arthur Pickering likely thought it amusing to hold the masquerade in a house believed to be haunted by the souls of those who had died within its walls, Jennet thought. Although all of the deaths had been accidental, the gossips in the village had whispered of murders made to appear thus. She could see he had arranged carved turnip lanterns on every step, like so many little decapitated heads. Looking into their fiery eyes made her stomach clench as tightly as her gloved hands. Perhaps others would think it great fun, but to her it now seemed a ghastly notion.
“Are you not feeling well?” Jennet heard Catherine ask once they had alighted from the carriage. “You look pale.”
“I am a little chilled.” She dragged her attention from the wee grimacing turnips to regard her friend. While they had been talking with the Carstairs sisters and their escorts, a line of newly-arrived guests had formed on the steps. Politeness obliged them to move to the end of it, but they would soon be inside at the receiving line. “I should have worn my cloak.”
“I see I must inspect your wardrobe, and relieve you of anything that might tempt you to commit such a faux pas,” her friend chided as she stood on her toes to look over the heads of the guests in front of them. “I believe Mr. Pickering is greeting everyone. Look, he’s dressed himself as a straw man and put a sack over his head. Such an improvement.”
“Be kind,” Jennet chided. “This is not London, you know.”
As a black cat leapt from the shrubbery to dart between them and across the drive, Catherine drew back her skirts. “It certainly is not.”
Her friend’s disdain helped disperse most of her trepidation, but Jennet still kept a wary eye on the house. Two more couples called out greetings as they joined them, and she forced herself to smile and laugh as if they were meeting at the village hall for a country dance.
“My grandmother insists that this house is cursed,” one of the gentlemen told them in a hushed tone. “Every master of Dredthorne Hall is doomed to fall in love with a lady who spends the night. Once they are married, his wife in turn will either go mad or die within the first year.”
“What nonsense.” Catherine sniffed. “That could not possibly happen, unless Dredthorne’s masters have all been exceptionally gullible bachelors, and exceedingly boring husbands, of course.”
Jennet laughed along with everyone, but the remark brought back how she had been, immediately after being left at the altar. Anyone who had seen what she had done to her wedding gown would have regarded her as not entirely sane. Thankfully that brush with madness had been of very short duration, and never again returned. She had not been cursed by her duplicitous lover; she had been set free of him.
“Ladies, I have a notion to elude this curse,” Catherine was saying, “All we need do is avoid becoming engaged to Mr. Pickering, and leave well before the midnight hour.” She smiled at Jennet. “My dear friend here has become expert at both, so we must hope she demonstrates her talents.”
“Oh, the trick is quite simple,” Jennet told them. “Simply say no, and go.”
Once safely inside Dredthorne Hall Jennet eyed the receiving line. Of the four costumed hosts welcoming the arrivals, just one stood tall enough to be Arthur Pickering. Only he would be so ridiculous as to wear a sacking mask, and rough old clothes liberally adorned with bits of hay, in order to emulate a straw man. Yet the longer Jennet regarded him the more startled she felt. Why had she never before noticed how broad his shoulders were, or those bulges of muscle along his arms? Either he had stuffed more hay under his costume, or his tailor had been doing him a terrible disservice.
She bided her time, smiling and nodding to the other hosts before halting in front of the straw man and poking her fan in his ribs the moment he straightened from his bow.
“I do not appreciate your invitation, sir,” Jennet told him firmly. “The wording you employed quite scared my mother out of her wits. I insist you issue any future messages to me without the threat of curses on my family, or I will replace my fan with a club.”
The straw man took hold of her wrist, and drew her hand up to his mask to press it against the crookedly-sewn seam serving as his mouth.
Feeling the warmth and pressure of his lips through the sacking sent a jolt of sensation through Jennet. The heated wave sizzled along her skin before sinking deep into her breast. For a moment everyone around her faded into ghosts of themselves as she stared at Pickering’s bent, masked head and saw instead gleaming black hair tied neatly in a queue.
That kiss had been bestowed on what Jennet had considered the most exciting night of her life, and what she regarded now as the greatest mistake she had ever made.