“Hey.”
Dylan looked fantastic in a gold-trimmed, navy-blue pirate vest. He wore a wide gold sash around his narrow waist and black pantaloons. He even had a stuffed green parrot attached to his shoulder.
“You. Look. Mahvellous,” Ellery said. “Love the bird.”
Dylan hammed, “Bird? You say you love my bird? Is that what you say?”
“Gene Wilder, Start the Revolution Without Me.”
Dylan pointed at him. “Correct. Speaking of looking marvelous. Somebody should paint you in that outfit.”
“This waistcoat is so tight, I’m not sure Nora didn’t.” No lie. He was afraid he was going to pop that row of little gold buttons every time he exhaled.
“Eat your heart out, Chief Carson,” Dylan murmured.
Ellery threw him a quick look of alarm. “Jack? Jack isn’t going to be at this thing, is he?”
“Pirate Cove’s Chief of Police? Of course. If Chief Carson doesn’t qualify as a VIP, I don’t know who does. He’s here every year.”
Ellery scowled. He hadn’t seen or spoken to Jack since Wednesday night, and he wasn’t in a hurry for that to change.
Dylan had already heard the whole story of Jack and Ellery’s run-in. Like Nora, he had tried to offer a more…mollifying view of events. He said again, “Carson can be abrasive, but I really do think he was scared at the idea of what might have happened to you.”
“I know,” Ellery said. Meaning he knew that was what Dylan thought, not that he agreed with him. From the first, Dylan had been of the opinion that Jack had reacted badly because he had feelings for Ellery. Ellery thought Jack had reacted out of what Great-great-great-aunt Eudora would have called an “excess of spleen,” and that Dylan was a lot more romantic than he’d suspected.
Okay, he was honest enough to admit, at least privately, that he could have been smarter in his handling of the situation at the Barbys’. He knew things could have ended badly for him. He could even believe that part of the reason Jack had been such an ass was because of his experience as a detective. Jack knew all about unexpected violence and tragic outcomes. But leaving his supposed “friend” sitting there in that spider-invested wreck, listening to the icy slurp of water and things scuttling in the darkness? Ellery was still angry.
Anyway, he was glad he had warning that he was liable to run into Jack—although it added to his irritation that Jack had not mentioned he was attending the Marauder’s Masquerade when Ellery had shown him his invitation. Had he been afraid Ellery might ask to be his date? Who the heck knew with Jack?
What Ellery did know was he was tired of wondering about what Jack might be thinking.
In fact, he was tired of the very idea of Jack.
Ellery and Dylan paused for pics, gave their names to the photographers, accepted glasses of champagne, and followed the stream of guests up the red-carpeted steps lined with fairy lights and through the doorway beneath a lintel carved with schooners and sea monsters.
They entered a marble great hall dominated by a gigantic gold-framed portrait of a handsome seventeenth-century nobleman standing on a cliff, spyglass in hand. The man wore a long black cloak, and his tumbled pale locks blew in the wind from beneath a large-brimmed, plumed hat. His silvery-gray eyes seemed to stare down the centuries at them.
“Is that Tom Blood?” Ellery asked Dylan.
“That’s the man,” Dylan said. “Or possibly the legend. For all we know, he was three inches shorter and bow-legged.”
“He was definitely shorter,” Ellery said. “That portrait is about eleven feet tall.”
“Good point.”
According to Pirates of New England, Captain Blood had cut a pretty romantic figure, and the man in the portrait certainly looked heroic, but everything was relative.
They followed the crowd through a couple of marble columns, and Ellery had a quick impression of a huge room filled with candles and flowers and sparkling chandeliers and gold-framed paintings. Positioned between long mirrors, a string quartet were playing Schubert.
“It’s like a scene from Forever Amber, isn’t it?” Dylan said with satisfaction. They shared a love for corny vintage historical dramas, and Ellery grinned in agreement.
There were enough gowns and elaborate wigs and frock coats and breeches for three more Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. They couldn’t all be provided by the Scallywags, so did that mean the citizens of Pirate’s Cove kept a spare wardrobe of pirate garb?
He amused himself speculating about the secret lives of Pirate’s Cove residents.
Most guests were sporting laser-cut Venetian-style masks, though some went in for traditional papier-mâché trimmed with braid or jewels or beads. One or two gentlemen, who had been likely dragged against their will, wore the squarish and more concealing Bauta-style masks that offered actual disguise, but mostly it wasn’t hard to tell who was who.
And it did appear to be true that just about everyone who was anyone in Pirate’s Cove was in attendance.
The crowd seemed to have narrowed to a receiving line. A tall woman stood at the head. She could have been any age between fifty and seventy. She was very thin but elegant in a silver satin and brocade gown trimmed with pearls and sequins and yards of foamy lace. Her platinum hair was swept up in elaborate knots of sparkling jewels and ribbon. Her mask was hardly more than a wisp of silvery lace and probably wasn’t intended to be more than ornamental. The resemblance to the portrait in the great hall was striking.
“The Pirate’s Granddaughter,” Dylan murmured. “That’s husband Number 2 with her.”
Until Dylan pointed him out, Ellery hadn’t even noticed Marguerite’s companion. He was equally gorgeously clothed, in his case in blue velvet. He was shorter, dark-haired, blue-eyed. Definitely younger—perhaps forty—and handsome, but starting to blur at the edges. He held one of those Medico della Peste masks with the long hollow beak and round eyes.
The queue moved forward, and Ellery found himself shaking the “Pirate’s Granddaughter’s” silver-tipped, perfectly manicured hand. From behind her mask, her cool, gray eyes met his.
“Ellery Page,” Ellery introduced himself. “Thank you for inviting me, Mrs. Bloodworth-Ainsley.”
Marguerite regarded him with an odd intensity and then offered a dazzling smile. “Julian’s friend. Of course. We’re so happy you could join us, Ellery.” She glanced at her companion, who was joking with someone. She didn’t speak, but he reacted as if she’d nudged him in the ribs.
He blinked from Marguerite to Ellery. “Yes, my angel? What’s that?”
“Brett, this is Julian’s friend, Ellery.” Marguerite’s voice was a smooth contralto.
“Nice to meet you, Ellery,” Brett said automatically, shaking hands. His blue eyes had a slightly glassy look. That could have been too many drinks or too many introductions. He added vaguely, “Oh, right. Julian’s friend.”
Who the heck was Julian? And where did they get the notion Ellery and Julian were friends?
Was there a polite way to ask? Ellery had no idea and, in any case, there was no time. He had to admire the smooth way he was moved down the receiving line and handed off to a heavyset iron-haired man who introduced himself as Locke Lombard.