Page 14 of Beneath the Devil's Mask
“I would have planted only primroses or marigolds. So unimaginative.” Anne plucked at the blossom he had given her, sending a shower of petals cascading to her feet. “Do you have a garden, my lord?”
“Oh, yes. Just what you would expect. Weeds, thorns, briars, some deadly nightshade.”
“Perhaps you should engage a new gardener,” Anne began seriously, then caught the twitch of his lips and realized he was teasing her. She almost relaxed enough to return his smile.
Moonlight bathed his proud aristocratic features, accenting the planes and hollows beneath his high cheekbones. Anne eyed him with fascination. She felt rather like a moth, risking a flutter near a bright flame, but keeping back far enough so there was no danger of singeing her wings.
She had always sworn to Lily that she did not perceive the attraction of the rakish marquis, but Anne saw it well enough. He was handsome, despite his look of a man who had experienced far too much of the world.
A fallen angel, the romantic Lily would sigh. But the term did not fit. No, Mandell had never been cast out, Anne decided. He had with deliberate arrogance turned his back on heaven.
“If you keep staring at me like that,” Mandell said, “you will put me to the blush, my lady.”
“Oh! I’m sorry.” Anne lowered her eyes, aware that she was the one who was blushing. “It is just that we have never been well acquainted before. I never had the opportunity to?—”
“To study wickedness up so close?”
“No. You are not the only wicked man I have ever known. There is also my brother-in-law, Lucien,” she added dully.
“Lucien? You wound me by the comparison, Sorrow. Your esteemed brother-in-law, and you will forgive my saying so, is an underbred boor. He is taking himself to the brink of ruin and doing it with no originality. Whereas I flatter myself that at least I am going to the devil with a little style.”
“Are you?” Anne regarded him with grave curiosity. She had spent so many of her days striving always to do what was right, what was proper. She could not help but be intrigued by someone who lived as he pleased, not giving a damn for the consequences or the world’s opinion.
“Surely you cannot be satisfied with your life,” she said. “Pursuing such a reckless course. Has it made you happy?”
“Ah, now I have the feeling you are trying to learn my secrets, my lady. You would not like them.” He was still smiling but his voice held an edge of warning.
“I did not mean to pry. It is only that I have noticed you before at other gatherings. You seem solitary, alone even amid a crowd.”
“You have noticed me before? I am flattered. I wish I could return the compliment, but I feel as though tonight I am seeing you for the first time.”
“You are not. I was always there.” Anne was surprised by the trace of bitterness in her voice. Yes, she had always been there, fading into the woodwork. “I daresay you just don’t remember me very well. I have not been to London for the past two years.”
“Two years? Has it been as long as that? I never really knew you before. But you have changed. You are not nearly as mild as I recalled.”
“I suppose I am different. It is owing in some part to being widowed.”
“You miss your husband a great deal?”
“Naturally.” Anne moved automatically into the expected response. She had had enough times to perform it since Gerald’s funeral. “Of course, one would. Miss one’s husband or any close acquaintance. Any death diminishes one. ‘Never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.’”
“Then you were not in love with him?”
Anne started to protest, but he silenced her, saying, “My dear Lady Fairhaven. A grieving widow usually does not wax so cheerfully philosophical, nor does she quote Donne.”
He did not sound shocked, merely amused. All the same, Anne hung her head. She had the feeling the moonlight revealed her face too cruelly, those less than perfect feelings she sought to keep tucked away.
She was startled to feel his fingers beneath her chin. Slowly, he tipped up her head, forcing her to look at him. His expression astonished her. She would never have thought Mandell’s smile could ever be quite that gentle.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “I would have thought worse of you if you had esteemed Sir Gerald.He was a pompous, narrow-minded prig, full of his own self consequence.”
As a dutiful wife, Anne knew she ought to defend her husband’s memory, but that shocking voice that piped up inside of her from time to time affirmed that Mandell was right.
It didn’t matter for she could not speak anyway, not with Mandell standing so close, holding her prisoner with his eyes. They were as dark and relentless as a night with no stars.
He continued, “And I no more approve your choice in poets than I do husbands. I have never been that fond of Donne. My tastes run to something more like ‘Say what strange motive, Goddess, could compel a well-bred lord to assault a gentle belle? O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored, could make a gentle belle reject a lord?”
He caressed a tendril that had strayed loose from her braids. The back of his hand grazed against her cheek.
