Page 4 of Beneath the Devil's Mask
Sara was one of the few women he had ever known who did not load her dressing table down with bottles, jars of scent, and other useless paraphernalia. The cherrywood surface was bare except for a silver-handled brush and the vial of laudanum Sara took for her headaches.
As he leaned closer to the mirror, folding the cravat, he attempted to mollify his refusal to take her to the ball. “I onlymean to stay at Lily’s an hour or more. I could return then if you like.”
“I fear I won’t be here. Not tonight. Nor tomorrow. Nor any other night.”
The words were pronounced without rancor, in a tone that was merely matter-of-fact Mandell glanced up to see her arms folded across her breasts, her face steeled with determination.
Her announcement was not entirely unexpected to Mandell. After the briefest pause, he went on tying his cravat.
“Am I to understand the arrangements I have made for you are no longer satisfactory?”
“Oh, as to that, Mandell, you have been generous with your money. And with other things.” She touched him, her fingertips running up his arm, the caress light, suggestive.
Then she sighed, dropping her hand back to her side. “But I have realized for some time now that the thing I want most you are never going to give me.”
“And that is?”
“Your name.”
“I believe I made that clear from the outset?—”
“You did,” she interrupted. “Abundantly clear. You could never marry a woman of such dubious social background. Although my father was a gentleman, a sea captain, and my late husband a man of good family and property in Yorkshire.”
Mandell said nothing. He had never believed in the existence of the sea captain or the dead husband. He had no idea where Sara had really come from and he had never cared. She was entitled to her secrets. The devil knew, he had plenty of his own.
“There is no way of making you understand, Sara,” he said “I possess few scruples, but I do have some sense of what I owe to my grandfather, the honor of his house. I would have to be madly in love with you to forget all that.”
“Which you never will be. You and I, my dear Mandell, are practical people. We are not the kind to fall madly in love with anyone.”
“That is precisely why we are so well suited to one another.”
“We would be, were I not so ambitious. I know that there are plenty of other titled fools out there who would not be troubled by your scruples.” A spark lit Sara’s eyes, like the green fire of an emerald. “I want to be ‘my lady somebody.’ I want to take my place in your world, the society you so scorn. I want to attend all those routs and balls, receive vouchers to Almack’s, perhaps even make my curtsy to the king.”
“The king is as mad as you are.”
“Well, the Prince Regent then! Go ahead and sneer if you like, Mandell. But this is what I want.”
“I was not sneering at you, my dear. You may well achieve your ambition. I don’t doubt but what you are clever enough to do so. But after you have it all, the title, Almack’s, a place in society, I wonder if you are going to want it. You have a certain freedom now that you don’t quite appreciate, unlike me, a prisoner to all the trappings of an ancient family name.”
“From where I stand, the gilt bars of your prison look mighty good.”
He smiled and shook his head, but he made no effort to sway her decision. In truth, when he had begun the liaison with Sara, he had known it would end this way. No recriminations, no repining, a blazing affair that had burnt itself out like so many others. To give Sara her due, she was a little better than the rest, not quite in the common way.
He finished knotting his cravat. It was a shambles but it would do to see him home. Searching for his boots, he completed his dressing in silence.
Rubbing her arms and shivering, Sara rustled over to the hearth. She put another log on the fire, then poked at the embers to stir up the flames.
When he had eased himself into his frock coat, Mandell turned to her. He held out his arms and quoted, “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.”
She might have been justified in flinging the next line of Drayton’s sonnet at him, “Nay, I have done, you get no more of me.”
But Sara never read poetry. Dusting off her hands, she moved into his embrace, raising her mouth to his. Even now her lips were generous, her tongue fiery hot against his. Drawing back, she gazed up at him, her eyes soft.
“You have been my lover all these weeks, and I suddenly realize I don’t even know your Christian name.”
“I don’t have one,” Mandell said. A memory intruded upon him—the lordly figure of his grandfather looming over him, a shivering child of ten, the old duke of Windermere flinging the certificate of Mandell’s baptism and his French passport into the fire.
“Thus dies the past, boy. You have but one thing to remember now and that is that you are the marquis of Mandell, my heir.”
