Page 59 of Beneath the Devil's Mask
“Your lady has a passing sweet smile, my lord,” Hastings ventured.
“The fire waxes hot enough. Have done and get out.”
Hastings rose to his feet, dusting off his hands on his breeches and started to leave the room. When he had reachedthe threshold, Mandell brought him up short by adding tersely, “And Hastings.”
“Yes milord?”
“She is not my lady.”
“No, milord,” the footman said quietly, easing the door shut behind him.
When Hastings had left, Mandell let fly an oath. When had he become reduced to holding conversations with his footman, especially about a woman? Irritated beyond measure, Mandell poured himself another brandy. He did not know what the devil had come over him of late, but he knew the cure for it.
Diversion. Fortunately, he was in a city that could provide amusement in abundance for a gentleman of his wealth and tastes. Anything from an evening at the opera to a night at a most discreet and exclusive bordello.
He was in no mood for Mozart. What he needed was a woman, and not one with soft trembling lips and vulnerable blue eyes, but a practical woman skilled in the arts of pleasing a man and grateful for nothing more than the size of his purse. Yet the thought left him strangely cold.
Perhaps what he really required was supper and cards at White’s, that all-male bastion that had the good sense to ban any woman from so much as peering across the threshold. He might bid Drummond to come and dine with him. It could be entertaining to discover what Nick had been up to this past week, to torment him over the doings in Parliament. But Nick might be inclined to ask some awkward questions about the lady Anne, questions Mandell felt unequal to parrying.
Frowning into his glass, Mandell drained it. He had fallen into one of those damnable moods when every distraction he could think of seemed stale and meaningless. He would end by spending the evening at his own fireside.
But to do what? To discard books the first page barely read, to rise from the pianoforte, the melody half finished, to begin a letter only to leave the sheet blank? To pace this great empty house like a caged beast, tormented by his dark memories, questioning everything from the folly of the world to the meaning of his own existence?
Anne was right to have been relieved to have escaped him. He frequently found his own society quite intolerable. Mandell started to reach for the brandy again only to check the movement. He was already entertaining enough morbid notions and he wasn’t even drunk yet. Instead, he forced himself to settle behind his desk, attempting to concentrate on the letters he had received.
The cards of invitation he thrust aside without hesitation to be examined later. The rest were bills, many of them still from when he had had Sara Palmer in his keeping. One from a dressmaker looked surprisingly recent. He wondered if Sara had been desperate enough to attempt to foist one final purchase off on him. Mandell would not have put it past her.
He had never known any female to be bolder or more shrewdly calculating. She would likely one day get her hooks into some noble fool and trick him into wedding her.
Mandell could imagine himself being introduced to her in a crowded ballroom, hearing her styled as my lady something or other, Sara looking as haughty as a grand duchess. That at least was one thing to look forward to, Mandell thought cynically. It would be amusing to utter some wicked greeting only Sara would understand, to flirt with his former mistress under the nose of her unsuspecting and no doubt oaf of a husband, more amusing still if she were wearing a gown Mandell had purchased.
Smiling a little at the thought, Mandell dipped his quill into the ink, preparing to write out a draft to settle the account. He was interrupted by another knock at the door. Hastings again.
This time Mandell did not even trouble himself to look up.
“Yes? What is it now? More mail that has been left lying about for the past few days?”
“No, my lord. You have a caller.”
“Tell whoever it is to go to the devil. I am not receiving.”
When Hastings made no move to comply, Mandell glanced up impatiently. “Are you hard of hearing, man? I said I am not at home to any visitors.”
“Yes, my lord. But it is your grandfather, the Duke of Windermere.”
Mandell’s brows arched in mild surprise. His grandfather calling upon him and at such an hour?
Hastings gave a delicate cough. “I am not sure you would really wish me to deliver His Grace such a message.”
Mandell flung down his quill with an expressive grimace. “You are quite right, Hastings. One is always at home to His Grace of Windermere. Show him in?—”
Mandell broke off, glancing down at his attire. It would hardly do to receive the old gentleman in his shirtsleeves and breeches.
“Place him in the drawing room,” Mandell finished. “And express my regrets for the delay, I shall be there directly.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Hastings rushed off to obey his command while Mandell retired to his bedchamber to make himself more presentable. Some fifteen minutes later he descended the stairs, smoothing out the sleeve of a dark navy frock coat, his cravat arranged to a modest perfection.
