Come Near Me (32 page)

“That might not be impossible, if you keep
telling me things like this. Adam, I—”

He cupped her chin in his hand, kissed her.
Kissed her long, and deep, and with all the love in his heart.
Kissed away her questions, hopefully some of her fears.

Slowly, he pushed her back onto the carpet,
divested her of the dressing gown, began to worship her body.

He kissed her breasts, her belly, thrilling
to the thought that their child was even now growing inside
her.

Her hands soothed him, her love words
inflamed him, and soon they were lost in passion, a passion born of
love and, quite possibly, of the realization that they were still
in danger.

For all they now knew, there was still so
much they didn’t know. They clung to their love for each other, for
it was the only true thing in the world.

~ ~ ~

Whether it was the lack of other pursuits in
this, the Small Season, or whether Lady Winslow was simply an
exceptional hostess, the masquerade ball seemed to be proving a
marvelous success.

The Winslow ballroom in Portman Square was
littered wall to wall with eye-patched Lord Nelsons. It had been
gifted with at least a dozen Cleopatras—one of them had brought her
own small barge that a servant toted along behind her everywhere
she went. There were a sprinkling of Romeos and their giggling
Juliets—actresses from Covent Garden, most probably, sneaked into
the ball by daring young peers, all well hidden behind their
masks.

And, as had been predicted, a person couldn’t
go more than a few feet without bumping into a portly Henry Tudor
carrying a greasy chicken leg along with him.

There was also one lady who had chosen to
attend dressed as the widow of Sir Walter Raleigh, which role, to
make the thing more authentic, she embellished by also carrying
with her a wicker basket that supposedly held her dearly departed’s
cutoff head. The fact that the real widow had actually done that,
for a space of almost fourteen years, did nothing to endear the
unknown woman to Sherry once Adam had explained the reason behind
the basket.

But, in Adam’s opinion, Sherry stood out
among all the feathers and jewels and various ridiculous folderols
with the historical purity of her costume. In fact, she looked as
if she had just stepped out of one of the ancient tapestries kept
at Daventry Court.

She was clad in the simplest of fine,
long-sleeved woolen gowns, colored a soft green. A jeweled girdle
was slung low around her waist, a similarly jeweled dagger tucked
into the girdle. Her feet were covered by deerskin sandals that
allowed her to float across the floor rather than walk, or so it
seemed, and a simple gold circlet denoting her rank as queen shone
dully amid her long, loose, dark red curls.

As Arthur, Adam was dressed a little more
formally, but Edmund Burnell had provided him with a quite
comfortable long, straight tunic and heavy leather girdle encrusted
with faux jewels. He wore soft, deerskin boots and had a dark
purple woolen, ermine-tipped mantle draped about his shoulders,
clasped at the front by a pin whose center jewel was as large as a
finch’s egg. His crown, although higher in the points than
Sherry’s, was also a dull gold, without ornamentation.

And he was, of course, carrying his sword in
a sheath hanging from a second leather girdle around his belly.

He was rather surprised that Edmund had
allowed him the sword, but it only convinced him that Burnell and
Brimley had no idea their plan had been for the most part exposed.
They felt no danger from Adam. They were too busy arrogantly
continuing their game.

And, to Adam’s mind, growing increasingly
reckless.

He took another sip of wine. He’d had a glass
in his hand from the moment he’d bowed over Lady Winston’s hand in
the receiving line and then left Sherry where she stood so that he
could make a great business out of calling out for a drink.

Servants had been more than happy to keep him
generously supplied from that moment on, especially as he gifted
each man with a coin for every new drink—drinks he sipped from a
bit, then managed to pour away into potted plants Lady Winston had
so conveniently littered throughout the rooms.

He glowered behind his mask, standing on the
edge of the floor as Sherry danced each dance, then sat out the
first intermission with Julius Caesar—if that wilted green thing
around the man’s bald head could be considered a Roman crown of
laurel.

Chollie joined him just as he’d poured yet
another drink into a pot of hothouse orchids. Adam watched as his
friend hitched up his own bright green girdle, which showed every
sign of slipping off the Irishman’s nonexistent hips.

“He’s late,” Chollie said unnecessarily. “And
this beard itches like a sack filled with fleas,” he continued,
reaching up to scratch under the long, white beard that matched the
shoulder-length white wig he also wore. “Wish Geoff had come along.
I could have used the seat, and no mistake.”

Adam smiled at Chollie’s nonsense, then
remembered his role. As he’d been more than drunk more than a few
times since his return to London, it had seemed the most convincing
role to play. He slapped his friend most heartily on the back,
nearly staggering him, then laughed loud and long, attracting more
than a little attention to himself. As long as he had that
attention, he staggered a step or two himself before manfully,
drunkenly, pulling himself upright once more.

“Do that again, boyo,” Chollie warned,
adjusting his wig, “and I’ll forget you’re supposed to be bosky and
wipe your nose for you. All—here we go, boyo. I doth think Sir
Lancelot doth approach, forsooth, and all of that nonsense. At
least we all can recognize each other this way, being knights of
the Round Table and all of that rot. I’ve got your back, all
right?”

“I’ll mind my own back, Chollie,” Adam said,
lifting his empty wineglass to his lips. “You watch Sherry, you
understand. If Brimley’s here, he’ll go to her sooner or later. God
damn, Chollie, I wish I could think of another way. I also hope,
frankly, that he does show up. Then we’ll know if there really are
two of them.”

“We have to know, boyo,” Chollie agreed with
a shiver. “One way or the other, we have to know. And I pray God
there are two of them, and that they’re both human enough to bleed
when I mill them down. Here, stick these beads in your pocket, if
you’ve got one. Ma had them blessed in Dublin.” Then he walked away
before Edmund, dressed quite handsomely in white and blue and odd
pieces of chain mail, called out a greeting.

“Good evening to you, Sire,” Edmund said,
bowing from the waist, then grinning at Adam from beneath a simple
eye mask. “I’m dreadfully late, I know, but dearest Lady J’s
costume proved somewhat of a bother. That’s her, over there, with
the bent halo tipping over her eyes. But it was the wings, you
know. Had the very devil of a time getting them to stay on.”

Adam looked across the room and saw Lady
Jasper battling her way through a crowd of other costumed guests,
slapping at Henry Tudors and belled fools as her large, white wings
got tangled up with chicken legs and ribboned canes. “You picked
that for her, I suppose, Edmund,” he drawled, then manfully
suppressed a hiccup. “Considering that you picked everyone else’s
costumes?”

Edmund’s white teeth flashed again. “Guilty,
Daventry. I always like to give everyone just what they think they
want. One way or the other.” He turned his gaze to the dance floor.
“Now, where is our dearest Sherry? Ah, there she is. I’ve said it
before, and I’ll say it again tonight. She’s glorious, Daventry.
What a lucky dog you are.”

Adam tossed his empty wineglass into a potted
palm. “Lucky, Burnell? Is that what you call it? Do you see anyone
carrying a tray of drinks?”

“Better than that, Sire,” Burnell said,
taking Adam’s unresisting arm. “I’ve gone so far as to find us a
round table, and then supplied it with two full decanters of
brandy. Interested? Or do you want to spend the night standing
here, watching our fellow creatures make bloody fools of
themselves?”

“More than interested, Edmund,” Adam said,
willingly going along with Burnell. “I’m not much in the mood for
frolic tonight, I suppose you could say.”

“It’s Sherry, isn’t it?” Burnell asked as he
closed the door behind Adam, sealing the two of them in one of the
small antechambers lining the ballroom. “I spoke with her earlier
today, and I couldn’t help noticing—as I have before—that she’s not
quite happy. The two of you are at odds somehow, aren’t you, for
all your show of being the contented couple?”

“That’s none of your concern, Burnell,” Adam
gritted out as he splashed a quantity of brandy into one of the two
snifters, then collapsed into a chair. “I won’t discuss my wife
with you.”

“No. No, of course not, dear friend,” Burnell
agreed quickly, pouring brandy into the second snifter, then
sitting down across the table from Adam. “I’ve overstepped, and I’m
sorry. Please, forgive me.”

Adam gave a dismissive wave of his hand,
dropped his chin onto his chest. “Everything’s so much easier at
the beginning of the thing, isn’t it, Edmund? We see so clearly, or
so we think. We know what we want.” He gave a short, derisive
laugh. “We
think
we know what we want...” He allowed his
voice to trail off as he lifted the snifter to his mouth. He drank
deep, sending up a silent prayer that he’d be able to hold on to
his mind as he downed enough brandy to be convincing.

“Oh, dear,” Burnell said, pouring more brandy
into Adam’s snifter. “It’s like that, is it? If I remember the
words correctly, I believe it was Joseph Addison who said, ‘there
is nothing we receive with so much reluctance as advice.’ He was
most probably right, hmmm?” He smiled. “In which case, dear
friend—and this is only a suggestion, and not an offer of advice—I
propose the two of us sit here quietly, and long enough to get
very, very drunk. It’s either that or I have to trip back into the
ballroom in this ridiculous costume. I have no idea what ever made
me think a costume ball would be enjoyable, do you? But first, if
you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I believe I’d better check on
my aunt’s whereabouts. She may look angelic enough tonight, but I
assure you, looks are more often than not quite deceiving.”

“That’s the truth, all right, Burnell.
Deceiving.” Adam lifted his snifter in salute, silently agreeing to
the plan, then watched as Edmund walked out of the room.

“Your turn, Sherry, I suppose,” he whispered
as his gut clenched. “Chollie, don’t take your eyes off her for a
moment.”

~ ~ ~

Sherry moved along the dance floor, touching
hands with gentleman after gentleman in the line, smiling and
dipping and doing her best to pretend to enjoy herself even as she
was inspecting each masked face. Was this one Dickie? This one?
This one?

Lady Winslow had to be either delighted or
appalled by the success of her masquerade ball, which was quite a
bit more
lively
than any social engagement Sherry had
attended during the Spring Season. Even young Baron Gilesen, with
his arm in a sling after a fall from his curricle, seemed to be
enjoying himself.

There was more laughter, for one thing.
Definitely the wine was flowing more freely than usual. And, safe
behind their masks, the gentlemen were being freer with their
speech—and their hands—than most of them would have dared if the
ladies could see their faces.

Not that every woman in attendance could be
called a lady. Adam had warned Sherry that masquerades were a
perfect excuse for men to foist ballet dancers and mistresses on an
unsuspecting society, and he hadn’t been wrong. She’d laughed out
loud as she’d passed by one young, masked lady dressed quite
elegantly as Marie Antoinette as she leaned over an eye-patched
Nelson and trilled, “Cor, ducks, but this is the life, ain’t
it?”

Yes, this was the perfect place for Dickie to
show himself—without showing himself. And once he had, and once
he’d been goaded into telling her why he was here and just what he
planned to do, well, then they’d have him. All she had to do was to
ask a few questions, listen to the answers, then beg to meet with
him tomorrow. After that, Sherry really didn’t much care
what
Adam had planned for the man.

Just so it would be over. Finally, finally
over.

She’d come to the end of the line of dancers,
to very nearly the end of the dance floor itself, when a tall, slim
man dressed very much like Adam, but all in black, took her offered
hand and then quickly escorted her off the floor and through the
doors leading to a slice of balcony.

She had disappeared so quickly, so silently,
that she was nearly numb with the shock of it, sure that Chollie
hadn’t seen her go.

“Guinevere, it is I, Mordred. You know the
legend, my dear? He, rather more than Lancelot, was the death of
Arthur,” her companion drawled from behind his eye mask, to which a
length of black silk was fastened, so that it hung down over his
nose and mouth. But she could see his eyes in the light of the full
moon that hung over London on this strangely clear night.

Oh, yes. She could see his eyes. She knew his
eyes.

She’d never forget them.

“Dickie,” she breathed quietly, swallowing
down her sudden panic now that the expected had so unexpectedly
happened. She tried to tug her hand free of his, but it was useless
to fight his greater strength, so she gave up. She didn’t want to
do anything that might make him happy, make him feel that he held
more power over her than he already did. “And here I thought—” she
said, rallying, “I thought you’d still be hiding beneath whatever
rock you slunk away to after leaving Frame Cottage.”

“Now, Sherry, don’t try to be arch. It
doesn’t suit you. It does, however, suit me. Straight down to the
ground. That said—have you missed me?”