Page 87 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

“Politeness is easy.” He said it flatly, without looking at her. “Character is another matter.”

“And why,” Anna said, very carefully, feeling the ground beneath her all but quake, “do you suddenly care so much about the character of men who speak to me?”

Frederick went very still. Not the controlled stillness she knew, but something she hadn’t seen before. She took a sharp inhale and held her breath. He turned to look at her, and there was something working in his face that he could not quite figure out. She held his gaze and waited.

“Anna—”

“Your Grace,” Lady Oldbarrow’s voice carried from ahead, and his gaze followed.

“Coming,” Frederick straightened and walked off ahead of Anna.

She followed, and they all began to walk once more. They soon arrived at Lord Wexford’s carriage. Lady Oldbarrow, Anna, and Lord Wexford climbed in. Frederick bowed to the assembled company.

“Good day,” he said to the group.

The carriage pulled away. Anna watched from the window, Frederick still standing on the pavement. He was not watching her go, or at least appearing not to. She pressed her lips together and looked at her hands. In the seat beside her, Lady Oldbarrow looked out the opposite window and said nothing at all. Across from them, Lord Wexford began speaking of drainage systems, but Anna heard none of it.

CHAPTER 32

Anna had stood in the modiste’s workroom three weeks ago and looked at the draping ivory silk and the gilded laurel wreath.

Venus, the goddess of love. It is perhaps too pointed, but if I am going to do this properly, I had better mean it.

She was there to find a husband. She was there to find love, or the nearest approximation. She needed to be stirred, to be challenged. She had enough pleasant exchanges to last a lifetime, she decided after her chance encounter with Frederick at the park.

There is nothing to be gained from half-measures.

She had paid for the ivory silk and the wreath in full, and she wore them now with her hair loose down her back in the classical Greek fashion. She set her shoulders back and walked in through the glittering front entrance.

Here goes nothing.

The Fairfax masquerade took her breath away. Candlelight pooled gold over silk and secrets. She inhaled the particular drunkenness of a room where no one was who they claimed to be. Anna held her mask an inch from her face and let the current of the crowd carry her past a svelte fox in a burgundy velvet gown, a buxom, and a devil who bowed too low to be polite. It was a bacchanalia.

She counted feathers and painted eyes instead of counting the minutes. It was all so extravagant and otherworldly. She told herself the tightness under her ribs was only the stays, laced too well for a woman who meant to be forgotten tonight. She found Thomas and Rachel almost immediately, which required no effort at all. Rachel, as Cleopatra, was the most immediately identifiable woman in the room. She had kohl lining her bright amber eyes, her hair straight and back. Thomas had naturally gone as Antony, not Caesar.

“Venus,” Rachel said, delighted, holding Anna at arm’s length. “Of course.”

“You are magnificent,” Anna told her, meaning it entirely.

Thomas bowed. “Antony, at the goddess’s service.” He glanced past her into the crowd with the expression of a man scanning for something specific. “And who has come as Mars, I wonder?”

“I have no idea,” Anna said, pleasantly, and moved on before Rachel’s face could ask the question her mouth was politely restraining.

She found Lord Wexford near the refreshment tables. He had come as Henry the Eighth, broad and elaborately costumed, jewels sewn into the. He bowed deeply when he saw her.

“Lady Birchall.” He seemed pleased with himself, and with her. “How appropriate a costume.”

“And yours,” she said, because she had to say something as she took in his costume.

Two executed wives, a poor omen for an evening on which a man was likely thinking of matrimony. Surely it was only a costume to him. It means nothing.

The music swelled, and so they danced. He was a competent dancer, which she had established several weeks ago. He steered them through the other couples. She had gotten lost in the steps when she became aware of a figure in dark red on the far side of the room.

Mars.

He was clad in red and dark leather that made him seem even taller than usual. He stood over the crowd, dominating it as only Mars can. He wore a mask that covered his face, but did nothingwhatsoever to disguise the particular set of those shoulders, the controlled way that man moved through any room he occupied.

She looked back at Lord Wexford.