Lord of the Masquerade by Erica Ridley

Chapter 5

Julian had been about to bite into his second tea cake when Barnaby entered the parlor in a flush.

“You have a visitor,” his butler announced.

Julian arched a brow.

“I know that you’re busy,” Barnaby said quickly. “But I did not want to send the young... er... person... away without consulting you. She... she…” The butler flushed and placed a calling card on the dining table next to Julian’s tea cup.

She, indeed.

Julian hadn’t thought it possible for his already raised brows to climb even higher, but here he was, staring at an extremely unlikely calling card.

“What does she want?”

“A meeting with you.”

“Obviously. But what does she want?”

“Er...” The butler coughed into his gloved hand. “She implied the answer to that question is whatever you want, Your Grace.”

An intriguingly indecent offer that Barnaby apparently believed the duke ought to consider taking.

Julian had never and would never employ a mistress, a stance which some courtesans seemed to take as a personal challenge. However, those women tended to already know him and his proclivities. He had never heard of a Unity Thorne.

Something else had brought her here. Money, most likely.

The promise of luxury was what brought everyone to his door. He could listen to her entreaty, and perhaps give her a banknote or two before sending her on her way.

Or, if she struck him as the right sort, perhaps he’d invite her to tomorrow’s masquerade instead and allow her to fish in an even deeper pond.

“Show her into the green salon.” Julian glanced at the tall-case clock. “I will be there in seven and a half minutes.”

Despite his unquenched curiosity, no one controlled the duke’s time but the duke. Tea ended precisely at four o’clock. Miss Thorne had already disrupted Julian’s repast enough.

“I shall see to it, Your Grace.” Barnaby bowed and closed the door behind him as he left.

Julian returned his attention to his cakes and his newspaper, putting the unusual interruption from his mind. The dining room was perfectly silent. The footmen in the shadows did not speak. His servants were paid to attend their posts, a task they did very well, and for which labor they were rewarded handsomely.

All non-masquerade days were exactly the same. He awoke at a precise hour, bathed and dressed at a precise hour, broke his fast at a precise hour, attended to his correspondence at a precise hour, took his tea at a precise hour, met with his man of business at a precise hour, and so on.

Everything in Julian’s life unfolded just as he planned it. Even the gossip about him was divine. Last week’s masquerade had been phenomenal. People were still whispering allusions to entertainments that could not be spoken aloud.

The notoriety greatly reduced the amount of correspondence the duke must deal with. He received plenty of invitations, although not to any of the truly proper things. Which was too bad, he supposed. He might have liked Almack’s. There were rules there.

The invitations Julian received were to the sorts of unorthodox affairs where anything might happen. He tossed them all into a large basin for his man of business to politely decline, as he had for years.

Julian didn’t want “anything” to happen. He wanted the things he carefully orchestrated and only the things he carefully orchestrated to occur.

Such as the business of finding a wife.

This was the last year for masquerades. Julian turned thirty-five next year, and he had long planned to have a wife by that age, and beget his heir by the following spring. It was all there in his journal.

He took his position in the House of Lords seriously and expected his son to do the same. This meant raising his children as part of society, which meant Julian had a reputation to mend... right after this season. He would make these last masquerades the most memorable of all, and then settle down to the business of selecting a proper, impeccable, predictable wife.

All he had to do was orchestrate the perfect marriage and the perfect heirs and the perfect family just like he structured every other aspect of his life. He could do it.

Not every lady wished for a husband whose name graced the scandal columns as often as Julian’s, but the vast majority of young ladies would overlook quite a bit if it meant nabbing a wealthy duke. All that nonsense about reformed rakes making the best husbands.

Julian had no intention of being a romantic husband. Romance was unpredictable, and he had neither the time nor the patience for such folderol. All he required was a union of convenience.

What was marriage if not a masquerade? He could design and manage it as well as any other. He’d select a biddable wife, who would bear well-behaved sons, who would take their rightful place in society without disrupting the duke’s life one whit.

This unexciting future was what he would have, because it was all he could have. He was not capable of love, so there was no sense pretending to seek it.

Julian set down his napkin and rose to his feet. It was time to make sense of the courtesan in his sedate green parlor.

He left the calling card on the table and strode down the corridor and into the drawing room, intending to inform Miss Thorne that—

Well, he wasn’t certain what he might have informed her. He had planned a stern speech. He planned everything. But when he saw her, all of the carefully chosen words evaporated from his head.

She was tall for a woman. Voluptuous. The scarlet opera gown she wore at four o’clock in the afternoon simultaneously hugged every curve whilst also managing to swirl lushly over his understated Axminster carpet.

Her skin was a light golden brown, darker than tea with milk but not quite dark enough as to be chestnut. A great deal of soft skin was on display. Her neck was bare, her arms were bare, and her bodice—well. He could certainly see what had scrambled Barnaby’s brain. Julian’s throat had also gone uncomfortably dry.

Miss Thorne’s full lips were painted as red as her gown, an affectation that was not remotely fashionable, and yet constricted his tight chest further. A beauty spot beckoned just to the left of her mouth. Her nose was wide and pert, her cheekbones high and flushed, and her eyes... were drinking him in with much the same expression he imagined displayed on his own face.

Her black lashes were long, her eyelids sleepy, but her clear brown eyes were quick and alert. A profusion of black ringlets spilled over her forehead and down her neck from an upswept coiffure dripping with pearls.

No—not real pearls. Julian could tell the difference from here. Perhaps in the dim light of evening, one would be fooled, but here in his parlor, beneath three enormous windows brimming with bright sunshine, Miss Thorne looked...

Disreputable and utterly ravishing.

“Miss Thorne,” he said.

He expected her to curtsey. Perhaps to coo or to flutter or whatever she thought would best sell the wares she had on display.

Instead, she attacked him.

Not physically. She did not move from her position in the center of his parlor. She didn’t have to. She unleashed a whirlwind of words, pelting him at all angles until he squinted against their force like a wanderer lost in a sandstorm.

“Here we are, Your Grace, and I am certain you’re wondering why that would be. Or perhaps you’re not, because you think you know why I’m here, and are eager to get to the business of it, in which case I must swiftly inform you that your access to my body shall be limited to your handsome eyes because I have come for another reason entirely. Your masquerades.”

“My what?” he said, his tone sharp with warning.

She smiled, not cowed by him in the least, which was unprecedented and infuriating. His ability to command a room just by being in it was a trick he had cultivated into a fine art and had never before failed him.

“Your masquerades,” she repeated.

He ignored this. “Back to the subject of business,” he said in his coldest voice, looking down the bridge of his nose at her from his greater height. “I am not in the market for a mistress.”

“And I am not in the market for a master,” she replied in a tone that said, There, now that we’ve had done with your little topic, shall we get on with mine?

He did not like it at all.

“You presume to barge into my home and demand an invitation to the most exclusive ton event from no less than the Duke of Lambley himself?”

“It’s not a ‘ton’ event if the majority of guests could not be greeted without their masks,” she replied, “and I find your unsubtle switch to third person adorably pretentious. I’m quite aware you’re the sixth Duke of Lambley and that you outrank all but royalty and your two dozen fellow dukes. Congratulations. You did nothing to achieve it. You did, however, make this town infinitely more interesting the moment you threw your first masked ball.”

A muscle worked at his temple. He was mortally offended and disproportionately flattered, all at the same time.

“I’m here to help you,” she said.

“Help... me?” he managed.

“Your masquerades are wonderful, I’m told. Although, yes, I’d need an invitation in order to develop my own opinion firsthand. ‘Wonderful’ is… acceptable, perhaps, to some, but you don’t seem the sort of man who prides himself on ‘acceptable’, and I am the sort of woman who can improve anything, if given the chance to try.”

“You want an invitation to one of my parties so that you can... give your unsolicited opinion about them?”

“I am recommending you solicit said opinion posthaste, but more importantly, my opinion is only the beginning. I will find every last imperfection and offer a comprehensive solution to improve it. Much like cleaning a copper pot with lemon and a bit of salt, your masquerades will shine so bright, they’ll hurt the eyes.”

“You want to change them?” he sputtered in disbelief.

This woman didn’t just want to elbow her way in where she wasn’t invited, she planned to inject a measure of unpredictability into a thing he’d fashioned into being exactly what he wanted.

“No,” he said firmly. “Unthinkable. Impossible.”

“There, there,” she said in a tone so patronizing he could practically feel her slender fingers patting the top of his head. “I am certain dukes are never told of their faults, no matter how many there must be, but I am not here to critique you. By all accounts, your masquerades are the best in England, which is not a thing that happens by accident. You want them to be superlative. I want to help you make them even better than that. You don’t seem the sort of man to brook any sort of shortcoming. If I were to discern one... wouldn’t you wish to address it?”

Of course he would.

He glared at her. She was not impressed by his title, but she was impressed by his parties—and thought they could become even more impressive. With her help.

He didn’t want or need her help!

But... he did want this final season of masquerades to be the most memorable he had ever thrown.

Miss Thorne’s expression was earnest. “All you need... is a lady’s touch.”

He snorted. “Are you a lady?”

“A woman’s touch,” she amended, unperturbed by the dig.

It wasn’t a dig, he realized. It was truth. Only someone of his class would be offended at being considered lower than a lord or lady. Miss Thorne was nothing at all like—

Nothing like him.

Intriguing.

He had not sought an outside opinion, but he could not find one further afield from peers and peeresses than the red-lipped woman standing in the middle of his parlor.

“What if I told you this was my last year for masquerades?” he said. “Perhaps I am no longer interested in such indecorous amusements because I am on the hunt for a wife.”

She shrugged. “What if I told you that you might find your future wife under this very roof, smitten thanks to the improvements we’re about to undertake?”

“I would laugh at your naivety,” he said, and did just that. “The kind of lady I’m looking for would never attend such saturnalia.”

“I laugh at your naivety,” she said, and made an equal show of doing so. “I thought you said these were ton parties. Perhaps only a handful of guests have bowed before the Queen, but why would you assume that one’s comportment whilst anonymous is the same as when promenading with your precious peers? Whatever kind of woman you want your wife to be, she can be that and attend a masquerade at the same time.”

No. She would not be innocent and pure after attending one of Julian’s masquerades. But did he want innocent and pure? Or did he want a wife he might have something in common with? A marriage in which both parties could tolerate each other’s company?

The option had not occurred to him.

He’d had an intended once. Long ago. He hadn’t picked her. Their fathers had declared the match. Julian had been eight years old. Too young to understand about marriage, but old enough to know he didn’t want that girl with the runny nose and the tendency to knock over all of his belongings.

One day, instead of going on a picnic with the two families, Julian had thrown an unholy fit instead. Father had locked him in his bedchamber and told Julian he was to be deprived of all future entertainments until he got control of himself.

Sudden rainfall and the unexpected collapse of an old bridge prevented the others from ever coming home. Eight-year-old Julian’s wish to make his own decisions was granted at the cost of his family.

He got control of himself.

Eventually.

And then never, ever relinquished that control again.

He would wrest control of this situation, too. He could grant Miss Thorne an invitation. What harm would it do? He could rescind her welcome at any time. If he did not like what she had to say, he did not have to listen. He was the one with the power. Just as he liked it.

“Tomorrow night,” he said. “Ten o’clock. My night butler will be expecting you.”

“Tomorrow and every Saturday,” she countered. “I am talented, but not a miracle worker. I will need time to familiarize myself with every detail before I can be expected to—”

“Tomorrow night. Ten o’clock,” he enunciated. “Your continued presence will be determined on a minute-by-minute basis. Our agreement ends the day I’m betrothed or the moment you disappoint me, whichever comes first.”

She stared at him.

Speechless? Miss Thorne? He was glad to see something could achieve it. “I suppose you expect to be paid for your so-called ‘expertise’ overseeing a party you’ve never attended?”

“First night free,” she said quickly, having found her voice again. “To prove to you I possess the skills I claim to have. After that, I think a weekly rate of...”

She named a number that was laughably small for him, but he supposed comparable to what an accomplished courtesan might gather in monthly presents from her patrons. Miss Thorne intended to take advantage of his wealth, but not extort it. Asking just enough for it to be a windfall for her, whilst being negligible to him.

She was clever. He would give her that. And presumptuous, which was a less positive trait. Whether she would prove herself any good to him remained to be seen.

“Not a minute past ten o’clock or your name will be crossed from the list.” He turned on his heel. “Barnaby will show you out.”

“Barna—who?”

The pink-cheeked butler swept into the room from his position just outside the open doorway. “If you’ll come with me, madam?”

“But I still—”

Julian could barely hear them. He was striding too quickly to the room adjacent to his study, where his man of business sat at a large desk.

“Mr. Voss,” the duke said briskly. “There’s been a change in plans.”

“Change?” Voss stared at him. “You?”

“It’s the same plan,” Julian admitted. “Marriage by thirty-five. I’ve decided to implement my bride hunt concurrently with the most outrageous masquerades of my tenure.”

“Concurrently, Your Grace?” his man of business stammered.

Julian nodded at the basin of invitations upon Voss’s desk. “As you politely decline, if the recipient is at all connected to the beau monde, feel free to casually divulge that His Grace is finally on the hunt for a bride.”

“If I do that,” Voss said carefully, “they will all descend upon you like locusts.”

“No.” Julian smiled. “Only the ones who don’t mind a little debauchery.”