Lord of the Masquerade by Erica Ridley

Chapter 9

The warm spring sun fell on the back of Unity’s bare neck as she stepped off of the pavement and into a bustling outdoor market. Vendors surrounded her, some shouting in front of fruit or vegetable stands, and others threading through the crowd, hawking posies or oysters from baskets like the one Unity carried.

Hers was empty, just like her larder. Between the long days at the theatre and the long night at the duke’s masquerades, she’d been too busy to think of much else. This morning when she broke her fast with her last egg and the final hunk of stale bread, she knew she could escape the real world no longer.

But, oh, how she yearned to! She wished she were shopping not for her small shelf in her apartment’s shared pantry, but for the future masquerade-themed assembly rooms she would one day open.

She was tired of being frugal and conservative and quiet. Everyone complimented her on being so resourceful, on finding a way when there was none, on turning scraps into something more. But who wanted to live like that?

“Soon,” she murmured as she threaded her way through the crowd.

Was that true? She hoped so. The dream of not just being financially secure, but the owner of a thriving establishment she could be proud of had filled her every thought for so long, and had given her much-needed hope on countless bleak days. It was her favorite fantasy to dream about, the picture she painted in her mind at every opportunity—

Or, at least, it had been.

It still was! It definitely still was. It was just... A certain duke had begun to creep into her thoughts more and more. Pah. He was nothing more than a temporary distraction. A distraction who had kissed her. There could be nothing more distracting than that!

And their embrace was just theatre. He’d walked away from their kiss—walked away from her—like an actor hanging up his wig after a performance.

Unity should know. She’d seen it thousands of times. Ordinary people became Hamlet or Joan of Arc for three hours but returned to their true selves as soon as the curtains closed.

Lambley played two roles: Magnanimous Host and Irresistible Rake. She’d merely been caught at the intersection last night on the stairs. An accident of proximity. The audience demanded a kiss, and so he had kissed her.

No—he had kissed Lady X, not Unity. A nameless, faceless figment of the crowd’s collective imagination. They hadn’t wanted him to kiss her. They didn’t know or care who the person was beneath the mask. They just wanted a show. It wasn’t personal.

And she was a professional, too, was she not?

Unity balanced her basket on her hip in order to dig a small journal out of her reticule. The coins she had earned from her time at the masquerade clinked in the bottom as she turned to a fresh page in her book.

With a nub of pencil, she jotted down, Determine what show my audience wants and give it to them. A valuable lesson. Her crowd would differ significantly from the duke’s, but the general principle remained the same.

Her lips quirked. Oh, how the rigid Duke of Lambley would rankle if he knew Unity thought him a glorified theatre manager!

He plied his trade on Grosvenor Square rather than Drury Lane, but he alone controlled the set, the casting, the script, and the curtain call. A grand performance every Saturday from ten to six, available only to ticket holders. Please wait at the entrance for the usher to admit you...or to show you out.

She snickered to herself as she added rhubarb and elderflower to her basket and paid the vendors. If she were an artist, how might she design a playbill advertising his masquerades? The duke didn’t just manage the production—he was also the star.

Perhaps the illustration should be of his stern countenance in profile. A forbidding silhouette, to show that this was a serious, intellectual drama, the sort people loved to brag about having attended, in order to prove how sophisticated they were. Or perhaps the playbill should depict the duke in footlights upon the stage, showered in a deluge of falling roses, to highlight the themes of romance and desire. That was universal, wasn’t it? Or perhaps a better idea—

She turned from the chicory vendor and twitched to a halt.

He was here. Here.

Not ten feet from her, haggling over spring onions.

No, no, he couldn’t be haggling. Surely, he wasn’t here at all, and last night’s kiss had turned Unity temporarily mad.

He must have an entire army of maids who came to market carrying rulers and scales, ensuring every gooseberry conformed to exacting standards of perfection before it was allowed into a perfectly engineered basket, to be carried into an equally perfect scullery.

She watched as he tossed a silver crown to the vendor. Enough coin to buy an oxcart of onions. He did not wait for his change.

Definitelynot haggling.

And definitely the Duke of Lambley.

He looked handsome and out-of-place in a well-cut dark blue coat with twin columns of gold buttons, a frothy white neckcloth above a black silk waistcoat, spotless tawny buckskins clinging to powerful thighs, and shiny black Hessian boots, complete with a jaunty tassel just below each knee.

The duke turned away from a particularly insistent flower girl, now holding a newly acquired posy, and met Unity’s amused gaze. His hazel eyes widened for only a moment before he quickly schooled his features into their usual impassive mask of arrogance and ennui.

Unity wasn’t fooled for a second.

He was standing in a market. And had just been manipulated by a ten-year-old into buying flowers he didn’t want or need. She sauntered up to him without bothering to school her expression.

“Shopping for your next party?” she asked with faux politeness.

“If you must know,” he answered coldly, “indeed I am.”

She wished she could raise a single eyebrow. “Isn’t that a task usually reserved for underlings and dogsbodies?”

The duke had no problem arching a lonesome brow. “A curious statement, considering you’re here shopping as well.”

“I have no servants,” she pointed out dryly.

She should not have done. A frown of confusion marred his handsome face.

To him, she was not Unity Thorne, costume and cosmetics worker, but rather a fashionable courtesan he had never seen wearing anything but a fancy ball gown.

Until today.

She had carefully constructed the impression that she was a demimondaine of the calibre that certainly would have a respectable quantity of servants to attend her every need, only to pop up in the middle of a market wearing a yellow day dress with the elbows worn thin and a straw bonnet whose edges had begun to fray.

“Are you in disguise?” he said doubtfully.

“Some of us don’t limit our role-playing to one night per week,” she replied. There. That was vague and could be interpreted in many different ways. She attempted to guide the conversation in a different direction. “You seem as surprised to see me as I was to see you.”

“I was just thinking about you and there you were,” he murmured.

She expected him to wince or to color or to otherwise indicate that he regretted speaking without thinking.

Instead, his gaze held hers without flinching.

Of course the Duke of Lambley would not speak without thinking. He had been thinking about her, and now they both knew it. But why had he told her? Because she was “Miss Thorne, Courtesan”?

No, that was not it. Another man might have been interested in procuring a saucy mistress, but Lambley’s attention infamously waned before dawn, and the tryst never repeated.

Nor had he any need to pay for such encounters. His home filled with willing bodies every week. He had only to crook his finger at a woman, and she was his for the taking. Had Unity not proved as much herself, by kissing him with abandon in front of hundreds of watching eyes?

But she would not be intimidated. She was almost his equal in one sense, whether he believed it or not. Soon-to-be proprietress of the newest masquerade establishment on everyone’s lips.

Well, everyone in her circles.

“I was thinking about you, too,” she replied, as though the topic were no more consequential than cabbages and watercress. “And then there you were.”

“Specifically,” he said, “I was thinking about our kiss.”

Well.

“Specifically,” she replied, “I haven’t stopped thinking of it.”

There. She waited for him to say that it was a mistake. Or to proposition her to one night of torrid passion, followed immediately by never seeing each other again.

He said nothing of the sort. Just watched her, with his forbidding, carved-marble countenance. His eyes, however, were not hard at all. They gazed at her with the same hunger she’d glimpsed last night, right before his mouth claimed hers.

“Are you just finishing up?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Just starting.”

“Then I shall accompany you.” He tugged her basket from her suddenly weak fingers and looped the handle over his strong forearm.

“Oh,” she managed weakly. “There’s no need to—”

“Do you want to hold the posy, or shall I place it in the basket?”

“You didn’t buy the flowers for me,” she stammered.

“And yet,” he replied, “I find it is you whom I wish to give them to.”

Heat rushed her cheeks. “B-basket.”

There was no way she could stroll casually about the market with a posy from the duke clutched in her sweaty, trembling fist. She was no one, but he was recognizable from dozens of caricatures. He knew he could be recognized, standing here, sparring with her. And he cared not one whit what the gossips would have to say. The Duke of Lambley did as he wished, and what he wanted in this heady, inexplicable moment, was to give a posy to Unity.

He dropped the flowers inside her basket.

For a brief, mad moment, she imagined he might offer her his free arm.

He did nothing of the sort.

Her cheeks flushed hotter, and she cut her gaze away as she fell into step beside him. Of course he could not offer his arm. Who did she think she was, a princess? She should count herself flattered that he condescended to carry her basket.

She was flattered, damn him. And embarrassed that she’d thought for even a moment that it might mean anything more than a courtly gentleman’s act of kindness. Their worlds did not intersect outside of his anonymous masquerades.

In fact, he wouldn’t dare to stroll next to her if she were one of his upper-class set. Being alone with a debutante was scandalous enough to send him to the altar, whether he liked it or not.

But with her, such proximity did not signify. Unity did not count. It was like being alone with a servant in one’s employ.

She was in his employ, she realized grimly. That was exactly the situation. Working for him was her idea. What was she complaining about? She had got her way. Huzzah.

Besides, they weren’t really alone. The market swarmed with people. And a lord like Lambley probably had a footman or twelve following at a discreet distance at all times.

She should just enjoy this unexpected moment for what it was, and forget about all it was not and could never be.

“I enjoyed your party,” she said casually, as she inspected a box of parsnips. “For a reclusive misanthrope, you certainly surround yourself with a prodigious number of people.”

He slanted her a quelling glare. “I didn’t say I liked them.”

“You didn’t have to.” She dropped her parsnips into the basket. “You wouldn’t care so much about your guests’ enjoyment if you didn’t also care about your guests.”

He looked adorably disgruntled. “Clearly you mistake what it means to be a gentleman, who must do as is right, regardless of his feelings on the matter.”

“Mm-hm.”

Clearly the Duke of Lambley was as soft on the inside as he was hard on the outside. A puff pasty, whose crusty exterior hid nothing more alarming than warm, gooey sweetness. And he didn’t even realize it.

She paused before a stand of carrots.

“Select whatever you like,” commanded the duke. “I’ll have it sent to your home.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort.” She lifted her chin to glare at him. “I don’t want or need your charity.”

The opposite. She wanted to prove herself capable. Prove herself worthy. To him, and to herself, and to the world.

“As the lady wishes,” he said without argument, in a tone that might have been accompanied by a careless shrug if the Perfect Gentleman were not so great a personage as a duke.

She forced her attention to the carrots, lest she stare at him in consternation all day.

The night butler was right. Lambley was wealthy and privileged and thought he knew best, and he tried to use all of that to help others.

He was assertive, but not demanding. He’d informed her of his plan rather than ask her opinion of it, but when she declined his offer, he immediately respected her decision with no further questions or arguments to sway her mind.

His mystified expression indicated he had no idea why she would turn down his money—perhaps no one else ever had—but he made no attempt to encroach upon her autonomy.

That, or he was too consumed trying to control his own life to bother unnecessarily with hers.

“What?” he demanded.

She widened her eyes at him. “I was thinking about your night butler.”

“He’s married,” Lambley said flatly.

She ignored this. “Mr. Fairfax said you gave him that position without him asking for it. That it hadn’t even occurred to him you might be in the market for such a thing.”

“He’s married and he lacks imagination.”

“He says you’re a very good friend.”

Lambley grunted and flicked a hand toward the carrots. “Are you buying any of these or not?”

She tried not to smile. “Are you actively trying to give the impression you do not work well with others?”

He looked aghast. “Why would I want to work with others?”

Her laugh caught in her throat when she realized he wasn’t playing along with her jest, but deadly serious.

“Now I know you’re teasing,” she said uncertainly. One could not rule from on high all of the time, unless one was a king... or perhaps a duke? “Surely there are people not in your employ whom you rely on, someone who would make a good partner, or part of a... team...”

He looked more horrified at each word she spoke.

“I am all the team I need.” His tone brooked no argument.

Unity turned back to the carrots.

She understood wanting to prove oneself. She was in the midst of attempting that very thing. But she didn’t wish to be lonesome forever. She had worked well with Sampson at his gambling den. She was one small part of a large team that put on intricate performances at the theatre. Neither was the future she longed for, but her life would not be richer for locking herself away.

Lambley had said she could be his temporary assistant, but he hadn’t meant it. He intended to let her trail behind him, then toss a pile of sovereigns at her and send her on her way without ever truly considering her opinions or potential value.

He was making a mistake.

She would teach him. Unity was determined not just to prove herself, but to prove him wrong. To contribute, to help. She could be useful... if he allowed her to try.

“What if,” she said slowly, “we changed the menu a tiny bit—”

“No.”

“Just for one night—”

“No.”

“Just one item—”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I’m proposing we change it to,” she burst out.

He raised his brows. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not your party.”

“Give me my basket back,” she muttered.

He smiled. “No.”

She tossed far more carrots than she needed inside just to make the basket heavier. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I will not change something that is good for something that might be less so.”

“‘Might,’” she pounced. “Then you admit it also might be better. Let’s start with something simple. Why are you so committed to maintaining the status quo of your little triangle sandwiches?”

“I have tested the matter extensively. They are of a perfect size to easily consume in three bites. Any larger, and sandwich remnants litter the trays, or one risks the filling sliding out. Any smaller, and guests have to queue more often to refill their plates. What is your vendetta against my perfect sandwiches?”

“It’s not the sandwiches,” she said. “I believe you when you say every item in your home is the best possible version of that item in the entire world, at least insofar as you’ve been able to make it.”

“Then what is your point?”

“Variety is my point. Surprise is my point. New experiences are my point. Listening to outside opinions is my point. Maybe other people’s suggestions are better. Maybe they’re not. If things don’t go to plan, it’s all right.”

He gave her a forbidding gaze. “My plans always go exactly as intended.”

“So you planned to run into me today and argue from the turnips to the asparagus?”

His scowl deepened.

“All right,” she said. “I can compromise.”

“I cannot.”

She pretended not to have heard him. “What if, next Saturday, we meet an hour early to sample new items that we both already know you fully intend to veto?”

He stared at her for a long moment, his gaze inscrutable. “As long as you understand that’s precisely what will happen. And I shall pay for the ingredients.”

She reached for the basket. “I told you, I—”

“No arguments. It is now an entertaining expense that I must cover, as host of the party.”

“Hogwash,” she said. “You already know you’re going to reject all of my suggestions, therefore it has nothing to do with your party at all. You just want to win.”

He grinned at her. “I always win.”

Except he hadn’t. He had let her take this round.

They both knew she could not force him to taste potential new dishes. He had agreed because... oh, who knew how his mind worked? Either he secretly enjoyed letting her take charge, or her queries had made him fear she’d think of something he hadn’t. He’d feel honor-bound to exhaustively test all possibilities.

Which made Unity honor-bound... to let him. She schooled her features into a mask of innocence to hide a spark of devilry. In Act One, Lambley was used to getting his way. He thought he’d ended the matter by condescending to taste a creation he’d already dismissed out of hand.

But Act Two was just beginning.