For the Heart of a Roguish Duke by Harriet Caves
Chapter One
“It’s quite absurd for you to wear a mask, Maddie, as all of the gentlemen will already know that it’s you from your freakish eyes,” Georgiana said, while keeping her face perfectly calm and friendly. Madeline’s lips pressed together and she forced herself to take a deep breath. She’s just trying to get me to quarrel, she reminded herself. If I ignore her, she’ll soon leave.
She had been repeating some version of that excuse to herself throughout the night, and in fact she’d started telling herself that long before they’d even arrived at their sister Anne’s masquerade. Georgiana had been determined to poke and prod at Madeline from the moment they’d both come down to breakfast, or so it seemed.
But Madeline—so far—hadn’t risen to the bait. She had kept her peace, or at the very least ignored her step-sister’s comments and jokes and various attempts at sabotage, because she knew that it was what her father would want from her.
“I’m sure that there’s still a little mystery,” Madeline said mildly.
“None at all,” Georgiana countered. “Even the special mask that Mother had made for you doesn’t disguise the fact that you’re cursed.”
Her step-mother had taken Madeline to the costumer’s shop specifically to have her mask for Anne’s ball specially made. The hope had been that with the right combination of colors and patterns, they could draw attention away from the strangeness of Madeline’s eyes.
“I am not cursed at all, Georgiana dear,” Madeline said, but she could feel her eyes starting to sting. She took a shaky breath and looked around the room.
“You might as well be cursed, as no man will ever have you,” Georgiana said lightly. “I’m sure I do not know why you even bother yourself to come to these events, since it will always only result in your humiliation.”
“Georgiana, Dear, that is more than enough,” Henrietta, Madeline’s step-mother said, stepping between the two of them. “If for no other reason, you must think of the way your reputation will be tarnished if such people of quality overhear you tormenting your sister.” Madeline glanced at her step-mother, relieved at the older woman’s presence.
Henrietta had always been kind to her, trying to keep Georgiana in line and stop the constant insults. If Mother had never died, I would never have had to put up with Georgiana. But since Mother is dead, at least my step-mother tries to stop Georgiana from time to time.
“Lady Madeline,” a man said, and Madeline turned in the direction of the voice. It was Lytton Hampstead, a friend of Anne and her husband Phillip. He wasn’t one of the nobility, but he had sizable holdings in Devon and—as rumor had it—earned eight thousand a year.
“Mr. Hampstead,” Madeline said. She looked up into his face and saw the brief flicker of unease there.
“I would greatly appreciate the honor of the first dance, if you’ll oblige me,” Mr. Hampstead said, bowing appropriately over her hand.
“No one has yet claimed it, so I am happy to bestow it,” Madeline said, smiling as politely as she could. She accepted the kiss to the top of her hand, and returned his bow with a curtsy.
Even better than getting asked to dance was the sight of Georgiana, still waiting for a suitor to come and claim her, clearly fuming in spite of the polite expression on her face. Madeline let Mr. Hampstead escort her to the center with the other dancers gathering for the first dance of the evening, and thanked her step-mother mentally for paying for the extra lessons from the dancing instructor the week before.
While dancing didn’t exactly come easy for Madeline, she wasn’t completely clumsy, and she’d figured out that when in doubt, she only ever had to mimic the steps and movements of the people around her for a few beats before she remembered the correct choreography.
“Your older sister informs me that you have recently finished a charming new design for a China set,” Mr. Hampstead said, as they came together in the dance, moving side by side.
“Oh, I don’t know that it’s charming,” Madeline said, feeling her cheeks warm up. “It is very enjoyable to paint, and it makes me think of warm, summer days.”
“I believe she said the motif is daylilies?” Mr. Hampstead asked, the very picture of polite interest.
“Yes,” Madeline confirmed. “My mother has been experimenting with them in the garden, trying to refine the strains.”
“I would quite enjoy seeing them sometime, if I’m permitted to come visit,” Mr. Hampstead said. They passed near to where Georgiana and Henrietta were standing, with a few other girls who hadn’t yet been asked to dance. Henrietta had a delicate glass cup of syllabub in her hand, and was eating it contentedly. Just as they passed Madeline’s step-sister, however, Georgiana made a face, startling Madeline enough to make her stumble.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Madeline said, smiling to try and cover her gaffe. “I believe someone might have dropped some syllabub just there.”
“You have recovered wonderfully,” Mr. Hampstead said, but Madeline could tell he didn’t fully believe her excuse. He hadn’t seen the face, either.
The second time they passed Henrietta and Georgiana, Madeline felt her left foot slide against the floor, and she nearly spilled into Mr. Hampstead. She only barely caught herself before she could fall, and lost the rhythm of the dance for almost three seconds before she was able to recover. There was no doubt in her mind that her step-sister was somehow to blame, though she didn’t know for sure what Georgiana had done.
Mr. Hampstead escorted her back to where her step-mother and step-sister stood, still polite and gracious. “Perhaps you will honor me with an invitation to dance next,” Georgiana said. “I daresay I will not be as clumsy as my sister!”
“I hadn’t noticed anything of clumsiness from Lady Madeline,” Mr. Hampstead said, and Madeline mentally thanked him for the polite lie. “But perhaps after a brief moment of refreshment, I shall seek your hand, Lady Georgiana.”
He left them as soon as he could, and Madeline tried not to look after him. Whether or not she had made a good impression on Mr. Hampstead would have to wait. It was less important than the question of whether a certain Frederick Harlowe had noticed her stumbles.
Frederick was in another corner of the room, talking to his cousins Vera and Helena, and of all the men in the room, Madeline wished that he would ask her to dance. He was the son of the Earl of Whitstead, and while she was only barely introduced to him, Madeline wanted to get to know him much better.
A man she didn’t know came to claim Georgiana for a dance, and Madeline stifled the regret she felt at being left to the sidelines with the relief she felt at having a break from dealing with her step-sister.
“Are you well, My Dear?” Henrietta asked, shifting slightly closer and pitching her voice low enough for only Madeline to hear.
“Oh, yes,” Madeline said, smiling brightly. “But I would dearly love a syllabub, if the servants come around again with it.”
“One should be back through in a few moments,” Henrietta said, putting her arm around Madeline. “That Mr. Hampstead is quite a handsome man, and a fine dancer!”
“He is,” Madeline agreed, unable to fully tear her gaze away from Frederick Harlowe. He was dashing in his evening wear, his boots shiny and his coat as black as pitch. The mask he’d chosen was also beautiful: black and white, with swirls and curlicues extending off of it.
“Perhaps he will dance with you again, and you two can get to know each other better,” Henrietta continued. Madeline agreed without saying much, and tried to pull her attention away from Frederick before she became too obvious. She fanned herself lightly, making sure she wasn’t accidentally signaling anyone who might be watching her, and looked around the room.
One of the servants passed with glasses of punch and syllabub, and Madeline took one of the delicious, light glasses of cream and wine and began to consume it slowly. There would be a dinner, later in the evening, and she knew she shouldn’t eat very much of it—but syllabub and ices and other sweet things she could have as much of as she wanted without causing gossip.
The dance was ending, and Madeline tried not to let herself feel too annoyed that Georgiana would once more be at her side and making more snide remarks. She scraped a little more syllabub out of the glass, glancing around the hall. It was early yet, but from what Madeline could see, nearly everyone had arrived, and her older sister, Anne, and her husband Phillip were making their way around the room, talking to each little group of people.
“Pardon me, Lady Madeline?” Madeline nearly dropped her glass at the sound of a man speaking her name. She glanced around, and then up, and found herself looking at a masked face, the mask featuring daring and intricate black and white curlicues. It was Frederick!
“Yes, Lord Harlowe?” Madeline replied, dipping into a curtsy.
“How do you know I am a Lord?” Frederick asked. Madeline giggled nervously, and tried to recover her composure.
“My sister informed me of who you were, I am afraid,” Madeline told him.
“That does indeed solve the mystery,” Frederick said. “She also informed me of who the charming young woman in the striking green-and-blue mask was, when I inquired.” Madeline stifled another giggle, taking a quick breath.
“Do not you think that the mask doesn’t quite conceal the strangeness of her eyes?” Madeline’s heart sank at the sound of her step-sister’s voice. “Perhaps Maddie would have done better to come to the ball blindfolded!” Georgiana slipped into place between Madeline and Henrietta, smiling as if her words were just a joke.
“I’m sure we all have our own strangeness,” Frederick said.
“Oh, certainly,” Georgiana’s partner agreed. “All of us have some fault or frailty that we quail to think of others noticing.”
“Some are more obvious than others,” Georgiana quipped.
“As much as I am loath to put an end to philosophical discussions,” Frederick said, turning his attention back to Madeline. “I wondered if I could claim the honor of the next dance, Lady Madeline?” Madeline felt her cheeks heat up with the blush that swept through them, and her heart almost seemed to stop in her chest for a few seconds.
“Of course,” she said, as soon as she could trust her voice. “It would be my pleasure, My Lord.”
She saw Georgiana’s shocked face as she accepted Frederick’s hand, and let him lead her to the center of the room. As the band started up, Madeline realized that the dance was one of the longer ones, and she couldn’t help but smile. “I am so pleased to be able to claim you for a dance,” Frederick said, leading her to the correct spot.
“I am as pleased to be claimed,” Madeline replied, trying to keep her smile within the proper limits. She focused only on Frederick and the steps, listening to the rhythm that the band set, and for precious minutes forgot about her step-sister entirely.
“Your brother-in-law informs me that you enjoy painting,” Frederick mused, as they went back up the line the second time.
“I have recently taken up watercolor painting,” Madeline explained. “Though I am afraid that as yet I have not made much account of myself.”
“I’m sure that it’s not as bad as you think,” Frederick said, and Madeline giggled in spite of herself, letting him lead her through the next figures of the dance.
For nearly thirty minutes, she didn’t have to think of Georgiana, of the possibility that she would be embarrassed yet again, or that her father might hear something bad about her. As the dance began to wind down, Madeline spotted the source of her torment: Georgiana was walking toward where they had been standing, with a full cup of punch in her hands.
Just as Madeline’s path crossed with Georgiana’s, she heard her step-sister let out a startled shriek—one that sounded entirely too dramatic to be real—and felt the cold and wet of liquid hitting her chest and dress. She gasped, stumbling slightly as she stepped back, nearly colliding with Frederick.
“Oh, my word!” Georgiana cried out, and Madeline would have sworn her step-sister wanted to make sure everyone’s attention turned to her. “Oh, my dear sister, your dress!”
Madeline looked down and saw the dark streaks of liquid across the front of her gown, and wanted to scream. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that Georgiana had done it on purpose, and that her step-sister was trying to draw as much attention as possible to the event.
People were looking. Madeline took her hand out of Frederick’s, and glanced around wildly, trying to find the best possible way to get out of the mess her step-sister had caused. She saw the entrance into another part of the house, and fled.
* * *
The evening was not even halfway over, and William was already exhausted. He had agreed to come to the masquerade ball as a favor to his friend Phillip, Viscount York, and it was hard not to regret giving in.
He had managed to avoid dancing with no fewer than a dozen young women, but William knew that his luck was running out. After dinner was served, he would definitely have to give in to one of the many young women who wanted to try and charm him into a proposal.
“William, you look positively miserable,” Phillip said, and William glanced at his friend as he approached from a few feet away, where he’d been entertaining some guests with his pretty, genteel wife Anne.
“I find that my eyes for this ball—metaphorically speaking—were bigger than my stomach is,” William said with a wry grin.
“You must make an effort,” Phillip suggested. “You know that it is almost beyond time for you to find a wife, and it would do me no end of pleasure for you to find one under my auspices.” William snorted, sipping his punch and casting his gaze around the room.
The problem was that while there were many beautiful women, William had no interest in any of them. He knew that he had to take a wife and secure an heir for his family line, and soon; but the idea of settling into married life held nothing but dread for him.
“I’ll find a wife soon enough,” William assured his friend. Not long ago, Phillip’s life was almost a copy of William’s: nights at the club, or with their mistresses, and no thought to marriage and family life. But that had changed when Phillip had met Anne Brighton.
“For now, at least let me see you having a good time,” Phillip suggested. “Even if you don’t find a suitable bride in my hall, you can at least flirt and enjoy yourself.” William suppressed a grunt at that idea.
He’d been flirting ever since his arrival—or at least, he had been entertaining the stumbling attempts at flirting that the young ladies that Phillip and his wife had invited had to offer. One particularly stubborn suitor had been Lady Georgiana Brighton, the step-daughter of the Earl of Ponsonby.
Somehow, Georgiana always seemed to show up at his elbow whenever he talked to anyone else, pushing herself into the conversation. It was especially impressive given that the few times that William had walked past her, he’d overheard the debutante making pointed remarks about someone named “Maddie,” in a syrupy-sweet voice that still didn’t cover the acid of her words.
William looked around and spotted the girl across the room, talking to her latest dance partner with her mother at her side. At least I’m out of her sights for now, William thought wryly.
“I will leave you to your guests, dear York,” William said, finishing off the punch in his glass and handing off the empty vessel to a passing servant.
“Don’t be too much of a stranger,” Phillip said, as William picked his way past the guests, heading in a direction that he knew would give him at least a few minutes of peace and quiet.
He found his way to the library, and closed the door behind himself as quietly as he could, hoping that none of the other guests had followed. “It wouldn’t be implausible for that spoiled chit Georgiana to have been watching me, waiting for a moment like this,” he muttered to himself as he sighed and sat down in one of the oversized chairs the library boasted.
William closed his eyes, thinking about his predicament. Phillip had waxed philosophical about it earlier in the evening, before the guests for the ball had really started arriving. His advice had been the same as it had when William had complained about his lot in the past.
“You have to have a wife, and a child, to secure your fortune,” Phillip had said firmly. “But you needn’t fall in love for that. Find a woman who has a reasonable head on her shoulders—there are several, I promise you—and convince her to marry for the sake of her status and upkeep, with the provision that you bed a few times per month in order to ensure an eventual heir.”
It seemed so simple when Phillip put it like that, but William had learned that “reasonable” women who would be interested in such a convenient arrangement were few and far between. Ever since it had gotten out that he was looking to take a wife, he’d become a target for ambitious young Misses, all of them looking to secure a promising husband.
While William was sure they were interested in maintaining or improving their situations, those women also seemed to think that it was important that he should fall in love with them—which was the last thing William wanted.
He was so tired of spending his evenings maintaining courtesy that even when he got to spend the night with Miss Chattingrove—a delightful woman who was completely reasonable, though not at all appropriate to take as a wife—William didn’t feel any of the relief he used to.
“I should go back to the ball,” he murmured to himself, looking at the door to the library. Maybe it would be a lucky evening. Maybe he’d finally stumble across a woman of status who understood that marriage didn’t have to mean love.
Just as he was about to stand, the door to the library opened, and a young woman slipped through it, head bowed. The front of her white gown was doused in streaks of reddish-brown punch. The girl leaned against the door and started to tremble, her gloved hands coming up to the intricate mask on her face.
“Excuse me,” William said, and the young woman looked up, gasping in surprise. “I suppose that I am not the only one who hoped for a little solitary time.”
