Chapter 11

“This just came for you, Lori. Lori ? Lori. ”

Lori’s head whipped up. “More Runners?” she asked, jumping to her feet.

Freddie smiled. “No, my dear.

“Thank heavens.”

“I regret having to raise my voice, but it seemed you were very far away from here.”

Lori yawned and dropped back into her chair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore you. I am just… struggling.” She gestured to the pages covered with messy handwriting and rubbed her eyes, which felt like somebody had been sprinkling sand in them. When she looked up again, she realized that Freddie was holding a large pale pink box tied with a silver velvet ribbon. “What’s that?”

“It just came by messenger and it’s for you.” Freddie set the box on the desk, which was covered with failed attempts at an article for David.

“Who is it from?”

“The delivery boy didn’t know.”

“There is no message with it?” Lori asked.

“Nothing but the box.”

“That’s strange.”

“Open it.”

Lori smiled at her friend’s impatience and pulled off the ribbon, lifted the lid, and then peeled back the layers and layers of silvery-gray tissue paper.

“Oh, my goodness,” Freddie murmured. She reached out and stroked the exquisite peacock blue-green gown with reverent fingers. “It’s gorgeous.”

Lori couldn’t resist petting the material before snapping out of her worshipful fugue and glaring at her friend.

“What is the matter?” Freddie asked.

“You bought this, didn’t you?”

Freddie laughed. “This is from Madam Thérèse’s dress shop. I recognize her distinctive pink box and silver ribbon. Even if I were arrogant enough to purchase you clothing without consulting you, I am afraid Madam Thérèse’s is a bit above my touch.

Lori lifted the gown from the box, her heart speeding as she took in the almost overwhelming beauty of the garment.

Freddie reached into the box. “Look Lori—there is a pair of opera gloves, as well.”

Once again, she felt compelled to reach out and pet the garments. The leather was softer than butter and the rich teal color and multitude of tiny buttons on the inside of the wrist spoke of an expert glover’s touch.

“ Gloves does not seem like a grand enough word for them,” Lori said, handing them to Fredie.

“They are exquisite,” Freddie agreed. She draped the gloves over her lap and gestured to the gown Lori was holding. “Lift it up so I can see.”

Feeling as if she were in a dream, Lori held the dress in front of herself, the whisper soft silk warm beneath her fingers.

“Oh, Lori,” Freddie breathed, her eyes shining with admiration. “That color is absolutely perfect for you.”

Lori turned until she could see herself in the mirror over the fireplace. Her lips parted in wonder; Freddie was right. It was the perfect color for her, the blue-green making her eyes look even greener, like sparkling emeralds.

“Who sent it?” Freddie asked.

“I have no earthly idea.” Could David have bought it? After all, she’d mentioned not being equipped to attend so many ton functions.

Lori snorted at the thought.

“What is so amusing?” Freddie asked, coming up to stand behind her, their eyes meeting in the looking glass.

“I cannot believe that I entertained, even for a second, that David Parker might have purchased such a thing.”

“You are certain that he did not?”

She gave a bitter laugh. “If David had bought me a gown—a possibility that truly defies credibility—it would be cheaply and poorly made.”

Freddie did not look surprised. “You have no ideas at all as to the sender?”

“None. Unless…”

“Unless?” Freddie prodded.

“Do you think Honey or one of the others might have sent it? They all saw me last year at Miles’s betrothal ball. Indeed, Honey tried to convince me to accept a new dress as a gift.” Lori had been amused and touched by Honey’s offer, but she had firmly refused the gift. The last thing she wanted to do was make a practice of accepting expensive gifts from her wealthy friends. She met Freddie’s suddenly troubled gaze. “Has Honey said anything in her letters that might indicate it is from her?”

“I did mention in my letter to Honey that I was refurbishing your gowns—but only because she had asked me if I had time to do some needlework on a reticule she had made for her niece.” A faint flush stained Freddie’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, Lori—I did not mean to—”

“Hush, Fred! You needn’t apologize for that. However, I do want you to write and ask her if she is responsible for this.”

“Of course, I will ask her.”

Lori turned back to reflection and sighed. “I hate to admit this, but I love this gown.”

“Why do you hate to admit that?”

“Because I can hardly wear it if I don’t know who sent it.”

“You can’t send it back if you don’t know who purchased it,” Freddie pointed out.

“I will go to this Madam Thérèse and see if I can get the information out of her.” Lori sighed as she lowered the dress back into the box. “If she won’t tell me, I will tell her that I will send the garment back. That is exactly what I’ll do. It is what I must do.”

“You sound as though you are trying to convince yourself.”

Lori laughed. “That’s because I am. My better angel is in ascendance right now, but my evil imp is poised to take control at the first sign of weakness.”

Freddie took the gown from her and carefully draped it over her arm. “If you bunch it up like that it won’t be fit to wear,” she chided gently. “I’ll have Mary lightly press it. Just in case you decide to keep it.”

“But I was going to take it with me—to Madam Thérèse’s.”

“You can hardly drag this big box all over the city. Send it by messenger if she refuses to tell you.”

Lori sighed. “Fine.”

“It would be perfect for the Archer ball tonight,” Freddie murmured, gazing almost lovingly at the beautiful gown.

“Are you saying that you like this gown better than the one I just purchased myself?” Lori asked with exaggerated surprise.

Freddie opened her mouth, but then closed it again, clearly not wishing to give offence.

Lori laughed. “I am teasing you, Freddie. I tell myself that it’s not so much that I have horrid taste as that I’m a terrible nipcheese. I always go into a dressmaker’s shop with the best of intentions, but I find myself quickly overset by the shocking cost of things. I chose that blue material because it cost a fraction of anything else.”

“Yes, that is what I thought,” Freddie said mildly, making Lori laugh again. She cast another admiring glance at the gown over her arm. “I truly hope you can’t find out who gave this to you, Lori.”

***

Two hours later—and after a heated discussion in French, with Madam Thérèse—Lori had failed to obtain the name of her anonymous benefactor.

She had also managed to delay writing her article for another day, a matter that weighed on her mind and wiped the mystery of the ball gown from her thoughts as she made her way back home.

Despite David’s rather harsh directive to drum up an article about Lord Severn—either about the mutineers or his brother’s suicide—she was instead working on a story about the Earl of Ashby and his disastrous curricle race to Brighton, which had resulted in the death of a thirteen-year-old boy who’d been walking beside the road when Ashby lost control of his horses.

None of the articles Lori had read mentioned that the peer had been intoxicated and whipping his pair into a bloody froth when he’d lost control of them. That was a piece of information Lori had discovered after talking with over twenty witnesses to the reckless event.

She hoped the story would take David’s mind off his obsession with Severn and at least buy her a few weeks reprieve.

This was the sort of article she felt proud to write. Ashby deserved to be punished and if she were fortunate enough to get the truth published it would hopefully help build public sentiment against him.

Writing about the race without sensationalizing it had proven more difficult than she’d believed, but the boy deserved better than to have his death turned into nothing but a lurid piece of gossip.

But now the story would have to wait.

Lori sighed and glanced at the watch pinned to her bodice after she’d hung up her hat and cloak. She barely had half an hour and would have to hurry if she was to be dressed and ready for dinner on time.

She’d just finished a quick sponge bath when Freddie paid her a visit, holding the freshly pressed ball gown over her arm. “Well? What is the verdict, Lori? Do you get to wear it? Or will you break my heart and send it away?”

“That stubborn Thérèse woman wouldn’t speak so much as a word, so it looks like I’ll be keeping it.” She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t forget to ask Serena about it—and ask the others, as well—in your next letter.”

“I won’t.” She hesitated and then said, “You could always write to our friends yourself, you know.”

“I do write, just not every week,” Lori protested. Or every month, truth be told. She knew it was more than a little ironic that the writer among their group was dreadful at correspondence.

Freddie laid the dress carefully across Lori’s bed and then turned to her. “I’m going to arrange your hair for you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that, Freddie. I know you have the twins to—”

“The twins are having dinner with their grandmother, so they shall meet us at Lady Archer’s.”

“It will be just the two of us?”

“Yes.”

“That’s capital!”

“We will have to take a hackney rather than the Barton’s fine coach,” Freddie warned.

“It is worth a ride in a filthy hackney to get you to myself without the presence of your wittering charges.”

Freddie ignored Lori’s unkind comment and motioned toward the dressing table. “Take a seat and unplait your hair. I’ll return with my beauty box.”

Lori heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Very well, I will allow you to dress my hair. But absolutely no ringlets. Or curling tongs.”

Freddie smiled. “No ringlets or curling tongs, I promise.”

***

As usual, Fast ignored the cluster of young bucks who’d gathered around him the moment he’d entered the ballroom. Instead, he focused his attention on his erstwhile best friend, the Earl of Moreland, who was dancing with Miss Pascoe.

Tonight was the first time he’d seen the other man in more than sixteen years. Just looking at his smug, handsome face set Fast’s teeth on edge.

For years he had hated Moreland because the other man had married the woman Fast loved. By the time Fast returned to England last year—more than a decade and a half after he’d left—his hatred had burnt down to glowing embers.

It hadn’t taken more than a few weeks back home for his banked hatred to flare back to life. He’d expected that Moreland would keep a house in London and that he and Louisa would be engaged in the social whirl of the Season. He had dreaded that first meeting with his old love.

But the day had never come.

Instead, he’d discovered that Louisa had not been seen in London since her marriage. Moreland had kept his wife isolated on his country estate, where she had given birth year in and year out, until she was bed-bound, a shell of her former self according to the few people who had seen her. She’d been gravely ill last year and Fast’s two letters to her had gone unanswered.

And now Louisa was dead.

And Moreland was waltzing around a ton ballroom in the arms of a woman less than half his age, thoroughly enjoying himself if his self-satisfied smirk was anything to go by.

Fast’s jaws ached, making him realize that he was grinding his teeth again.

“Isn’t that so, Severn?”

He jolted at the sound of his name. “What’s that?” he asked, not bothering to hide his irritation from the Marquess of Dare—a tiresome youth who clung to him like shit on his shoe no matter how diligently Fast tried to scrape him off.

Dare smiled eagerly. “Er, I was just saying that the odds are currently in your favor when it comes to landing the Pascoe chit.”

“Don’t you know that wagering about ladies is bad form?” Fast barked.

The youngling’s face puckered and for a moment Fast felt guilty, as if he’d just swatted a puppy on the nose with a newspaper. “Oh, er, yes. Just so.”

“ I haven’t participated in any of that foolery,” Viscount Melton said, cutting Dare a virtuous smirk.

“Being a kiss-arse is also bad form, Melton,” Fast said.

All the other young men guffawed.

“Have any of you—” Baron Kearsley began, but Fast didn’t catch the rest of what he said, the chatter around him falling away as the person he’d been waiting for all evening appeared across the crowded ballroom.

His mouth became as dry as the Sahara and yet he was suddenly perspiring like a bishop in a brothel. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. He’d known Miss Fontenot would look good in that blue-green gown, but nothing had prepared him for just how good.

“I say,” Dare squawked in his grating voice, “who the devil is that ?”

Fast didn’t need to ask who the young sprog meant. Before he gave into temptation and snarled at the young men to not so much as look at Miss Fontenot, Fast pushed off the wall and made his way toward where she was chatting with the Countess of Sedgewick and several matrons. He knew it wasn’t possible, but the damned Fontenot woman seemed to draw all the light from hundreds of candles toward her.

As Fast had long suspected, the clinging silk of her gown displayed the sort of figure that men launched navies and declared wars over. The snug bodice was lower than she usually wore, but not so daring that it would offend even the most prudish sensibility.

Instead of the full-length sleeves she usually favored, Fast’s creation featured short, delicate puffs of silk that left her pleasingly plump arms on display. Or at least partly on display.

His choice of opera gloves in a matching blue-green kid had truly been inspired. The supple leather hugged her pale, creamy flesh in a manner that was positively decadent and required him to pause and subtly adjust himself before resuming his journey across the ballroom.

Her glorious mass of blue-black hair was, for once, arranged in an attractive coiffure rather than brutally scraped back from her temples and pinned to within an inch of its life. Thankfully, she had not opted for either a cropped, teased fringe or the annoying sausage-like curls that so many young women preferred. Instead, her thick glossy locks were twisted into a simple but elegant chignon that managed to look smooth yet artfully disarranged, as if she’d just tumbled from a lover’s bed.

Lady Sedgewick noticed Fast first and must have said something to Miss Fontenot because she turned to him, her eyelids lowering over her brilliant green eyes and her full lips curving into a mocking smile.

Christ she was lovely!

“Miss Fontenot, what a pleasure seeing you here tonight.”

“What is the world coming to, Lord Severn?”

“I am almost afraid to ask what you mean?” he said.

“Who would have believed that you would have sought out me ?”

Fast laughed. “I must be a glutton for punishment.”

Her smile grew into a smirk, and she turned to her friend. “Freddie, this is Lord Severn. Lord Severn, the Countess of Sedgewick.”

Fast was amused by her unconventional mode of introduction and suspected she did it on purpose.

Lady Sedgewick gave a curtsey of surpassing grace. “It is a pleasure to meet you, my lord.”

Fast bowed over her hand. “The pleasure is all mine. I knew your husband about half a lifetime ago.”

Her eyes, an unusual fawn color, shuttered, and the slight amount of warmth he’d seen in them turned to frost. “Indeed.”

Fast couldn’t say he was surprised by her reaction. He’d known Sedgewick well enough back in the day and the man had been a cad who’d had some rather unsavory perversions. He suspected his widow was all too aware of what her husband had been like. He would have thought Sedgewick’s death was a happy release but clearly the countess had been left penniless if she was forced to launch Cit’s daughters to earn her crust. She was a lovely woman but had all the warmth of an iceberg. Lord only knew what Gregg saw in her to fascinate him so.

He turned to Miss Fontenot. “You look lovely,” he said, amused by the pink wave that suffused her from the swells of her delicious breasts right up her swanlike neck. A neck that only sported a rather sad-looking pearl necklace he suspected was paste. Damn! Fast knew he should have included some bauble that matched the gown.

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Did you have any plans to ask me to dance?”

She laughed. “Odious man! You should not have mentioned my shocking behavior in front of Freddie. She will be horrified.”

“But not surprised,” Lady Sedgewick said dryly.

“I believe there is a waltz next,” Fast said. “Will you honor me with a dance.”

“Oh, but the honor would be all mine,” she purred.

The small hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Bloody hell, what was she planning to grill him about this time?