Chapter 2

Chapter Two

" Y ou're not a rakehell, Harman."

"Zach, no one asked for your opinion. Go draw it. Somewhere else."

Zach missed the point of a masquerade. No one expected to see respectable Lord Harman, heir to his father's political legacy, in a pirate's ragged waistcoat. Much less a waistcoat hanging open to show a black shirt collared with tarnished-silver lace.

He didn't look respectable; he looked like he charged up and down ship riggings and dispensed death at the point of a sword.

For one night, he wanted to look dangerous, unexpected. That was the point.

He'd never found the women of London worth raking. He found most of their conversation vapid. That didn't mean he wanted London to think him harmless.

Months before the prospect of Christmas masquerades, he'd started collecting the costume's pieces.

When he'd displayed himself in his father's library that evening, sweeping off his tricorn hat with a flourish, the gentleman had only grinned. "Who loaned you that lace? It must be seventy years old. Hope he trusts you the same way with his district. Perhaps it's time to stand for member of Parliament."

It drained off all Harman's good humor. "I'll inherit your seat in the Lords, you know."

"Not for quite a few years, you vulture!" His father swatted his arm with a folded-up gazette, as if Harman had still been a boy. "No, it's time you stood for the Commons. It shows you're serious about serving. People admire that in a man with a title."

The moment crystallized a realization Harman had not yet articulated. He didn't want people to admire him.

He didn't know what he wanted, but not that.

If he didn't say so soon, he'd find himself on a ballot.

His mother's reaction had been more subdued but just as unsettling. She'd straightened his hat, kissed him on the cheek like when he was a little boy.

"Our younger dreams don't always matter so much as we get older," she said, for no reason at all.

"I'd still like to have a few," he'd said with half a grin, leaving her in the foyer to their London townhouse, believing, apparently, that he secretly longed to be a pirate.

Well, to a certain extent, he did.

After all these years in his parents' shadow, no one expected Harman to do anything shocking. No broken engagements, no duels—he'd barely convinced the Duke of Gravenshire's dizzy daughter to dance with him, and that only once.

It was as if all of London had already cast him in the role of his father, a steadfast minister of Parliament whose conversation even at assemblies was all politics.

Harman had never liked persuading others to take his position. Agreement was boring. He preferred a little opposition. Questions sharpened his mind.

Against his will, his thoughts turned back to the country estate where he'd spent his younger summers playing with a baronet's daughter. A stunning little girl, with black hair that shone like silk and bright eyes that saw straight into his soul.

She'd never been to school, yet she asked cleverer questions than anyone else he knew. No one would have imagined the sweet, soft-spoken child could be stubborn, but Alara had never once agreed with him just to agree. Are you sure? she would ask when he made the most outrageous guesses about what made the sky blue, or why gold was used to mint money.

Maybe someday she would stop haunting—he couldn't say his dreams , for he seldom dreamed. The world, and his role in it, felt stolid both waking and sleeping. He'd think he'd dreamed her but for that; their time together was that magical, and that difficult to remember.

After every one of those summers, his parents had reminded him she had her own role to play: sail away to her mother's Empire, marry a prince, live a charmed life. They'd prepared him for the break; they'd warned him.

He'd been an eager boy ready to travel as much as the constant wars would let him; when he'd returned, a grown man, he saw no signs of her, nor did anyone in society know her.

No black-haired beauty would be ignored in London for long; ergo, she wasn't in London.

He could have visited her parents, but he didn't want to hear about her life in Istanbul, even though he still kept its map in his room. He could barely admit it to himself, but if he heard she was anything other than alive and well across the sea—that her ship had sunk, or she'd fallen prey to some other calamity—he didn't think he'd be able to bear it.

Still, he thought of that quiet little girl every time he walked into a room like this, wondering what she was doing, wishing she were here. Looking for eyes that spoke sonnets.

Looking for something else that interested him as much.

Lord Zachary clung to his distaste for Harman's pirate costume. "You're wearing a false label. Someone will take you for a rakehell and you'll wake up in Berkshire, snuggling sheep."

"You're only proving you have no idea what a rakehell is or does." Since Lord Zachary cared for nothing but his art, disappearing for weeks at a time to his secret garret in Leicester Square to contemplate colors and lines that only artists cared about, he was in no position to judge whether Harman might pass for a rakehell.

Which he definitely could. At least for tonight.

Everyone in London had come to the same party. The freezing cold weather had kept everyone within doors through autumn and into winter, and clearly Lady Gadbury's masquerade had given them all a reason to burst out. The larger their mask, the less chance they'd be recognized, and that was an excellent opportunity to kick up anyone's heels, their own or someone else's.

Harman's own mask was the kind worn at Italian festivals, barely more than a strip of silk tied around his head. It was enough, along with his coat, a ragged alley-market thing that smelled of cannonball smoke. Together they achieved much of his desired effect, the cavalier air of a pirate.

He was too young for London to be as boring and predictable as he found it. It seemed like in mere minutes he'd be as old as his father but far less satisfied, a pallid copy of the better man.

Tonight he'd be someone different.

A knot of young men clustered around a pillar; someone in its center had apparently established a defensible position. All Harman could see was a fluttering scrap of black lace. The men crowded round, bowing and trying to look more interesting than their neighbor.

It was a young lady in the middle, and she was about to be crushed.

Charging into the jolly fray, he could just see a fold of the lace through the crowd of legs. It wasn't antique and tarnished like his, but fresh as the day it was made. It lay so cleverly above the golden silk underneath that it gave the effect of being transparent, as if one glimpsed golden skin through the lace.

Well. It was a gown that demanded attention, but that didn't mean she wanted to be trampled.

He thought of Lady Trace's strict rules about Alara's dress, insisting she be covered up to the neck and down to wrists. When he saw a crush like this, he sympathized with it.

"Now men, if you smother the lady before the dancing even begins, none of you will?—"

He froze in the middle of his speech, heedless of other young swells who shot him dirty looks as he pulled them away to give the young woman some space.

It was her.

Alara. She was here. That was her. All of her. Under that sensual, suggestive, revealing black lace.

Alara, with the same black brows and rose-petal lips, with a figure he'd never dare attribute to a lady.

He rasped out words stuck in his very dry throat. "Miss Trace?"

Alara turned readily, as if toward the sunshine.

"Lord Harman!" She could not, did not hide her excitement, and all around her came groans of dismay.

"Shove off, Harman, give a man a chance."

"He's not so much."

"Get stuffed." That one muffled quickly as the fellow's neighbor squashed down his hat.

"Miss Trace." Harman reached through the disgruntled crowd to draw her out.

The view got better, his concern worse.

Every inch of her was swathed in perfect, delicate lace. Black lace. All lined with the same golden silk.

It gave the effect of a teasing veil draped over a lush goddess carved out of gold, even as Harman had the uncomfortable notion that if he could actually see Alara's skin, the hue would be pinker.

The illusion was arresting, to say the least, lace floating over the silk clinging to her curves and causing words like grateful to bounce through his mind.

Her hair, glossy black as night, had been artfully braided over one shoulder, and at her ears glittered a fortune in rubies.

She was here. She was stunningly beautiful. And every man in the room had his eyes on her daring, imagination-sparking, blood-firing dress.

Alara had almost abandoned her newfound determination to be brave when her aunt produced the dress.

"I cannot wear that in public!"

"My dear, when times are desperate, desperate action must be taken," said Mrs. Griffiths, entirely without apology.

Its chemise was a silk so light Alara could see through it, and since all her stays were short, the whole affair slid over her skin in a way that felt constantly distracting. And terrifying. And delicious.

All the way to the barouche, all the way along the street, there'd been a dozen times Alara had nearly turned back. Right up to the moment inside the fashionable Argyll Room Alara had taken off her cloak.

The raucous party pulled her attention away from the gown slipping against her skin.

Above her, private galleries were lit with flickering candles, full of shadows and smoke. She only saw a few silhouettes in the seats, only heard a few giggles from that direction.

The main floor already spilled over with fascinating characters—harlequins, horses (what cunning velvet trousers!), Roman emperors, and some well-painted ladies whose brazen confidence inspired her.

"The dowager Duchess of Talbourne sponsored this party?"

"Well," her aunt said, squirming a little as she gave up her own cloak to the waiting footman. "Not exactly."

It was a marvelous chance to learn a great many things. It was truly kind. Alara needed to learn a great deal very quickly if she were to find her own destiny, and this was the time. This was the place.

But the more men crowded round her, the more she found herself searching for the one face that wasn't there.

Could she really marry a British man who wasn't Lord Harman? It seemed like all of them were here. She saw the cleverness to Mrs. Griffiths' plan. The masquerade was a chance to see into their minds, see what they dreamed about day by day hidden by the rote actions of practical life.

None of them seemed as innocently adventurous, as sweetly kind, as the Lord Harman she'd known.

And that realization felt pathetic. For he had never once thought of her, never called on her, never even written. Had he been at all interested, she would already know. She would already be betrothed, because she couldn't imagine refusing him anything.

She was faced with a much tougher decision than she'd realized, and very little time to make it.

The musicians, gathered on stage at one end of the room, had limbered their instruments and were playing a most peculiar song about marching in a boar's head. Alara felt as if she had left Britain already, the sights and sounds were so strange.

Colors whirled everywhere, along with the thousand voices talking, laughing, singing, and the smell of warm skin and rich perfumes. Over everything hung the bitter tangs of liquor and spilled beer.

Her aunt retired to a card table with friends of hers, pointedly leaving Alara free to be anyone, or do anything, that she liked.

And men crowded around her, hoping she would be what they liked. Hoping they knew her dreams just from this dress.

Which perhaps they did. Dreams she didn't know she had. The idea was rather lowering.

"Care to dance, miss?"

"May I bring you some punch?"

"You look simply fetching tonight."

None of them properly introduced, all of them quite forward, and none, from what she could tell of their manners, the sort of man she'd consider for marriage.

Not that she expected them to propose it.

They did propose dancing, and drinking, and one whispered something near her ear that she didn't understand and didn't wish to.

The whole affair was rapidly degenerating into discouraging chaos.

Then that voice.

The timbre was different—older, deeper—but she knew that voice as well as she knew the verses said to inspire happiness.

She hadn't expected his voice to make her shiver, just saying her name. They'd called each other Alara and John when they were little. He used to like how she said his name.

She was dying to say it again.

But as the crowd parted, she saw that the man who went with the voice was broad in the chest and tall, much taller than anyone Alara remembered. His dark head bent down with a regal, threatening sort of hook to its shape; his billowing hat shaded his face, and so did his mask.

Quickly he seized her round the waist and hauled her out of the crowd. He left behind loud groans and a few curses.

Alara found herself leaning into him, one hand on his chest. "It is you, isn't it?"

She saw his lips press tightly shut. A muscle jumped in his clenched jaw. He didn't look kind, or sweet. "That depends what you mean."

How? Alara knew it was him. But she wanted him to say something—to introduce himself, or to remind her of something they'd found together. He was so forbidding and grim, and nothing like the boy she remembered.

Against her will, she asked, "Aren't you my old friend?"

He looked over her shoulder as if back at the crowd of disappointed young roughs. "We've met," he said briefly, and all Alara's dreams shattered and fell on the floor, a thousand shards of cutting glass.

Harman had somehow offended fate. That was the only reason he was standing here, at a Christmas masquerade, with a fully grown, fully rounded Alara Trace in his arms...

...seeing a face over her shoulder that he knew all too well. The face of trouble.

Tonight she had bright gingery hair and a tinsel crown. Her lacy shepherdess dress and blousy chemise recalled Marie Antoinette in her fashionable days, a reference in poor taste at best, as they'd just passed the twentieth anniversary of that lady's execution.

That probably amused the lady scoundrel.

He had no choice. "Miss Trace, you'll excuse me, won't you?"

"Of course." Alara looked confused, as well she might; they'd just met again for the first time in more than ten years, and he was running from her.

But the last thing he wanted was for her to meet, or get entangled with, the tiny woman in the tinsel crown.

He looked back over his shoulder. The disgruntled youths were still there; he did not want to leave her alone in this party. For a man who never dreamed, his imagination was suddenly bursting with possibilities, all bad. Where was her mother? Why wasn't she chaperoned?

Had he more time, he'd retrieve Lord Zachary and require him to watch after Alara; but Zachary had a fair face and golden hair, and he was far from blind. He could all too easily take an interest in Alara himself. Disappointing a crowd of masked bandits was one thing; dissuading an old friend was another.

After the disastrous bonfire night in the country they'd just had, Harman was short an old friend, and unready to lose one more.

The little crowned shepherdess waved hello, beckoning him.

"Your pardon," Harman bowed abruptly to Alara, feeling his jaw jump with tension, and against every inclination in his body, left her there.

He resolved to keep her in sight, but even so, every step he took away from her felt difficult, as if the very air pulled him back.

Brusquely he snapped to the small executed French queen, "Madame. What are you doing here? I feel I should remind you, you disappeared."