Prologue

PROLOGUE

THE LONDON SEASON, JUNE 1803

It was a glittering, glamorous scene from a generation ago, before the Terror, before the King and Queen and so many others lost their heads to Madame Guillotine. The theme of the costume ball in the grand mansion in Mayfair was Old Versailles. The ballroom was white and gold, lined with tall mirrors, before which sat great pyramids of highly scented flowers in the same colours – a perfect setting for the small orchestra and the whirling dancers.

The height of fashion now demanded austere modern simplicity: straight white Grecian muslin gowns for the debutantes, set off by a backdrop of plain dark evening coats in the masculine style made so popular by Mr Brummell. But the young ladies and gentlemen present seemed to be enjoying the rare opportunity this evening gave them to parade in all the splendour of bright silk, lace, velvet and embroidery, as their parents and grandparents had not so long ago. They flirted behind fans, and bowed and curtseyed to each other with exaggerated politeness, laughing as they did so, as though they were children playing at dressing up as princes and princesses.

Many ladies, and some of the more daring gentlemen, had painted their faces in the old style and placed velvet patches here and there to enhance their beauty. Few people had gone so far as to set ridiculous tall wigs upon their heads, but some of them had chosen to powder their own hair silver, and most of the ladies sported elaborate old-fashioned coiffures adorned with ribbons and feathers. It was a colourful scene, and cheerful, unless any of the participants chose to reflect that it was all an illusion, and a recreation of a way of life, now gone forever, that had ended in disaster.

It wasn’t a masquerade ball. Nobody was disguised, apart from the unfamiliarity granted them by the costumes and the unusual ways they’d dressed their hair. Rafe, self-conscious in pale blue velvet embroidered with silver, shaking his hands free from trailing lace shirt cuffs, reflected that for him the shelter of a mask would have been most welcome. He was aware, as he always must be when mixing in society, of the sidelong glances and muttering that followed him about, and of that whispered word that he had come to hate, and yet could never avoid, because it was his own name, and his father’s: Wyverne.

He knew exactly what people were saying, even if he couldn’t overhear the actual words, since such poisonous gossip had been the constant backdrop to his life for years now, though he was barely three and twenty. He didn’t need to hear the scandalised enjoyment in their voices to know it was there. ‘That’s Wyverne’s boy, Lord Drake. Yes, the tall, young fellow in blue with the dark eyes. The Viscount. Eligible? Well, I dare say he is, if all you care for is the great fortune and the title. I suppose it is no great surprise he was invited, and since he is here, he clearly has no shame. But would you want to ally yourself with that family? Would you really care to be on visiting terms with them? The father is quite bad enough, as all the world knows, but let us not forget the stepmother, if you can call her that. A common hussy from the stage – and that’s the more respectable portion of her career! My dear, you must have heard the latest shocking rumours…’

It was no wonder Rafe generally avoided such gatherings, and lived his life in the country or in Oxford, as far away from London as he could. As a student and a green boy, he’d sometimes tried to argue with people who looked at him askance, to confront their prejudices head-on, but he was wiser now; he’d realised through painful experience that you might as well try to reason with the weather, or command an avalanche to stop tumbling down a mountain. He hated with a passion being the subject of scandal, but it was a fact of his life. He’d have said that nobody could enjoy such notoriety, except that it was perfectly clear that his father did enjoy it – revelled in it, took pleasure in provoking such shocked reactions, and in proving to the world that he wasn’t as bad as he was rumoured to be – he was much worse. The Marquess of Wyverne, he knew, was in London too this June, staying in his town house, for purposes Rafe didn’t want to consider, but his son and heir was not sleeping under his roof or calling on him there. He never did. He had as little to do with his father as was possible. At least the Marquess was most unlikely to be here tonight; this was hardly his sort of party.

But Lord Drake’s close friend and neighbour Simon Venables, who had been his youthful tutor at Oxford, was to be married in a few days, and Rafe had found himself included in the cheerful wedding party. It really would have been excessively ungrateful and churlish to refuse to participate in such a joyous series of celebrations. God forbid he should cast even the smallest of clouds over Simon and Elizabeth’s innocent pleasure, especially since he was best man. So he was staying in Simon’s family home in Half-Moon Street, and had agreed to come to this ball, and other, similar events. It would do the Viscount a great deal of good, Simon had said, to mix with people. To mix with young ladies, in particular, as any man of three and twenty should.

Simon was the best of friends, but he was also a minister in holy orders, and he believed – despite strong evidence to the contrary provided by Rafe’s father’s disastrous marital career, or even his grandfather’s – that the wedded state was the source of all human bliss. Rafe was perhaps a little young to settle down, even in the Reverend Mr Venables’s estimation – but he was showing worrying signs of becoming a recluse, and therefore this was an excellent opportunity for him to spend time in refined feminine society for a change. To show his willingness to be sociable, Rafe had already danced with Elizabeth, the bride-to-be, and with her sisters, and with Simon’s sister Mary. He was not well acquainted with any of these ladies, but they were all perfectly pleasant and friendly. No doubt they had been reassured in advance by Simon and his mother that, despite his family’s atrocious reputation, Rafe himself would not offer them any insult, nor whisper words in their ears that would bring a blush to their innocent cheeks. He was, whatever the world might think of him, not his father.

And here was Lady Venables again, wider than she was tall in a flowered gown with huge panniers, like a sort of mobile sofa, bustling him away. She was obviously bent on continuing her son’s campaign to raise Rafe’s spirits, this time by presenting him to a young lady who was not a member of their own party, which made him suddenly nervous of the girl’s reaction, in case she should recoil from him in horror, to the embarrassment of all three of them. But Simon’s mama was inexorable. ‘Mademoiselle de Montfaucon,’ she said firmly, refusing to meet Rafe’s gaze, ‘may I present Lord Drake to you as a partner for the next set?’

He bowed correctly, inwardly wincing, uttering a polite greeting. It was clearly far too late to withdraw without insulting the debutante who stood before him, which he had not the least desire to do. Perhaps, he thought desperately, since her name suggested that she was a French émigrée, she might not be aware of the Wyverne reputation, or the horrible rumours that swirled about his own name in particular. She was smiling at him shyly, and murmuring acceptance, so that appeared to be so, thank goodness.

She was a beauty. Rafe had no interest in young ladies making their come-out, and no intention of involving one of these innocents, ever, in the slowly unfolding disaster that was his family. But he was a healthy twenty-three-year-old, and could not help but notice the young lady’s sweet, expressive face, her lively brown eyes and spectacular red-blonde curls, piled up on her head in a style that became her greatly. The heavy coiffure emphasised the graceful curve of her neck, and her queenly bearing. Presumably she was indeed an aristocrat whose family had fled the Revolution; she’d have been a small child in 1793. Too young to remember anything of that dreadful time? He had quite a lot of experience of children, through his younger half-siblings, and he thought not. But whatever her private feelings might be on this occasion – he wouldn’t be at all surprised if she considered it more than a touch tasteless – she was composed and exquisite in pale green silk embroidered with pink, and perfectly in tune with the theme of the ball, as if she’d stepped straight from a painting by Boucher or Fragonard.

Mademoiselle de Montfaucon put her hand in his, and he bowed over it, and led her to the dance floor, saying, ‘It would be my pleasure, mademoiselle.’ He realised with some surprise that it would, in fact, be a pleasure. His partner had not yet cultivated the boredom that debutantes soon understood was required of them; she did not sigh, look about her wearily and say languidly, ‘It is a sad crush tonight, is it not, sir?’ As the dance began, her dark eyes were sparkling with infectious enjoyment; brighter, he thought, and far more naturally appealing, than the enormous and impressive pink jewel she wore about her neck, striking fire in the candlelight as they twirled about.

Any observer, standing aside and watching them, must surely have thought that they made a pretty pair in their silk and velvet finery, both so young and handsome, the lady fair and vivacious, the dark gentleman perhaps more serious in nature, but still looking down at her now, plainly charmed by her delight, an attractive smile transforming his previously rather stern, forbidding young features. Perhaps five years separated them in age, and it would require a heart of stone, surely, not to be touched by the picture they presented in their fairy tale costumes, if one could ignore the rumours for a moment or two. They could easily have been Cinderella and her prince.

But Rafe would not have been so carefree if he had seen who was tracking their movements from the shadows at the edge of the room, eyes hot and avid, gaze unwavering, pale face set in harsh, cynical lines. The watcher – who appeared to be perfectly capable of resisting the innocent charm of the scene that was playing out before his eyes – was a man in his sixties, dressed even more opulently than the rest of the throng, bearing several elaborate jewelled decorations upon his black velvet coat and diamond rings upon his thin fingers. He seemed quite at his ease, even though nobody spoke to him and there was a little space around him in the crowded room that suggested an odd reluctance of fellow guests to stray too close, as if they feared some physical or moral infection. Again the scandalised whispers raced around the room at lightning speed; again those ladies and gentlemen whose self-control was less than perfect craned their necks quite blatantly to see. Even those who professed complete fashionable indifference shot a sly glance or two the old man’s way, since one surely could not be blamed for wishing to set eyes upon the notoriously wicked Marquess in the flesh.

It was Lord Wyverne, and he watched his son and the lovely young girl as they danced not with fatherly pride, or even aristocratic indifference, but with the dark, intense, pitiless focus of a hunter with his prey.