Chapter 14

14

He’d danced with her. Christ, but he had. Just once. Rafe remembered it clearly now. He spent so little time in London, so little time in society – being whispered about and stared at had always been a torment for him – but his friend Simon Venables, before he’d given up on him in recent years and stopped trying, had occasionally endeavoured to persuade him that it wasn’t healthy for a young man to shut himself away from all company, and particularly the company of women. Eligible women.

It must have been about the time that Simon had married – yes, eight years ago. They’d been in London for the wedding, staying with Simon’s mother and his brother Philip, a light-hearted family party plus Rafe, and in the run-up to the ceremony he’d been persuaded to attend a few balls and other social events. He didn’t lack for invitations, despite the unsavoury rumours that had swirled around his name even then, and had hardened into accepted fact by now. The title and the money still worked their sordid magic. And Simon was the younger brother of a baronet and related to half the noble houses of the land.

It had been, appropriately enough, a masquerade of sorts. Simon and Elizabeth had been innocently delighted, he remembered, because the fact of their partial disguise had meant that they’d be able to dance together more often than the paltry two or three times that society normally permitted. He’d danced with Elizabeth, and with her sisters, but he’d recognised no one else, even if they must have known him for a scandalous Wyverne. He couldn’t remember now who had presented him formally to the lovely young woman in flowered green silk. Someone had. Simon’s mother, the Dowager Lady Venables, that inveterate matchmaker? He had no idea, and really it didn’t signify in the least.

They were all of them dressed as courtiers at Versailles. He’d had his grandmother to advise him well in advance, so he could be sure his blue and silver costume was authentic. It had been amusing, he’d had to admit, to ape the more formal manners of the previous century, and he had made a particularly sweeping bow to the young lady in the pink and green gown. She’d smiled as she took his hand, not mocking him, but enjoying his enthusiasm, he’d thought. She’d been a good dancer, and he’d admired her grace. She was very young, probably in her first season – but then he’d only been twenty-three or so himself – and as they twirled and turned about the room together her fine dark eyes were sparkling with pleasure. Brighter – he might even have told her, or maybe he’d just thought it, since he was after all only twenty-three and had little experience of ladies – than the enormous, fabulous pink diamond she’d been wearing about her neck.

Good God almighty. The diamond Rosanna had been wearing last night. The de Montfaucon diamond. He thought it had another name, as these things often did, but he couldn’t recall it. He remembered the jewel, though. There was no possibility of mistake.

He hadn’t stopped to consider before how the treasure had come into his father’s possession, and he’d never had any reason before today to link the bauble Rosanna loved to flaunt with the girl he’d danced with once and never seen or thought of again.

Mademoiselle de Montfaucon. The daughter of the Duke, one of the many noble refugees from the Terror. He struggled to recall if he’d ever heard her Christian name, if someone had addressed her by it or said it when he’d been presented to her as a suitable dancing partner. So very suitable, no wonder they’d thought of it – both of them so young, he a marquess’s son, she a duke’s daughter.

Yes. He did know. When the dance had ended, he’d heard someone address her: Clemence. It was Clemence. She wasn’t Sophie Delavallois. He’d always known that deep down, though he’d chosen to forget it last night. He’d set his previous suspicions aside in the headiness of what had roared into life between them, and when he’d knelt at her feet in worship he hadn’t cared who she was or what she was. But she was Clemence de Montfaucon. It surely couldn’t be a coincidence that she was living at Wyverne Hall of all places, in his father’s house, where the famous necklace that her family had saved from the chaos that had enveloped them was now kept. ‘Kept’, that was an innocuous little word. His father kept it, as he kept so many precious jewels that adorned Rosanna’s body. Lord Wyverne liked his possessions.

He was a collector, an obsessive hoarder of the beautiful and the rare. So Rafe had always assumed that Wyverne had bought them all – the jewels, the pictures, the woman. He supposed it was entirely possible that Sophie’s… that Clemence’s father had been obliged to sell the precious diamond to provide for his family. The Marquess, his father, was just the man to enjoy getting something valuable cheaply because of desperation, to enjoy on top of possession the fact that the sale hurt the seller. That would be disreputable, dishonourable, loathsome, but not… not criminal.

He had an uneasy feeling that there were things he wasn’t yet aware of; that Sophie’s reasons for having inserted herself into his father’s house would bring him most unwelcome news. But he knew who would know more.

He must set aside for now his own feelings, the turbulent mix of emotions that roiled within him as he struggled to absorb what he had discovered. He wouldn’t think about last night, and whether in thinking it such a wonderful moment of escape he’d been deluded or deceived, and what if anything he should do about it. He needed to talk to his grandmother.