The Reluctant Husband by Madeleine Conway Page B

managed to spirit her into the courtyard where guests more intent on conversation were strolling or sitting on stone benches. There were areas of deep shadow where the light spilling from the thousands of candles gleaming in the house failed to reach. Exclamations and bursts of laughter punctured the rush of water from the fountain as anecdotes were exchanged and gossip passed on. Ormiston drew his dancing partner to a seat just beyond a crescent of light.
    â€œYou wish to monopolize me, sir?”
    â€œI wish to know if it was you I saw playing at circus tricks the other day.”
    â€œWhat sort of tricks? Acrobatics? Walking the tightrope? If I were a circus performer, I would hardly have secured a ticket for the most exclusive ball of the Season.”
    â€œRiding tricks. You were with a party. A woman lost her hat. You galloped to the rescue.”
    â€œYou seem very certain that it was I.”
    This oblique response confirmed her identity to Ormiston. If she had not been the same woman, she would have been baffled, perhaps even outraged by the possibility. He determined to find out more about her. “Where do you come from?”
    â€œI thought we had established that I am a goddess from Egypt.”
    â€œYou speak French almost like a native, but there is a faint accent. Not German. Perhaps Dutch.”
    â€œWhy is it so vital? We shall be unmasquing before dawn. Why not wait? What does it matter?” Cecilia strove to keep her voice level and her manner insouciant. It was far too early to reveal herself to Ormiston. In fact, it seemed to her that keeping her identity concealed from him altogether would be her wisest course.
    â€œWhy are you so secretive?”
    â€œBecause this is a masque, a night of revels without fear of revelation, a night for mystery, a night for secrets.”
    â€œBright-shining goddess, share your secrets with me.” He leaned toward her and brushed his lips against hers, then withdrew as swiftly as he had advanced.
    â€œI am no Lesbia, to be abused in your lyrics.” Her voice carried a nervous edge.
    â€œI write no poetry. But I did not know that an Egyptian goddess would recognize the words of Catullus.”
    Cecilia was silent, well aware that her slip had revealed more than she intended. It was unladylike enough to admit to reading Latin, let alone a poet as notorious as Catullus. But his works had been there in her father’s library and Marchmont’s policy had been to allow his children access to any book he owned. And then, there had been the kiss, gentle as a butterfly’s touch, but more potent than champagne. Which was, she realized later when reviewing the events of the evening, her downfall. A waiter was passing and she half rose from her seat to summon him. He stopped, lowered his tray, and deftly removed a glass to hold it before her. She reached for it, but failed to grasp it before he moved away. The glass slipped, its contents splashed her, and the glass itself rolled into a flowerbed. She stood upright and her cavalier exclaimed, “Quickly, I’ll take you inside and you can sponge it dry. There’ll be no harm done.”
    He grasped her hand and whisked her into a quiet passage and then up a short flight of stairs into a circular room lit by a single candelabra.
    â€œWait here—I’ll fetch a cloth and some water.”
    She sank onto a chaise longue and looked about her. The sounds of the ball had quite faded away. It took some seconds for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. Then she began to make out strange shapes and what appeared to be great boxes scattered on the walls. A few more seconds and she had identified the shapes as several globes and an astrolabe, and the boxes as glass display cases holding fantastic creatures: the elongated limbs of a huge crab, longer than the arm span of a man; a twisted ivory horn attached to a small white whale; the vertebrae of something she guessed was a giraffe; a