Josie looked sultry, dangerous, erotic—and at the same time, young, fresh, and beautiful. She was like sin packaged and made young again.
“Christ,” Darlington said, stopping dead.
Griselda had a sudden pang. What was she doing, introducing Darlington to Josie? Of course, he would—he would—But he didn’t look like a man transfixed by lust. Instead, he was frowning down at her.
“What in the hell did you do to that girl?” he whispered.
Josie was flirting with four gentlemen at once, handling them with the aplomb of a woman who’d been on the market for several years, and who had spent her entire life being feted for her beauty.
“Nothing,” Griselda whispered back. “Behold the lovely girl whom you labeled a sausage!”
“Not fair,” he said. “You’re not playing fair, Lady Godiva, and I’ll have to take a forfeit.” His voice darkened, and she squirmed away.
“None of that!”
“There’s something different about her. She’s not stuffed any longer.”
Griselda bit her lip.
Darlington shook his head. “I’m no good at this sort of female thing. But you can’t blame me for not seeing that,” he said in her ear. “If she’d looked like this in the first month of the season, I could have called her a sausage, a cow, or the entire herd, and not a man would have paid attention to me.”
“Now I want you to dance with her,” Griselda said, beating down an impulse to drag him in the opposite direction.
He glanced over. Josie was playfully rapping one of the gentlemen on the knuckles. “I don’t want to. She’s in fashion, Griselda. That’s Skevington at her right. Hell, maybe she’ll marry him. He’s got a sweet little estate, and a title coming when his uncle cocks up his toes.”
Griselda blinked.
“You don’t want me to take her away from Skevington. He looks entranced.”
“Josie doesn’t,” Griselda remarked.
“A problem of a different nature. But she will not be entranced by me either.” And he pulled Griselda gently but firmly in the other direction.
“Why wouldn’t she be entranced by you?” Griselda asked, feeling queer as she asked it. But she might as well be straightforward. “Josephine has a very large dowry.”
“My father informed me of that before the season began,” he said, making swiftly for the door to the ballroom. “In fact, he was under the distinct impression that I would be able to get even more money out of Felton than has been offered. It is unfortunate that I have a low tolerance for boredom.”
“Josie is not boring! She is one of the cleverest, most witty young women I know.”
“They’re the worst kind,” Darlington said. “It’s exhausting to have to reply to pert comments made by a woman in her early years. They expect so much.”
“But you, of all people,” Griselda protested, “should be able to snap back a reply.”
“In that respect I am rather an amateur,” Darlington said. He slowed down now that they were in the hallway.
“Where on earth are we going?” Griselda asked. She was trying to think of a clever remark to make, and she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“A place I discovered the last time I was in Lady Mucklowe’s house, for the Byron reading, ages ago.”
“I missed the reading,” Griselda said. There was something terribly exciting about holding hands in the middle of a crowded party. Of course, no one would possibly know who she was. Not only did she have the mask, but her hair was not in its usual ringlets, and she was wearing a thoroughly scandalous gown. She didn’t even feel like herself.
Everyone would know who Darlington was, though. There was no disguising those curls and his lean, lithe figure.
They were half running down a corridor now, obviously a passageway reserved for servants. “Charles,” Griselda said, trying not to pant. Only old women panted. “Where are we going?”
“The kitchens, of course,” he said. And there they were, in a low-ceilinged kitchen, paved in flagstones. It was full of servants, darting to and fro, preparing for the supper that would be put on at two in the morning. No one even glanced at them.
“Come on,” Darlington said, and pulled her between a chef, two cooks, and four scullery maids. “The back door.”
They were outside. It was oddly quiet, with just a muffled roar from behind the closed door, as if the ocean were contained on that side.
“How very, very lovely,” Griselda said. It was an old garden, with high brick walls separating it from the larger formal gardens that stretched behind the house. The old red brick was overhung with white burnet roses that could be dimly seen from the light pouring from the kitchen windows.
Griselda began to pick her way down the uneven little walk between beds of early carrots, lettuce, and some bluish-purple leaf that she couldn’t identify.
Darlington followed her. “An enormous crop of horseradish,” he said, glancing to the right.
A large red cat gave them the arrogant, slant-eyed glance of a born mouser, jumped the wall and disappeared.
They walked all the way to the end of the garden where the roses hung, their stems tangled into a mat as heavy as horse blankets on prize thoroughbreds. In the very back there was a little wooden bench.
“This garden seems so familiar,” Griselda said slowly. “I know! Didn’t Hellgate have a tryst in a kitchen garden? Oh, Darlington, was it you? I have been beginning to believe Hellgate is modeled on my brother.”
“Absolutely not!” Darlington said. “I have never done anything indiscreet in a kitchen garden. You called me Charles a moment ago.”
“A momentary indiscretion,” she said, “should never be followed up by more of the same.”
“But I want more of the same.”
“Life is full of wants.”
He was cupping her face in his long fingers. “Hush,” he said, and his face came toward hers in that one moment before she closed her eyes and gave in. Thoughts were flying around in her mind like trapped birds: She shouldn’t! They shouldn’t! They might be seen!
“I’m going to take off your mask,” he murmured against her mouth. There was something almost angry in the way he was kissing her. It was an insistent, possessive kiss, the kind a man gives when he wants to say something without words.
Griselda broke away, gasping.
But without saying a word, he drew her back, slowly, giving her time to say no. But she couldn’t. All she did was raise her face to his, and open her mouth to his, and say “Charles.” That was enough, though. Somehow they found their way onto the little wooden bench.
“We can’t—” she gasped.
“We won’t,” he said, eyes gleaming. “It’s not dark enough. But I’m going to kiss you senseless, Lady Godiva.” He bent his head and said it against her lips. “I’m going to kiss you until you forget that little plan you have to find yourself a husband tonight.”
“I—” she gasped, but his hand closed on her breast.
Griselda was the kind of woman who never found herself at a loss for words. She had a reputation justly deserved, for words of kindness at the right moment, suitably spiced gossip in appropriate circumstances, and a chuckling laugh that covered most other eventualities. Now she couldn’t seem to bring a rational phrase to her mind.