‘Yes. Though I hope you will be very careful.’ He put his hands on her bare arms and pulled her closer, his mask almost touching hers. ‘You think you know what he is, but you have never seen him thwarted. I have, and I can tell you that he will stop at nothing. I am sure he will order beatings, torture, worse, if he so much as suspects that you have taken what he believes to be his and thinks that hurting you would help him get it back. Actually, even if he didn’t have such a hope, he might still hurt you for its own sake. Because he likes it.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Of course I do; I can never forget what he did to my father. That’s why I will contrive it so that it appears the thief has gone, has fled with the jewels. He will send men in pursuit, but of course they will find no trace, for there is nothingto find. I don’t want anyone innocent – the servants above all – to be suspected and to suffer for it.’
‘Then there is little more to be said. You intend to wait till they are done in there, till she has passed out – she’s drinking steadily, they all are – and take it all from her body, despite the hideous risk you take by doing so?’
‘Yes. That is my plan. I know it is daring, but I believe it has a good chance of success. She won’t be calling her abigail to help her – the maids are all locked away and guarded tonight, on your grandmother’s command.’
He said soberly, ‘You may have a long wait. Would you like me to go and see…?’
She nodded, grateful that she would not be obliged to go back in there just now. He released her, leaving her alone in the shadowy passageway – she was suddenly cold in the thin muslin gown, and shivered – but in a moment he was back at her side. ‘It’s not over yet,’ he said, ‘but the crowd has thinned out considerably. Some of her earlier – I honestly can’t think of an appropriate word, but some of them have already succumbed to drink, and are still present in body, but snoring and insensible. Since there are far fewer women there now, I must presume that some couples, with a delicacy you would hardly suspect them capable of, have departed, no doubt to conjoin in some privacy. It almost makes one feel affection for them in their sweet bashfulness, don’t you agree? Rosanna’s opponent seems to me to be flagging, and Lord Wyverne, in so far as one can judge, appears to be a little bored. It might not be much longer.’ He must have seen that she was chilled, for he said in a quite different tone, ‘You could come closer, and let me hold you. You have gooseflesh on your arms.’
‘I do,’ she said, stepping into his embrace, torn between a strong desire to be there and a certain wariness, ‘but I must warnyou, I am not feeling in the least amorous. I was thinking, in fact, that I might never again.’
‘I am not either,’ he said ruefully, slipping his arms about her and resting his masked cheek against her hair with a deep sigh. ‘I have observed before that whenever I am offered the dubious privilege of an insight into the workings of Lord Wyverne’s mind – and today has really been nothing but that, all day long – it drives away all lustful thoughts from me for a good long while.’
‘You don’t want to be anything like him,’ she murmured against the dark fabric that covered his broad chest. She was warm in his arms, and felt safe, though she knew this was pure illusion. ‘It’s perfectly understandable. I’ve noticed that you rarely describe him as your father, and I do not think I have heard your grandmother refer to him as her son above once or twice.’
‘Can you say that you are surprised?’
‘Of course not, but I don’t think you need to worry. Surely if you’d shared his… his proclivities, they’d have revealed themselves by now. The very fact that you worry you might be like him shows that you can’t possibly be. You must know that. I’m sure he was a vicious child, and a vicious youth, to grow into such a man.’
‘Yes, I believe he was, though the stories I have heard of his doings have come from others, from the servants mostly. It pains my grandmother to speak of such things, and she has tried to shelter me as best she could.’ He fell silent, and they stood, holding each other in the near darkness, taking precious comfort each from the other.
After a little while he said, ‘I know I’m not like him. My closest friend – he lives nearby, he is the rector of the local parish – tells me so, if I ever begin to doubt it. I do not share Wyverne’s twisted appetites, and I have no desire to treat any woman as a possession. I’ve had one lover in my life, and Iwas faithful to her all the while we remained together, and would have remained so if she had stayed with me, though I understood why she left. Two lovers, Clemence, if I may count you. And I would like to count you.’
She was about to answer him, to reveal some of her own tightly held secrets, but a sudden noise startled them. A dishevelled man in a wine-stained bedsheet toga came lurching out of the Marble Saloon, his arm about the waist of a woman draped in exiguous white silk. They were both unmasked. ‘You’ve missed all the fun, wench!’ he confided, breathing heady fumes into Sophie’s face, making her grateful once again for the protection of the mask. ‘Lady W has been declared the winner. A worthy successor to Messalina. Twenty-six, to the other’s twenty-four! What a woman! Makes you proud to be British, don’t it? Only she’s passed out now, and no wonder. The whore is mad as fire! Going off to set a few records of our own now, aren’t we, my girl?’ he said, squeezing his companion’s bottom.
She didn’t appear to be anywhere near as inebriated as he was. ‘We’ll see,’ she said with a bold wink at Sophie. ‘Stranger things have happened, I suppose. Come on – I’ll have to get you upstairs first, and you might find you prefer a nice nap by the time we get there. Come along!’
They staggered away together, and Sophie pulled from Lord Drake’s embrace. Whatever she had been about to say was gone forever. It was probably for the best, she thought. ‘I must go and see if it’s time.’
‘Be careful!’ he said, his voice deep and intense.
‘I will. I always am.’
‘You weren’t last night…’
She didn’t answer him. She was already gone.
20
When Sophie cautiously re-entered the great marble chamber, she found it almost deserted. There were indeed, as Drake had warned her, drunken men and women slumped insensible here and there – some of them had chosen to claim the vacant bed and lay there snoring in a jumble of limbs. But Lord Wyverne’s throne stood empty, and his wife had been abandoned after all her exertions and lay sprawled in her tawdry finery, limbs spread across the crumpled sheets. If he had shown concern for Rosanna, even to the extent of having her carried away, it would have complicated matters; she’d have had to follow to her chamber, and would have done so despite the risk. But there was no need.
Sophie had a small bag, part of her luggage, and she’d secreted it earlier in the evening, before the party started, under one of the tables. She fetched it out now. She’d always known that this would be the hardest part – to strip the jewels from the unconscious woman’s body. She was a pickpocket; she had the lightest of touches. But this was something altogether new, and undeniably distasteful as well as difficult. It would have been quite impossible, she realised now, to undertake such a daring,intimate theft if her victim had merely been asleep rather than insensible from drink and physically exhausted besides. She had been, she now admitted, insanely confident in her plan – and yet it seemed fate had played into her hands. She must not fail to take advantage of it.
She started at her ankles – that seemed easiest, and taking the Stella from about her neck, that would be most difficult. Slowly, slowly… She’d even practised for this; there was no manner of fastening that she couldn’t undo, even while blindfolded. Her deft fingers found the clasp of the first diamond bracelet, and in a moment she had dropped it into her waiting bag. She breathed a little easier. She could do this.
The jewels had marked Lady Wyverne’s skin in places. The candles had burned low and were guttering; some of them had gone out completely – there had been no servants here to trim or to extinguish them properly – but the full moon was high above, its powerful beams streaming down through the oculus and illuminating the extraordinary scene below. It was in truth more light than Sophie needed or wanted, and not only because of any lingering fastidiousness she might feel at being confronted with the stark reality of her task rather than being able to perform it in cloaking shadows. It was not just that; if anyone should enter the room now she would be utterly undone, exposed as guilty, but she would not let the terrible risk deter her. Not when she had come so far.
She was moving faster now, more secure in her skill and in the depth of her victim’s stupor. Bauble after bauble slid easily into her bag. Both Rosanna’s ankles were now bare, and she turned her attention to the woman’s wrists, working swiftly. The rings, she thought, would be quite hard to remove, and she’d leave them till last. Till after the Stella.
It was time now, after so much preparation, to do what she had really come here to do. The chain had a clasp – acurious thing, not quite like any other fastener she had come across before or since. She remembered… good God – a sudden image flashed into her mind, shocking in its clarity. It was so powerfully affecting that it made her pause for a moment to recover her composure before she dared to continue. She remembered her mother setting the jewel about her own neck, on the one occasion in her life when she had worn it, when she’d gone to the costume ball and danced with Lord Drake. Before their lives had come crashing down around their ears. She’d been so excited that evening to be trusted with the family’s most precious treasure. Mama had fussed with it for what seemed like forever, careful not to disturb Clemence’s piled-up hair, and then stepped back to see the effect it had made. The Duchess had smiled rather mistily and told her she was beautiful. Her father had agreed when he had seen her later… they’d both kissed her, and her brother Louis had come down in his nightgown and little cap to see her, and had teased her over how grand she looked, how unlike herself…
Enough. She took a deep breath, unfastened the clasp, and with infinite care drew the chain from about the neck of this woman who had no right to wear it. The jewel was heavy in her hand, and warm from where it had lain. She shuddered involuntarily, and slipped it into the bag with all the rest. If she could hold her nerve a little longer, she would soon be done, and then she could go, and do all the other things she needed to before this interminable evening could be over.
Lady Wyverne stirred in her sleep and made a fretful sound. Her head turned restlessly, her eyelids flickering. Clemence – Sophie – froze like a statue, wondering if there was the least chance of getting away undetected if Rosanna woke now and found herself robbed. Realistically, she knew there wasn’t. She’d be seen, there’d be a scream to shatter the stillness of the night, others would wake, she’d be caught… But no. The naked womanturned her head uneasily upon the pillow again and then sighed, and slipped back into a more peaceful slumber.
Hands shaking, Sophie unwound a long diamond chain from her hair. It was agonisingly difficult, repeatedly catching and tangling, and she was pushing her luck too far now, she knew. She ought to stop. But some demon of perverse determination drove her on, and now she turned to the rings, easing one and then another very slowly from Rosanna’s fingers till her hands were as bare as the rest of her body.
