Caroline wouldn’t like it above half, but if she was going to the pleasure gardens to keep an eye on her friend, which was undoubtedly her reason for accepting the ridiculous invitation, then James and Tristan would attend in order to keep an eye onher.
“Do you think she will be angry?” Tristan asked when they arrived at Vauxhall and climbed from James’s carriage. Flames flickered on torches lining the pathway while people milled about, lacking inhibitions. Loud, grating laughter rent the night air, and the overall tone was more abrasive than the usualtonparty. Tristan found he disliked it immensely.
“How are we to find them in this crush?” James asked.
“Bengard would have paid for a supper box, I’m certain of it. Shall we make our way toward them?”
James agreed, so they wound their way through the groups, passing the maze and crossing a small bridge over a pond. A woman bumped Tristan’s shoulder roughly, sending him into James. She didn’t apologize, only laughed harder as she was led away with her group.
“My sister shouldn’t be here,” James said.
“She is a strong woman.” Tristan scanned the boxes circling the dance floor. “Miss Fielding, however, seems a more sensitive female.”
“Sensitive? Kitty?” James laughed. “A more lively lady I do not know. She is made for a place such as this.”
Tristan disagreed. He saw youth and naïvety when hewatched Miss Fielding, and he feared this evening would be a shock for her, though she was bound to pretend otherwise. Caroline was different, though. She did not need to be coddled.
“There.” James pointed across the floor. “Is that not Kitty?”
Tristan had to shift to peer through the moving partners. The torches threw light over the crowd, but not enough to see easily.
“The fox,” James explained. “She has Kitty’s shape, and I believe it looks like her mouth.”
A woman in a copper gown with long sleeves and a fox mask was dancing with a dog. Her smile was familiar, but James would certainly be able to recognize her more easily than Tristan did. They moved about the floor in a waltz not unlike the one they had danced in Almack’s, only this one had a peculiar discomfiture about it. When they completed the dance, the fox drew her hand through the dog’s sleeve and giggled her way toward a box in the half-circled building lining the perimeter of the dance floor. It looked like something exotic Tristan would have seen on the Continent during his Grand Tour, a tall red building with private, arched tables inset, like a curved row of booths.
“Aha,” James said when the couple slid into a box where two women waited, one of whom was shrouded in a red domino—the color Caroline was meant to wear. “ItisKitty. Though I won’t have to tell you I don’t like all this waiting around.”
Tristan agreed. “Then we can ask them to dance.”
James glanced at him. “And give ourselves away?”
“No. You can disguise your voice, can you not? I shall do the same.”
“I won’t ask my sister. Devilish odd, that would be.”
“You ask Kitty. I’ll ask your sister.”
When the plan was decided, they made their way along the perimeter of the dance floor and stopped at the box holding their friends. Bengard leaned over Kitty in a predatorial way, though she did not seem to notice.
James cleared his throat. “I’ve never seen a more fetching costume. Might I have this dance, Miss Fox?”
Kitty looked at him sharply. Her gaze drifted to Bengard, whose eyes had narrowed.
“Only one dance,” James repeated.
“I’m not sure…” Kitty looked at Bengard, then at Caroline.
But Caroline was looking at Tristan, a bend in her brow. He bowed to her. “I would be honored to dance with you, Miss Scarlet.”
“I should like that,” she said.
Had he not disguised his voice well enough? She had accepted at once, and he a stranger, no less. He would like to think she had recognized him, because the alternative—that she would willingly dance with a man she didn’t know—was troublesome.
“Ifyouwill accept, then I suppose no harm can come of it,” Kitty said.
That wasn’t true in the least. Most people at Vauxhall did much to harm their reputations, which was the appeal of the masks.
James stepped away to give the women room to exit and leaned close, lowering his voice. “I dislike how quickly they accepted.”
