Tristan watched the woman walk away—or rather, flee—before the midnight unmasking. As her figure disappeared into the crowd, he was left with an odd sense of disappointment and… Lon?—
He dismissed that notion before it finished forming and wondered what might have happened had she stayed.
“There you are!”
Tristan turned to see Moira making her way toward him through the glittering assembly, her mask still in place, and her tartan shawl draped elegantly over her shoulders.
“How are you certain you have the correct gentleman, Moira?” he asked as he took a step toward her.
His foot caught on something. He looked down and felt his breath catch.
There, glinting against the polished floor, lay the amethyst pendant his masked partner had been wearing. The delicate chain must have broken. How had he not noticed?
Moira was nearly upon him. Without thinking, Tristan stepped forward, positioning himself over the pendant so as not to draw attention to it.
“Oh, I would know you from a hundred miles away, Tristan,” Moira said with a warm smile as she reached him. She leaned closer, her eyes full of mischief behind her elaborate mask. “I saw you waltzing with a woman. Who is she?”
Tristan shook his head. “She never stayed long enough for me to know.”
“That’s a shame.” Moira’s expression softened with genuine sympathy. “You seemed rather taken with her.”
Before Tristan could respond, the clock began to toll the hour, and the first deep chime of midnight rang through the ballroom. Chaos erupted as guests reached for their masks. Moira turned away to watch the spectacle, and Tristan seized his chance. While everyone else was distracted by the unmasking, he bent down and retrieved the pendant, closing his fingers tightly around it.
He straightened and scanned the room, searching the sea of newly revealed faces. Perhaps she had changed her mind. Perhaps she had lingered, had removed her mask with the others.
But she was nowhere to be found.
Tristan slipped the pendant into his coat pocket and made his excuses to Moira. Within the quarter hour, he had left the ball entirely.
When he returned to Evermere Hall, the house was silent and dark. He went straight to his study, lit a single lamp, and sat behind his desk. For a long moment, he simply held the pendant in his palm, studying it.
Light flared along the hairline crack in the gem, making it somehow more beautiful despite the flaw. That was a sort of beauty he could never hope for, and with a sigh, he opened the top drawer of his desk and placed the pendant inside, covering it with papers and correspondence. Just for now, he told himself. Just until he could determine the proper course of action.
Henry’s voice slowly drew Tristan back to the present, and he glanced at the drawer.
The pendant was the only reminder he had of the one bright moment in an otherwise bleak half-year, a dance with a mysterious woman who had vanished like smoke.
But Henry, for all his perceptiveness, did not notice this small betraying loss of attention. Nor did he remark on the way Tristan's gaze occasionally drifted toward the door through which Lady Lavinia had departed—the same door through which she would return at four o'clock for their scheduled meeting.
Time enough, Tristan thought, to rebuild the walls her presence had somehow managed to breach.
CHAPTER 6
"That will be all," Lavinia said to the hired hack driver as he helped her alight. She slipped him a coin whilst calculating what remained with the swift mental arithmetic that had become second nature this past year.
Taking a deep breath, she let herself into the manor, and as she did, her gaze traveled over the faded wallpaper, lingering on the rectangular patches of darker color where paintings had once hung—sold one by one to satisfy creditors.
"Lavinia!" Frances's excited voice echoed through the hall as she appeared in the doorway to the drawing room, her face alight with curiosity. She rushed forward, clasping Lavinia's hands in her own. "You've returned at last! I've been watching for you this age. How was it? Is the Duke's daughter lovely? Did you like Evermere Hall? Was it as grand as they say?"
Lavinia felt the tension in her shoulders ease at her sister's enthusiasm. Frances's ability to find joy in their circumstancesnever ceased to amaze her. "So many questions, and I've barely crossed the threshold," she said, summoning a smile. "At least allow me to remove my bonnet."
"Oh! Yes, of course." Frances reached up to help with the pins, her movements eager but gentle. "But you must tell me everything. I've been positively dying of curiosity all day."
Lavinia surrendered her bonnet and pelisse to her sister's care, grateful for this small moment of sisterly affection. "Lady Sophia is... reserved," she answered carefully. "Shy, perhaps, but there is kindness in her. She reminds me of you at her age, in some ways."
"Does she? How wonderful!" Frances beamed, hanging the garments on their rather sparse hall tree. "Poor thing, growing up without a mother. No wonder she's shy. Did she warm to you?"
"Somewhat," Lavinia remembered the sound of Sophia's laughter, brief but genuine. "It will take time, but I believe we shall get on well enough."
