And in less than one hour she was. They all agreed upon it. If anything, Kenna thought Yvonne very nearly blossomed when flanked by her two swarthy and disreputable escorts. Her rose satin gown had once belonged to Lord Dunne’s grandmother and though its wide panniers and off the shoulder neckline made it sadly out of fashion, it was perfect for a masquerade. It recalled another time when Dunnelly Manor had been host to gay parties and was equal to this occasion. The same trunk had yielded matching slippers and splendid lace petticoats, but the only wig they could find had been home for a family of moths for decades. Undaunted, Kenna had arranged most of Yvonne’s splendid hair high on her head. Three thick sausage curls dangled elegantly at the nape of her neck and every strand was dusted liberally with white powder and sprinkled with glitter. Kenna had no beauty patch but she improvised by painting a tiny black mark on one of Yvonne’s high cheekbones and the half mask that Nick found set it off beautifully in addition to hiding most of Yvonne’s nose. Her bare throat was adorned with a string of matched pearls that now belonged to Kenna but had been Lady Catherine’s. Yvonne fretted a bit over the pearls, but when no one else thought Lord Dunne would recognize the necklace, she let the matter drop.
“You look like a princess,” Kenna exclaimed happily, well pleased with her work. “Rhys. Nicky. You will keep an eye on her, won’t you? I shouldn’t want her accosted by some rake.”
“Other than Rhys,” Nick said, reaching around Yvonne to give his friend a good-natured poke.
“Especially Rhys. Or you, Nicholas. I vow I have heard Father remark that you are the true libertine and Rhys is but a foil for your games.” Kenna frowned, puzzled briefly by the odd exchange of glances between her brother and Rhys. She told herself she had imagined Nick’s guilty start and Rhys’s quickly veiled warning. It was difficult to discern their meaning when their faces were nearly covered by their black masks and shadowed by their hats. “Yvonne, you shan’t have a moment’s worry with these highwaymen to guard you,” she said, shrugging off the moment’s unease. “They make most excellent brigands, don’t you think?”
Yvonne nodded happily and held out her hands to Kenna. “Thank you for this, dear Kenna! I don’t know how I will repay you.”
“Just remember everything. I’ll be waiting up and I want to hear it all.”
“Won’t you watch from the stairs?”
Kenna shook her head and saw Rhys’s eyes grow skeptical beneath his mask. She wrinkled her unremarkable nose at him. “No. I think it best if I simply stay in my room.”
“I hardly know if such wisdom becomes you, sprite, but I shall think on it,” Rhys said, winking broadly at Nick. Before Kenna could object to the odious nickname, he ushered Nick and Yvonne into the hall. Their animated laughter nearly silenced the door slamming behind them.
“Horrid man!” Kenna announced to her empty bedchamber as she leaned against the door. “He should have stayed on the Continent. He and Napoleon deserve one another.” But a moment later, when she was stoking the fire in her hearth, Kenna was smiling. It truly was lovely to have Rhys at Dunnelly again.
Kenna fully expected Yvonne to return within the hour so she seated herself by the hearth and read while she waited.The History of Tom Joneswas not precisely the sort of book Lord Dunne relished his daughter reading, which is why he had placed it on one of the library shelves at exactly eye level. Knowing Kenna as he did, he correctly assumed she would be interested in literature that was out of her reach, surmising it to be forbidden. But Kenna, finding the reading on the upper shelves to be rather dull stuff, though terribly edifying, eventually saw through her father’s game and began to take books from the shelf that she could reach. These books were also terribly edifying but the nature of the information had changed.
It did not take her long to become immersed in Tom Jones’s misadventures and when she glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantel she was surprised to see more than an hour and a half had passed. Curiosity ate at her insides for another ten minutes while she tried to imagine what Yvonne was doing. Was she dancing with Nicholas? Or had her brother passed her along to some other young buck? Kenna chided herself for thinking ill of Nick but it could not change the truth. He and Rhys, for all that they looked alike, were not so similar under the skin. Nick was irrepressible and on occasion irresponsible. Rhys was so—she searched for the right word—wise. Kenna had the feeling that Rhys, whether he joined a scatter-brained escapade or initiated one, was always watchful, naturally cautious. She admitted that Rhys invariably made her feel protected, no matter what the consequences. No doubt he was with Yvonne and she would come to no harm in his care. That thought satisfied Kenna for another five minutes, then she could not tolerate the not knowing another second.
Coming to a decision, Kenna tossed aside her book. She rummaged through her mahogany chiffonier, pulling out the drawers and never quite pushing them back in when she didn’t find what she wanted. A waterfall of lingerie covered the front of the chiffonier by the time Kenna found the clothing that would transform her. In a matter of minutes, she was no longer a young lady, but a rogue every bit the equal of the two highwaymen who had preceded her to the masquerade.
Granted, she told herself, critically surveying her image in the cheval glass, it was not a particularly original idea, and certainly it was a far cry from the Cleopatra costume she had discussed with Yvonne prior to the tower room incident, but it served her purpose well. The more she looked at her reflection the more it seemed reasonable that not even Yvonne would recognize her. The lower half of her face was buried beneath a black wool scarf and the black cocked hat, similar to the ones Nick and Rhys sported, cast her eyes in a shadow. She wore a black velvet jacket from an old riding habit over a white linen nightshirt that had once been her father’s. The hem of the shirt was tucked into a pair of dark breeches which were in turn tucked into a pair of riding boots. The breeches and jacket were a bit snug and the boots pinched her feet but Kenna congratulated herself for not throwing any of them away. The outfit she now wore had been an almost forgotten part of her wardrobe, relegated to the back of her drawers and her memory when she had vowed to give up riding hell-bent across the countryside. The clothes might have been resurrected sooner, for she had reconsidered her rash promise to her father the very next day, but Kenna found that her new riding habit was not as restrictive as she thought it would be. In no time at all she was riding again at a breakneck speed, and Lord Dunne had to be thankful his daughter had a very fine seat.
Behind the rough scarf Kenna smiled impishly as she considered what a lark it would be to steal Yvonne away from the care of her brother and Rhys. Tucking a loose strand of fiery red hair beneath her hat, she turned away from the mirror and sauntered out of her room.
Kenna told herself it was not lack of courage, but simply good sense, that made her choose the enclosed servants’ passageway rather than the main staircase. The deserted corridor served to reaffirm Kenna’s intentions. Considering the number of footmen, chambermaids, grooms, gamekeepers, gardeners, stable boys, coachmen, housemaids, cooks, and laundry maids employed at Dunnelly, she thought it a miracle of sorts her path did not cross that of one servant.
The section of the manor that was the domain of the servants was a veritable maze of rooms. Had Kenna not explored the warren when she was a child she could have been forgiven for thinking that all work at Dunnelly was accomplished by magic. There were rooms for pressing linen, polishing shoes, cleaning and sharpening knives, washing, drying, ironing, and folding. There were separate larders off the main kitchen for meat, game, and fish. There were two sculleries, one for the kitchen and one for the dairy, a pantry and a wine cellar.
Staying clear of the kitchen and wine cellar, a certain hub of activity, Kenna slipped from the hallway into the lamp room which she knew would be deserted, the lamps having been filled and trimmed earlier in the day. From there she entered the main hallway and walked briskly toward the strains of music in the ballroom, narrowly avoiding a collision with a running footman. Kenna nearly laughed as he hurried on his way, never looking up and never knowing that his single-minded determination to deliver a silver salver laden with crystal wine glasses had prevented her discovery yet again.
It was not difficult to become part of the squeeze of guests at the ballroom’s entrance. While searching the room for some sign of her father in the hope that she would then avoid him, Kenna mingled with an armored knight and his fair damsel, a red-caped devil, a Roman senator, and two of the four shepherdesses. Looking past the gold leaf medallion on the senator’s shoulder which held his toga in place, Kenna spied her father and sighed with relief. She wasn’t certain how much longer she could have looked at Squire Bitterpenney and maintained her composure. Really, she thought, he would have done better to hide his girth in something less revealing than a toga and sandals. Excusing herself from the squire’s side with a deeply mumbled apology, Kenna moved to the edge of the crowd circling the floor and watched her father take up the next dance with his wife.
Even if Kenna had not helped Lord Dunne decide upon his costume she would have been able to find him. Her father had a certain presence that made other people seem less significant when he was in the room. It was not simply his commanding height, which Kenna had inherited, nor his serene composure, which Kenna had not, that made his peers look at Robert Dunne with respect and perhaps a shade of envy. It was rumored that his lordship possessed the most uncommon sort of luck; that whatever came to his attention flourished beneath his regard. As a result, the gossips had it, Lord Dunne’s estates were free of debt, his lands were producing, his tenants and servants were loyal to a man, and the bills he sponsored in Parliament were passed nearly without a dissenting voice. The truth, Kenna knew, had nothing to do with luck, uncommon or otherwise, but lay in her father’s brilliance. If he had good fortune he was its own architect, a dedicated planner of his own happiness.
Kenna glanced about the crowd and saw there were those few who would begrudge her father his beautiful new wife, thinking it was unconscionable for one man to be so graced, but Kenna imagined there were also those who thought the lovely French émigré, Comtesse Victorine Dussault, was the one most smiled upon by Lady Luck.
Nowhere in the room was there a more handsome or romantic couple, Kenna thought proudly, if a trifle subjectively. Although her father had scoffed at Victorine’s suggestion that he should dress as a dashing Elizabethan privateer, he held up his hands in good-natured defeat when Kenna and Yvonne approved her plan. Now, in his blue velvet doublet and thigh-high boots, with his silver-handled sword at his side, he might have been Sir Francis Drake himself, escorting the lady of his choice on the deck of theGolden Hind.
Kenna tipped her hat a shade lower as she watched Victorine follow her father’s lead. In light of their youthful expressions, it hardly seemed possible that either of them had grown children. Victorine was innately graceful, poised, and confident on the dance floor, her steps neatly matching her husband’s so they appeared to be as one. Kenna was entranced by Victorine’s splendid elegance. Wearing a gown she had copied from a portrait in Dunnelly’s long gallery, she looked more Elizabethan than the ancestor who had worn the original. The stiff white ruff about her neck somehow made her skin seem porcelain and her honey hair more golden. The tapering waistline of the emerald dress drew in her tiny waist and the sleeves, billowing at the shoulders and tight at the elbow and wrist, accented her delicate slenderness. The gown was shot through with threads of gold and Victorine fairly shimmered as she went through the steps of the country dance.
Kenna did not remember her own mother, but she liked to think Lady Catherine had been as gracious and loving as Victorine. How could it be otherwise, she reasoned, else her father would not have proposed marriage to either. All things considered, and Kenna believed she had considered them all, she was very lucky to have a stepmother who was the antithesis of those portrayed in fairy tales.
Kenna blinked, startled when Victorine faltered in her steps. Then she saw her father’s eyes, teasing his wife in a way that Kenna was beginning to understand bespoke of intimate matters, and she turned away, unaccountably embarrassed by their actions.
“She’s quite something, isn’t she?”
Kenna pulled up sharply, belatedly realizing it was the devil speaking to her. She had nearly impaled herself on his trident. “What?” she stammered. “Oh, you mean Lady Dunne, Yes, she’s quite something. A diamond.”
“Indeed. Pursued her myself once,” the devil went on, leaning on his trident. “She would have none of me. A pity. For me, that is. Robert’s a damn lucky fellow.”
Eager to leave this particular conversation, Kenna made some unintelligible reply beneath her scarf. Unfortunately for her the devil took it as an assent.
“Of course she’s lucky herself. It couldn’t have been easy for her, seeing her first husband lose his head to Madame Guillotine as well as her father and mother. Bloodthirsty race, the French. It’s a miracle she was able to flee the country. I understand she and her daughter were nearly victims of the blade.”
