He sat down and began to tug on his boots. There were plenty of bored married women who came to these soirees. His stranger had told him she had once been married, that she was a widow, but that could have been a lie to hide what she currently was. She could be the wife of a friend.
Not a wife of one of his duke club. He didn’t believe that for a moment. All of them were deeply in love with their husbands, and he doubted any were lacking in pleasure in their lives.
But he had friends outside that circle. Could one of their wives have strayed only to be confronted with the horror of what she’d done once she saw his face?
That was certainly one possibility. One he found himself sick about, for the idea that he would betray a friend mixed with the concept that this mystery woman who had so set him on his heels was not…free was terrible, indeed.
However, it wasn’t the only possibility.
He got to his feet and shoved his shirt back into the waist of his trousers before he found his tangled waistcoat and jacket.
It could be she was a servant. Someone who knew his face because she had brought him tea or served him roast. The fact that he had touched her could get her sacked, at least in her mind. Or put into a compromising position where she did not get to choose her own path.
He wrinkled his brow at his reflection. That didn’t seem correct, though. The lady he’d bedded had worn a fine gown and her hair had been done like she’d had help with it. Her hands were soft—she clearly didn’t do work with them.
Still, it was a possibility.
He supposed the third option was that the woman had simply been shocked that his identity was revealed. She’d wanted an anonymous encounter and he had violated the terms of that agreement when he removed his mask for adjustment. Now she couldn’t so easily push aside what they had done. Forget it, as perhaps she wished to.
He looked at his own reflection in the same mirror she had so recently examined herself in. Whatever the reason for her quick exit, he couldn’t help but feel concern for her well-being. And he found himself smiling at his reflection.
He had intended to tell the woman that this was a wonderful night, but one he should not repeat. But now…
Well, now it would be ungentlemanly not to approach her if he saw her again.
“To reassure her,” he said to his reflection. “That’s all.”
He turned away from the liar in the mirror and made his way from the room. As he exited, a chambermaid stepped up. “Are you finished with the room, sir?”
Matthew looked off in the direction where his lady had run. Then he nodded. “For tonight, yes.”
She wrinkled her brow at the strange turn of phrase, but her questioning faded when he tossed her a coin and left her there.
He would come back. Even if he’d been telling himself he shouldn’t. He would come back and he would find the lady again. Just one more time. And then it would be over.
That was how it had to be.
Isabel shook as sobs racked her body. The carriage driver was unaware, of course, and drove on, turning down this street and that, knocking her around and making her very aware of the delicious soreness of her body that had been caused byhim.
She lifted her head and wiped at the tears on her cheeks. She knew him. The magical stranger had been transformed in an instant from a gentle lover to a man she’d been told to fear for three long years. To hate. To suspect.
“How could he be Matthew Cornwallis?” she asked herself out loud. “How could he be the Duke of Tyndale?”
The tears returned and she flopped down on the carriage seat as she let them flow. Life was too cruel. It was so punishing. She had gone to the Donville Masquerade for anonymous thrills. Things to think about as she furtively touched herself in her lonely bed. Things to recall once she was married off to yet another man who would have no interest in her.
A real lover was never meant to be a part of that. Certainly not a lover who turned out to be the greatest enemy of her family.
She flashed to his mouth on her, to the gentle coaxing of deepest pleasures that she hadn’t known she could feel. Her body shuddered at just the memory, and she shoved it aside.
“No!” she snapped at herself.
She could not look fondly on that night. It was wrong to do so. At the very least Tyndale had once been her late cousin’s fiancé! That made what she’d done bad enough. But that her uncle believed him to be a killer?
“It’s too much,” she murmured as anxiety rose in her chest. “Too much.”
The carriage pulled around behind her uncle’s home as she had instructed and the hack driver came down to open the door for her. She handed him money and he looked her up and down. “You’ve been a naughty girl,” he said, his tone lewd.
She glared at him, trying to behave as if his words didn’t rattle her in an already rattling situation. “Mind your own affairs,” she bit out, and then stepped up to the gate.
