“Ah!” cried madame. “Then, you ’ave know,mon cher? Nurse, she take my twins up ze stairs!”
“Twins!” gasped Gideon. “Jupiter! I thought I was making it up!”
“Wicked, wicked man!” said Naomi happily, her last shadow vanishing.
Madame Favre exclaimed in French, “So this beautiful creature, she must be your lady of the garden, and you are married to her! Ah, it is good, my dear, dear, Gideon!”
Much later that evening, when the festivities had finally ceased and the celebrants had all gone their separate ways, Naomi reminded her husband of madame’s remarks. “There were,” she called to him sternly, “altogether too many ‘dears!’ ’Tis quite obvious to me, Captain Rossiter, that you and Madame enjoyed a very agreeable relationship.”
Sitting up in bed, his eyes glued to the door of the dressing room, Gideon agreed provocatively, “Exceeding agreeable. With regard to Mignon, especially. I am very fond of children. Speaking of which… are you ever coming in?”
“Oh! How naughty you are,” she said, dimpling as she dabbed Mysterious Moonlight here and there. “I wonder that you dare say such things when you deliberately allowed me to think that all those horrid rumours were true! Why, sirrah?”
“Because you were so willing to believe the worst of me, of course.”
“Your pride was hurt, was it?” she said indignantly, standing and blowing out the dressing room candle. “I think you are far more full of pride than ever I was, Captain Rossiter!”
“I grant you, ’tis a dreadful vice,” he admitted with a grin. “I promise never to indulge it a—” And he stopped, because Naomi had come in at last.
Her very décolleté nightgown was a drift of salmon pink lace and net that allowed a tantalizing glimpse of the loveliness it veiled. Her glorious hair rippled in a glowing mass about her creamy shoulders, and as she stood there, her eyes were tender but very shy.
“Oh… egad,” he whispered. “And I am telling another lie! ’Fore heaven, I must be the proudest man alive!” He reached out to her. “Come to me, my love—my life.”
“Do you truly welcome a—a guttersnipe to your bed?” she asked, walking slowly and demurely across the room.
“I told you once,” he said breathlessly, “that I must be time’s greatest fool.”
Naomi looked into his adoring face and ran to him. “The dearest, bravest, most gallant fool who ever…”
Captain Gideon Rossiter pinched out the candle.
EPILOGUE
It was very quiet in the darkened room, and although the air was wreathed with tobacco smoke, it held the clammy chill of a place where sunlight never shines. The single candlestick, set on a very old credenza against one wall, threw a dim light on the table and the five men seated there. They were as so many statues: silent, waiting, all clad in dark cloak and hood, and each face, although barely visible, covered by a mask.
At last, one of them muttered irritably, “The Squire is late.”
The man to his right shrugged. “And likely vexed.”
Across the table, a man drawled, “’Tis all made right, and we achieved what was planned.”
The smoke stirred, giving the only sign that the door had opened.
A sixth man entered. Tall, and clad exactly as the others, he moved soundlessly to the table, and at once the rest came to their feet.
“To the contrary, Two,” he argued in a thin, colourless voice. “We achieved only part of what was planned, and suffered a considerable setback.” His head turned, the eyes glittering through the slots in the mask as they rested upon one after another of those present. “I do not care for setbacks, and each of us is allowed but one mistake.”
A silence.
Then, the man he had addressed as Two said, “We are six again, Squire.”
“Happily so. And must proceed.” The Squire raised one gloved hand in which was a small figure glittering with diamonds. “Despite our failure, we have achieved much, and all done with the authorities suspecting nought.”
“As yet,” muttered a tall, bulky figure.
The Squire chuckled. “Just so, Four. By the time they suspect, ’twill be too late. I am told young Rossiter tried to warn one of our splendid generals, and was writ off as a likely candidate for Bedlam.”
A huskily built man asked in a growl of a voice, “Will it serve?”
