Nathaniel evicted them from the chaise with no more than a glare. Bess waved an apology at their retreating backs, but her feet hurt too much to quibble about manners. She sank gratefully onto the chaise and fanned at the back of her overheated neck where her hair had straggled loose from its pins to cling damply to her skin.
Glancing up, Bess found Nathaniel standing over her, scanning the ballroom as though searching out potential threats. The stance of his long legs and the set of his wide shoulders were casually possessive, protective in a way that made Bess’s insides melt with heat.
He’d found her a secluded corner, she realized with some relief. An ornately carved wooden screen stood at the end of the chaise, painted with a peeling scene of a hunt on horseback, complete with baying hounds and scampering fox.
A large potted palm stood at the other side of the chaise, too spindly to provide any real screening but bulky enough that the wildly cavorting dancers flowed past it without stopping.
She found she could actually breathe here, for a moment, and she savored the slightly cooler air away from the crush of the ballroom floor.
Evidently deeming the situation acceptable, Nathaniel said, “I will find you something to drink. Stay here.”
And then he was gone, cutting a swath through the crowd like an axe cleaving through a tree trunk, leaving Bess blinking bemusedly after him.
She sat quietly for a long moment, enjoying the hint of a breeze from a nearby open casement window, even if it did smell of the river. Another minute passed. She shifted on the chaise and rolled her shoulders, wishing she could put her aching feet up but feeling strongly that would be considered impolite.
Though why she should concern herself with propriety at this gathering, she didn’t know, Bess reflected.
A heavily rouged, giggling woman costumed as a peacock in a feathered, beaked mask and a teal satin gown caught Bess’s eye. The lady peacock bent flirtatiously over to invite an enthusiastic Mephistopheles in head-to-toe scarlet and horns to swat her bottom.
Mercy. Bess fanned at her neck some more. Still, even in such dissolute company, it felt too awkward to lounge at her ease here on this chaise.
But perched as she was, she had nothing to lean against. Bess lifted her left arm to the scrolled back of the chaise, leaning a bit, but immediately regretted it. Who designed this ridiculous piece of furniture, she wondered crossly.
She thought about getting up and moving to a normal chair, but paused at the thought of Nathaniel’s reaction when he returned to the chaise and couldn’t find her.
Bess did not wish to be the cause of a deranged duke tearing this dilapidated manor house down to its foundation in his search for her.
She had just crossed her ankles and straightened her posture, resigning herself to the torture of the chaise, when a man detached himself from the crowd of party guests and approached her.
She watched him come, alert but not alarmed. Nathaniel would return any moment, and until then, she felt herself perfectly equal to handling a drunken gentleman in an overly elaborate, and probably very aspirational, Zeus costume.
“I saw you from afar, beauteous rose,” the lanky Zeus proclaimed, with the overloud tones of the inebriated.
“Good evening,” Bess returned placidly.
Zeus’s eyes glittered behind his hammered gold mask. He seemed young, to Bess. Untried, but with the preening overconfidence of wealth and privilege. He made a very pretty leg, only wobbling a bit, and held out his hand. “It would give me great pleasure if you would do me the honor of dancing with me.”
“That is very gracious of you, but I’m afraid I must excuse myself. I’m very tired, you see, and my companion has gone off in search of refreshments. He will be back shortly.”
Something ugly tightened the corners of Zeus’s thin lips. “One dance. While you wait for your…companion. Surely you will not deny me.”
“I must,” Bess said firmly. She did not like the way he sneered the word companion, as though he meant something else entirely, something much more unsavory. “Though I thank you for the thought.”
He stepped closer, his toga brushing Bess’s dancing slippers. He hadn’t been shaved well, and the sparse, sandy-colored stubble gave him an unkempt appearance. “What I think, is that you ought to be on your knees thanking me for condescending to notice you, you ill-bred bitch.”
The menace in his voice propelled Bess to her feet. She worked in a busy coaching inn; she had done her time behind the bar, dealing with guests who might’ve had a few too many. She’d been propositioned by travelers on their way through Little Kissington to Bath, who thought the company of the bar wench ought to come free with their pint of ale. And she’d never had too much trouble turning those propositions aside with a wink and friendly smile.
But there was something about the intensity of this man’s regard, and how quickly he’d moved to loom over her, cutting off her easiest escape, that unsettled Bess.
“You should leave,” she told him, in the plainest language she could muster. “You are not behaving as a gentleman, and my companion will not like it when he returns.”
“A gentleman,” he sneered, cheeks mottling under the gold mask. “As though a whore like you has any claim on gentlemanly behavior.”
He leaned in close, the smell of whiskey on his breath strong enough to make Bess’s eyes water, and said the first thing tonight that truly frightened her.
“I know all about you. Elizabeth Pickford.”
The breath went out of her in a sudden wheeze. “How do you know my name?” she blurted, an instant before realizing she should’ve pretended she’d never heard of Elizabeth Pickford.
