‘You have me at a disadvantage,’ she said after studying him for a few seconds.
‘Isn’t that the point of masquerade balls?’ Ben asked. ‘To conjure an atmosphere of mystery and allow you to creep into dark corners with an unknown admirer.’
‘Perhaps to conjure an atmosphere of mystery...’ Lady Somersham conceded. ‘But I’m sure my mother always told me to keep away from strange men and dark corners.’
‘And do you always take your mother’s advice?’
There was that smile, just a hint of the impish grin he remembered from childhood.
‘She likes to think I do.’
‘Lady Somersham,’ a deep voice boomed, causing heads to turn in their direction even half a ballroom away. This was the overweight, red-faced man who was destined to be Francesca’s next husband if rumours were to be believed.
‘You’re not meant to tell anyone who I am, Lord Huntley,’ Francesca said, turning to face the man. She smiled at him, too, but Ben could tell this was forced, a mere upturning of the corners of her mouth with no glimmer of pleasure in her eyes.
‘Nonsense. Everyone knows who everyone else is. Damn ridiculous idea if you ask me, all this prancing around in masks.’
Ben noted Lord Huntley had not deigned to don a mask of his own, leaving his red-rimmed and wrinkled eyes unadorned. Surely a mask would be of benefit to this man, even if it were purely to draw one’s eyes away from his generous jowls.
‘I think it is rather fun,’ Lady Somersham said and Ben had to wonder if she was just saying it to be perverse. Lord Huntley made him want to run in the opposite direction and he never had the awful prospect of having to one day be intimate with the man hanging over him.
‘Where’s your father?’ Lord Huntley barked, looking around as if Lord Pottersdown might be hiding behind a pot plant or marble statue.
‘I’m not sure,’ Francesca said, her eyes involuntarily flicking towards the doors that led into the ballroom. The gaming tables, no doubt. These past few weeks Ben had learned a lot about Francesca’s life just by listening to gossip. The ballrooms and dinner parties were rife with it and, although there was a lot of exaggeration and a few things that were clearly completely fabricated, you could glean some very interesting things if you filtered the dross out.
‘Losing more of the family fortune,’ Lord Huntley snorted derisively. He’d come to the same conclusion, it would seem.
Ben saw Francesca’s cheeks redden under the delicate rim of the mask and for an instant got the urge to manhandle Lord Huntley outside and send him on his way for embarrassing her. Then he remembered that he wasn’t her protector, he wasn’t anything to her, just a man who had once been a boy she’d known. A man she might not even remember.
‘Wait here,’ Lord Huntley commanded. ‘I’ll go fetch him. We need to pin down the agreement for this marriage.’
‘I’m still in mourning...’ Francesca said, but Lord Huntley had already departed, heading through the ballroom with his rotund belly leading the way. Not once had he even acknowledged Ben’s presence.
* * *
‘I’m sorry,’ Francesca said, trying to fight the tears that were building in her eyes. ‘That was incredibly rude, you shouldn’t have had to see that.’
Really she was apologising for Lord Huntley, the oaf of a man who would one day soon be her husband. The thought made her feel peculiarly queasy.
Trying to focus on the man in front of her, she couldn’t help but notice how he was the opposite of Lord Huntley, being tall and broad shouldered. She could tell there wasn’t a single ounce of fat on him even through the thick material of his jacket. His skin didn’t have that sickly grey tone to it, instead there was an unusual but healthy tan on his cheeks as if he spent a large portion of his day outdoors.
‘The best way to avoid discussing your marriage to him tonight is to not be here when he returns with your father,’ the masked stranger said nonchalantly. Feeling her eyes widen, Francesca tried not to splutter. Most people would politely ignore the exchange they had just witnessed, but it seemed the man in front of her wasn’t about to do that. ‘Come on,’ he said, a gleam in his eye that Francesca found vaguely familiar.
Offering her his arm, he flashed her a rather seductive smile as she hesitated. What she should do was wait here for her father and the man who was angling to become her future husband and listen while they discussed her like a horse for sale. Not that she had any illusions that her presence would make any difference to the outcome. She had absolutely no say in whom she married or when, both her father and Lord Huntley had made that perfectly clear.
Feeling rebellious, she took the man’s arm and allowed him to lead her through the ballroom away from the direction Lord Huntley had disappeared in.
‘You must tell me your name,’ she said, peeking up at him from under a carefully curled ringlet that framed her face. Her hair was difficult to tame, but her current maid was an expert at fighting the curly locks into submission and making her look presentable. As long as she didn’t go out in the rain.
‘Ben,’ he offered.
‘I can’t call you Ben.’
He shrugged, smiled at her and said, ‘That’s all you’re getting. This is a night of mystery after all.’
‘Well, Ben,’ she said, leaning in so no one would overhear her being quite so familiar with a stranger, ‘now you’ve removed me from having to discuss my future with Lord Huntley, what do you propose?’ She felt reckless, giddy. Francesca knew it was because she was near to hysteria, her emotions running high at the thought of having her whole future decided for her and a marriage to another man she did not like.
‘We could go somewhere a little more private,’ he suggested, that glint in his eyes again. Francesca trawled back through her memory, trying to place the man. They must have been introduced before, otherwise why was she finding him quite so peculiarly familiar? It was a sensation rather than anything else, a feeling rooted deep inside that she knew the man escorting her around the ballroom.
‘I don’t think that’s wise,’ she said. Years earlier she might have been tempted. He was a good-looking man and she was desperate for a dash of romance, of adventure. But she wasn’t a giddy debutante any longer, far from it. She was a widow in her late twenties, and that meant she’d had plenty of time to realise that liaisons with strange men in dark corners never ended well for anyone, no matter how tempting it might be.
She glanced at the man beside her and saw he wasn’t surprised by her answer. Francesca knew many widows had a looser sense of what was acceptable behaviour and what wasn’t, with many of them engaging in discreet affairs, but she wasn’t one of them. Her father had made it clear when she’d been forced to go back and live with her parents that she would keep her reputation pristine and pure so no potential suitors would be put off. It had worked, she thought glumly, she wasn’t even out of her mourning period for her first husband, Lord Somersham, and she was practically betrothed to Lord Huntley.
‘Then dance with me,’ he said, pausing before changing direction to the dance floor.
‘I’m not meant to dance,’ she said, gesturing to her half-mourning clothes.
‘Surely this world is more fun if you do one or two things you’re not supposed to.’
She felt herself hesitate. She would love to dance, especially with this man by her side. He was strong and young and had a vitality about him that neither her late husband or Lord Huntley had ever exuded. Imagining what it would be like to be swept around the ballroom in his strong arms, she felt herself nodding.
Trying to close her mind off to all the whispers and disapproval that would be coming her way, she allowed her companion to lead her into position. Francesca loved to dance, she’d loved to dance since she was small and had often