As Queen Cleopatra, she was wearing a plain white linen gown and gold girdle about her slender hips; it revealed more of her shapely assets, which was considered by some to be quite shocking and indecent and would have sent her widower father into a fit of apoplexy had she presented herself for his inspection before they had left Mellin House for the ball.
Matthew Golding was a cripple and unable to attend, but such a grand occasion as this served as a marriage market for all unmarried girls. Facing financial ruin and desperate to find husbands for his two daughters, he had insisted on them attending under the chaperonage of his good friend and neighbour, Mrs Crossland, who had two daughters of her own.
As the evening wore on Rowena became bored and she found that the sparkle with which the evening had begun had evaporated. Her head beneath the heavy black fringed wig felt hot and was beginning to ache, and she was sure the kohl around her eyes beneath the mask was beginning to run in the heat.
‘I feel so hot I shall have to slip out for some air,’ she told Jane, her seventeen-year-old sister, who was dressed as a Grecian lady.
Jane was as different to Rowena in temperament and looks as it was possible to be. Pretty and small featured, Jane’s pale skin was flushed with a lovely rosy glow, her green eyes sparkling. Her whole body was surging enchantingly towards Edward Tennant, who was watching her from across the hall. Rowena intercepted the look that passed between them and her face became thoughtful. Edward was Lord Tennant’s youngest son, a handsome youth, and he had danced two dances with Jane. She looked away. Their father would be well pleased if a match could be made between them.
‘If you must. Is Edward not handsome, Rowena?’ Jane said breathlessly, her eyes shining in his direction.
Rowena’s look was keen and Jane turned eagerly to her, her radiance shining from her eyes, her expression that of all those who had found love and longed to speak of it.’
‘He is quite handsome, I do agree, and he seems much taken with you, Jane.’
‘I do hope so. Who’s that with him?’
Rowena’s eyes were drawn to the tall, indolent figure standing beside Edward. He met her gaze with the cool expression gentlemen always seemed to assume when presented with an attractive woman, but there was a leap of pleasure in his eyes behind his silver mask, which she knew was answered in hers. His identity was a mystery to her, but his manner bespoke the privileged class, of generations of men of superiority and honour. Averting her gaze, she turned to her sister.
‘I’m going outside. If you must know, this wretched wig is making my head hot and unbearable. I have to take it off, else I swear I shall scream.’
‘Then go to the ladies’ retiring room. I’ll come with you if you like. Mrs Crossland was most insistent that we were not to leave the house.’
‘I really do need to go outside for a bit. I’ll be back before Mrs Crossland notices I’ve gone.’
Jane watched her go. No one, except perhaps their father, had ever defied Rowena’s dangerous spirit, nor had the courage to try to curb it. Through a succession of governesses had been employed to educate her, not one had had the resolution that was needed to discipline Rowena Golding.
She had a hot temper, had Rowena, which could flare in a second from mere annoyance to a rage from which one would flee in alarm. Without a mother and their father a cripple, Rowena had taken on the mantle of responsibility for her family, which gave her a degree of freedom not experienced by many of her peers. In her spare moments her laugh rang frequently across the hills around Falmouth, where she had grown up as free and wild as an unbroken pony.
Rowena ventured deeper into the gardens, smiling with amusement on hearing whispers and giggles and the odd shriek of laughter coming from the undergrowth—the gardens were full of dark places and dark deeds. Eventually she found herself in an enclosed, secluded arbour, where she tore off her mask and wig and shook her thick, dark brown tresses free.
A moment later she heard a sound. She looked towards it, her senses suddenly alert. Something or someone was watching her. Her heart began to race, urging her to turn and run back the way she had come. But then a man, tall, long-limbed, dark and mysterious in the shifting shadows, stepped into the arbour. It was the man she had seen with Edward Tennant.
She let out her breath, unaware until that moment that she had been holding it. ‘You startled me.’
‘Do not be alarmed. I mean you no harm.’
His voice was unusually deep and rich in timbre. She could not make out his face, which was hidden by a silver mask and the shadow of a wide-brimmed hat on which a black plume curled with a flourish.
He drew close, his eyes gleaming through the slits in his mask, and as she was about to step back, murmured, ‘Dear God! Never have I seen the like!’ Lifting his gaze from the gentle curve of her slender hips encased in the gold girdle, he stared into the vibrant beauty of her face. How did she get away with it?
On his arrival he had been a figure passing among the throng, a mysteriously ominous keen-eyed observer of the masquerade. This young lady had not escaped his notice—in fact, she had stood out like a black sheep in a field of white. He had watched her, with a toss of her head and a wide smile on her carmine lips, almost with wild abandon dance first with one gentleman and then another, just two who vied with many for her attention and to make her laugh—too loud at times, causing heads to turn to see what Matthew Golding’s undisciplined daughter was up to now.
Like everyone else he had been unable to tear his eyes from her, and he had observed the leap of interest in her own when she had met his gaze. He had thought her outrageous, a young woman who evidently believed she was above every consideration, every rule, every discipline that life and society dictated. He had been amused and strangely stirred by her appearance, as any man with a drop of red blood in his veins would be.
Recovering quickly from her initial discomfort, Rowena stiffened, clutching her mask and wig in both hands at her waist. ‘What are you staring at?’ she retorted rudely, her eyes dark and dangerous.
‘At you, lady,’ he answered softly. Deliberately his gaze raked over her from top to toe. ‘Did no one think to tell you that your costume is outrageous for a young marriageable lady, who with behaviour such as this will never attract the attention of a husband?’
‘And how do you know I don’t already have a husband?’
‘Had you a husband, I doubt he would allow his wife so much freedom and abandon with every one of your partners.’
She scowled, feeling a certain amount of discomfort at the way he was looking at her. ‘Would you please stop looking at me like that? I find it most annoying.’
‘If you don’t want to be looked at then you shouldn’t make a spectacle of what no sane man can resist. You can’t expect men to be unaffected by the sights you display so audaciously.’ Again he let his gaze wander speculatively over her.
Rowena was angry now without really knowing why. Perhaps it was because his words had a ring of truth to them. She had started to regret her choice of costume the moment she had stepped on to the dance floor and every face she saw was secretly smiling, covertly sneering. Suddenly she had felt stark naked. What she had done was childishly defiant and she wished she had chosen something more demure to wear.
‘What right have you to lecture me on what I should wear? It is nobody’s business and certainly none of yours, whoever you are.’ The hot flash of temper exploded quite visibly. Her nostrils flared and her soft pink mouth had thinned into a hard line, straining to find the words to punish him.
‘Then if anything should happen to you, you will have no one to blame but yourself.’
‘Why, you rude, insolent…’ Her mouth gaped in amazement and the scathing words with which she intended to berate him stuck in her throat. It wasn’t often she was lost for words, as she was now as she confronted this presumptuous stranger.