Elliot also had Sloane’s dinner waiting for him. Afterwards his valet helped him dress for the evening, until all he need do was wait for the Cowdlin carriage.
He paced the Aubusson carpet of his drawing room, his footsteps so muffled by its nap he could hear the ticking of the mantel clock. His father’s voice kept ringing in his head. To mask it, he started to hum a tune.
Come live with me and be my love…
His butler announced that the carriage had arrived, and Sloane gathered his hat and gloves. The night was warm, a harbinger of summer nights to come.
He walked up to the carriage and greeted Lord and Lady Cowdlin and Hannah through its open window. ‘Would you like me to collect Miss Hart?’
‘She is not coming,’ said Lady Hannah.
Her mother added, ‘She sent a note today, begging off.’
Sloane frowned as he climbed in, suddenly dreading the long night ahead. ‘She is not ill, I hope?’
‘Not at all,’ Lady Cowdlin assured him.
He worried that something had happened with the courtesan school, while he was wandering the streets of Mayfair feeling sorry for himself. He frowned.
Hannah, who was in very high spirits, did not notice. She could barely sit still. ‘Poor Morgana!’ she said. ‘I hope she did not feel she would be out of place among my friends. Indeed, she has little to say to them. You have been kind to engage her, Mr Sloane.’
‘I find Miss Hart’s company quite pleasant,’ he said, tersely, offended at her characterisation of Morgana.
Hannah responded with a knowing expression, as if she understood he was merely being civil. Sloane gave it up. To say anything else might arouse suspicions that more went on than the Cowdlins should ever know about Morgana.
Hannah’s giddiness wore very thin by the time the carriage rolled over the new Vauxhall bridge.
‘I do wish we were to arrive by boat. It would be vastly more romantic,’ sighed Hannah.
‘Not good for my gout,’ grumbled her father.
Hannah continued to prattle on about everything being ‘exciting’ or ‘marvellous’ and how she could not wait to tell Athenia Poltrop this or that. She barely took heed of the spectacle that greeted them when they crossed through the garden’s entrance.
Thousands of lamps were strung throughout the tall elms and bushes, like stars come down to earth. Arches and colonnades and porticos made it appear as if ancient Greece had come alive in the stars, though the music of the orchestra sounded modern in their ears.
Sloane had always liked the fantasy that was Vauxhall. Nothing was as it seemed here, illusion was its only reality. Here a man could wear a mask and even the glittering lamps could not reveal whether he be a duke or the duke’s coachman. Here rogues and pickpockets shared the walks with frolicking vicars and extravagant nabobs. Indeed, a lady might walk by her maid without knowing her. She might dance next to her footman or the man who delivered coal to her Mayfair townhouse. It was impossible to feel one did not belong in this place.
But Hannah hurried them down the Grand Walk, past the Prince’s Pavilion and the theatre, past the colonnade, heading for the circle of supper boxes near the fountain.
Sloane wondered if Morgana would have rushed down the Grand Walk so quickly. Or would she have become distracted by the sights and all the people? Would she have tried to guess who the people were and to what sort of life they would return when the night was over?
‘I declare, this place is filled with riff-raff,’ Lady Cowdlin sniffed, apparently as oblivious to the splendour as her daughter.
‘Pay them no mind, dear,’ Lord Cowdlin advised. His lordship, however, paid particular mind to a group of women as pretty as flowers, all masked and escorted by two gentlemen. Sloane suspected Cowdlin would search out this very group as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
The supper box Elliot had arranged for them was in a spot with a view of the fountain, its water sparkling like tiny gold coins in the park’s illumination. The music from the orchestra rose and fell, carried in and out on the wind.
Lord and Lady Poltrop were already seated in the box, sipping some of the good vintage wine Sloane—or rather Elliot—had ordered for the occasion. Athenia jumped up when she saw Hannah, and the two young ladies embraced each other as if it had been an age since they’d been together when it had probably been as recent as that very afternoon.
‘No one else has arrived,’Athenia said to Hannah. ‘Indeed, I feared to be the only one here. Can you think how humiliating? Your brother will come, will he not?’
‘I wonder if he and the others were directed to the wrong box.’ Hannah looked about her with a worried expression. She reached out a hand towards Sloane. ‘Mr Sloane, do take us to search for the others! Perhaps they are on the other side. Oh, do take us.’
Lord Cowdlin was too busy whispering something to Poltrop to take heed of Hannah’s request, but Lady Cowdlin magnanimously gave her permission. ‘Do not venture into the Dark Walk, however,’ she warned in a jocular voice.
As if Sloane would be so foolish as to take two silly girls into an area of the park more suited to the sort of rakish behaviour he had forsworn. He’d rather they quickly discover the missing members of their party so he could get some relief from the chatter.
The two young ladies walked arm in arm, keeping up an intense conversation and paying Sloane little mind. He walked a step behind them, close enough to prevent any mischief befalling them. They circled the area where men and women danced beneath the musicians’balcony. Though both girls craned their necks to search the crowd, they spent as much time whispering to each other. Sloane, out of a desperate need for respite from their company, looked around for Hannah’s ‘particular’ friends, the ones who surrounded her at every society function.
He did not see them, but he spied the colourful group of ladies Lord Cowdlin had so admired. Not surprisingly, they had seated themselves in a box where they could be easily noticed.
He guided Hannah and Athenia past them, but one of the prettily dressed females cried, ‘Well, now. Aren’t you the handsome gent.’
Another giggled, but a third said a sharp, ‘Hush.’
Sloane whirled around, but other strollers obscured his view. Lady Hannah and her friend kept walking, and Sloane had to push his way through the crowd to catch up to them.
He looked over his shoulder again and a gap in the crowd afforded him a good look at the group.
One of the young ladies was raven-haired, another a redhead, the others golden-haired and mousy brown. But it was not these his eyes were riveted upon. It was the tall, dark-haired woman who stood in the midst of them.
Morgana.
Chapter Twelve
How could he have not instantly known them at first glance? Before the crowd closed the gap again, he’d even recognised Penny and Miss Moore. He’d bet one of the gentlemen with them was Penny’s favourite inamorato, that idiot Duprey. The identity of the other gentleman put a worried crease between his eyes. Few of Penny’s masculine acquaintances would be men Sloane thought fit for Morgana’s company.
He put his hand on Hannah’s elbow. ‘Ladies, let us go back to the supper box. Your friends may have arrived in our absence.’
‘Oh, let us do that,’ Hannah replied enthusiastically.
They all walked at a brisker pace: Hannah, to find her friends; Sloane, to find a way to get back to Morgana.
Several