what would help, but there seemed little point. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t be able to do it. He couldn’t introduce her to anyone in this crowd of elites, couldn’t make her feel confident when he had no idea what he was doing. And he damned well couldn’t ask her to dance.
Even in a suit of shining armor, he wasn’t fit to be her hero.
“I would do this for you if I could,” he said. “But I can’t.”
“I know.”
”You won’t convince your aunt you’re circulating in society if you spend the night hiding in the bushes.”
“I’m frustrated with myself, believe me. A masquerade is supposed to be a chance to put on a different face, isn’t it? An opportunity to be someone else for a few hours. Yet I can’t seem to manage it. I’m still me, beneath the mask.”
“I know what you mean.” Gabe was still himself beneath the armor, too. An interloper among the aristocrats. Unwelcome. Inadequate. “We are who we are, I suppose.”
“We are who we are,” she agreed.
Gabe despised the defeated note in her voice. He liked who she was, beneath the mask. And when he was in her company, he almost liked who he was, too. The idea that anyone would overlook her made him vaguely furious.
“You don’t have to dance.” He gestured clumsily with a metal-plated arm. “Strike up a conversation with someone. Anyone.”
“I do see someone I know.” She lifted on tiptoe and craned her neck. “That man over there. He’s a distant cousin.”
“The one dressed as a Russian prince?”
“The one who actually is a Russian prince.”
Of course he was. As if Gabe needed one more reminder of the vast gulf between their stations. “Go on, then.”
She hesitated.
He creaked sideways, moving closer. “The hedgehog was ages ago. Everyone will have forgotten it.”
She tensed. “I’m not so certain.”
“Why, Lady Penelope Campion. Is that truly you?”
Penny winced. Of all the people she could bump into at her first true social foray in years, it would be the Irving twins.
“My dear Lady Penelope.” Thomasina took Penny’s hands in hers and squeezed. “How long has it been?”
Not long enough.
Tansy and Thomasina Irving had been the bane of her life at finishing school. Unlike some of the other girls, they were never cruel outright—they would never risk making an enemy of an earl’s daughter. However, they never missed an opportunity to needle her, and since there were two of them, they pricked from both sides.
Tonight, they were dressed as peacocks. They each wore a gown of shimmering teal-blue satin, with matching gloves and slippers. Fan-shaped arrays of peacock feathers sprouted from their posteriors.
“Why, we haven’t seen you since your debut at—” Tansy conferred with her sister. “Almack’s, wasn’t it?”
“I can’t say I recall,” Thomasina answered blithely. Falsely. “It doesn’t matter. What’s wonderful is that you’re here now.”
Penny knew they were baiting her, and she felt helpless to challenge them. With Gabriel, she could be tart and witty, but with these girls she was straight back to her sixteenth summer. All the old feelings rose to the fore. Not because these girls were to blame for the humiliation at her debut, but she couldn’t uncouple them from that time in her life. The years when she’d tried so hard to be good, to be quiet, to curl herself into a tight, impenetrable ball and go unnoticed.
Instead of going unnoticed, she’d made herself a spectacle, mowing down the crowd at Almack’s.
“Won’t you introduce us to your friend?” Thomasina swept an unsubtly flirtatious glance up Gabriel’s armored figure. “What a fine figure you must strike at the Round Table.”
“At any table.” Tansy giggled.
Penny seethed. “It wouldn’t be a masquerade if I gave him away, now would it?”
“I suppose we’ll have to tease it out of him,” Thomasina said. Was it Penny’s imagination, or did her gaze linger on his codpiece?
Get your eyes off him, you vulture.
She chastened herself for entertaining a thought so mean. It was unkind to vultures.
“But you should be dancing, Lady Penelope,” Tansy said. “Our brother is here. I’m certain he’d stand up with you.”
“That’s kind of you, but I don’t wish to dance this evening.”
“What a shame.” Thomasina smiled. “How is that hedgehog of yours? Not still with us, I suppose.”
“Actually, she is. Going on ten years now.”
“By now, I’d wager she’s in good company. You must have a houseful of dear little waifs.”
Tansy latched on to her sister’s arm. “Oh, Tommy. Remember the frog?”
As the sisters laughed, Penny wanted to inch backward until she disappeared into the shrubbery.
“What a sweet thing you were,” said Thomasina. “Always so fond of God’s lesser creatures. What’s the latest beast in your collection, I wonder?”
“Me.” Metal clanged as Gabriel flipped the helmet’s visor. “I’m her latest beast.”
The Irving sisters choked on their laughter, then swallowed it hard.
He took a clanking step forward, towering over them. “Let me tell you, Lady Penelope has her hands full. I’m vicious. Untamed. I won’t come to heel.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice to a growl. “And I bite.”
He turned, and—confronted with the wall of hedges—stormed through it like the Ottomans breaching the walls of Tyre. Once he’d cleared a path with his armored body, he extended a gauntlet, inviting Penny to follow.
She put her gloved hand in his shining one.
Rather than leading her through, he pulled her to him, slid his hand to her backside, and lifted her off her feet, keeping her slippers free of the trampled shrubs.
Her beast in shining armor.
As he carried her through the hedge, she waved farewell to the bug-eyed Irving sisters. “It’s been lovely seeing you.”
Once he’d toted her a short distance from the pleasure garden, he set her down. After several moments of increasingly comic difficulty, he yanked the helmet off his head and chucked it aside with a curse.
Penny went to retrieve the helmet.
“Leave
