and the eighteen years since he’d last seen her. Dressed in muted greys and violets, colours he was informed signalled the period of half-mourning, Lady Francesca Somersham still cut a striking figure. She was older than most of the debutantes, but having been married and widowed in the years since Ben had last seen her that was hardly surprising. Despite being almost thirty she still turned heads and Ben saw two gentlemen start in her direction as soon as they noticed her entrance into the ballroom.
This was what he’d been waiting for the past three weeks, but now she was here in the same room as him he was unsure of what he wanted next.
‘Enough,’ he murmured to himself. He wasn’t the lowly son of a steward any more. Over the years since he’d finished his sentence Ben had worked hard and taken risks, most of which had paid off, meaning he was now a very successful Australian landowner. There was no need to skulk about watching from a distance. Today he would talk to the woman he had been dreaming about for the past eighteen years despite his best efforts to forget her.
Quickly, he weaved through the crowds, ignoring the appraising looks from the masked debutantes. Fitzgerald was correct, these flimsy masks didn’t do much to conceal the face, but he was largely unknown and as such was a man of interest.
‘Mr Crawford,’ a pretty young woman murmured in his ear as he moved past her. ‘We really must find some time to spend together.’
Ben grimaced, but quickly turned it into a smile. Since arriving in London he had made the acquaintance of a number of women, mostly widows or those with husbands happy to turn a blind eye. He’d danced with them, talked to them, but never anything more despite their sometimes quite obvious offering of themselves. Ben might have a reputation as a man the ladies could not resist, but nothing was going to jeopardise his getting close to Lady Somersham, especially not a meaningless fling.
‘I await that moment with anticipation,’ he said, planting a fleeting kiss on the young lady’s hand, but moving on quickly, using the press of people to his advantage and weaving a path away from Mrs Templeton’s inviting eyes.
Suddenly she was in front of him and for a moment Ben felt the breath being sucked out of his lungs. She was beautiful. Gone was the gangly-legged, freckle-nosed girl he’d played with throughout his childhood and in her place was a woman of poise and grace. Ben took a moment to study her hair, sleek and tamed into a complicated bun at the back of her head. When they were children Francesca’s hair had always been an uncontrollable mess, frizzy and wild and more often than not flying behind her as she did something dangerous at great speed. He felt a sharp stab of desire deep inside him and fought to keep himself under control.
‘Lady Somersham,’ Ben said, pausing a couple of feet in front of her and bowing formally. He might have been brought up the son of a steward, but he was a great imitator and just a couple of days in London society had led to him being able to replicate the gestures and customs perfectly.
Francesca turned to him and, even though nearly every other part of her had changed, she fixed the same mischievous blue eyes on him that he remembered from childhood.
‘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
