on how to handle this foreign and precarious moment.
Her mother rose abruptly, alleviating the uncomfortable tension between them. “I aided in the suppressing of your feelings until you were rendered emotionless...cold. I did not see that until this incident.” She sighed and the rigid set to her shoulders sagged slightly. “I’m sorry, daughter. And I will right that wrong tonight.” She strode to the box and pulled off the cover.
Eleanor slid off the bed and peered into the opened parcel. Nestled within was a length of folded black silk.
“It’s a domino and mask.” The Countess gracefully scooped a black silk mask from the box. “There’s a wig as well. To protect your identity.”
To cover her hair. Of course. Anyone seeing the garish splash of red would immediately know Eleanor’s identity. The color had come from her father and it certainly had not offered Eleanor any favors. Not like her mother’s green eyes, which Eleanor was grateful to have inherited.
Eleanor stared down at the pile of black silk and her heartbeat gave a little trip. “Where am I to go that I should need a disguise?”
“I’ve paid a courtesan to teach you what I cannot.”
Eleanor jerked her gaze to her mother in absolute horror.
“Oh, she wasn’t always a courtesan,” the Countess replied. “She’d once been a sweet vicar’s daughter, which is how she is known to me. Difficult times do harsh things to women who have no other options.” She pressed her lips together in a reverent pause. “The woman is discreet, and she will teach you to be more genuine, more receptive. Less like me. I don’t want you to have a cold marriage or an austere life, in which every detail is perpetually calculated.” The mask trembled in her mother’s loose hold. “It’s been so long since I’ve allowed myself to soften I fear I would be a poor tutor.”
She pushed the mask into Eleanor’s hands.
Her fingers closed around the silk without thought. “A courtesan?” she gasped. “I’ll be ruined. You’ll be ruined.”
Her mother leveled her with a look. “Your father is dead, your brother is missing, I am getting old, and you are already two and twenty. The Season is halfway over and your one prospect has found another woman. You do know that if Evander is gone three more years he’ll be declared dead and your cousin will inherit everything?”
Eleanor’s thoughts flinched from the mention of her brother. It ached too much to think of his absence. He had left four years ago, to seek the adventure his father, the previous Earl of Westix, had once relished. In a world of turmoil and war, his prolonged absence gave them all cause for concern. Not that they had relinquished hope. Not yet, at least. But that did not mean they did not worry.
Her mother was correct in her harsh assessment. Eleanor’s prospects were bleak.
The Countess was also correct regarding Eleanor’s cousin, Leopold. He was a rapacious young popinjay, with an eye on Evander’s title and any wealth he could squander on eccentric clothing and weighted gambling tables. Eleanor would get little from him before he managed to consume it all.
“Perhaps next Season will be better,” Eleanor said. “I know I’m already nearly on the shelf, but—”
“There isn’t money for another Season.” Her mother pressed a hand to the flat of her stomach, just below her breasts, and drew in a staying breath. “Your father spent it traipsing around the world. Evander didn’t leave to follow in his path—he left to repair it. To save us from financial ruin.”
Eleanor maintained her composure—a near impossible feat when the world seemed to have tipped out from underneath her. “I didn’t know...”
“I wouldn’t have expected you to. It’s not information I would have willingly shared. At least your father had the forethought to establish a trust in my name after we were wed. Which is why you’ve had the Seasons you’ve had so far.”
The confident tilt of her mother’s head lowered a fraction of an inch. Weariness etched lines on her face, and for the first time in Eleanor’s life her mother appeared truly old.
Their situation was indeed dire.
Eleanor unfurled her fingers and regarded the mask crumpled against her damp palm.
“This may be your only chance, Eleanor,” the Countess said. “Learn how to be less cold, how to appear more welcoming. Dispel the rumors and rise above the label they’ve placed upon you. Be in charge of your own destiny.”
Her mother touched her face with icy fingertips. Eleanor did not pull away, but instead met the anxiety in her mother’s stare.
The Countess’s brow creased. “I want a better life for you.”
Eleanor’s heart pounded very fast. Surely her cheeks were red with the effort of it? “Do you trust her, Mother?”
The Countess of Westix nodded resolutely. “I do.”
“Then so shall I.” A tremor of fear threatened to clamber up Eleanor’s spine, but she willed it away. “When do I start?”
The Countess turned to the window, where the sky beyond had grown dark. “Tonight.”
Charles Pemberton was the new Duke of Somersville. The news was unwelcome, for it meant that in the six months it had taken him to return to London his father had died.
He stood by the desk in the library within the massive structure of Somersville House, his father’s letter clutched limply between his fingertips.
It did not feel right to sit at the desk, when for so many decades it had been the previous Duke of Somersville who had resided behind the great expanse of polished mahogany. The entire room had been off-limits to Charles for the majority of his life, and it left everything within him feeling too hard, too desolately foreign, to offer any comfort.
Charles regarded the letter once more. Not the one which had taken months to reach him where he had been exploring in a remote location on the outskirts of Egypt. That one had informed him that he must return home immediately. No, he held the letter which reminded him of a promise made—a promise woefully unfulfilled.
Rain pattered on the windowpanes outside, filling the room with an empty, bleak drumming. It was fitting, really, as it mirrored the torrent raging through him. His father had been the biggest part of his life—the reason Charles had sought to travel from the first. To witness the wonders of the world which had made his father so much larger than life in his eyes. To make his father proud of him for the first time in Charles’s life.
And now the Duke was dead.
Ridiculous that the notion still had not thoroughly soaked into Charles’s mind. Or perhaps it was his own guilt which prevented it. After all, he’d vowed when he’d left for his Grand Tour that he’d seek out the Coeur de Feu—the renowned ruby stolen from a French collector in the mid-sixteen-hundreds. It was said to be the size of a man’s fist and to burn with a fire at its core—hence its name: the heart of fire.
It was the one artifact that had eluded his father, and therefore the one with which the previous
