The Masquerade Read Free

all noticed how oddly you have been behaving these past few days. Why, you have even lost your appetite and we all know how much you love to eat! What is worrying you, dear?”
    Lizzie wanted to smile at him, she did, but the expression simply would not form on her face. What could she say? Her infatuation with a young man who did not even know she existed had been amusing when she wasa child of ten. It had been the cause of raised eyebrows and some concern when she was a blossoming adolescent of thirteen. The following year, espying him in town with some beautiful noblewoman, Lizzie had realized how absurd her feelings were. Such an infatuation was no longer acceptable and Lizzie knew it, especially as she was being launched into society alongside her older sisters.
    But he would be there at the masque, because he was there every All Hallow’s Eve, as he was the earl’s heir. According to her older sisters, he was polite and charming to all of his family’s guests—and the object of a great deal of feminine pursuit and speculation. Every marriage-mad mother of the ton’s uppermost echelons foolishly hoped to somehow snag him for their own daughter, never mind that the world knew he would marry for duty as his family wished. Lizzie had only to close her eyes and Tyrell de Warenne’s dark, noble image filled her mind, his gaze piercing and intense.
    The thought of seeing him at the ball tomorrow made it impossible for her to breathe. Absurdly, her heart raced. Absurdly, she could see him sweeping a courtly bow and taking her hand…. and suddenly she was on his white charger with him and they were galloping off into the night.
    Lizzie began to smile, realized she was daydreaming and she pinched herself. Even though she was going to the ball costumed as Maid Marian—Robin Hood was one of her favorite tales—he was not going to notice her. But she didn’t want to be noticed, not really. She didn’t want him to look at her with a complete lack of interest, as her sister Anna’s gentleman callers seemed to do. She would stand by the wall with the other wallflowers and discreetly watch him as he flirted and danced. Then, when she had returned to her own home and her own bed, shewould dream about his every look and gesture, his every word and even his touch.
    He halted the charger abruptly, wrapping his arms around her, his breath feathering her cheek….
    Lizzie’s pulse accelerated and her body ached in that terribly insistent way, a strange yearning she had come to accept but barely understand.
    “Lizzie?” Papa interrupted her brooding.
    She bit her lip, eyes flying open, and somehow smiled at him. “I wish,” she began impulsively, and she stopped.
    “What is it that you wish, my dear?”
    She was far closer to Papa than she was to Mama, perhaps because, like her, he was an avid reader and a bit of a dreamer. On too many cold, rainy days to count, Lizzie and her father could be found in the parlor, curled up in big chairs before the hearth, each engrossed in a book. “I wish I could be beautiful, like Anna,” she heard herself confess in a whisper. “Just once…just for tomorrow night.”
    His eyes widened. “But you’re so pretty!” he exclaimed. “You have the most striking gray eyes!”
    Lizzie smiled slightly at him, aware that he could offer no other possible praise. And then she heard Mama racing down the stairs, calling her name. “Lizzie!”
    Lizzie and Papa exchanged a look, understanding Mama’s strident tone. Something was amiss, and Mama wanted Lizzie to fix it. Lizzie hated conflict of any kind, and more often than not, played peacemaker in the family. Now she stood, quite certain she knew what had happened.
    Mama sailed into the parlor, almost at a run. Her cheeks were flushed and she was wearing an apron over her striped day gown. Like Lizzie, she had strawberry-blond hair, but hers was cut fashionably short and curly in the style known as La Victime, while Lizzie’s long,unruly hair