A Regency Duchess's Awakening. Amanda McCabe

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      “It’s like something from the Arabian Nights,” Emily murmured. “It can’t be quite real.”

      “I can’t believe we’re here,” said Jane, tugging the folds of her Greek-goddess costume into place. “However did you persuade your parents to let you come?”

      “Oh, it was not difficult.” After her name was linked with the duke’s in the Great Park Incident, as she had begun to think of it, they would have allowed her anything. Her mother had even given Emily one of her old gowns, an elaborate creation of green satin and ruffled gold lace Lady Moreby had worn in her own first Season, to serve as a costume. With the gown, a ravenblack wig of high piled curls, and a gold silk mask, she really did feel like someone else.

      Unfortunately, she had also borrowed her mother’s old high-heeled shoes, and she was sure she would topple from them at any moment.

      “Well, however you accomplished it, I’m very glad you did,” said Jane. “We’re going to have such fun tonight! Oh, look at that man over there, the one dressed as a Crusader. Who do you suppose it is? He has such deliciously broad shoulders.”

      Emily laughed, but in her own mind she decided the Crusader’s shoulders were not nearly as attractive as the duke’s. He was so very strong, the way he snatched up the child so swiftly, as if she weighed nothing at all. The way he caught her, Emily, when she fell from the stairs, and held her so easily. So close to him …

      She suddenly stumbled on a loose patch of gravel, her heel sinking into the pathway. Cursing her silly, distracted state, she yanked her shoe free and hurried after Jane and her sister Mrs Barnes as they entered the Grand Quadrangle.

      The Quadrangle was the centrepiece of Vauxhall. Lying in the Grove between the parallel Great Walk and South Walk, it was enclosed by four classical colonnades holding the supper boxes and surrounding yet more walkways and trees. The orchestra played in the centre, lilting dance music as the guests arrived and mingled, greeting friends, looking for new flirtations, trying to guess who was who behind the masks.

      Yet more of those glittering lamps were draped in the trees and lit up the colonnades, so bright it could have been midday. Magical creatures in the garb of kings and damsels, Greek gods and goddesses, shepherds and shepherdesses, and mysterious figures in dark cloaks slid in and out of the light and shadows. Emily felt dizzy with it, as if she was caught in an ever-shifting kaleidoscope.

      She stumbled again, and someone caught her arm before she could fall. Dazed, she glanced up to see it was one of those cloaked men. A black satin mask covered most of his face, giving him a slightly sinister air, like a demon dropped suddenly into the bright fairy revel.

      She instinctively drew back from his touch, frightened. But then she glimpsed the eyes behind that mask. Surely only one man could have eyes of that certain shade of blue.

      “Thank you, sir,” she whispered. She willed him to speak. If she heard his voice, she would know for sure it was the duke. But he merely nodded and moved on, disappearing into the crowd.

      “Hurry up or you’ll fall behind!” Jane called.

      Emily shook away the strange spell the gardens and the blue-eyed man cast on her and followed Jane into their box. It was a small space, open on one side so they could watch the concert, made even closer by the long table and close press of chairs. Mrs Barnes’s friends waited for them, and to judge from the clutter of empty wine bottles on the table they had already begun the revels. They called out uproarious greetings, waving their goblets in welcome.

      As Emily squeezed on to an empty seat between Jane and a lady dressed as a voluminous Queen Elizabeth, she caught a glimpse of herself in the looking glass hung on the back wall. At first she leaped up again, sure she was about to sit on some unfortunate woman, but then she laughed. It was her, that black-haired lady in green satin. She had forgotten she wasn’t entirely herself tonight.

      If that was really the Duke of Manning, surely he did not know her either. If only she could find him again, and try to find out for certain.

      “Here, Emily, have some arrack punch,” Jane said as she pressed a glass into Emily’s hand. “Vauxhall is quite famous for it.”

      “As they are famous for the paucity of their refreshments? “ Emily murmured as she watched the footmen in Vauxhall livery deliver their supper. Platters of tiny, bony chickens, paper-thin ham and little wedges of pale cheese.

      “It’s better than Almack’s, I dare say,” Jane said, drinking deeply of the arrack.

      Emily sipped at hers—and coughed as her eyes watered. “It’s—quite good.”

      And it certainly was, once she got past that first sharp kick. Spicy and sweet at the same time. She drank some more and nibbled at a little dry chicken as she studied the passing crowd. There were so many men in black cloaks, all of them too far away for her to see the colour of their eyes. She would never find him again! She should have followed him when she had the chance.

      So distracted was she by her search that she hardly noticed when she finished her punch and her glass was refilled. She felt quite pleasantly warm and tingling, and everything seemed so very funny. Even the chicken was suddenly tastier.

      The orchestra launched into the opening bars of an aria, and the famous Signora Rastrelli swept on to the stage amid a storm of applause. She held out her arms and curtsied deeply, a tall, bosomy woman in purple velvet and vast white plumes towering over her bright red hair.

      She launched into her first song, an old lament of lost love, and everyone fell silent to listen.

      “‘I pass all my hours in a shady old grove, but I love not the day when I see not my love! Oh then, ‘tis oh then that I think there’s no Hell like loving too well …”’

      Emily rested her chin in her hand, watching Signora Rastrelli in something like envy. What would it be like to look like that, sing like that? To feel things so very deeply? To have such great passion? It would surely be quite uncomfortable, but also perhaps rather marvellous.

      “‘Where I once had been happy and she had been kind, when I see the print left of her foot in the green, and imagine the pleasures may yet come again …’”

      But I love not the day when I see not my love. Emily had never felt like that at all. She loved her family, of course, as exasperating as they could be. She wanted to please them and help them, and she knew they loved her, too, and wanted what was best for her in her life. She loved the women she taught and her work at Mrs Goddard’s, it was very fulfilling. She loved trying to do the right thing, trying to do her best and help people. But she had never felt like that, swept away by sweet emotions so much larger and greater than herself.

      And she probably never would.

      Her eyes suddenly itched, her throat tightening as if she would cry. She stared down into her nearly empty glass, blinking furiously to hold those foolish tears back.

      Not that anyone would notice if she did start crying. Everyone else was sobbing at the song’s passion. But Emily felt like the walls of the box were closing in on her. The press and heat of the other people was too much, and she could not breathe.

      “I’ll be back in a moment, Jane,” she whispered to her friend.

      Jane glanced at her from behind her white feathered mask. “Are you all right, Emily? Your cheeks СКАЧАТЬ