Page 28 of My Rogue, My Ruin
“I do not swoon,” Brynn said, even as she eyed a pair of nearby doors. They were propped open to a balcony, a gentle breeze wafting inside. Swooning was for ninnies and artful girls, eager for attention. Brynn counted herself above such ploys.
Then again…shehadchosen to wear the necklace for attention. Though only from one man. It wasn’t at all the same. Was it?
She accepted a glass of champagne from a passing server and took a rather large gulp.
“I apologize. It is just that I have heard something of your condition,” Hawksfield said, sipping from his own glass. She cut her eyes from the tempting balcony and hit him with a glare.
“Mywhat?”
“No need to be embarrassed.” His lips curled up at the corners then. Was helaughingat her?
Indignation swelled up her throat and threatened to choke her. “I assure you, I am quite well. Whatever you have heard about my previous health concerns is exactly that—previous.”
He lowered his glass and swallowed his champagne, his Adam’s apple dipping below the snowy folds of his cravat.A spot of gravy.Dear Lord, she was making a mess out of this evening. What had she imagined? That the bandit would actually show up wearing his black silk mask and that he would seek her out for a dance or two? More likely, the true owner of these rubies would spot them, onherbosom, and accuse her of thievery.Oh!Another rush of heat scorched her chest and neck.
What if that is exactly what the Masked Marauder had planned all along?
“Where is your mask?” she asked abruptly, wishing now that she hadn’t been so imprudent. Hawksfield’s answer was a slow tented eyebrow. Of course he wouldn’t deign to wear one.
“Does the sight of my face bother you so?” he asked. “Perhaps you would rather I place a sack over my head?”
“Don’t be absurd. It is a masquerade, and without a disguise you stand out as a spoilsport.” Her tone was condescending, and Brynn hated the way it sounded, but she sipped her champagne and faked a bored expression. She’d rather engage in verbal sparring with the likes of him than continue to worry whether some lady in attendance would accuse her of theft.
A shot of embarrassed heat flooded her ears as Hawksfield stared at her for another second, his expression unreadable. He then reached into his trouser pocket and extracted what appeared to be a black slip of silk. Brynn narrowed her eyes on the silk as he shook it out and pulled the demi mask over his face. His gray eyes glittered in the candlelight.
Brynn seemed to tumble forward and then back, her vision shaky as her eyes traced his finely shaped nose beneath the silk, to his unsmiling lips. They flicked past the angular cut of his cheekbones to the silver eyes staring steadily at her.
Why hadn’t she seen it before?
Shaking slightly, Brynn gripped the stem of her champagne flute, her fingers surging to her throat and the necklace that lay there like a brand. Her pulse tripped over itself as a million possibilities assaulted her.
It couldn’t be…couldit?
CouldHawksfieldbe the bandit?
The tumultuous fall of her thoughts steamrolled all others, including the fleeting yet torturous one of himsanstrousers. Her face felt as if it were aflame, and she struggled to compose herself.Ifhe were the bandit, why would he rob someone en route to his own ball? Why would he rob anyone at all? His father was a duke for heaven’s sake, and he was…Lord Hawksfield—a complete, unimaginative boor.
Brynn shook her head to clear it and set the empty champagne glass on a passing footman’s tray. Clearly, the drink was going to her head. The implacable Marquess of Hawksfield would be the absolute last person on earth to lower his esteemed self to rob anyone. He was too poised. Too arrogant. Too stodgy. She frowned at her own swift logic and reconsidered the possibility.
Hawksfield was the right size, and the right age, and had the right physique. But it could not be him. His precise tones were several shades lower than those spoken by the bandit, whose voice had been sophisticated and educated, yes, but also ostentatious. This peer of the realm was too rigid, too proper, too…tonnish. Further, the bandit’s tones were higher and more jovial, except when he’d been delirious and his speech slightly slurred. Hawksfield’s diction reeked of excessive good breeding. No, the marquess wasn’t her man.
However, with that realization, she felt a new emotion cling like a thorn. It prickled and itched, and a moment later she grasped, with a fair amount of alarm, what it was. Blast it all.
Lady Briannon Findlay was well and trulydisappointed.
Chapter Eight
“You are right,” Briannon told him in a bored tone, her eyes averting from his masked visage, likely in search of her brother through the crowd. “Perhaps a sack would be better.”
Archer removed the demi mask and stuffed the scrap of silk back into his pocket. She was only being sarcastic, perhaps to insult him the same way he’d done to her about that awful dress she’d worn to the Bradburne Ball, but it still pricked. Deeply. Which infuriated him. So far, he’d counted three men in attendance who could have recognized him as the masked man who had set upon their carriages. Three men who could be the one behind the anonymous note delivered in his copy of theTimes. And yet, he’d dared put it on.For her.
After last night’s episode, he’d been loath to attend the masquerade. However, when he heard Briannon would be in attendance, he had made the effort, despite the soreness of his leg. The bullet had gone through, and no infection had set in, thank God, but he’d still had to endure Brandt’s mocking.
In truth, Archer was starting to doubt what he’d seen. Hehadlost a lot of blood, and Brandt was right—it could have been a groomsman, perhaps one who had been following the carriage as a precaution to an attack. The newssheets had been making an enormous deal of the Masked Marauder. But why would the groomsman have then taken him to Brandt’s cottage? Unless Archer had imagined that, too. Or maybe the man had had a crisis of conscience. It was the reason Archer carried no bullets in his gun during the robberies—he didn’t want innocent blood on his hands. He sighed. Archer had gained consciousness with his mask still in place, though he could not be positive the groomsman hadn’t been curious and peeked underneath. Discovery was something he could not afford.
Despite that, he had known the odds when he’d donned the silk moments ago, especially so soon after the robbery on Briannon’s carriage. A part of him had been hoping, in defiance of reason, that she would recognize him.
The foolish, reckless part of him that had felt flattered she’d worn the rubies was disappointed. Something desperate rose inside of him then: a desire to make her respond, anything to take the bored look off her face, the one that amply conveyed what she thought of the man standing before her.
