Free Unmasked by Nicola Cornick Page A

played havoc with his judgment. She had played him for a fool then. It would not happen again. Now they would play on his terms, not hers.
    He watched as Mari made her way off the dance floor and disappeared through the doors that opened on to the terrace. Her gray dress blended in with the pale shadows and she was gone from his sight. With a slight jolt Nick realized that Mari’s deliberately drab appearance was as much a disguise in its way as the blond wig and mask had been at the Hen and Vulture. She was trying to efface herself, perhaps to escape the fortune hunters, perhaps for another reason. Could she be deliberately creating a persona as far from that of Glory, the female hellion, as possible?
    “I think,” Charles said suddenly, surprisingly, “that Mrs. Osborne might be shy. She is not at ease in social situations. I have often observed that she would prefer to avoid gatherings such as this.”
    Nick reflected cynically that Charles might have made an interesting point—that Mari Osborne avoided company—but attributed it to the wrong reasons. No woman who dressed as a courtesan and picked men up in a tavern like the Hen and Vulture could possibly be shy, but again she might be deliberately playing a role that was the opposite of the highwaywoman heroine, Glory.
    “Well, if she is shy, then she is most unlike your cousin,” he said, nodding toward Lady Hester Berry, the vivid center of a group of male admirers further down the room.
    “Chalk and cheese,” Charles agreed. “Poor John Teague—” He indicated an older man standing slightly apart from the group and watching with an air of weary amusement. “He never gets a chance. He’s been in love with Hester for years but I think she barely sees him.”
    Teague glanced toward them and Charles beckoned him over. “Come on,” he said to Nick. “There’s better refreshment in my study than you’ll find for Laura’s guests. And Teague has lived in this area awhile. You may find he can throw light on your case.”
    They repaired to Charles’s study, a room off the hall where Charles had stashed a very fine bottle of brandy against the need to fortify himself to deal with his cousins.
    “For,” he said wryly, “Henry and Faye may be family but I fear that I have little in common with them and Faye will try to foist her daughter on any or all of my male guests, like a fishwife pushing her wares.”
    “A shame,” John Teague said lazily, accepting a glass of brandy and folding his long length into an armchair, “for Miss Cole is a fetching little chit—” He broke off to see Charles’s quizzical eye upon him. “No, I do not have an interest there myself!” he said hastily. “You know me better than that, Charles.”
    Nick had been watching Teague and weighing up how far to take him into his confidence. Charles had introduced the older man as a friend and indicated that he was reliable, but Nick liked to make his own mind up on such things. Certainly Teague, with his shrewd expression and open manner, seemed pleasant enough. But even at Eton, Charles had been quick to trust, and whilst it was an admirable trait to look for the good in everyone, it could be damnably awkward if you found that the man you had thought honorable turned out to be less than sound. So Nick said nothing of Rashleigh’s murder, merely indicating that he had been sent by Lord Hawkesbury to investigate the civil disturbance caused by the Glory Girls. Teague raised his brows and said he was surprised that Hawkesbury should concern himself with such a small domestic matter.
    “They are a bunch of petty criminals, highwaymen, no more,” Teague said. “Gossip has it that they are females, but I doubt it very much.”
    “Gossip has it that they are gently bred females,” Charles interposed, “and I think there may be some truth in it.”
    “Do they ride sidesaddle?” Nick asked.
    Charles laughed. “Not they! They ride astride like a pack of huntsmen!”
    Teague shot