Free Dark Masquerade by Jennifer Blake

marriage. But it doesn’t matter, there aren’t that many invitations to be refused.”
    “Aren’t there neighbors, friends?”
    “Oh, yes, neighbors. But few real friends. This area is filling up with Americans.”
    “Really now. You are as American as I am.”
    “In name only,” he said, laughing a little. “Most of our friends and relatives live in New Orleans. We move to town during the season, that is, we have in other years. We didn’t this year because we were in mourning. What was the point? The soirées, the balls, everything but the dullest of family dinner parties, would have been denied to us. I slipped into town for New Year’s, drank my share of eggnog at each visit—no gentleman caller is allowed to escape until he has sampled the recipe of the lady of the house, you know.”
    “Yes, the gentlemen used to call upon the ladies on New Year’s day when we lived in Mississippi.”
    “Did the young ladies expect a cornet of French confection?”
    “I don’t think so, but then, I was hardly out of the nursery when we migrated. What is a cornet?”
    “A rolled tube of gold or silver paper, like a cornucopia, with lace frills and usually a miniature of some simpering damsel in gaudy colors.”
    “I see, and you gave these to all the girls—or to only one?” she said teasingly.
    “Oh, I must have scattered hundreds, the ladies collect them like scalps, to prove how pursued they are. If they don’t receive what they consider their due, some ladies have been known to buy a few more to supplement their collection.”
    “You aren’t serious?”
    “My word of honor.” He grinned. “But of course you would never stoop to such a deceit.”
    “No? All is fair, they say, in love and war.”
    “People have been using that saying for two thousand years to excuse their misdeeds.”
    “Are you so virtuous, then?” she asked mildly.
    “I refuse to admit to that! But I have no use for hypocrites either.”
    There seemed nothing to say to that. Elizabeth thought there was some meaning behind the words, but she did not feel she had known Darcourt long enough to ask him to explain.
    “You enjoy the New Orleans social round?” she said after a while.
    “Immensely, as long as I have the feathers to fly with.”
    “You prefer it to Oak Shade?” Because it was so warm and pleasant on the gallery, with the breeze sweeping now and then from around the corners of the side galleries, there was a shade of censure in the question.
    “Oak Shade doesn’t belong to me,” Darcourt said deliberately, and then shrugged. “If it did, I don’t know. I would certainly have the money to enjoy New Orleans society—besides being even more socially acceptable to all the match-making mamans.”
    “An estate is a great responsibility. You wouldn’t be able to spend all your time socializing or you would be bankrupt before you knew it.”
    His blue eyes flashed and his teeth gleamed white beneath his dark gold mustache, as he grinned at her serious expression. “What I need, I suppose, is a position where I would be paid for making merry, say as a courtier. I would have been a huge success at the French Court a hundred years ago.”
    “I expect you would have,” Elizabeth agreed, returning the smile, her gaze on the indention in his cheek that was almost, but not quite, a dimple. He had the ready wit, the friendliness, and the audacity that would have made a good courtier. “But being a courtier wasn’t all dancing and gaiety. What about the bowing and scraping, the bootlicking and back-biting?”
    “What, in a word, of the hypocrisy?”
    “Yes, I suppose that is what I meant,” Elizabeth admitted.
    “My scruples would be as firm as rock, I expect, until they were tried.” He laughed across at her, and then his smile faded. “Isn’t that the way of it?”
    The bitterness in his voice found an echo in Elizabeth’s mind. She did not reply. The question came too close to home.
    As she stared out through the