Free Midnight Masquerade by Joan Smith

she admired her with all her heart. Such charm, such easy manners and grace, such beauty, and such skills in making the most of it with batting eyes, insinuating voice, and fluttering fan. She would forget that Belami was this minute in her bedroom, holding Lenore in his arms, kissing her. She felt a tingling sensation on her own lips, such a tingling as she had never felt before Dick kissed her, that evening in her aunt’s conservatory. Her head was still reeling a quarter of an hour later, when he had proposed with those stilted phrases, so different from the impassioned words used earlier. And she, a confirmed ninnyhammer, had accepted.
    People thought she was a cold girl, but she knew that beneath the ice there was a fire. If she let the ice be chipped away, it would roar out of control and consume her, so she continued to be the prim and proper Deirdre Gower. “Hidden passions,” Dick had said that night in the conservatory. But he had ferreted out her secret, had opened a chink in the icy door, and she had taken many a peek inside the door since.
    While she sat with her book and her thoughts, Dick prepared his most ingratiating smile, and went tapping at the door of Lady Lenore Belfoi, who was aux anges to receive a bedroom call from her handsome host. She had arranged a carefully tousled coiffure and put on her prettiest lace bedjacket in preparation for Chamfreys’ visit, but was not tardy in ordering a servant off to delay him once she laid her lovely eyes on Belami.
    “Good morning, Lennie,” he said, lounging in with no discomfort at being in a lady’s boudoir. He looked for a chair, but she patted the side of the bed invitingly, and he was not slow to proceed to it.
    “I didn’t steal it, darling, if that’s what brings you calling at this farouche hour,” she said, by way of greeting, in her husky voice. Lady Lenore had a voice like a foghorn—low and misty. He adored it.
    “Farouche? No, it is nearly nine-thirty. Nine is farouche; nine-thirty is only inconsiderate. Anything before nine we shan’t even discuss. It is too barbaric.”
    “Are you here to play Bow Street, Belami, or . . . something else?” she asked with a sultry peek at him from beneath her lowered lashes.
    He reached forward and kissed the tip of her nose. “Bow Street,” she decided aloud at this tame token of affection. “If that’s all you came for, you won’t mind if I have my coffee while it’s still tepid?”
    He handed her the cup that rested on the table beside her bed. Then he sat and watched while she sipped daintily. He was intrigued why a husband should display so little interest in a wife of Lenore’s obvious charms. Black hair and green eyes were a stunning combination. She had a heart-shaped face, a perfect nose, perfect teeth, which sparkled behind a set of perfect rosebud lips. Her body was similarly flawless. And with all this, she was neither ill-natured nor stupid. She was one of the few women in the country a man ought to be able to find happiness with, yet to the best of his knowledge, Lennie and Belfoi never spent so much as a week together from head to toe of the year.
    “Don’t frown, luv,” she said, setting the cup aside. “It makes me think I have grown a wrinkle, or got a dirty face.”
    “I was pondering the riddle of the age. How does it come Belfoi ever lets you out of his sight? If I had the good fortune to be your husband, I’d have you manacled to me.”
    “Extraordinarily uncomfortable, I should think. But perhaps if you were my husband, I shouldn’t mind. Belfoi and I go on very well together. We don’t meet often, but when we do, it is always on the best of terms. We were at Badminton together only last autumn. I thought we might meet at Christmas, but we got our plans mixed up somehow. We both hold the belief that variety is the spice of life. We have that in common with you, I believe.”
    “I too am Latin in my taste. I like life highly spiced.”
    “How do you find the dash