Chapter Five

Lord Leighton’s Mr. Kit Summers’ Guide to Masquerades, Matchmaking, and Denial

Wayland’s, London—June 5, 1816

Kit

My sister would be the death of me. Or, if not strictly her, one of the ladies she thrust in my direction with no particular subtlety. Which, of course, was as good as being the cause of my untimely demise herself. 

Sheer will and nothing else kept my sneeze at bay. Whatever flower this one coated herself with didn’t agree with my sinuses. Miss? Lady? Lavinia? Lydia? Lady Lydia? That would be a lot of L’s. And D’s. And Y’s. And A’s for that matter. So many repeats. I probably would have remembered that one. Christ, Katie would absolutely keep me from the refreshment table all night if I offended yet another one of her friends. But it was a masquerade, surely I shouldn’t be expected to know all the names of all the licentious lords and layabout ladies. 

“Do you not think, my lord?” the girl at my side trilled. 

It took a beat to remember that my lord was me now. And the moment that followed was just as devastating as the last. And every one before that. 

“My lord?” she repeated, twisting the knife. 

“Yes.” It was a worthy guess and seemed to satisfy. She returned to her inane prattling about her watercolors or the weather. How did gentlemen manage this? Counting, conversing—even a conversation as dull as this—stepping, guiding… It was all too much to manage. I should be grateful that she required so little input from me. 

“Oooff.” Oh no, that was a toe. 

“Apologies…” Damn it all. Was she a miss or a lady?

“Oh no, I apologize, my lord. And truly, the musicians are offbeat, I’m certain of it. In fact…”

I should breathe a sigh of relief at her breezy forgiveness, if only to save me from Katie’s wrath. But that was one of the things that was impossible to ignore about the title, the way I was suddenly perfect. Six months ago, if I had trod on this girl's toe, someone would’ve had me flogged for my misstep. 

Well, flogging was probably an exaggeration. But at the very least there would’ve been a glare and some truly vile words, if not from her, then some male relative or protective mama. Now that I was a lord, I could break all ten of her toes and she’d thank me for it as long as there was still hope of an “I do.” 

She would be a great deal less willing to forgive my transgression if she knew I was planning to forfeit the title, lands, money, all of it, just as soon as I found the next-in-line and a legal loophole. Lord Leighton’s rough edges were smoothed by coin and title. Mr. Kit Summers was as jagged as broken glass.

Suddenly, the sneeze broke free, taking us both by surprise. I barely managed to catch it in my gloved hand, handkerchief much too far away. 

And now I had a wet glove. 

Even Lady Miss Lydia Lavinia wore a pinched, disgusted expression before she smoothed it away as she blessed me. 

Even the obscene fortune I’d unwillingly inherited wouldn’t be enough for this one to give Katie a good report. 

A jovial feminine cry rang out from one of the gaming tables lining the dance floor. If there was one place I was less suited to than a dance floor, it was there. A ball in a gaming hell—my own personal hell. 

I knew, without turning, who the burst of laughter belonged to. I would know that triumphant giggle anywhere, her face masked or not. Her perfume wouldn’t offend my sinuses so. Her chatter was never inane. She absolutely would have trod right back on my toe. 

Lady Davina. 

I’d spotted her earlier, before Katie dragged me down to the floor by my ear. When I had been hiding on the second floor with an equally recalcitrant Will. 

She was bright and vivacious as always. Flirting her way through the ballroom with a flick of her fan. Even in her ostentatious, peacock-feathered gown and matching mask I knew her. Lady Davina was magnetic. 

Magnetic and a menace. I glanced over at her during a turn in the dance, and if the countenance of everyone at her table was any indication, she was robbing them blind. 

Warring instincts left me dizzy and dazed. Pride and the sight of her pleased grin and flushed cheeks whirled around the usual combination of irritation at her recklessness and worry for her safety. It was a familiar sensation, but it left my knees weak. It always did. 

Lady Davina was determined to see both her brother and me deceased in a fit of apoplexy. It was the only explanation for her escapades. 

And there was a God, if only because the dance mercifully came to an end at last. Mid-bow, whatshername spun on her heels and strode off somewhere to do something. I couldn’t bring myself to lament my poor showing. 

Surreptitiously, I slipped my gloves into a pocket with a hope that no one would notice as I strode toward the snacks. That they were closer to Lady Davina and the gentleman contemplating her with pursed lips and a furious brow was a mere coincidence. 

I reached the tower of Mrs. Ainsley’s fairy cake things at the same time that Juliet, tonight’s hostess, pulled Lady Davina away from the gaming table with a subtlety I wouldn’t have been able to match. 

With Lady Davina safe from her own machinations for the next sixty-seven seconds or so and Katie nowhere to be seen, I crammed a chocolate fairy cake into my mouth in a single bite. I could be interrupted at any moment, and I would not be kept from the delicate layers of cake and preserves. Not to rescue Lady Davina and certainly not by my matchmaking sister. 

No sooner had I swallowed my much-too-large bite than a sharp, familiar tap on my shoulder interrupted the selection of its replacement. 

With a sigh, I turned to face my sister, wiping away crumbs as I did. Katie, armed with her resolved expression, was not alone. No, Lady Davina was at her side, towering several inches above her in spite of her younger age. 

Indeed, she was an inch, perhaps two, taller than me, and with her peacock mask… The feathers added another few inches still. Lady Davina’s dark brow was covered with the delicate metalwork of her mask, but her dark eyes were brightened by its golden reflection. And she’d had the generosity to wear a demi-mask, leaving her full, rose lips free. 

“Christopher!” my sister snapped impatiently. 

I turned back to her before my eyes had a chance to ogle other, less polite areas of Lady Davina’s form. 

“Katherine!” I teased.

She rolled her bright eyes before tipping her head toward the lady at her side. “This is my dear friend, Lady Davina. Lady Davina, this is my brother, Lord Leighton.” 

Even though I’d been anticipating it, I struggled to restrain my wince at the title. Especially from Katie—so casually, as if it were mine. As though those two didn’t belong to our uncle and some day to our cousin, or that it shouldn’t be father’s title in my stead. There was so much sadness, so much death wrapped in those two words. And it never once phased her to use them. 

“I’ve already had the pleasure, Katie. Lady Davina, it’s a delight to make your acquaintance again.” My sister could never know how often I’d had the pleasure. But Lady Davina had attended Katie’s wedding, and that would suffice for explanation. 

The rest of my meetings with the woman before me fell under the privacy agreement I held with her brother. Not that I would have revealed them were I at liberty to. 

“And you as well,” she replied, though it was a perfunctory thing. 

Katie, entirely unwilling to let this be, stepped into me and up on her toes. I still had to dip my head down for her. She pressed a false kiss to my cheek before whispering, “Ask her to dance, you ninny. And keep her away from the gaming tables before someone calls her out.”

I swallowed the sudden knot in my throat as Katie flitted off in search of the next victim of my pathetic attentions. “Would you care for a dance?”

Lady Davina’s gaze flicked up and down my person before she replied with a disinterested shrug. The lack of enthusiasm stung a bit, but it was tempered by her hand sliding into the crook of my arm as the first strains of the next set began. 

It wasn’t until we reached the floor that I realized what the next set was—the waltz. Of course it was the dance I hadn’t come near to mastering. What else would it possibly be? 

Wordlessly, Lady Davina pressed her hand into my—still bare—one. It was not so scandalous, she wore elbow-length gloves of the finest silk dyed to match the peacock blue of her gown. 

“Mr. Summers?” she whispered.

At the surely dumbfounded expression on my face, she caught my free hand with hers and wrapped it around her waist—far lower than I would have dared on my own. The gauzy fabric of her gown was so delicate, so thin, that I could feel the heat of her skin beneath the layers. There was no doubt in my mind that when I closed my eyes that night, I could easily pretend there had been nothing at all between us. 

Swallowing the disconcerting combination of terror and lust, I stepped forward with my left foot. And trod directly on her right. 

“I am so so—”

“You don’t dance very often, do you?” 

“Ah… No,” I replied, wishing very much that this moment were a horrific nightmare from which I would wake, sweaty and disheveled but less humiliated. 

“Follow me,” she said simply, biting the corner of her lip to hide a smile and squeezing both eyes shut quickly in what I suspected was intended to be a wink. Bless her.

* * *

Davina

A single chuckle broke free from his chest and the corner of his lip twitched. It was the closest I’d come to a smile in months, possibly ever, and I decided to consider it a success. 

Mr. Summers was always a little surly and far too studious, but he’d been too forlorn for months. Even this quarter, perhaps eighth, of a smile brightened his sad eyes. Warmth bubbled in my chest at the sight. My triumph was so great that I could forgive his part in the not particularly subtle scheme to keep me from the gaming tables. 

With one finger, I tapped a silent beat against the back of his hand. My other hand guided him by the shoulder. I preferred to lead anyway, and my brother always whined about it being improper when we were learning. Unlike Xander, Mr. Summers was excellent at taking instruction. 

“How much did you win?” he asked when he settled into the rhythm. 

“Five pounds off Mr. Rushforth. And eighteen off Mr. Sheffield.”

“Well done.”

“Gabriel taught me—my brother—the eldest one. Before he passed.”

“How old were you?”

“Seven, perhaps eight when he taught me. He stopped gaming after he married Cee. I was the only one he could play with then because Xander wanted nothing to do with it.” As we spoke, Mr. Summers’ posture relaxed a bit, and he settled into his frame. His former tension was obvious only in its absence.

“That is not the least bit surprising. About your brother. Both of them, really.”

“Yes, Gabriel was a reprobate and Xander is determined to be a spoilsport in all things.” Before he could protest—defend Xander most likely—I asked, “Why does your sister call you Lord Leighton?”

He flinched at the name, the same way he always did. It was subtle, almost more of a blink, but it was there. “Well, it’s my title, I suppose. For now, at least.”

“Yes, but you dislike it.”

“I don—”

“You do, your mouth pinches at the corner or you wince. Xander did it too, when anyone called him Rycliffe.”

“Well, I suppose it was for the same reason. I’d rather have my father than a title,” he explained in a tight voice. 

“No, I know that. But why does Kate call you that when you dislike it?”

He sighed, shaking a too-long curl off his forehead. I hadn’t noticed before, but his hair was longer than he usually kept it. His shaggy, close-cropped curls left him with a boyish look that paired oddly with his usually churlish expression, but the overgrown locks made him look a bit devil-may-care. 

“She’s trying to find me a wife. She thinks the title will impress ladies that the rest of me will not.”

It was difficult to picture. Stern Mr. Summers, who hauled me out of whatever adventure I’d gotten into at any time of the day and night, as a married man. Would he frown across the breakfast table at her every morning? Pout at her every evening?

“Do you want a wife?” 

His expression shifted to something I couldn’t quite name, perhaps a small furrow to the brow behind his domino, his lips slightly more pouted than usual. “I don’t want the sort of wife who only looks at me now that I’ve a title.”

Well, that was absurd. He had the title now. It was inextricably linked to him. “You may have difficulty finding such a wife.”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“Would it be so terrible? Allowing your sister to find you a wife to sulk at?”

“Yes, I’m hardly—” I watched the precise moment he registered the second half of my comment. He froze, missing a step before performing a little half skip to find his footing. Instead of the narrowed eyes and pursed lips I expected, he chuckled. It was under his breath, more to himself than anything, as he insisted, “I don’t sulk.”

“Would you prefer ‘glower’?” I asked, not bothering to hide my grin this time. 

He shook his head, the corner of his lip tipping up just the tiniest bit again. “I suppose you can call it whatever you’d like. It’s just the way my face is.”

I rather thought that wasn’t the case. He’d always been solemn. But the last two times I’d seen him, he’d been downright despondent. Still, two almost-smiles in as many minutes, I wasn’t about to be the one to put the furrow back between his messy brows.

“Oh, so you’re not cross with me during my adventures?”

“Oh no, I’m almost always cross with you during your adventures. Cross or trying desperately not to laugh.” The corner of his left eye crinkled, signifying a deepening of his not-quite-a-smile. This close—closer than I’d ever been to him—I could see that his eyes weren’t the flat brown I’d thought them. Instead, there were hints of an olive green toward the edges. And his voice—there was a mirth in the tenor that was unfamiliar. What other secrets did dull Mr. Summers keep hidden?

“Really? How do I know which?”

“There’s a direct correlation between the amount of danger you’ve placed yourself in and how furious I am with you,” he explained, gaze ticking to the side. 

“Oh, you’re furious? ‘Furious’ is quite different from cross, more severe.”

“It is,” he agreed, solemnity back in his voice and eyes. “I do wish you’d keep to the safer adventures.”

“Such as?”

“That time you snuck out and tried to eat sorbet at Gunther’s. The adventures that don’t include pirates,” he added under his breath. 

“I don’t know what you and Xander were so worried about. Annie and Grace are delightful. And their endeavor only required a paltry sum.”

Mr. Summers’ eyes slipped shut on a deep inhale, a look of pure exasperation crossing his face. “A paltry… It was more than I make in a year.”

“Well, that’s a pity. You should really charge more. You know Xander would pay it.”

“I’m not going to extort your brother.”

“Why not? I do it all the time.” That earned me the eye crinkle but no quirk of the lip. It would have to do as the final strains of the waltz began to drift over us. 

“I know,” he drawled. “But I have some integrity.”

“Terrible thing, integrity. You really must do away with it if you want to have any sort of fun.”

“I think I’m quite all right without your sort of fun. Thank you.”

“More’s the pity.”

“You have more than enough fun for the both of us,” he added, then released my hand and waist with a bow. I hadn’t noticed the heat of his touch, not while his hands were on me. But the absence of it left me chilled. “Try not to have too much tonight. All right?”

“I make no promises…” I took a step back from him, and another, a third, then spun on my heel and dipped into the crowd before I had any more disturbing insights into dull Mr. Summers.

It was the masquerade, surely, that made him less inane, nothing more. And tomorrow, all would be as it once was.