Page 5 of Duke of Moonstone
“He told me I could no longer come to the school,” Eleanor continued. “Just like that. No discussion. He simply informed me as though I were a child and not a woman of twenty. And when I told him that I had responsibilities there, that the children expected me, that Malcolm...” She stopped. “He would not hear it. He will not hear any of it. He says only that I mustthink of my position and my future and the masquerade ball, as though a ball is any sort of answer to anything.”
“What does he intend?” Frances asked. “For your future, I mean.”
“A suitable match of course.” Eleanor’s voice carried a dry edge that did not suit her usual warmth which told Frances how long she had been living with this. “A nobleman. Someone of rank and fortune and absolutely nothing else to recommend him. He has arranged for half of London to attend this masquerade in two days’ time, and he expects me to smile and dance and allow myself to be looked over like a horse at Tattersall’s.”
“Eleanor—”
“I love Malcolm,” she said plainly, and that was somehow more affecting than tears would have been. “I know what people will say. I know what Alexander says. I know the arguments, Frances, every one of them, and I have turned them over a hundred times, and the answer is always the same. I love him, and I cannot imagine my life without him, and I do not know what to do.”
Frances looked at her friend, at the unhappiness that she was clearly trying very hard to hold inside the shape of something manageable, and she felt the irritation she had carried in from the drawing room transform into something quieter and more resolute.
“We will think of something,” she said.
“Actually.” Eleanor’s grip on her hands changed, tightening slightly. Her eyes, which had been cast down, came up. “I have been thinking of something already.”
Frances recognized that expression. She had seen it before, most memorably during an incident at Lady Hartwell’s garden party three summers ago that she still preferred not to think about in great detail. It was the expression Eleanor wore when she had conceived of a plan that was either very clever or very inadvisable, and there was often very little distance between the two.
“Ellie—”
“The masquerade.” Her friend leaned forward, her voice dropping further. “In two days. Alexander will have invited hundreds of people. The house will be full to the walls, Frances, everyone in masks and costumes, no one quite certain who is who.” She paused, and something bright and frightened and determined moved behind her eyes all at once. “It may be the only chance I have.”
“A chance for what, precisely?” she said though she was beginning to suspect she already knew.
Eleanor’s hands tightened around hers, and the look on her face was the look of someone who had already spent several sleepless nights arriving at the only answer she could find.
“I need your help,” she said. “Will you hear me out?”
Frances thought about the Duke as he had spoken of what he would and would not permit. Then she looked down at Eleanor’s hand clutching hers.
“Yes,” she said. “Tell me.”
CHAPTER 3
TWO DAYS LATER
“Ishould never have promised to help you. What if we are caught?”
Eleanor looked up from the dressing table. “We will not be caught.”
“You cannot possibly know that.”
“Frances.” Eleanor set down the ribbon she was holding and turned on the stool to face her properly. “I have thought about this for a long time. Every single detail. I have gone over it so many times that I could recite it in my sleep, and I am telling you, we will not be caught.”
Frances looked at her friend, then at the two identical costumes laid out across the bed, then back at her friend. “Tell me again,” she said. “All of it.”
Eleanor took a breath. “Tonight the house will be full, two hundred guests at the very least, possibly more. Everyone in masks and costumes. Alexander has invited half of London, and no one refuses the Duke of Whitestone.”
A small, tight note entered her voice at his name, but she pushed past it. “In a room of two hundred people in disguise, no one will be looking too carefully at any one face. That is the entire point of a masquerade.”
“Go on.”
“We dress identically. Both of us as the Goddess Diana.” Eleanor smiled. “Are you not glad we have the same hair color?”
Frances held back a sigh. “Go on, Ellie.”
“When the ball begins, you will go down in my stead while I hide in there.” She nodded toward the door that led to her small dressing room. “After perhaps an hour, once the rooms are full and the dancing is well underway, I will slip out through the side door to the mews where Malcolm will be waiting. No one will know.”
“Are you sure about that?” Frances asked. “There might be two hundred people, but most of them know you rather well.”
