console the old girl. He needed to stay in her good graces, for when she died, Stephen wanted to ensure
that he was her sole beneficiary.
He hadn't spent all these years toadying up to the old crow not to see his work come to fruition when she cocked up her toes.
He pulled his hat down lower over his brow, considering how he could find out what he needed to know.
Then, as luck would have it, he saw an old friend, Viscount Barnet, filtering through the throng, his toadof a wife a few steps ahead of him."Barnet," Stephen called out. "Good to see you, man.""Cariston." Barnet extended his hand. "Heard you'd gone to the country."Stephen cringed inwardly and silently cursed the idle tongues of the ton. "Nothing of the sort.""Good. Glad to hear it.""Barnet," Lady Barnet called out. "Please hurry along. I want to get to Lady Marlowe's presently. I can't find my sister anywhere in this crush and I want to hear if she's finished that book yet. Especially after
tonight. Perhaps it will explain what happened."Barnet nodded to his wife and then turned back to Stephen. "I go to the theatre only when it is thatFontaine creature onstage, and what do you think, she doesn't show up tonight." Barnet blew out asteamy sigh. "But then, why am I telling you-you were inside, weren't you?"
Stephen could barely contain his glee. Riley hadn't appeared onstage-which could mean only one thing.McElliott had killed the thieving bitch."Yes, quite a disappointment," he managed to say.Barnet leaned forward, his voice lowering to a confidential whisper. "Haven't the vaguest notion who that gel who replaced her was, but she's a tasty little bit. Might perk up my theatrical interests, if you know what I mean." Barnet winked.
"My dear! We must be away or we will never get a good spot at Lady Marlowe's," his wife complained. "There now, Cariston, stay away from the parson's mousetrap, or you'll spend your life listening to mandates," Barnet said as an aside. To his wife, he replied, "Yes, my love. We haven't a moment to lose." He bade a hasty farewell and started toward his carriage. Then he turned and asked, "Will I see you at this Marlowe madness later on? Promises to be a terrible crush."
Stephen let himself smile. "Yes," he told his friend. "Should be quite an entertaining evening." As the Barnet carriage rolled away, Stephen said after him, "More interesting than you will ever know, you henpecked fool."
Riley unfolded herself from Mason's embrace. "We'd best get dressed. Our rescue will be coming anymoment now."He grinned at her. "You could order them away and we could spend the night here."He kissed her anew and Riley felt her blood quicken once again."No," she laughed. "You won't persuade me so easily. My grandmother is expecting us, as are the girls."
The girls!
"Oh, no!" she said, rising to her feet. "Louisa! We have to stop her. Now that the play is over, she and Roderick will be off to Scotland." She caught up her chemise and gown and tugged them on. She prodded Mason with her toe. "Get dressed. You have to stop them."
"Perhaps I should call young Roderick out-you know, demand satisfaction, fight a duel for the family honor."
"Oh, honor be damned," she shot back. "Just stop them."
"And what if someone had stopped your parents?" he asked. "I wouldn't be here now, looking at the woman I intend to spend the rest of my life with. Beside, I think Roderick is entirely suitable for Louisa."
"How can you say that?" Riley asked. "You specifically told me you wanted your nieces to marry eligible
young men. Roderick is penniless and an actor, and a baseborn, ill-bred, conniving-"Mason slid his finger over her lips and stopped the sputtering complaints. "-Imposter," he finished forher.
"Yes, an imposter," Riley agreed. "He's the worst kind of fraud."
Mason put his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. "Truly, for he is hardly baseborn orpenniless."Riley studied him for a moment. "What do you know that you haven't been telling me?""Roderick Northard isn't the man you think he is.""And that would be?""Do you remember a few weeks back, when Cousin Felicity was reading in the paper about the Duke of Walford's missing relation and how there were plans to drag the river for his body?"Riley nodded."They should have been dragging Brydge Street instead. Your leading man is the Duke's heir."She shook her head. "Why didn't you tell me?""Because he asked me not to. When I discovered the truth, I confronted him and demanded an explanation."
Outside, the footsteps of stagehands drifted closer. Riley cocked a brow at Mason's state of undress and he quickly pulled on his breeches and continued getting dressed, even as he finished telling his story.
"Your Roderick Northard is more commonly known as Roderick Northard Benton, Viscount Hurley.
His father and grandfather have been after him to settle down and marry the Marquess of Rowden's daughter, which he refused to do. His relations, thinking to starve him into submission, cut him off. So when he saw your advertisement for actors, he applied."
Riley still couldn't believe it. "But the stage? If he thought his relations were going to cut him off for not marrying that girl, what did he think they would do when they found out he'd taken to the stage?"
"Actually he hoped they would," Mason said. "At the very least, Lord Rowden would refuse to have his daughter married to someone who'd worked-and on the stage, no less."
She laughed at this. "That explains his ability to play Geoffroi, the embroiled and embittered royal son so well-'tis hardly a stretch for him." Riley still had one last question to ask. "Does Louisa know?"
Mason shook his head. "She'll probably be furious when she finds out. She thinks she is creating the perfect Ashlin scandal, and while tongues will wag, it will hardly be the mismatch she thinks she is making."
"So she'll be a Viscountess?"
Mason smiled. "And eventually a Duchess. Hurley is heir to the Walford duchy. Though it may be years before he ever takes his great-grandfather's title-the Bentons are notoriously long-lived-in time, Louisa may well be the Duchess of Walford."
"She will be furious," Riley agreed. "I think she had plans for a long career on the stage."
"She'll have a long career, that is for certain, but it will be on a different stage," Mason said.
Riley still had some concerns. "Will his family accept her?" This was a question near and dear to Riley's heart. For if the tonniest of the ton would accept Louisa with her brief appearance on the stage and her scandalous relations, might Mason be able to find it in his heart to take that leap as well?
"They may be a little aghast at first, but she's an Ashlin and our families have always been on very good terms."
The stagehands were close, and Riley almost wished they would never open the door, for what would happen when they did?
As if in answer to her unspoken questions, he folded her into his embrace and said, "You too have a long career ahead of you, Madame-one that begins tonight. I think we need to get you to your grandmother' s so you can meet your adoring public." He grinned at her and she wondered for a moment at his odd choice of words, but when his lips bore down on hers, she was lost again in a distracting maze of passion.
They kissed like that until the door swung open.
"Riley!" exclaimed one of the hands.
Mason and Riley pulled apart and she grinned at the men standing in the doorway.
"We wondered where you got to," one of them said. "But Mr. Pettibone wouldn't hear of holding up the curtain to go find you. Glad to see you safe and sound."
In the back of the group, one of the cheekier fellows let out a wolfish whistle, while a few of them chuckled at the sight of their noble patron and leading lady leaving the prop room in such a state of dishabille.
"Do you think they know?" Riley asked Mason as they climbed the stairs to the theatre. "Do you think they could tell that we'd..."
He plucked a few loose feathers out of the back of her hair. "Whyever would they think something like that?"
The Marlowe residence, as predicted, was a terrible crush. By the time Mason and Riley had made it to her grandmother's house, it was nearly midnight.
They probably would have arrived earlier if Riley hadn't insisted on going upstairs to change and fix her hair-and Mason hadn't insisted on going along to help.
"How will we ever find Bea and Maggie?" she asked, standing on her tiptoes at the entrance of the ballroom and straining to see over the sea of plumes and fancy headdresses.
"I think I see your grandmother across the room, but I don't see the girls anywhere," Mason said. "Perhaps they are dancing."
"Could be," Riley commented. "Before I venture in there, I am going to go upstairs and get the necklace my grandmother said she wanted me to wear. She told me where it would be if I got here late."
Mason pecked a kiss on her forehead. "Get your treasures and I'll keep an eye out for your cousin."
"Do you really think he would dare come here?"
"Not if he knows what is good for him. By now his house has been searched, and if he was home, he's in custody, but if not-" Mason glanced up the stairs. "Maybe I should come with you-"
She shook her head. "Go find the girls. I'll be up and back before you'll get ten feet in this throng."
Riley dashed up the stairs and into her grandmother's bedchamber. The room was mostly cast in shadows, with only a single taper burning atop the bureau. The drawer where her grandmother kept her jewels was open and the rifled cases were scattered about the floor.
Taking a step further into the room, she nearly tripped over an upended decanter amongst the litter, which explained why the room stank of brandy. Then, to her horror, her cousin stepped out from behind the curtains, a pistol in one hand and a shocked look on his face.
"Riley!" he said, his words slurred with drunkenness. "You're supposed to be-"
"Dead? Yes, Stephen," she said as pleasantly as she could muster. "I so hate to disappoint you, but I am hopelessly alive-and I plan to stay that way."
Stephen didn't even try to deny his part in the attempts on her life. The liquor had obviously provided him with a false sense of bravado. "But I saw McElliott...and I heard that you were unable to go onstage...and I thought..."
Riley shook her head. "You were wrong. As you were to think you wouldn't be discovered in all this." She glanced down at the damage about her feet. "I suppose you thought to make your escape with still more of the Marlowe fortune."
"I wouldn't have to if you hadn't ruined everything. This is all your fault!" he snarled, the pistol waving dangerously in his hand. "You and that do-good Ashlin. He's set the law on me, and for no reason. I'm being hounded like some criminal."
Riley was past the point of caring that the man held a gun on her. The cad actually had the audacity to blame all this on her?
"No reason?" she sputtered. "You hired a man to kill me. Not once, but twice. I think that does make one a criminal in the eyes of the law."
Stephen's bloodshot eyes narrowed. "McElliott-I should have known. He was probably in this with Ashlin the entire time." He cursed roundly. "I should have had Nutley kill you months ago, before Ashlin ever set eyes on you. My father always said the world was better without you Marlowe bitches in it."
"Your father? What has he to do with this?" Though she knew what Mason had told her, she wanted to hear it from Stephen, and in his befuddled and brandy-fueled courage, she suspected he'd tell the entire story.
"Yes," Stephen said, his chest puffing up. He paced a few steps and began to tell the entire horrible truth. "We were broke-he'd invested heavily in the war with the Colonies, and then lost everything else in a foolish plantation venture. We were ruined, so he plotted to kill your mother and thus gain the Marlowe titles and properties."
"But your father failed, just as you have."
Stephen's lip curled. "I haven't failed, not yet." He waved the gun at her before continuing his confession.
"My father never thought the likes of Geoffrey Stoppard man enough to fight back-so when he did, the brigands hired to kill everyone in the carriage fled like a pack of cowards. Though it was disappointing your mother still lived; without the marriage papers and pregnant, she was as good as dead." Stephen fished inside his jacket and pulled free a pack of yellowed and wrinkled pages. "My father was a sentimental fool. He saved these as a memento, even when he knew your grandmother searched high and low for them."
Stephen held the papers out to the edge of the candle flame. "I intended to burn these the moment I heard you were dead, but now is as good a time as any."
"No," Riley cried out, seeing her family's title and properties lost forever in this senseless act.
He smiled at her and then pulled the papers away just before they would have ignited. "Perhaps you are right. As long as I possess them, they are of value-to you and me. I suppose you might pay quite a pretty penny for them? If not tonight, then someday." He tucked them back in his coat.
Riley slowly let out the breath she'd been holding.
Her cousin edged over to the window, then pulled the curtain back to survey the garden and alleyway behind the house. A few seconds later, he yanked the curtain back in place. "He's had the place surrounded." He turned back to Riley, the pistol once again fluttering in his hand as if punctuating every complaining word. "How am I supposed to get out of here now?"
"How could you doubt Mason wouldn't catch you?"
"Mason, is it?" Stephen's lip curled. "Your death will serve as a good reminder to your dear Mason that he is a nuisance. And if he cares for you, your death will ensure that he never interferes again."
He crossed the room and caught her by the arm, his fingers biting into her flesh. When she struggled and started to protest, he laid the muzzle of the gun to her temple and said, "One false move, Cousin, and your grandmother's servants will have a worse mess to clean up than just these empty boxes."
Riley settled down-she didn't trust that he wouldn't pull the trigger, given his state of agitation and drunkenness, and the longer she delayed that unhappy event, the better her chances were of being rescued.
If only she'd let Mason come upstairs with her. He would have been able to disarm Stephen, but now he was probably mired in the crowd, unable to reach her.
"The only way out now," Stephen said, "is the front door. And you, my dearest cousin, are my ticket."
Stephen had his hand on her elbow and the pistol prodding her in the ribs. As a pair, they walked down the stairs and toward the main entrance.
Suddenly the crowd stilled, all eyes watching their descent.
Riley didn't notice it right away, for she was too busy trying to breathe. She had no doubt that once
Stephen gained the streets, he would kill her and make his escape in the ensuing confusion-his revengeagainst her and Mason complete."'Tis her!" someone said."No, it couldn't be," another argued."But it must be," a third person added to the noisy disagreement. "Look at that hair, those eyes. She is the very image of Regine."
There were murmurs of agreement, then someone in the crowd began to clap his hands, and in moments, the entire foyer was sending up a rousing applause.
Stephen stumbled to a stop at the clamor. "What is this?"
"I haven't the vaguest idea," she said quite honestly.
Prodding her forward, Stephen continued their march toward the door.
The crowd parted and continued to applaud them. Guests from inside the ballroom surged into the foyer,