Unmasked. Nicola Cornick
the fear took her breath away. She closed her eyes for a second to steady herself, reminding herself that she knew none of this for certain. Even if he suspected her, he could prove nothing.
“I go to London very seldom, Major Falconer.” The evenness of her voice surprised her. “I have no need of the diversions of Town when I am so sincerely attached to the country.”
Nick inclined his head. “Odd. I thought perhaps that we might have met there a few months ago?”
Mari smiled and shook her head. “I have already said not, if you recall, Major Falconer. And I advise you not to push your luck—or your familiarities—too far.”
Their eyes met and held with the clash and challenge of a sword thrust. Then, with inexpressible relief Mari saw the figure of Laura Cole approaching. There was a faintly worried expression on her face, as though she had realized that Mari was in trouble and was coming to the rescue. Mari was so relieved she wanted to hug her.
“I do believe your hostess is coming to welcome you,” she said. “I wish you a pleasant stay at Cole Court, Major Falconer.”
Nick detained her with a hand on her arm. She felt the warmth of his touch through her sleeve as though her skin was bare. “I will see you again, Mrs. Osborne?”
“I doubt it, Major Falconer,” Mari said, and saw his teeth flash white as he smiled.
“You misunderstand me, Mrs. Osborne,” he said. “It was not a question. I will see you again. In fact, I would stake on it.”
“I do not play games,” Mari said. She released herself very deliberately from his touch. “Goodbye, Major Falconer.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Rosemary—Remembrance
NICK LEANED HIS BROAD shoulders against the ballroom doorway and watched Marina Osborne dancing the cotillion. Laura, Duchess of Cole, had welcomed him in the vague, sweet manner that he remembered and then she had drifted off to speak to some of her other guests and Nick thought that he would retire for the night rather than join the festivities. He felt tired and dirty from the journey. He was not dressed for a ball, as Lady Faye Cole had not hesitated to point out when she had passed him in the doorway and had practically sniffed to imply that he smelled rather insalubrious from his travels.
Mari was dancing with Faye’s husband, Charles’s cousin Henry Cole. Nick watched the elegant sway of her gown as she moved through the steps of the dance. When she and Henry came together, he grabbed at her with the overexcited playfulness of a puppy and she withdrew, an ice maiden in silver satin. Nick did not know Henry well for, although he belonged to the junior branch of the Cole family, he was older than Charles by several years and so Nick had never spent much time in his company. Henry had always struck him as a typical country squire, his life a round of hunting and shooting and fishing, gorging himself at table, drinking hard and suffering the gout in consequence. His color was certainly high as he danced with Mari but that, Nick thought, was probably due to a different kind of excitement from that engendered in the field. As he watched, he saw Henry surreptitiously squeeze Mari’s bottom as she passed him, a clumsy but lascivious gesture that made Nick clench his fists in disgust. For a moment Henry bent close to her ear and made some remark that had the color searing Mari’s face. No one else had seen his actions—Nick realized that Henry had made very sure of that. His opinion of Charles’s cousin fell several notches from an already low starting point.
Nick found that he had already taken a couple of steps forward, with every intention of intervening, when he saw Mari dig the spokes of her fan into Henry’s ribs with a force that had him almost doubling up in pain. Henry reeled out of the dance, coughing and spluttering and Mari raised her brows, a look of most perfect concern on her face. Nick relaxed a little and smothered a grin. Henry Cole had got what he deserved and clearly Mari Osborne could take care of herself. Of course she could. She did not need his protection. For a moment he had almost forgotten that she might be a criminal and even a murderer, blinded as always by the complicated mixture of raw desire and deeper need that she seemed to evoke in him.
As a soldier, Nick had honed a fine instinct for danger, when to attack, when to withdraw and bide his time, to trust his gut feeling, to listen to that intuition which other men sometimes derided. It had led him to make judgments and decisions that on more than one occasion seemed to fly in the face of practicality and sense and yet they had proved correct in the long run. His instinct had kept him and his men alive. And now his instinct was telling him that Mari Osborne was Glory, the harlot from the tavern, and he wanted her. Lusting after Mari Osborne, the clever, devious, disreputable widow ran counter to everything that he had always believed in about himself and what he had thought he wanted from a woman. She could not have been more different from Anna. And yet his hunger for her was intense, burning him up.
He shifted, uncomfortable with both his thoughts and the physical effect that they had on him. He had found crossing swords with Mari intensely stimulating. He had admired the coolness with which she had countered his attack and the manner in which she had weighed the odds and decided which matters to concede and where to fight him. She was a clever strategist and he relished the game between them. And since they possessed such a powerful mutual awareness, he would use that attraction to bring her down. He would get close to her. He would seduce the truth from her. And he would not forget for a moment that this was all in the line of duty. In playing the game he would be able to slake his desire for her and then the white-hot passion that seared him would burn itself out.
“She turned you down then,” Charles Cole said in his ear, with a certain satisfaction.
Nick straightened up. “She did. In no uncertain terms.”
Charles laughed. “I did warn you,” he said. “She’s as cold as the driven snow. Always has been.”
Nick raised his brows. “Does she have many disappointed suitors then?”
“Plenty of men are interested in her fortune,” Charles said, “even if she is a little gray mouse of a woman.”
Nick looked at him. Charles was a man, albeit an apparently happily married one. Could he not see how alluring Marina Osborne was if one looked beneath the dowdiness of her attire? But perhaps he could not. Charles skated across the surface of life, seldom seeking deep meaning. He had been like that for as long as Nick had known him. Perhaps he could not see the rich curves and tempting lines of Mari Osborne’s body and perhaps it was a good thing, too, for Nick had a powerful feeling that he would want to take any man who looked covetously on Marina Osborne and pull his neck cloth so tight it choked him.
With a palpable effort he forced himself to relax. His feelings were becoming too involved and it was clouding his judgment. This was precisely what had happened to him at the Hen and Vulture when Mari’s warmth, the touch and the taste of her, had invaded his senses and played havoc with his judgment. She had played him for a fool then. It would not happen again. Now they would play on his terms, not hers.
He watched as Mari made her way off the dance floor and disappeared through the doors that opened on to the terrace. Her gray dress blended in with the pale shadows and she was gone from his sight. With a slight jolt Nick realized that Mari’s deliberately drab appearance was as much a disguise in its way as the blond wig and mask had been at the Hen and Vulture. She was trying to efface herself, perhaps to escape the fortune hunters, perhaps for another reason. Could she be deliberately creating a persona as far from that of Glory, the female hellion, as possible?
“I think,” Charles said suddenly, surprisingly, “that Mrs. Osborne might be shy. She is not at ease in social situations. I have often observed that she would prefer to avoid gatherings such as this.”
Nick reflected cynically that Charles might have made an interesting point—that Mari Osborne avoided company—but attributed it to the wrong reasons. No woman who dressed as a courtesan and picked men up in a tavern like the Hen and Vulture could possibly be shy, but again she might be deliberately playing a role that was the opposite of the highwaywoman heroine, Glory.
“Well, if she is shy, then she is most unlike your