Midsummer Masque by Deborah Hale

Author:Deborah Hale [Hale, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9781426802454
Publisher: Harlequin mini
Published: 2007-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

If ever there had been a night meant for lovers, this one was!

Dressed as Helen of Troy in a flowing Greek chiton, Sylvie Somerville watched with a smile on her lips and a gentle mist in her eyes when Lord Daventry and his fiancée made their entrance at the masquerade ball celebrating their engagement.

When Sylvie and Lord Westborne had arrived the previous day, she’d wondered if this match between the scarred war veteran and his beautiful neighbor could possibly be based on love. Watching the way Miss Lacewood clung to Lord Daventry’s arm, and his visible pride in her, all Sylvie’s doubts had been banished.

Apparently it was possible for two people who had known each other a long time to fall in love. Until yesterday, Sylvie had believed it quite out of the question. Now she gazed around the darkening south lawn, where the ball was being held, and savored the atmosphere of romantic possibility.

Music wafted on the warm evening air from a small but skillful orchestra. Guests in colorful costumes made intricate shifting patterns on the tiled terrace that served as a dance floor. Tiny tin lanterns cast twinkling light from the branches of the trees that surrounded the lawn, mirroring the stars that were beginning to appear in the darkening sky above.

A masculine voice with a mellow, musical cadence wrapped around her from behind, shimmering with admiration. “Helen, ‘fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars!’”

A delicious blush suffused her cheeks and she spun about to face…Robin Hood? For an instant, she had thought the voice belonged to someone other than Viscount Allingham. But, of course, it couldn’t.

Fortunately her mask helped obscure any flicker of disappointment that might have crossed her face. What was there to be disappointed about, after all? She had agreed to meet the viscount here tonight and spend the evening with him.

“Why, Robin Hood, you are curiously eloquent for an outlaw.” Hard as she tried to recapture the bubbly banter of the previous evening, it eluded her. “I hope you do not mean to steal from me.” She twirled around, making the soft folds of bleached muslin billow around her. “As you can see, I have little worth taking.”

“Quite the contrary, my dear.” He held out his arm to her. “You have riches beyond price. To gaze on your beauty, to hear your laughter, to bask in your smile — all are treasures of the highest value.” His voice rang with a sweet note of sincerity that Sylvie found difficult to resist.

She tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. “But you need not filch any of those, Sir Robin. They are yours to have when you will.”

“Perhaps, but there are other prizes of even rarer value.” He nodded toward the terrace and began to walk in that direction. “A dance, for instance?”

“You would steal a dance?”

He glanced toward her with a smile of such tender reverence that it set her heart aflutter. “Ah, there’s the rub. Like so many of life’s most precious riches, it would lose all its worth unless given freely.

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