Chapter 5

• Eight months later
• Astoria was feeling hot and bothered by the time she arrived very late—it was well after ten o’clock—to Fiona’s masquerade party.
• A problem with a client had come up at the last moment, delaying her in getting ready. Then, when the taxi had arrived to drive her here, she’d realised she had another problem. It was an extremely warm evening, and her gown was made out of soft gold and very heavy velvet, and the hoops beneath the skirts kept springing up and almost hitting her in the face.
• How on earth, Astoria wondered wrathfully, had women ever managed to move around in these clothes two hundred and fifty years ago, let alone eat or drink in them?
• Astoria gave her cloak to Jamieson the butler after being admitted to the house, before moving to the mirror in the hallway to check her appearance. The gold mask she wore covered her face from brow to top lip, and her red hair was covered with the white powder that had been the fashion of those days. The low neckline of the gold gown showed an expanse of breasts pushed up to a creamy swell by a corset, which also held her waist nipped in tightly, and the full skirt billowed out and over the gold slippers that matched the dress.
• Yes, she was as ready as she was ever going to be to face all the other guests, who were already outside in the romantically lit garden.
• Fiona had telephoned Astoria yesterday so that she could tell her all about her plans for the masquerade party. The garden was to be lit only by lamps and strings of coloured lights in the trees and bushes, with a small orchestra hired to add to the romance of the evening. But even so Astoria was totally unprepared for the magical appearance of everything and everyone when she stepped outside on her way to the rose garden where Jamieson had told her Axel and Fiona were greeting their guests.
• The costumes of the two hundred or so guests were exquisite, and the masks even more so—a lot of them intricately decorated, especially those worn by Fiona’s Venetian relatives—giving Astoria a feeling of unreality, as if she really had stepped back into another time.
• It was easy to see how and why, with so many corners of the spacious garden left in darkness, those flirtations Fiona had spoken of took place!
• Astoria quickly made her way to the rose garden, keeping a wary eye out for Fiona’s obnoxious brother—a man she thankfully hadn’t seen in the eight months since Fiona and Axel’s wedding, an occasion when they had all but ignored each other.
• ‘Is that you, Astoria?’ Fiona greeted her warmly as soon as she saw her, her own Georgian-style costume an elegant red, her mask silver and her dark hair unpowdered.
• ‘You aren’t supposed to know it’s me.’ Astoria frowned behind her mask.
• ‘We discussed these dresses once—don’t you remember?’ her friend said as Astoria moved to kiss a Duke-of-Wellington-costumed Axel.
• As it happened, Astoria did remember the time she and Fiona had lain under an oak tree in the school grounds, waxing lyrical about how romantic it must have been to live in the seventeen hundreds, with all those manly heroes from the historical novels they’d devoured. Until they had remembered that there had been no plumbing for instant hot baths in those times, nor the convenience of the telephone!
• But like Fiona, Astoria hadn’t been able to resist wearing a beautiful gown in the style of that century this evening.
• ‘You both look very beautiful,’ Axel told them gallantly.
• He was nothing like those dark, almost satanic heroes Astoria and Fiona had once drooled over, with his hair a golden blond and his eyes blue, but there was no doubting the happiness of Fiona and Axel’s marriage, Astoria recognised almost wistfully, as Axel turned to give his wife a lingering kiss.
• ‘Just tell me what Leo is wearing so that I can once again avoid him!’ Astoria begged of her friend as she realised she was holding up the receiving line.
• ‘He’s a p—’
• ‘Just think of the D’Alessandro ancestry and you’ll know him,’ Fiona cut smoothly across Axel. ‘And you see all those good-looking men gathered by the bar?’ She nodded towards five men laughing and talking together as they sipped champagne. ‘D’Alessandros every one,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘You met them all at the wedding last year, and I’m sure that any one of them would be pleased to oblige you, if you know what I mean…?’
• ‘Very funny.’ Astoria shot her friend a silencing glare before moving off to join the rest of the guests strolling in the garden, knowing exactly what her friend was referring to even if Axel didn’t. In the eight months since she had spoken to Fiona about her grandfather’s will, Astoria hadn’t even come close to finding a solution to that particular problem.
• But Fiona was right about the D’Alessandro men all being good-looking, Astoria acknowledged ruefully as she stood a short distance away from them. All of them were dark-haired, very tall, with athletically fit bodies. In fact any one of them could be Leo, she realised in dismay.
• One was dressed as a nobleman. Another as a priest. The third as a gondolier. The fourth was a nineteenth-century Italian soldier. The fifth was in Regency-style clothes.
• Exactly what had Fiona meant by her cryptic comment about the D’Alessandro ancestry in reference to Leo’s costume?
• ‘Champagne…?’
• She turned to find a rakish-looking pirate standing at her side—another one of Fiona’s D’Alessandro cousins? This man’s dark hair was pulled back and tied with a black bow at his nape, and a black mask covered his face from brow to top lip. Tight black trousers were tucked into black boots, emphasising the long length of his legs, a black sash was about his waist, and a long black leather tunic was worn over the white billowy shirt that was de rigueur for any respectable pirate.
• Except pirates weren’t respectable by definition, were they?
• This one certainly didn’t look as if he was. Dark, dark eyes glittered through the slits in the mask as his gaze roamed boldly over Astoria, from her toes to her powdered hair and then back to her face behind the gold mask.
• ‘Champagne…?’ he prompted again huskily, and he held out one of the two glasses he held in his hands.
• Astoria swallowed hard, not taking her gaze off the pirate for even a second. It was one thing to fantasise about meeting a man like this when you were an impressionable teenager. Another thing altogether, at the age of twenty-four, to find yourself face to face with a man who looked as if he were every bit as dangerous as the pirate he was dressed as.
• Which meant he definitely had to be a D’Alessandro cousin!
• Still, it was a masquerade party, where no names were exchanged and there would be no expectations after tonight. Fiona was right; it could be fun for Astoria to just anonymously enjoy herself for one evening.
• Until ten minutes ago Leo had been finding the evening tedious. Conversation became louder as bottles of champagne began to disappear, the laughter too shrill, the flirtations more obvious—and the culmination of those flirtations was obvious as couples began to disappear off into the darkness of the garden.