He paused, catching his breath. Arabella Knightley had easily outstripped the others. She was as light-footed and as fleet as a boy.
Adam climbed back up the hill, holding the portrait carefully by the corners, listening to the shrieks and giggles Grace and Hetty Wootton made as they pounced on the scattered pieces of paper.
Back at the rug, Grace gathered the sketches together. A number of them were dog-eared and grass-stained. “The kitten and the robin,” she said, a note of worry in her voice. “I don’t see it.”
“I have it,” Arabella Knightley said, last to arrive back.
Adam glanced at her face—alight with laughter, flushed with exertion—and looked hastily away. He was aware of a surge of heat inside him that had nothing to do with climbing the hill.
Grace laid the sketches in the leather-bound portfolio again, closed it, and tied the ribbons tightly.
BACK AT HIS town house in Berkeley Square, Adam laid the evidence on his desk: the note from Tom, and Arabella Knightley’s sketch of Grace.
I believe these belong to you, Tom had written. I found them in Lady Bicknell’s possession. And then he’d drawn a black cat at the bottom.
Adam examined the cat. It had been drawn with an unerring hand. Miss Knightley’s work, surely?
He turned his attention to the writing. The only word in common between Tom’s note and Miss Knightley’s label on the portrait was in. He grimaced. Not helpful.
But wasn’t the y the same? And the neat curves and loops of the ell in Bicknell and the ell in Arabella?
The longer he stared at the words—pencil and black ink—the more he was convinced. The handwriting was Miss Knightley’s, just as the cat was.
Adam pushed back his chair. He poured himself a glass of brandy and walked over to the window. What next? he asked himself as he swirled the brandy in the glass, warming it.
The answer was easy: the next time he saw Arabella Knightley he’d confront her with his evidence.
And then what? Dare he hope that Miss Knightley would confide in him? That she’d reveal Tom’s identity?
He strongly doubted it.
And just who was Tom?
Adam sipped the brandy slowly, staring out the window, not seeing anything. He’d thought Tom a gentleman; he knew now he was wrong. Miss Knightley had few friends among the ton. Tom had to be the large man who’d collected Jenny from the boarding house. A commoner, the landlady had said. Someone Miss Knightley had known as a child. A friend. Someone she trusted.
He felt a strong surge of envy. The brandy tasted suddenly bitter in his mouth.
Adam turned away from the window and went back to his desk. He stood, staring down at the portrait of Grace, at the black cat.
Such a gifted artist.
He touched Tom’s note, brushing the cat with a light fingertip. The next time he saw Miss Knightley, he’d have the truth from her.
THAT EVENING, ADAM escorted his sister and aunt to the Riddifords’ masked ball. Grace, wearing a domino of palest blue, was almost beside herself with excitement; this was her first masquerade. She quivered on the seat beside him in the carriage, her hands in their long white kid gloves clasped tightly together. “I’m so glad Hetty’s coming,” she said, as the carriage turned into St. James’s Square. “And Bella.”
“Miss Knightley?” Adam said, his interest sharpening. “She’ll be here?”
Grace nodded, and peered out the window as the carriage slowed. She clutched his arm. “We’ve arrived!”
The Riddifords’ ballroom was at the back of their house on St. James’s Square, along with a conservatory. Adam entered the ballroom with almost as much eagerness as Grace. He surveyed the assembled guests, looking for dark hair and a softly cleft chin. Where are you, Miss Knightley?
“Can you see Hetty?” Grace asked. “Or Bella?”
“No.”
He danced the cotillion and the quadrille without seeing Miss Knightley. The fact that everyone was wearing dominos and loo masks was extremely unhelpful. Frustration built inside him as he scanned the ballroom. A considerable number of ladies were as diminutive as Arabella Knightley, but none had her poise and her slender figure, her graceful way of dancing.
Two country dances later, he still couldn’t see her. Some of the ladies had pushed their hoods back to reveal dark ringlets, but they were all too short, too tall, too buxom, too thin.
Adam stood out the waltz, resolutely ignoring those ladies whose hands were unclaimed. He strolled around the ballroom, sipping a glass of champagne, looking for dark eyes hidden behind a loo mask, for a chin with the faintest of indentations.
Adjoining the ballroom was the conservatory. Adam trod down the short flight of marble stairs, but he found only greenery and more refreshments laid out on a table. Two dowagers were sipping punch from crystal glasses, and a young lady in a domino of jonquil yellow was conducting a mild flirtation with a gentleman dressed in green.
Back in the ballroom, Adam frowned across the dance floor. Where the devil was she?
A thought occurred to him. He headed for the door, pushing through the throng of masked guests. “The card room?” he asked a liveried footman, and was directed to an adjoining salon.
There, seated at one of the tables, was Lady Westwick. The hood of her lilac satin domino was pushed back and she’d dispensed with her loo mask. Her white hair gleamed, as did the pile of guineas in front of her.
Adam turned back to the ballroom. Anticipation hummed beneath his skin. If Lady Westwick was here, then so was her granddaughter.
“MISS KNIGHTLEY?”
Arabella glanced up. The gentleman standing in front of her wore a black domino. A mask hid his upper face. His hair was brown streaked with gold, his eyes behind the mask were gray, and his jaw was what could be described as chiseled. But even without those features, the man’s height, the fine shape of his legs in the black satin breeches and white
