Two Masquerades and a Major

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Chapter One

When Major Joshua Charles FitzRoy of the 5^th Dragoon Guards walked into Lord Rothingale’s masquerade ball, he instantly knew he’d made a mistake.

For one thing, not having known it was a masquerade, he had no domino cloak or a mask. A footman had handed him a strip of black silk with holes cut in it, but he stuffed it in his pocket. For another, everywhere he looked, lush women bursting out of their scanty costumes were dancing with men in cloaks and masks.

Hardly any of the men were in costume, which was proof positive that this was no normal costume ball, such as the Twelfth Night balls he’d attended before his father bought him a commission in the 5^th Dragoon Guards.

The men may be gentlemen, but the women weren’t ladies. Rather than the marriage market, this was a market of a different sort.

He wasn’t interested in such.

Or anything else.

Ever since his earlier dinner with three friends from Oxford, he had been wrestling with the realization that he’d outgrown them. Back in university, they’d called themselves the Arch Rogues, which was such a foolish label that he shuddered to think of it.

He had changed, and they hadn’t. Or so it seemed over dinner.

Perhaps it was the effect of going to war. After serving in the Peninsula in 1811, followed by the Battle of Salamanca, and a lengthy recovery from a gunshot that nearly took his life…

He found himself repulsed by Trywhitt, his oldest friend.

Clod Trywhitt, they called him now, or so Clod had cheerfully told him. Clod had turned into a gambler, frankly looking to marry a lady with a substantial dowry, even though he boasted of suffering a bout of syphilis over Christmas. What Joshua knew of syphilis suggested that Clod would infect his wife, not to mention whatever brazen faced (albeit masked) woman he chose this evening.

Joshua had just decided to cut Clod Trywhitt from his life and return home, when he heard a crash and a recognizable bellow.

Shouldering his way through the crowd, he discovered his friend flat on the floor staring up at a young vixen who had apparently landed him a blow that taken him off his feet. Not only that, but her delicate slipper was positioned on his chest.

She was pulling on his neck cloth, shouting. “Oh, you would, would you?” Every time she yanked on his neck cloth, Clod’s head rose from the floor and then thumped back down.

Joshua instantly knew why Clod wasn’t moving. He was in the bind of a gentleman who has apparently misbehaved—and is confronted not by a high-flyer, but by a young lady. Her voice was crystal clear, and her inflection enraged. He would guess her family was high-born, not mere gentry.

What on earth was she doing here?

Clod stirred, and she stamped her small foot. “Don’t you dare move, you repellent blackguard!”

He froze.

Joshua found a genuine smile on his face for the first time since he returned to England. “How can I help?” he asked her, and then, looking down, “What an ass you are, Clod.”

“Clod? As in a clod of earth?” the lady demanded. She yanked on his neckcloth again and let his head thump down. “He is a disgusting, repellent Beelzebub!”

end of excerpt