The Birth of Blue Satan by Patricia Wynn Page A

where, the fates have wrapped in night.
     
    Methinks already I your tears survey,
    Already hear the horrid things they say,
    Already see you a degraded toast,
    And all your honour in a whisper lost!
    How shall I, then, your helpless fame defend?
    ‘Twill then be infamy to seem your friend!
     

CHAPTER 3
     
    Hester did her best to keep her composure until she passed from the crowded room. She would not wish St. Mars to see how embarrassed she had been by her aunt’s churlish mood. As if Isabella suffered any competition from a parson’s drab daughter! she thought, hiding her flaming cheeks from the people she passed, and hoping the cool of the night would tame the flush that heated them.
    At the door downstairs, she was checked by a footman who inquired whether he might perform her a service. Hester had enough sense not to insist upon searching for Mrs. Mayfield’s carriage herself. With the crush of vehicles awaiting their owners outside, she might spend an hour dragging her skirts through the mud and the cold air while she tried to discover the right one. Not that she supposed Mrs. Mayfield had any need for the garment, but neither could her aunt now pretend she did not, having expressed herself so strongly in front of St. Mars. There was humor in that thought, at least, which made Hester feel a bit better while she waited for the footman’s return.
    She stood to one side of the hall, her back against the wall, where she could observe the arrivals and departures of Lord Eppington’s guests. The number of goings and comings had greatly fallen off this close to the supper hour, so that the noisy arrival of a gentleman, dressed in a riding costume rather than the finery required for a ball, his tall boots splattered with mud, could hardly escape her notice. The man’s Puritan-style clothing and grim expression gave her the unhappy feeling that he had come to deliver bad news.
    Just then, the footman returned with Mrs. Mayfield’s shawl. Hester was obliged to take her eyes off the newcomer in order to thank the servant for his help. By the time she turned again, the gentleman had moved up the stairs in the direction of the ballroom, leaving a stream of murmurs in his wake. His sober clothes alone would have caused remark, to which his solemn expression could only add.
    With a sense of impending calamity, Hester followed him back upstairs, through the hallway and into the ballroom.
    She trailed him to within feet of her aunt. He stopped and bowed before my Lord St. Mars.
    St. Mars, his colour heightened since Hester had left—perhaps by the fact that he was enjoying Isabella’s company at last—noticed the gentleman and his eyebrows shot up in surprise. He seemed to recognize him at once, although Hester could not hear what passed between them until she stepped closer. When she did, she felt her breath die in her throat.
    “My lord,” the gentleman said, “I regret to inform you that your father, Lord Hawkhurst, has been murdered.”
     
    “Murdered?” Gideon raised a hand to his forehead, gone suddenly chill as the blood drained from his face. A sense of unreality had been slowly spreading through him as the dancers pranced and Isabella toyed with her fan, refusing to hear his entreaties. But now the room transformed itself into a whirligig of faces. Lord Eppington’s guests disappeared in a revolving cloud of noses, wigs, and eyes.
    Someone grasped him by the arm, and an intense pain shot through him. He tried to muffle his cry, but the unexpectedness of  the pang made him jerk to protect his stabbing wound.
    “My lord!” Sir Joshua Tate, the justice of the peace who had brought him the news, stared down at a smear of blood on his hand.
    A gasp tore through the room. Isabella shrieked. His arm—his wound had bled. It must have been oozing through his bandages and had alarmed her.
    “It’s nothing,” he said. But his tongue would not obey his commands, and his speech sounded slurred even to his own