Father Felix offered a blessing and disappeared into the sacristy.
"Oh, no, wait!" Cordelia gathered up her skirts and ran to catch up with the viscount as he strode out of the chapel. "Don't go yet." She slipped her hand into his arm, pulling him aside into a small side chapel. "What a relief it must be not to have to go to confession." She took a bite of the pear she'd been holding in her hand throughout the rehearsal. "I tend to be rather forgetful when it comes to remembering my sins."
Her chuckle was so infectious that Leo couldn't help a responding smile. "Selective memory has its uses." He couldn't drag his eyes away from her little white teeth biting into the succulent flesh of the pear.
"I was wondering if loving could be considered a sin," Cordelia mumbled through another mouthful of pear. "I don't know why it should have happened that I love you the way I do, but it's a fact, and I don't really believe that God would frown upon it."
"Oh, in the name of mercy, Cordelia!" Leo jerked his arm free. "You don't know what you're talking about." He glared down at her. "And you've got pear juice running all down your chin."
"But I do know what I'm talking about," Cordelia protested firmly, searching through her pockets. "Oh dear, I seem to have mislaid my handkerchief. They're such juicy pears, you see."
With a muttered exclamation, Leo pulled out his own handkerchief and scrubbed at her chin. "You have to stop this fanciful nonsense, Cordelia. Do you hear me?" He thrust his handkerchief back into his pocket.
"I hear you. But I don't consider it to be nonsense." She gave him a serene smile. "Tomorrow night, in the Hofburg chapel, you will be my husband."
"Proxy!" he cried, flinging up his hands in frustration. "Proxy husband!"
"Yes, well, that's just a detail." She looked around for somewhere to dispose of her pear core, then with a shrug shoved it into her pocket. "Don't you see, Leo? This is meant to be. I know it in my blood. There are some obstacles, I know, but nothing we can't overcome."
"Are you run quite mad?" He looked at her helplessly.
She shook her head. "No. Kiss me and you'll see what I mean."
"Oh no." He backed away from her, holding up his hands as if to ward her off. She was Eve, and the serpent bracelet gleamed on her slender wrist as she reached for his hand.
"Kiss me," she repeated, her voice low and sweet, her eyes beckoning him with a siren's enchantment, her parted lips offering entrance to the lush secrets of her body. Her hand closed over his and she stepped up to him. Light from the stained-glass window played over her upturned face, and a bar of gold lay across her milk white throat. "Kiss me, Leo."
He caught her face between both his hands. The urge to bring his mouth to hers was overwhelming. His lips seemed to sing with the memory of the times he had kissed her, and she was looking up at him with all the expectant wonder of sensual awakening. He could feel his fingers deeply imprinting the soft skin of her cheeks. There was a demon here, in her or in himself, he didn't know, but somehow it must be exorcised. He looked down at her, his eyes seeming to pierce the shell of her body to the soul beneath.
Abruptly, his hands dropped from her face. He turned and strode from the chapel, and the door clanged shut behind him.
Cordelia bit her lip on her disappointment. She felt empty, as if she'd been promised something that had been incomprehensibly withdrawn. And yet she was certain that he did feel what she felt-that they were somehow bound to each other. It wasn't a certainty that she could imagine either ignoring or questioning.
Leo was bored, but no one would guess it from his smiling attention, his easy conversation, his diplomatic appearance of pleasure in the evening. He disliked costume balls more than anything, and in Paris or London he would have appeared in his regular dress, maybe carrying a loo mask as token contribution to the festivities. But in Vienna he was a foreign guest, a member of a delegation, and it would be discourteous to spurn his hostess's entertainment. So now he was clad as a Roman senator in a purple-edged toga, but as if to emphasize his dislike of the entertainment, his loo mask dangled negligently from one finger.
He shifted from one foot to the other and watched the clock. At midnight everyone would be unmasked, and if he slipped away a little beforehand, he could return dressed as himself without drawing comment.
In the meantime he conversed with one half of his mind while his eyes covertly raked the throng for Cordelia. She'd been at the banquet, dressed in a gown of celestial blue quilted taffeta over a petticoat of palest blue. Her midnight black ringlets clustered on her white shoulders, caught up at the back in a pearl comb. Her wrist was circled with her betrothal bracelet, and he noticed how she played with it absently when her hands had nothing else to do.
He had tried not to look at her, but, failing in that, had concentrated on concealing his observation. She had cast him several speaking glances across the wide expanse of the banquet table, but he had refused to return them, pretending to see only the brilliant glitter of the chandeliers, the crystal sea of glass, the glinting planes of silver and gold salvers that stretched between them.
But he couldn't deny that she was entrancing. She bubbled with life, and her table companions were reflected in her light and laughter. She seemed to scintillate at the center of the people around her, and Leo again saw Elvira. No one could be in the same room with Elvira without becoming wittier, prettier, handsomer, livelier. Even Michael in the early days of their marriage had taken on some of her hues.
Amelia and Sylvie occasionally showed glimpses of their mother's spirit, but they were intimidated by their dour governess, who was under strict orders from her employer to stamp out any signs of unseemly liveliness in the girls and to train and educate them to know their duty.
Leo, suddenly aware of his clenched jaw, forced his thoughts back to the ballroom. He made some vague observation to his companion as they stood at the side of the ballroom, his eyes still searching the crowd of dancers for Cordelia. She would have changed into her costume after dinner, but he was sure he'd know her, no matter how elaborate her disguise. Nothing would conceal the essential Cordelia.
When his companion's attention was claimed by another guest, he took the opportunity to move away, strolling around the ballroom, avoiding the strategically placed firemen with their pumps-eight hundred of them stationed in the window embrasures to watch the thousands of candles. He'd been told that the empress had installed medicines, beds for emergencies, and physicians in the apartments surrounding the temporary wooden structure of the ballroom in the grounds of the Belvedere Palace. It struck him as typical of that monarch's obsession with detail.
A quadrille was being danced by four squares of couples. He paused to watch, his eye immediately falling upon a lissome figure scandalously clad in britches that molded her calves and thighs. A tunic covered her hips for the most part, but when she moved in the dance, the tunic moved with her, offering tantalizing glimpses of a small round bottom.
Her hair was pulled back from her brow and confined in a silk snood, her black silk loo mask covered eyes and nose, but Leo knew immediately that it was Cordelia. What in Lucifer's name was she playing at? He pursed his lips on a soundless whistle and glanced involuntarily toward the dais where the empress sat with her daughter, her sons, and the senior courtiers of both France and Austria. Did she have the faintest idea that her goddaughter was dressed in this scandalous fashion? Cordelia was safe from Duke Franz because his gout kept him from the ball, but she was still risking serious censure. And she was drawing every eye in her vicinity.
She was outrageous and utterly seductive. And after tomorrow evening's proxy marriage, she would be totally in his charge until he delivered her to Prince Michael. It would be his responsibility to see she didn't flout the conventions on the procession through France. There would be rigidly defined rules of etiquette for this ceremonial journey with its many stops as the French people were introduced to their new dauphine, and there would be no room for nonconformity, however appealing the rebel might be.