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Ann?”
    The maid shook her head so violently her mobcap flew off.
    “Good. I located the coachman and groom without much difficulty, and they have been persuaded to believe they have been beset by a band of cutthroats who dragged your cousin off at pistol point before disabling the coach, which is why it will not return to your cousin’s domicile until morning. Damned uncivilized place, London, even in the finest neighborhoods at times. I’m surprised anyone is safe. Related to the Earl of Mentmore, are you?”
    Regina’s head was spinning. “How…how…”
    “The crest on the door. Only an idiot would arrive at Lady Fortesque’s ball in such an easily recognizable coach. How do you think I located the correct coach so easily? You’re not very proficient at intrigue, are you?”
    “But you are?”
    “As a matter of fact, yes, I am, luckily for you. And now that we’re settled on that head, my coachman has been instructed to drive straight to the mews behind my residence, where you will remain with the coach while I nip inside to rid myself of this betraying costume. You have between now and the time I return to come up with any missing details sufficient to the problem. I suggest you think in terms of where you were, why you were farther afield from wherever you should have been, why you have no chaperone and why you weren’t taken, as well.”
    “I…I stabbed the man who had hold of me. With my hat pin, the one Mama says all chaste young ladies always carry with them. And…and he let me go.”
    “Very good, for a beginning,” Robin Goodfellow complimented as the coach pulled into a narrow alleyway and stopped just outside a stable. “Perhaps even too good. You’ve the makings of a commendable liar, Regina.”
    “Yes, I know. It’s in my blood,” she said forlornly as he opened the door and jumped out, even before the coach had come to a complete halt.
    While Doris Ann sat sniffling, Regina did her best to concentrate on the fib—the great, big, whoppinglie—she would tell her mother. Except that her mother had been left alone with her “company,” and even if the wine had been watered, by this time of night she would be of no help to Regina or to anybody.
    And her father? Regina felt her stomach turn over inside her. No, her father wouldn’t be at home when she arrived in any case. How she loathed the man. He was as base and as common and as uncouth as…as any man who would sink to attending such a licentious ball.
    She reminded herself that Robin Goodfellow had been there.
    This did nothing to lighten her mood, which was rapidly descending into the very depths of desolation.
    Yet Miranda’s brother had received an invitation. There were bound to have been other men, supposed gentlemen of the ton, in attendance.
    Were all men so base?
    It really was too bad she had no desire to enter a nunnery…?.
    “Miss Regina? How can we go home without Miss Miranda? Her mama will be that upset, and his lordship will go spare, he really will.”
    Regina reached up and at last untied her mask, tossing it out of the dropped-down coach window with some force. “My uncle Seth will have every right to go—that is, to be angry. Terrified. But we must think of Miss Miranda, Doris Ann. We will think of her, and we will be brave. If not entirely honest,” she added, squeezing the maid’s hand.
    “Yes, miss. And how will you explain Mr. Goodfellow?”
    Regina opened her mouth to answer and then shut it again before making a decision. “He said he would handle the broad strokes. We’ll leave that up to him, shall we? Now quiet, please, I hear footsteps. Yes, here he comes.”
    Regina sat forward on the cushion seat and squinted into the darkness, waiting for him to step into the moonlight so that she could finally see his face without that extraordinary mask. She probably would one day convince herself that it was the mask that had destroyed her common sense, that its odd design had somehow enthralled her into