He gave himself a firm shake, readjusted his hat to a rakish tilt, and started to return to the fray. Then a voice nearby caught his ear. “Alas, my lady. You wound me, you truly do!” a man said with a low laugh.
Jack paused, and glanced around to find the speaker. He’d heard that turn of phrase before; a moment later he fixed his eye on a tall nobleman with long yellow hair, who stood on the balcony ringing the ballroom’s upper floor, conversing with a young noblewoman who laughed at his remark. Something about the fellow seemed familiar, but Jack couldn’t quite place him. “I’ve seen you before, but where?” he murmured aloud. The opera, perhaps? Or the meeting of the Historical Society?
Frowning, Jack stared at the mysterious lord for a long moment, forgetting about Seila and her friends on the dance floor. Tentatively he held out his arm and raised his hand slowly, positioning his fingers in his line of sight until he cropped out the upper half of the man’s face. All that was left was the bony jaw and the fringe of yellow hair falling about the fellow’s neck. “Ah, there you are,” Jack breathed. He’d seen that face and hair before, all right, but masked from the nose up in a leather cowl. The man standing on the balcony was Fetterfist the slaver … and he was apparently a guest at the Norwood ball.
“The dastard,” Jack fumed. Was he entertaining ideas of abducting her again? Or was he there simply because the Norwoods had innocently invited him among all the other assembled nobles of Raven’s Bluff, unaware of the fact that one of the city’s aristocrats was secretly a bloody-handed slaver? Either way, Jack meant to find out at once who the fellow was and expose him to the Norwoods-there was no reason to let Fetterfist walk about free one moment longer than he had to.
At that moment Fetterfist raised his eyes and spied Jack staring up at him. They locked gazes for a brief moment before the yellow-haired lord smiled, straightened, and turned to leave the balcony he stood on.
Jack swore and hurried inside to the hall just outside the ballroom, seeking the stairs to the upper floor. He quickly threaded his way through the elegant throng that mixed and mingled by the grand staircase, bounding up the stairs just in time to see Fetterfist descending the steps at the far end of the upper hall. Jack pursued the fellow at once, hurrying back down and crossing the ballroom to the manor’s foyer, deflecting greetings left and right as he rushed through the crowd. A moment later he clattered out onto the manor’s front steps, where a number of guests waited for their carriages to be brought up. He stood there on the steps, searching the crowd with his eyes, until he finally caught a glimpse of Fetterfist’s face glancing back from a carriage window to the Norwood’s manor. Then the coach with the slaver inside rolled away down the drive.
“Damn the luck,” Jack swore. He looked around desperately for some means of pursuit, but all he could see were more noble carriages and their coachmen. He briefly considered commandeering one, but at that moment Seila emerged from the manor and hurried down to join him on the steps.
“What is it, Jack?” she asked. “I saw you rush away. Is something wrong?”
He debated whether or not to alarm her before deciding that he would rather have her on her guard. “Fetterfist was here,” he told her.
Seila’s eyes opened wide, and a look of horror blanched her face. “No,” she gasped.
“I recognized him at a distance. Well, I am almost certain I did. When I saw him at Tower Chumavhraele half his face was hidden by that leather hood, but the shape of the jaw, the hair, his build, they all matched. And he seemed to take an interest in you.”
“Was he here as a guest?” Seila asked in a weak voice.
“I’m afraid so. At least, he was dressed for the party and seemed to fit in with the crowd.”
“Did you recognize him? I mean, do you know who he is?”
Jack shook his head. “I recognized his face, but that’s all. Remember, I don’t know many people in this day.”
Seila shivered in the cool night air, and wrapped her arms around herself. “Jack, if he means to take me back down to the drow again … I can’t go back to that dark awful place. I simply can’t!”
Jack caught her in his arms and drew her close; she buried her face in his neck. “Never fear about that,” he said. “We’ll make sure your father is warned, and we’ll find out who he is, trust me. I would die before I’d let them have you again.”
And, to his surprise, he realized that he meant exactly what he said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The party began to break up an hour or two after midnight, as more and more guests called for their carriages and left for their homes. Jack rather hoped that he might entice Seila to join him in the guest chamber at some point in the night, but Marden Norwood made a firm point of showing him to his room and explaining that a servant would be in the hall just outside his door all night long in case he needed anything.
“For a genial old fellow he seems to entertain an uncomfortably keen sense of curiosity and certain suspicions about my moral fiber,” Jack grumbled to himself.
Even with that precaution he might have been tempted to try his luck by stealing his way into Seila’s room instead-after all, spells of invisibility or changing appearance were extremely useful for that sort of thing-except that Seila’s mother had mentioned that the manor was absolutely full with so many relatives visiting, so Seila would be sharing her room with a couple of her dear cousins. Jack settled for a peck on the cheek at the top of the stairs under Marden’s watchful eye, and passed the night quite alone.
He slept late the next morning, recovering from the night’s revels, then passed much of the day in a long, chaperoned ride with Seila and several of her close friends. Jack was not an experienced rider, but he hid his discomfort as best he could-any nobleman would be expected to ride well, even one from such a distant realm as the Vilhon Reach of a century past. Later in the afternoon, with his thighs and back aching, he gamely helped Seila go over the previous night’s guest list, searching for a name to put with the face of Fetterfist. Based on Jack’s description of the man’s height, leanness, and yellow hair, Seila was able to line out all but twenty or thirty possibilities.
“This is too many,” she complained. “I can’t report all these men to the authorities. And most of them belong to very prominent families. It would be unthinkable to levy an accusation unless we were absolutely sure of ourselves.”
“You and your nefarious captor move in the same circles,” Jack pointed out. “If you and I attend enough social functions and gatherings together, sooner or later I’ll spot the man I saw last night and point him out to you. You’ll almost certainly recognize him at that point, and we’ll catch our secret slave-dealer.”
“Good thinking, Jack,” Seila replied. “That might work.”
Jack grinned to himself. He thought so, too; why, he was almost grateful to this Fetterfist fellow for showing up, since it would give him the perfect excuse to stick closely to Seila for the foreseeable future. “Send me word of any event you mean to attend,” he told her. “I will clear my calendar to make sure I am at your side.”