Masked Ball at Broxley Manor

fine,” Lady Merriman said.
    “Here I am. Quite safe. No cause for alarm,” said a voice by the door, and a man in a devil’s costume stepped out among us. “Please do not worry. I am sure your excellent police will soon have apprehended the man who tried to harm us.”
    He came into the light and I stared hard at him. It was the same costume all right, but there was something different about him. Even the voice was different—higher and with a slight foreign accent.
    “It is my turn to remove the mask, nicht wahr? Very well. I shall have a devil of a time doing it.” And he laughed as he pulled off the red mask and black cap. I found myself looking at a chubby and rather silly face with a weak chin. He had fair hair and blue eyes that drooped a little at the corners. He was definitely not the same person I had danced with.
    “Go and sit next to lady Georgiana, Otto,” Lady Merriman said. “She looks quite upset.”
    She led Otto to the seat beside me. “Your turn, I believe,” he said. He reached across and removed my mask. “Ah, yes,” he said. “My dear cousin Georgiana. I am so sorry you were frightened by the explosion. But you have had a pleasant ball so far, I hope. You enjoyed the dancing?”
    “Yes, thank you,” I mumbled. I could hardly get out the words. My mind was reeling. My partner had told me he was an interloper, a gate-crasher, and obviously it was true. But who was he, and why had he gate-crashed the ball disguised as Prince Otto? And then my brain took this supposition one stage further. Was it possible that he was perhaps the anarchist himself, in cahoots with the man who put poison in a drink intended for me? After all, the explosion had happened soon after he went outside, through those French doors. I didn’t want to believe that of him. It was breaking my heart, in fact.
    Otto was chatting on. “I am so sorry that I missed the reception that the king and queen gave for me the other day. I understand that you were there. I was unavoidably detained with friends in the country. A spot of motorcar trouble, you know.”
    His English was fluent but clipped and Germanic.
    The company had recovered from shock and other people were now removing masks to expressions of surprise and laughter. Lady Merriman had just suggested that we go in to supper when the French doors opened again and Lord Merriman came in, accompanied by a young bobby.
    “It’s all right,” he said. “They caught the blighter. Some foreign chappy trying to bump off Prince Otto, from what we can gather.”
    “Really, it is too bad that one can’t feel safe in England anymore,” Lady Merriman said. “Did he do any damage to our house?”
    “No, luckily the bomb was wrenched away from him and hurled away from the house before it could explode,” Lord Merriman said. “It has blown a crater in one of the lawns, that’s all. Easily remedied. So sorry, everyone. Let’s put it out of our minds and go in to supper, shall we? We’ll show these foreign blighters that they can’t scare us.”
    Prince Otto rose to his feet and offered me his arm. I took it and allowed myself to be led through double doors to a dining room where a magnificent spread awaited us on long, white-clothed tables. We ate very frugally at home, as Fig was in full economy mode, so on any other occasion I would have been thrilled to see whole smoked salmons, cold chickens, plates of oysters, mounds of caviar, lobsters, cold venison and all the foods I dreamed of when we were forced to face baked beans yet again. But I wasn’t used to eating this late and my stomach was tied in knots. I couldn’t stop thinking about my mystery man. I wondered if I should say anything to Lord Merriman, to tell him that my dance partner had been a gate-crasher at the party and had claimed that someone tried to poison our drinks. But if they had already caught him, his fate was sealed anyway. A wave of overwhelming sadness enveloped me. For the first time in my life I had met a man with whom I could really fall in love, and he had turned out to be a fake. Perhaps his kisses had been fake too—a pleasant way to pass the time until he went outside to detonate the bomb that would have killed us all.
    “You do not eat,” Prince Otto said. His own plate was piled high. “Not good to starve yourself. You need more meat on your bones. Here, let me give you this good venison.”
    I looked at the small foreleg in horror. All I could picture was a fawn standing in