Chapter 1
I’ll begin this tale with two truths and a lie, for I learned years ago that deception is easiest to swallow when offered alongside something pretty.
So here are mine.
First: I was desperately, indecently poor.
The kind of poor that crept in quietly, soft-footed and patient, through the cracks of a once respectable home.
It began with a single unpaid bill, then another, until I awoke one morning and realized that I owned more debt than dresses, more grief than coal for the fire.
The kind of poor that leaves a woman choosing between dignity and a decent meal.
Poverty, it would seem, when settled upon a household of good breeding, is a peculiar, humiliating thing.
It hadn’t always been that way though.
My father, once a respectable Viscount, was dead.
There were days in my childhood when laughter lived in the halls of our home, but grief is a slow poison. Somewhere between losing my mother to the asylum and watching his only daughter be shunned from his peers, he’d lost his battle with drinking and gambled away the fortune he once held dear.
By the time the last creditor came knocking, I had sold everything of value. I had grown accustomed to stitching my own hems by candlelight and learned to ignore the sharpness of my cheekbones from hunger.
Only my name remained…but even that was beginning to rot.
Second: I had once been in love with the Duke of Blackthorn.
Sylum Deveroux had loved me too—or at least I thought he had. He had seen past my scar, past the legacy of madness staining my bloodline, and for a moment in time, he had made me believe that I was worth more than hushed gossip.
But, love is a fragile thing in the hands of aristocracy, especially when you are nothing more than a penniless, mad woman’s daughter with nothing to offer a husband.
Duty wrenched him from me before I even understood what I’d lost. A well-chosen bride with a substantial dowry tore him from me without so much as a farewell.
He vanished from my life and reemerged only in gossip and headlines, his name spoken with both awe and scandal.
His betrothed never did make it down the aisle. The eve of their wedding ended in a funeral instead.
Most people believed Elizabeth had fallen from the balcony at Blackthorn Manor by accident.
Or slipped. Or jumped… or she was pushed.
It depended on who told the story and how much they’d had to drink.
In the end, gossip doesn’t need truth to thrive and even a Duke can be tarnished with a single whispered accusation.
Sylum had disappeared from London after that, never to be seen or heard from again and I’d lost the only person I’d ever truly loved.
As for the lie?
I was attending the Samhain masquerade ball merely for amusement.
I told myself that lie as I stood hidden beyond the lantern glow, breath fogging in the cold October air, trembling fingers fisting in the silk skirts of a gown three seasons out of fashion.
I told myself that slipping into a Countess’ ball uninvited beneath a handmade mask was merely an adventure.
But the truth—the real truth—pressed against my ribs like a second heartbeat.
I was there because I needed to find a husband.
Marriage was my only respectable escape from ruin.
A masquerade was the ideal hunting ground for a woman who possessed neither wealth nor reputation…
only desperation artfully disguised as daring.
In such a place, one could lie without consequence, flirt without expectation, and tempt without inviting scandal.
Masks softened flaws and hid scars. Silk disguised poverty. And in the dark, no one cared where a woman came from. They cared only whether she could make them laugh, make them want.
Still, doubt anchored my feet to the stones.
From inside the manor, music thundered. Laughter flared, bright and reckless. Wealth moved easily behind those doors, breathing champagne and indulgence. I had not breathed that air in some time.
All I had to do was step inside.
All I had to do was make someone fall in love before he knew the truth… that I was Lucy Benette, disfigured daughter of a disgraced viscount and the woman who’d gone mad enough to nearly kill her own child.
My pulse beat wildly as I adjusted my mask—cheap paste gems instead of diamonds, but convincing enough in the candlelight.
I inhaled once, sharp and shallow, crossing the courtyard like a thief in the night.
I just needed to slip inside unnoticed.
That truth pulsed louder than the violins, louder than the laughter spilling from painted mouths and flushed throats.
Invitations were checked at the door. Names were announced with ringing authority and titles unfurled like banners.
I hovered at the edge of the entrance, heart frantic, as I watched perfumed women glide past on the arms of men who had never once known hunger a day in their lives.
I timed it carefully.
A Marquess arrived late, red faced and bellowing at his wife in tones so public and indelicate that one would think he wanted the entire county to know their grievances.
Their quarrel sent a ripple of delighted horror through the crowd as guests surged forward like crows to a carcass, desperate for a single ounce of fresh gossip.
The commotion crested, the butler raising his voice in a futile attempt to announce them properly. In that small, miraculous lapse of order, I took my chance.
I slipped through the crowd.
No name. No title. No invitation.
Just nervous desperation and the borrowed anonymity of a mask pressed cool against my feverish skin.
The stale air inside hit me all at once. Far too many pressed bodies, champagne and wax from a hundred candles dripping gold down crystal chandeliers large enough to crush a person outright. The music throbbed through the marble floor, up into my bones, until I felt it more than heard it.
Laughter curled around me, sharp and slightly cruel. Everywhere I looked there was movement—skirts spinning, hands grasping, bodies leaning far too close in the half-approved intimacy of a masquerade.
I kept my head down at first, heart hammering loud enough to drown the strings of music. I was terrified that someone… anyone… might recognize me. It was foolish to be here. Reckless. Dangerous.
I knew these people. I had grown up among them.
I knew the tilt of familiar shoulders, recognized the cadence of their voices.
I was aware of the way their heads tilted when gossip ripened on their tongues.
I had once moved in their circles. I had once been just like them…
and a single recognition would destroy me.
So I did what any sensible sinner would do when amongst saints.
I went straight for the champagne.
The refreshment table gleamed at the edge of the room, crowded with half-empty glasses and sugared fruits glistening like jewels. I seized a flute of champagne with perhaps too much eagerness and drank deeply, welcoming the burn as it slid down my throat.
One glass did nothing.
The second steadied my hands.
By the third, the room began to soften at the edges, like a cruel painting smudged just enough to make the subject bearable.
I exhaled, my shoulders loosening as I dared to lift my gaze. No one had stopped me. No one had reached for my arm or demanded my name. Masks hid everything. Most importantly, past sins. Tonight, wealth and desperation looked remarkably similar beneath the gilt and velvet.
I wasn’t trembling anymore and that was a good start.
Encouraged, I let myself wander.
The masquerade was not a single room but spilled into many. Doors opened to alcoves thick with shadows and hushed conversations, balconies where couples tempted scandal, gaming tables where gold passed hands with careless abandon. Cards shuffled stiffly. Dice clattered like teeth.
Gilded masks adorned the pillars, their hollow eyes catching the light as though something sentient watched through them.
From the gallery above, a string quartet played a slow, haunting melody that trembled at the edge of something unholy—beautiful, yes, but just off-key enough to raise the hairs on one’s neck.
Guests drifted through the candlelight in a dizzying blur of color and perfume. Silk and satin whispered against marble floors, laughter chimed like distant echoes, and every face was half-concealed, half-revealed. Beauty and monstrosity blurred until I could no longer tell which was which.
As I threaded through the crowd, a gentleman in a fox mask caught my hand. He bowed so deeply that his feathered ears brushed my skirts before he rose to place a gentle kiss on my gloved knuckles.
“May I have this dance?”
I hesitated a moment, gauging him, praying I wouldn’t recognize the curve of his jaw or the timbre of his voice.
Thankfully, I didn’t.
I said yes before fear could catch up, the champagne singing through my veins and giving me courage I wouldn’t normally possess.
He was kind enough. Not handsome beneath the mask, but attentive.
I categorically assessed him closely, tallying each of his qualities and failures.
He spun me clumsily, apologized twice for stepping on my hem, and spoke at length about his estate in Kent with a rehearsed passion reserved for men advertising themselves like livestock at auction.
Perhaps, I considered with chilled practicality, he would make a tolerable husband.
I smiled and laughed when expected. I took note of his hands—clean, soft, and uncalloused. I noticed, however, that his eyes roamed over the room even as he spoke to me, ever searching for someone better.
Not him, then.
Another dance followed. This one with a much older gentleman whose hand lingered lower than propriety allowed, whose voice dropped suggestively when the music swelled. I extricated myself politely, pulse skittering again with half revulsion, half resolve.
Marriage, I chided myself as I silently marked him off my invisible list, did not require tenderness.
Only a cage large enough to survive in.