Chapter 2
Applause rippled faintly through the ballroom as the final notes faded, the music dissolving into a low, shimmering murmur of laughter and chatter. For one suspended, impossible moment, I could not move.
I stood rooted in the center of the dance floor as though my slippers had been nailed in place. My pulse had fled somewhere beyond my reach, pounding too hard and too fast, drumming like a fist against a locked door.
It couldn’t be him.
It couldn’t.
That thought spun through my mind in frantic circles, like a moth beating itself senseless against a lantern flame. I felt faintly absurd for even thinking it. And yet, the ache of recognition thrummed in my heart.
The chandeliers swayed gently overhead, scattering light that seemed to pulse with each beat of my racing heart. The air pressed against me, perfume and too many bodies pressed together, thick enough to choke on.
When I finally managed to breathe, it tore free, ragged and trembling.
I turned in place, eyes raking over the sea of masks. He had been there. I had felt the heat of his hand, the weight of his gaze, the shock of a voice I hadn’t heard in years yet knew down to its marrow.
Sylum.
“Excuse me.” I murmured automatically as dancers spun past, the edges of their laughter slicing through me. Someone brushed my arm, another jostled my shoulder. The pressure of the room closed around me, tightening and tightening until I could scarcely breathe.
My head pounded and my throat burned with the remnants of champagne as I pushed through the crowd.
Feathers caught on my sleeve. Someone’s jeweled fan struck my cheek. Faces blurred, smiling and indifferent, but none of them were his.
Then, I caught a glimpse of dark hair, of a familiar posture just beyond the gilded mirrors, and my breath caught painfully. I followed, weaving between couples and waiters bearing silver trays, my vision narrowing to that singular figure ahead.
“Sylum,” I whispered, though the name barely escaped my lips.
The crowd parted and closed again in dizzying waves, swallowing him whole. I stumbled, catching myself against the carved edge of a pillar. All I could see was his silhouette drawing farther and farther away.
I was losing him.
My heart beat so violently it hurt. I had to see him again. I had to know. I had to prove that the champagne hadn’t conjured him from longing.
Then, movement caught my eye.
Across the ballroom, half turned toward the open terrace doors, stood the man in the black mask. The same poised shoulders, the same impossible stillness.
He looked back once, as though sensing my gaze... as though he were luring me to him. Even through the crowd, I felt that smile again. The one that had once undone me entirely.
And then he was gone, slipping into the night beyond the glass doors.
Without thinking, I gathered my skirts and followed after him.
The night air struck like a slap.
Cool, damp, alive with the scent of crushed roses and the distinct hint of autumn.
I half-stumbled down the stone steps into the garden, one hand clutching the balustrade for balance as the world rocked softly beneath me.
The music still reached me from inside, muffled now, a heartbeat I couldn’t escape.
He had to be here. He had to be.
I pushed forward through the haze, eyes searching the shadows between the hedgerows and marble statues. Each movement sent the ground tilting faintly beneath my feet. My shoes slid on the dew-slick grass. The world shimmered and lamplight blurred to streaks of hazy gold.
“Sylum?” I breathed into the dark.
No answer. Only the sigh of the wind and the rustle of ivy. My pulse hammered against my throat, dangerously uneven.
I caught the glint of a mask ahead and moved toward it, only to stop short, heat flooding my face.
A man and woman tangled together against the ivy wall, locked in a feverish embrace.
One of her breasts spilled free from her gown, heavy and pale in the moonlight as the man bent to take it in his mouth.
His hand plunged beneath her skirts and she moaned softly, her pleasure vibrating through the quiet like a forbidden secret.
Heat prickled my skin. Shame or perhaps envy twisted in my stomach with equal cruelty.
I turned and fled, the world spinning again, branches clutching at my sleeves as I ran. I didn’t stop until I found a stone bench half-hidden behind a hedge of sleeping roses. I collapsed onto it, trembling, pressing my fingers to my temples.
I closed my eyes and tried to steady my breathing.
That was when the memory came. Unbidden. Unforgiving.
The first time I’d met Sylum, I had been nineteen and miserable, standing beside a refreshment table at Lady Crawford’s ball.
I had been there because it was expected, because even families ruined by scandal must still pretend at grace.
My mother’s illness had been no secret. Society had a long memory for disgrace and I was tolerated, not welcomed. Noticed, but never invited to linger. Most evenings, I hovered at the edges of conversation, smiling when required, invisible when not.
That night, a group of ladies—beautiful, cruel, and bored—had decided to make sport of me. They’d sent one of their companions, a young man named Edmund Harcourt, to ask me to dance. My heart had fluttered like a fool’s when he smiled.
We’d danced once before he’d suggested a turn about the garden. I’d followed him, na?ve and hopeful.
The others were waiting.
They hid among the hedges, giggling behind gloved hands. When the moment was right, one girl—pale as death, her gown ghost-white—leapt out with a shriek, brandishing what I thought was a knife. I screamed, stumbling back as their laughter echoed through the night.
“Beware, Miss Benette,” she had mocked. “Your mother’s come back for you!”
Their laughter had been crueler than any blade. I had run blindly, tears streaking my face, my only thought to escape.
Then, he found me.
Sylum.
He’d been standing near the terrace, watching the entire thing. His expression, fury restrained by breeding, made the others scatter like frightened birds. Then he’d come to me.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said softly. “That was cruel.”
I remember the trembling in my voice. “It was only a jest.”
“No,” he’d replied, his tone quiet but certain. “That was malice.”
He’d offered me his handkerchief, monogrammed and folded neatly. I could still feel the weight of it in my hand even now. He’d been careful not to startle me, his voice gentle, the kind of gentleness that becomes a promise.
“Walk with me?” he’d asked.
And I had.
That night, he danced with me, and again after that. Every time another lady approached, he turned her away. The guests whispered scandal, but no one dared question a Duke.
When the final waltz began, it was his hand that found mine. His eyes had been steady, unafraid of the gossip. That was the night I stopped being invisible.
We met often after that—at dinners, at balls, during quiet rides through Hyde Park at dawn. He was always kind. Always measured. And though he never said the words, I believed there might one day be something more.
I had fallen hopelessly, irrevocably in love with Sylum.
Then, one morning, the papers announced his engagement to Lady Elizabeth Whitcombe.
Without a letter, without explanation, he was gone.
I learned then that kindness, when withdrawn, wounds more deeply than cruelty ever could.
I pressed a trembling hand to my chest, the memory leaving an ache sharper than the autumn wind. Now here I was again, chasing the shadow of that same man through a garden heavy with a darkness I could never escape.
I laughed softly, bitterly, at my own folly. “You’re a fool, Lucy,” I whispered. “A desperate, lovesick fool.”
The night answered with silence.
I tilted my head back, staring up at the cold gleam of the moon through the clouds. My head was spinning, my body too heavy, my thoughts sinking beneath the warmth of too much champagne.
And then footsteps, soft and deliberate, came closer.
I straightened, pulse leaping, breath shallow.
A dark silhouette emerged from the path beyond the roses. The light from the terrace caught his black mask, glinting faintly.
He had found me.
I stood too quickly. The ground tilted faintly beneath me, the stone path rippling like water. Perhaps it was the champagne. Perhaps it was something darker, something that pulsed in my veins now instead of blood.
My heart and far too much champagne refused to let me lie to myself any longer.
He wasn’t really there. He couldn’t be there. And yet in my mind, he was.
“Sylum?” The name slipped from my lips, trembling and breaking.
The man didn’t answer at first as he stepped closer, neither denying or acknowledging the name.
“Perhaps,” he finally relented, dark eyes piercing my very soul.
I moved toward him before my legs could protest. Each step was its own betrayal. The grass was cold against my slippers, dampness seeping through the silk. My fingers trembled as I reached up, brushing the edge of his mask, my hand cupping his cheek, half-afraid he would vanish like a mirage.
“You’re not real,” I breathed, tears burning at the corners of my eyes.
His hand rose slowly, brushing against mine. His touch was warm, achingly familiar. Then, with exquisite deliberation, he removed his mask.
I gasped, the sound tearing from my throat.
Sylum stood before me.
Older, perhaps. Sharper at the edges. But it was him. Every line of his face carved into my memory, now made flesh beneath the moonlight. He was just as beautiful as I remembered.
My knees nearly gave out. I wanted to run. I wanted to fall into him. I wanted, above all, to understand how the ghost of my past could stand so vividly before me.
“Lucy,” he murmured at last, his voice low, rough, and far too real.
Hearing my name from his mouth shattered something fragile inside me.
“How—” I began, but the words failed. “Am I imagining you?”
“Maybe we are both imagining each other.” His mouth curved faintly, not quite a smile.
I swallowed hard. Memories collided violently with the present. His aunt’s cold smile, Elizabeth Whitcombe’s pale hand resting on his arm, the engagement announced as if I had meant nothing to him. Years of practiced grief surged up and tangled horribly with the warmth still pooling in my veins.
“Why did you do it, Sylum?” I asked, my voice thick with torn emotion. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
“I should have,” he murmured, stepping closer. The faintest trace of candlelight from the terrace caught his eyes—those eyes I’d once loved so fiercely were now unreadable. “You’ve no idea how long I mourned you.”
The air between us grew thick. My pulse quickened as his fingers brushed a stray curl from my cheek, his touch barely there, but enough to make my heart ache.
“This isn’t real,” I said again, but the words came weaker this time, traitorous.
His hand slipped to my jaw, his thumb tracing the edge of my scar. “Tell me it feels unreal,” he murmured.
I couldn’t.
My breath hitched as he leaned closer, so near I could see the fine tremor in his lashes, smell the faint trace of brandy on his breath.
“I thought…” I started, the words unraveling. “I thought you were gone forever.”
“I was,” he replied softly, not offering further explanation.
Before I could speak, before I could think, his lips were on mine, a ghost’s kiss turned feverishly real.
It wasn’t the kiss of a stranger. Every heartbeat, every stolen glance, every ache from the years between us seemed to surge back through that single touch.
I wanted to pull away.
I didn’t.
The world swayed, my pulse a thunder beneath my skin. His hands framed my face, and when I finally tore my mouth from his, I was breathless and dizzy.
“We can’t do this. What if we’re caught?” I murmured, voice shaking.
He smiled then, small and terribly sad. “If it isn’t real, Lucy, how would we be caught?”
I opened my mouth, my mind too fuzzy from the champagne to form a coherent argument. As if reading my thoughts, he placed a finger to my lips, silencing me. “Let go, my love,” he said quietly, “indulge in your passion.”
The sound of laughter spilled from the ballroom behind us, too distant, too careless. The night had folded in around us like a dream, and I couldn’t tell whether I was inside or outside of myself anymore.
“Sylum…” I sighed, my fingers still pressed to his chest.
“Yes?”
“If I wake tomorrow and find that none of this was real…” I trailed off, but he leaned in until his forehead rested against mine.
“Then dream of me again,” he murmured.
I nodded, lifting onto my toes to press my lips to his.
If this was madness then I never wanted to feel horrible sanity again.
One night.
That was all.
Whether Sylum was truly there or not, I no longer cared. In that moment, I just wanted to be with him.
His hands moved up my body, slowly at first then feverish as if my own desire spurred him onward. I was scarcely aware when my gown slipped from my shoulder, my breast spilling out into the chilled autumn air. He broke the kiss, but his lips never left me, trailing over my too exposed skin.
And that, dear reader, was the precise moment that lanternlight flared behind us, followed by footsteps, startled gasps, and someone calling out sharply.
“Lord Blackthorn?”
The illusion shattered. I turned back to look at the very real man before me, breath heaving, gown half-fallen.
Sylum simply smiled.