2. Masked Strangers
MASKED STRANGERS
It was ironic, really, how similar a society ball was to the average night at The Domus Emporium.
The same gilded walls. The same expensive wine. And beneath the chandeliers and jeweled masks, the purpose was much the same. Men wanted women. The only question was what they were willing to surrender for the privilege.
Rose knew exactly how that bargain worked.
At The Domus, no one pretended. Everyone understood what they were there for. The ton merely concealed their intentions beneath titles, fortunes, and polite smiles.
Was there anything honest about any of them?
Rose lifted her fingertips to the black velvet half-mask concealing the upper portion of her face. The masquerade had made her task almost laughably simple.
Wrapped in a gown of deep claret silk, its skirts whispering around her slippers and its bodice sewn with enough tiny garnets to catch every candle flame, Rose had swept through the entrance as though she had every right to be there.
Tonight, she had left the elaborate wigs behind and dressed her own pale blond hair simply beneath the black mask.
She’d felt more than a little exposed. And yet, for a woman who changed her appearance every day, what better disguise could there be than appearing as her true self?
Not one servant had questioned her. Not one had asked her name, her invitation, or which lofty family had sent her.
Why would they?
She looked precisely as a lady ought to look. And tonight, with every guest concealed behind feathers, velvet, and paint, no one had thought to wonder whether she wasn’t one.
Rose lowered her hand and let her gaze travel over the crowded ballroom.
Somewhere amid the peacocks, queens, devils, and jeweled strangers was Lord Reginald Preston—the man newly returned to London, the man who might already be considering what to do with the gift he had never asked for.
And, more importantly, with the women whose futures were tied to it.
She had not come to admire the spectacle.
She had come to find him.
A simple task, Nell had said.
Charm him, if necessary.
Discover whether The Brazen Belle had printed truth or gossip when it claimed the duke’s sea-roving younger brother was considering ridding himself of inconvenient responsibilities.
“Excuse me.” She interrupted the gentleman who had been regaling her with the tedious particulars of a wager he had won at White’s. “I have promised the next dance to another.” Rose smiled to take the sting out of it. Of course he would forgive her. He was enchanted with her.
But she’d been here for what felt like hours now, with no luck. So she tilted her head and glanced around with exaggerated surreptitiousness. “Before I go, I’d heard a rumor I wonder if you could confirm…”
“Oh?” the gentleman said, still trying to hide his disappointment, still eager to please.
“Is it true,” she asked coyly, “That the Duke of Malum’s brother has returned from the dead?”
The man, a viscount, nodded. “Ah, you’ve been listening to the latest gossip, have you? Well, the story is true in this instance. Ship never went down at all, apparently. Took heavy damages, though.”
Before the gentleman could get into too much detail about his assumptions of what Lord Reginald Preston had been doing all those years at sea, she touched his arm. “Do you think he’ll attend tonight? I’ve never laid eyes on a real live pirate before.”
“Tonight?” The gentleman blinked behind his fox mask. “Well, he did, but he left some time ago, I believe. Barely made an appearance.”
For one dangerous beat, Rose’s smile nearly slipped.
Left.
Thanking the man for the information, and with a few more words of flattery, Rose stepped away, back into the crowd.
She had failed before she had even properly begun. And here she thought the nobility preferred their “fashionable lateness”.
Her sisters at The Domus had trusted her with this—not because Rose could read men better than the rest of them. They all could.
But Rose was quick.
Quick to spot a change in the air. Quick to know when a smile meant trouble. Quicker still to decide what ought to be done about it.
Although, this evening, apparently, she had not been quick enough.
Lord Reginald Preston had vanished before she could so much as look into his eyes.
A cold knot tightened beneath her ribs.
The Domus was her livelihood. Her home.
She would not let some stranger decide its fate without a fight.
Rose lifted her chin, her expression smoothing once more into serene amusement. Very well. If Lord Reginald Preston would not be found here tonight, she would craft another route to him.
She had not survived this long by allowing one inconvenience to defeat her.
With a last glance over the glittering ballroom, Rose turned toward the arched entrance.
And walked directly into the broad, unyielding chest of a gentleman.
His hand closed around her elbow before she could lose her balance, the contact perfectly proper. He did not pull her close or take advantage of the collision in the way so many men would have done.
And yet a shiver ran down her spine.
She had known hundreds of men. Some carried rank, wealth, or looks striking enough to charm a lady from across a ballroom.
But this man—
He might be the finest gentleman she had ever met.
Which was saying something. His black coat fitted his broad frame perfectly, yet there was something… He seemed too untamed for such formal clothes. Lean at the waist. Long-limbed. And his mouth—
Rose’s attention caught there before she could stop it.
It was a beautiful mouth. Firm at rest, almost stern, though when he smiled—briefly, as if he had found something unexpectedly amusing—clean white teeth flashed beneath the edge of his mask.
He was a good ten inches taller than Rose, forcing her to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. Dark hair fell across his forehead, and the simple mask did little to hide the warmth of his complexion. Nor did it conceal the chiseled lines of his face.
But those eyes.
Silver. Sharp.
They nearly stole her breath.
“Forgive me,” Rose said, easing back a fraction. “I was not watching where I was going.”
“No harm done. And it was my fault anyway.”
It wasn’t.
His voice was low. Not rough exactly, but with a quiet force she felt rather than heard—and carrying none of the lazy amusement most gentlemen would show when an unaccompanied woman had quite literally fallen into their hands.
Rose glanced at the hand still lightly resting at her elbow.
He followed her gaze at once and released her. Not reluctantly. Not with the faint, proprietary squeeze another man might have given before doing so.
Which, in itself was… interesting.
“It is somethin’ of a crush,” she said. And immediately rushed to cover her lapse in speech.
She’d not slipped like that in ages. “Lady Westcott has quite outdone herself this evening.” Rose had never met her hostess.
And as this was the first ball she’d ever attended, she had no idea if the decorations surpassed those of other ton festivities.
There was that brief flash of white teeth again. “So they say.”
But he wasn’t looking at the room, he was looking at her. And not at the parts of her a man usually noticed first.
He looked almost surprised. As though he had been waiting for someone. As though he had stopped expecting her to come.
Rose was not the foolish sort to allow romantic thoughts into her mind. And yet, tonight, she allowed herself the feeling.
Only for a moment.
The musicians began a new set, the first notes slipping over the conversation around them.
It ought to have ended there. She ought to have made some polite excuse and gone back to The Domus. He ought to have bowed and moved on.
His gaze went briefly to the dancers gathering on the floor. Then it came back to her.
“Will you dance with me?” he asked suddenly.
Rose nearly laughed.
But she saw no assumption that she would agree. No taunt meant to make refusal seem unkind.
Only a question.
“I…” She needed to return to The Domus and tell the women waiting there that Lord R Reginald Preston had left before she could find him. That they would need another plan. That she had failed to learn a single useful thing about the man who might decide all their futures.
Instead, she looked toward the dance floor.
“It is a waltz,” she said.
His silver eyes warmed with amusement. “Do you know it?”
The waltz had been one of the first things Rose learned after Nell brought her to The Domus. Along with proper speech and manners. History. Art. Philosophy. How to listen when a man spoke, even when he said very little worth hearing.
And, of course, the more practical lessons.
“Yes,” she said simply. “Do you?”
“It has been some time since I last danced a waltz, but I believe I can manage without trampling more than two or three couples.” That warmer smile touched his mouth again. “If you are willing to take the risk.”
Then he held out his hand.
Long, unadorned fingers. Skin a shade darker even than his face.
As he turned his hand upward, waiting for hers, Rose saw an angry scar crossing the center of his palm.
Her hesitation lasted only a breath, and when she placed her gloved hand over his, it closed around hers.
Not possessive, but certain.
Rose forgot about Lord Reginald Preston entirely.
The stranger led her toward the dance floor without hurrying and without asking anyone to move aside.
People moved anyway.
Rose noticed it. The way gentlemen stepped back. The way ladies shifted their skirts, making room without appearing to do so.
He seemed unaware of it.
Or perhaps he was accustomed to that sort of casual deference.
There was purpose in him. A tethered kind of energy beneath the easy movement. And somehow Rose knew…
He did not belong in a ballroom.
The realization should have made her wary. Instead, it drew her in.
The dance had already begun by the time they reached the floor. He placed one hand at her waist and, with a single easy turn, brought her into the movement.