Chapter 4
Four
The party held at the Sharpe Estate was to be a symbol of declaration of our match in the house in which I am to wed.
I assumed that Mama and Mrs. Sharpe thought the announcement would deter the curious gaze of the public eye, both for the quickness of the engagement and for the parties involved.
The public eye is a formidable foe that’d eat me alive, and that night was no different from the ruse I had held.
The ballroom was a sickly gray color. Guests milled about, caught up in idle chatter and gossip.
My skin crawled at the very mention of my name uttered by strangers, casting wary glances pierced through my flesh.
Judging as if I was nothing more than livestock—a commodity to be bought and sold however they pleased.
The music couldn’t drown out the stifled scream building in my chest.
I bet she is with child and is forcing William’s hand. It is the only reason why someone as handsome as him would marry her.
I heard that the McCallister blackmailed the Sharpes, forcing William to marry.
Why is someone as ugly as her marrying him? She looks as if she is going to faint if you so much as breathe on her.
I wrung my hands, scanning the room, praying for someone to see the panic taking hold of my body, praying for someone to come up and to ask if I am all right—to save me from the void of the marriage and the pain building in my chest.
The phantom seared heat on my flesh as if he still had a hold of me.
He will soon.
Face after face, stranger after stranger, I gave up.
I resigned myself to the corner of the room, sipping on the champagne flute, its astute buzz of alcohol climbing.
My hand shook, and the liquid sloshed over the crystal glass.
I choked down the tears ready to burst from the facade I’d practiced since Father’s funeral.
I curled my fingers around the flute, turning them a tinge white.
I hated what he’d done, hated Mama for what had to be done, and hated Miriam for being simply what I can not be.
The zing of the alcohol mingling with awful realizations made me lightheaded. The room spun, and the cacophony of music and voices slammed into my head.
I’m trapped.
I was truly and utterly alone.
Air in the room became stifling, the heat setting my innards aflame.
I wiped my hands on another pink dress with trestles that buried me under the bundles of fabrics and tulle—farther from the tiny glimpses of sickly grayish hue.
Sweat beaded my forehead as I struggled to listen to the babbling of one of Mama’s friends gushing about my fiancé.
I shrank into myself, hiding under all the fabric as the warmth and heat threatened to suffocate me.
As I tried to steady myself by gripping the table, ragged breaths came out in gasps, and the room tilted. I clutched my bodice, forcing air into my restricted lungs.
The music and the gossip collided with one another in a humdrum of a singular voice. Bile climbed my throat, the sick taste of it coating my mouth as my steadied arm shook.
“Dear,” Mama said, “you don’t look well. Perhaps you should sit down.”
Her lips thinned into a wry, plastered smile reserved for the group as her eyes twinkled with concern. Gazes of the women floated above me, skirts enveloping the tiny corner.
One woman scooped me off the table and walked me toward a sitting chair a few paces from the gathering crowd. Another woman fanned profusely, ruffling away a few black strands stuck to my face and neck. All I saw in their concerned expressions were the sentiments Mama echoed time and time again.
Don’t ruin the perfect picture of the ruse you are.
A perfect composure held together by measly frayed threads.
I croaked out, “I need some air,” and handed off my drink to a lady in favor of staggering toward the large open balcony overlooking the small gardens below.
I pushed past partygoers congratulating me as though I were a prize horse in a parade before being slaughtered.
Smiles—cruel smiles—never once wavered as the balcony archway greeted me and the budding summer air twined itself into my hair and panicked lungs.
I rested my head against the pillar of cool stone, resisting the urge to sink onto the granite floor.
The bite of the air left goose bumps along my bare shoulders, and I shivered. The soft perfume of roses drifted from the bushes below, the full moon illuminating the garden in silvery light as soft petals clamored to greet its long-lost lover, only to be restrained by another.
Tears pricked as my chest rose and fell, desperate for air and aching for relief of bloodied release from the building pressure.
I clasped a hand over my mouth and stifled a weak whimper.
“A little chilly, isn’t it, Little Dove?”
A few paces from the entry to the gardens was a man stepping softly against the stone with the elegance of a cat, a creature of beauty and oddity.
His suit was a decade or two older than the current fashion, a long cape draped over his shoulder flickering with each step coming to rest from the edge of the balcony overhang.
The moonlight cut hard angles into his features, the shadows resembling etchings by careful artists.
I caught myself staring and uttered, “I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to be out here without a chaperone. I just needed some air. Never did I think I’d run into you again.”
The strange man gave a low chuckle, long silvery strands falling, with a pair of curious iridescent gold eyes peered behind a black mask at my goose bumps.
The man shrugged off his coat, draped it over my shoulders, and cleared his throat.
“You’d catch your death out here if you are not too careful. ”
I quipped back, almost without hesitation, “Perhaps death has already caught up to me.”
He leaned against the rail of the balcony, his golden gaze burning with fierce hunger. “Has he, now? What a morbid thought to have as a young lady.”
“As opposed to, what, being oblivious of their end?”
The frantic energy from the night bubbled out of me in shocking waves, and I chuckled.
I’d little recourse, as I wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol talking, the nerves, or the sheer desperation, but I continued to laugh as thought after thought slammed through my skull with the stranger looking on.
I peered out at him from the corner of my eyes, the thought of him mentioning death in front of me fresh on my ailing mind. “It would be foolish to think I can outrun death. No man can and we are forever to be forgotten by death—in death.”
My heart thundered as cloves and spice enveloped the night air, and the odd, familiar sensation bloomed inside my chest.
A cool hand grazed my warm cheek, tucking away a stray strand of dark hair. “Death would treasure a gorgeous creature such as yourself. So enthralled that he’d make any bargain with any gods that’ll listen just for you.”
I let his hand linger there for a second longer than I’d like, the sensation against my skin tender and warm I wanted to sink further into. Yet the gathering voices of the party and the gravity of the situation pulled me out of my delirium.
I pulled away from the stranger. “That may be a nice sentiment, but I am afraid that death is crueler to humanity than a lover of one. Now, if you’d excuse me, I should be getting back.”
I shrugged off the coat, handing it back to him—his gaze ripping into my soul piece by piece and into the act I’d play the rest of my little life.
“What is your name?” he asked.
The whispers reverberated throughout the ballroom, hard to ignore and even harder to fathom that a stranger was here, at a party, without knowing the most notable people for whom the party was thrown.
“You’re here at my engagement party, yet you do not know my name?” I scoffed, my fingers playing with the fabric of his coat.
He pinned the coat back over my chilled shoulders as a light smile danced across his lips. “I wanted to hear it from you, Little Dove,” he whispered in such a way of temptation.
“Valeria. Valeria McCallister.”
“Valeria,” he mused, sending a thrill up my spine. He closed the distance between us, extending a hand. “May I have this dance?”
“Dance,” I squeaked out, a cough nearly bubbling out. I cleared my throat, forcing it back down into the deep part of my lungs as I steadied my breathing. “I, uh—I don’t really dance.”
The music swelled from inside, a waltz I surmised, the dance floor awash in skirts and quick movements. From beyond the balcony, my so-called fiancé twirled a girl by the waist and whispered sweet nothings into her ear, his gaze flickering to the balcony.
At the open palm of the strange man’s hand, I was struck by the thought.
This man could be a trick on my decaying mind and body, or perhaps the gods from long ago were listening to my pleas for control of my own life.
Sending this man instead of a way out, I chuckled and took his hand gingerly in mine as he guided us into a waltz.
Out on the balcony, the life of the party dimmed compared to the heat flooding my body. Acutely aware of his ghostly touch from the hand wrapped around my waist and the other that held mine, he spun me in time with the music, and for once, my body was light and free.
We spun and spun, the stranger never taking a stray step or allowing a stray touch between us. As the music died, we stood still, chest to chest, where cloves and spice flooded my senses.
I stared at his lips, amazed at how they quirked back into a grin.
“Seems that the dance has ended, Little Dove.”
“So, it seems,” I said, hating the longing in my voice.
He dropped my hands, cradling them both. “There’s more to life than this. More than what death can offer.” He tilted my chin, iridescent eyes searching mine and boring into my soul.