Chapter Four
No Sleep Before the Mask
Sienna couldn’t sleep at all, the night before the gala.
The day itself had passed in a strange, charged blur — final fittings for the dress that had arrived that morning in a box lined with tissue paper, a rich forest green that matched the emerald mask waiting in her wardrobe, Mrs. Voss pinning hems with a mouthful of pins and an expression that suggested she’d noticed something shifting in the house this week and had decided, wisely, not to comment on it.
Damian had been absent for most of the afternoon, holed up with calls Sienna wasn’t privy to, though twice she’d caught him watching her from across the study when he thought her attention was elsewhere — a longer look than strictly necessary, quickly redirected the moment she glanced up.
She’d told herself it meant nothing. She’d told herself that about a great many things this week, and was beginning to suspect the telling itself was the tell.
She’d caught Mrs. Voss watching her once, too, during the fitting, an odd, considering look that lingered a beat too long before the older woman busied herself with a hem that didn’t need adjusting.
“You’re different than the others,” Mrs. Voss had said eventually, apropos of nothing, pins still clenched between her lips.
“The others?”
“There were a few, before you. Assistants. None of them lasted more than a month.” Mrs. Voss hadn’t elaborated on why, and Sienna hadn’t pushed, though the comment had sat uneasily in her chest for the rest of the afternoon, another fragment added to a puzzle she still didn’t have enough pieces to solve.
“You’ve lasted longer already. I don’t think that’s an accident, whatever it is. ”
Sienna hadn’t asked what Mrs. Voss thought it was. She suspected she already knew, in the same instinctive way she’d known, that first night, exactly whose silhouette had been standing in the west wing window watching her.
It wasn’t nerves about the event itself, though there was plenty of that too — the guest list Mrs. Voss had mentioned in passing, names that made Sienna’s stomach tighten every time she thought too hard about the fact that people who ran companies and sat on the boards of things she’d only ever read about would be in the same room as her tonight, watching a masked man reappear in society for the first time in years, standing beside a woman none of them would recognize.
It was something else, something closer and harder to name, that kept her staring at the ceiling long after the house had gone silent around her.
She gave up near midnight and went looking for water, telling herself that was the only reason, that it had nothing to do with the small, persistent hope that the halls at this hour might not be as empty as they usually were.
The house at midnight had a different quality to it than it did during the day — quieter in a way that felt almost expectant, the old wood settling and creaking overhead like the building itself was listening for something.
She walked the halls slower than she needed to, trailing her fingers along the same paintings that had been turned to face the wall her first night, still unexplained, still one more question she’d learned not to ask.
The kitchen was dark when she reached it, the house settled into the particular stillness it wore after everyone else had gone to bed.
She filled a glass at the tap and stood drinking it slowly, listening to the pipes groan somewhere in the walls, to the wind pressing against old windows that had clearly weathered worse than this.
She didn’t hear him arrive. She never did.
“Can’t sleep either?” His voice, low and unhurried as always, came from the doorway behind her, and she turned to find him there in shirtsleeves, no jacket, the mask still in place even at this hour, as though it were simply part of him now rather than something he put on and took off like clothing.
“Too much on my mind.”
“The gala, or something else?” He crossed into the kitchen, close enough that the space suddenly felt smaller than a room this size should have allowed. “You’ve been distracted all week. I’ve noticed.”
“You notice everything.”
“An unfortunate habit.” Something wry colored the words, self-deprecating in a way she hadn’t heard from him before. “It’s made me very good at reading people and very poor at simply enjoying their company without cataloguing every detail of it first.”
“Is that why you’re down here at midnight? Cataloguing?”
“I’m down here because sleep has never come easily in this house, and it’s come even less easily this week.
” He leaned against the counter opposite her, close enough now that the distance between them had shrunk to something that felt deliberate rather than accidental.
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t examine too closely why that particular coincidence lines up with your arrival. ”
“You could just say it.”
“I could.” Something flickered behind the mask’s edge, dark and considering. “I’ve found that saying things aloud tends to make them irreversible in a way I’ve spent years avoiding. It’s a difficult habit to break, even now.”
“Even now?”
“Even standing here,” he said, quieter, “wanting very badly to say something I’ve been telling myself all week I have no right to say to you.”
“You have every right to say whatever you want. It’s your house.”
“That’s not the kind of right I meant, and you know it.
” Something almost pained crossed what she could see of his expression, gone as quickly as it had come.
“I’m forty-five years old, Sienna. You’re twenty.
I’ve spent more evenings than I’d like to admit reminding myself of that particular arithmetic this week, as though the numbers alone might talk me out of something I clearly have no intention of being talked out of. ”
“I’m old enough to decide things for myself.”
“I know that.” His voice had gone rougher, quieter. “That doesn’t make the arithmetic disappear. It only means I’ve stopped letting it be the only thing that matters.”
She set the glass down, aware of how close he’d come without either of them acknowledging it, aware of the particular quality of standing in a dark kitchen at midnight with a man who unsettled every careful boundary she’d tried to keep between them since the day she’d arrived.
“What are you cataloguing right now?” she asked, and heard the faint tremor in her own voice, something she couldn’t quite hide no matter how steady she tried to sound.
“The fact that you haven’t stepped back,” he said quietly. “Most people would have, by now. I find myself curious why you haven’t.”
“Maybe I don’t want to.”
The words hung in the space between them, more honest than she’d meant them to be, and she watched something shift behind his eyes at the admission — a tightening, a stillness that reminded her, briefly, of a man holding very still around something he desperately wanted not to startle.
“Sienna.” Her name, without the formality of Miss Cole attached to it for the first time since she’d arrived, landed somewhere low in her chest. “I need you to understand something, and I need you to understand it clearly, because I don’t intend to repeat myself once we’re standing in a room full of people tomorrow night who’ll be watching every move either of us makes. ”
“Understand what?”
“That whatever this is between us,” he said, his voice dropping further, rough at the edges in a way she hadn’t heard before, “isn’t something I intend to pretend isn’t happening much longer.
I’ve spent the better part of this week convincing myself that distance was the responsible choice.
I’m rapidly losing interest in being responsible. ”
Her pulse was loud in her own ears, drowning out the wind against the windows, the groan of old pipes, everything except the low, deliberate cadence of his voice and the narrowing space between them.
“You’ve been doing a very good impression of restraint,” she said, and heard her own voice come out unsteady, quieter than she meant it to. “The dancing lesson. Dinner. You never once—”
“Because I was giving you the chance to step away first, if you wanted to.” His hand came up, not quite touching her yet, hovering close enough that she could feel the warmth of it against her cheek.
“I’ve watched a great many people make decisions they regretted because someone more powerful than them didn’t bother giving them room to choose otherwise.
I wasn’t going to be that for you. Not about this. ”
“That’s very considerate of you, for a man who reads people’s financial records before they’ve even met him.”
“I contain multitudes, Miss Cole.” The corner of his mouth curved, dark and amused, before sobering again just as quickly.
“But I mean it. If you want distance, tell me now, and I will give it to you, however much it costs me. I would rather lose this than take something from you that you didn’t choose freely. ”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” he murmured, close enough now that she could feel the warmth radiating off him, “that if you take one step back right now, I will let you. I’ll apologize for tonight, and tomorrow we’ll go to that gala and behave exactly as an employer and his assistant should, and I will spend the rest of whatever time you’re willing to give me pretending this conversation never happened.
” He paused, close enough that his next words felt like they belonged only to her, to no one else in the world.
“But if you don’t step back, Sienna, I want you to know that I won’t be responsible for what happens after that. ”
She didn’t step back.
Something in him seemed to break open at that, some final thread of restraint giving way, and his hand came up to cup her jaw with a gentleness that felt almost unbearable given everything sharp and controlled she’d learned to expect from him.
His thumb traced the line of her cheekbone, slow, deliberate, like a man memorizing something he intended to hold onto.