Chapter One
LILY HURRIED THROUGH the hazy, cobbled streets of Venice.
The sounds softened as she left the crowded areas behind her.
Fire-eaters, performers, throngs of people filling the city during this fortnight of Carnevale.
She took a deep breath, clutching her bejewelled handbag tight, baroque-style costume billowing around her.
Her heart thump-thump-thumping against her chest.
What was she doing? Would she even get in?
She wasn’t sure.
Lily stopped for a moment, trying to settle her nerves.
She stood outside a shop selling Carnevale masks.
They leered at her, some with sneering expressions, others as blank as the past few months of her life had been.
Should she be doing this? She could turn round.
Head back to where the tourists were and simply absorb the atmosphere. That would be easier …
No. She took another slow breath, released it. A misty gust in the chill of late winter. There was no backing out. Her ex-fiancé’s words taunted in her ears …
‘Good Lord, do I really have to marry her, father? She’s so dull.’
‘She’s the wife you need. She’s good for your career and meant to be dull. You can always find your excitement elsewhere.’
Dull … Find your excitement elsewhere …
Lily looked down at the low bodice of her ball gown. The way her corset underneath had plumped up her breasts. Breathe the wrong way and she might experience a wardrobe malfunction. Her usually dead-straight hair scooped up atop her head, heated into masses of curls.
What would you think of me now, Richard. Exciting enough for you?
Tears pricked her eyes. She blinked them away.
No crying.
First, it would ruin the full glam make-up she’d spent hours perfecting. Second, it was impossible to dab at tears behind the magnificent crystal and feather-encrusted mask she’d attached before leaving her glorious Venetian hotel room on the canals.
The whole trip to Venice, culminating in this night at an exclusive and secretive ball, was supposed to be the first brick in rebuilding her wreck of a life.
She’d wasted eighteen months on a highly encouraged engagement to the son of a family friend.
He’d been handsome and portrayed himself as patient and kind as he’d talked in a way that dreams might be made of, if you were silly enough to buy into the fantasy.
Which she had been, swallowing it hook, line and toxic lead sinker.
Yet all he’d ever thought of her as was a stepping stone for his career and their mutual families’ prestige and finances.
She wouldn’t have believed it had she not heard it herself at a house party when she’d gone in search of Richard, excited about something long forgotten.
Frivolous and meaningless. Probably dull, just like he’d said.
Instead of a comfortable conversation with her fiancé, she’d walked into a nightmare of her own making—after overhearing her former fiancé’s words and imploding her engagement, her life had fallen apart.
She’d withdrawn a chunk of the first instalment from her trust fund from her bank, then fled to Venice with a lot of help from her boss.
Lily had thought the trust fund payment was a gift meant for the married life she’d expected.
Now she realised it had been a bribe for being a well-behaved little Rutherford child and getting engaged like Mummy and Daddy had encouraged.
Her boss, Maxine, had witnessed Lily’s devastation over the past few months.
The floods of tears. Ran interference on anyone’s attempts to get in touch with her.
Especially her family and ‘that Dick’ as Maxine had nicknamed Richard.
She’d given Lily two weeks off her job as a receptionist in Max’s London art gallery, then handed her an invitation to tonight’s ball and a hotel reservation.
‘Live your life, Lil. Don’t let the bastards get you down. There are too many of them.’
Now she was doing just what her boss instructed.
Ignoring the furious voice messages and texts from her family.
Thinking only of herself. She’d always loved the idea of Italy.
The passion, craving to experience it for real, but at twenty-three she sadly hadn’t been here before, her parents preferring the Caribbean when they travelled.
Venice was one of the places she’d wanted to see the most. She’d hoped she might have come here for her honeymoon.
She and her ex had planned a kind of Grand Tour.
Well, she wasn’t interested in honeymoons anymore. She’d been in love, and her relationship had turned out to be one big lie.
She’d never buy into that fantasy again.
Lily had spent so much of her life thinking about others, being a good child, taking her parents’ advice, until she realised they were only interested in themselves.
Joining two families to increase their power, not really thinking about her along the way.
She’d been shocked and then devastated when her parents had still tried to encourage her to patch things up with Richard after she’d shared the things she’d overheard.
Saying she must have misunderstood, that he was talking about someone else.
No more gaslighting. She wanted this. To live her life for herself and not for others.
To let the atmosphere of Venice seep into her bones.
Even enjoying the final fittings of her eye-wateringly expensive rental gown required for this ball, because the dress code was everything and failure to meet it would mean exclusion.
She wasn’t going to be excluded from anything, anymore.
Maxine was right. Life was meant to be lived. She was going to live it tonight. Take everything offered. Take every chance.
A few people passed by. Ball goers, she presumed.
Men in garish brocade. Women in outlandishly decorated costumes, a little like hers.
She didn’t feel out of place with the magnificent hoop skirt, the fabric billowing round her in layers of iridescent pinks and blues highlighted with threads of silver and black, looking like the delicate wings of a butterfly.
The bodice she’d had to be taught how to tighten on her own, laced in deliciously tight, gave her the welcome sensation of being held together.
Her new life started by not standing like a wallflower at a shop window, but by marching her satin-slippered feet right up to the door of the venue. Winding through the back streets like Alice following the proverbial rabbit. What would happen when she jumped down the rabbit hole?
The atmosphere seemed to change as she neared.
Flaming torches lined the streets, their lights flickering, adding an otherworldly dimension to the night.
Street performers milled around, some secreted in doorways.
People with skin painted gold, fire twirling.
A jester, acting a fool whilst bells on his ankles tinkled a discordant tune.
It was like she’d stepped back into another world as she turned a final corner to the exclusive hotel where the ball was being held.
There was a small line at the front door, with two imposing men standing either side.
Bouncers she guessed, checking people’s tickets.
Wearing ferocious masks that looked like lions, with golden wings …
The Lions of Venice.
She gripped her embroidered bag tight to her chest. Maxine had said she didn’t believe identification would be checked, but Lily’s heart still caught in her throat.
Her boss was well enough known, her small gallery renowned.
Whilst this ball was about who could pay for a coveted ticket, there was a premium on the attendance of creatives and their supporters.
What if she wasn’t allowed in? Lily hesitated.
Fake it till you make it, Lil.
She strode forwards, head held high as she waited in line.
The other guests chattered excitedly in languages she couldn’t understand, each costume extravagant perfection.
There seemed to be some holdup in her line.
Had she picked the wrong one? Her heart began to pound against her chest, as if fighting to get loose of the corset.
Once comfortable, it now seemed intent on crushing the breath out of her.
She turned, trying to ignore the fierce-looking bouncers with their huge bodies and snarling masks, who looked like they’d eat her alive.
She peered off to her left down the laneway.
If it all went badly, she could scuttle down there, find her way back to the hotel.
It was hard to get lost. After all, people here always said that in Venice, all roads led to St Mark’s Square …
A movement disturbed the darkness down her preferred escape route.
Erupting from the shadows came a figure in black, caressed by the glow of the flaming torches that lit his way.
A tricorn hat edged in gold sat atop his head.
His face hidden by the shock of a white mask.
A cape billowed, whipping in the brisk breeze that had begun to blow.
She shivered. He was as tall and broad as the bouncers and in that instant, more fearsome than them in their snarling masks with golden wings.
For a brief moment he centred his gaze on her. She couldn’t tell the colour of his eyes behind the mask, only that they glittered like black diamonds in the torchlight. He stalked to the shorter line, next to hers, as his cape swirled round him.
Her breath snagged in her throat. The power of him, the presence. He may have been dressed like the night, but he blazed, more vivid than anyone in this line of people dressed in vibrant colours. They faded in the face of his bristling, midnight presence. She couldn’t take her eyes away from him—
‘Signora?’