Chapter One #3
‘Patron of what?’ she asked, her voice a little breathy. Why couldn’t she be sophisticated like all the other women here with their coquettish smiles and flirtatious glances, when faced with a handsome man wanting to kiss heaven from your lips?
‘Guess.’
One word drifted through her consciousness, a word that hinted at her impending undoing. ‘Chaos.’
He threw back his head and laughed. His Adam’s apple, prominent.
The muscles in his neck, thick and strong.
The sound of his mirth ricocheted right through her.
People turned, looked with covetous gleams in their eyes.
Not at her, but at him. Yet when he stopped laughing, his attention was only on Lily.
Had any living human ever given her such focus?
‘She’s with me …’
His words had been like a statement of intent. That should bother her. He was a stranger. They hadn’t even exchanged last names although Maxine had strongly hinted that at this ball, first names or even pseudonyms were all that were used.
Lily looked around the room because this man before her was almost too much. A faun and a satyr in one of the alcoves twined together. Hands exploring, barely hidden. The whole mood of the ball was one overflowing with raw sensuality and forbidden pleasures.
This was outside her life experience. It made her heart skip an excited and perhaps a little scared rhythm.
Her body begin to heat, soften. She’d been so sheltered.
Going to a prestigious independent all girls’ school.
Any boys she met carefully curated by her family to be the ‘proper sort of people.’ Deportment classes, her university studies in art history because that was the right course for a young woman who was one day going to curate the family estate she married into.
Then her engagement, which was something both families had simply expected of her.
She’d fallen into it all with no real qualms. The only thing she’d grabbed for herself with two greedy hands was her job.
Her parents had objected at first, but Maxine was well respected and the artists her gallery represented were renowned, so her mother and father begrudgingly agreed in the end because it was an interesting talking point.
The only thing she’d ever done without permission, that was just for her, was walking out of Richard’s family home and blowing up her farce of an engagement. She wanted this. To experience the decadence of the evening. She wanted it all.
‘I’ve never seen you at one of these balls before.’ The man’s voice curled round her like a searching vine. Drawing her from her introspection and trapping her with its expressive timbre, like every word was a secret uttered for her ears alone.
Lily’s hand fluttered to her stomach where the butterflies there had taken flight. He was clearly an afficionado of this sort of thing. A wolf to her lamb. ‘Would you have remembered?’
‘I wouldn’t forget you.’
Somehow, they were standing closer than before. Focussed only on each other as the colour and activity swirled round them. She’d barely seen anything of the ball and found she didn’t care. This man made her hotter than standing in a summer’s midday sun.
‘Perhaps instead of Medici I should call you Casanova?’
His tempting lips curled into a glorious, open smile showing perfect white teeth. ‘I can be whoever you want me to be.’
The words hung, pregnant with possibility.
There was such freedom in this, not being able to see the entirety of someone’s face.
Using only their first names or fake ones.
The mystery of it all. She could be anyone she wanted to be.
And this man in front of her, he didn’t appear to think her dull.
If she had to guess, he seemed a little interested.
‘Perhaps you’re enough as you are,’ she said. Lily wasn’t sure whether she was trying to convince herself or talking about him. Whatever she’d meant, his perfect smile seemed to diminish a fraction. Like something faded at the edges.
‘You don’t know who I am.’
He was right, yet from the moment she’d first seen him something about him called to her.
His magnificent presence, looming in black like the king of the night.
She simply didn’t notice anyone else here, even with their bright, outlandish costumes.
They were like tiny fireflies trying to outcompete a full moon.
‘I thought that was how this ball was supposed to be. A celebration of earthly delights. Isn’t that half the fun?’
Like this, it was easy to pretend she was someone braver, bolder. More like the Lily she wanted to be.
Medici, if that truly was his name, slipped his hand round her waist. Not caging her in but drawing her close.
Even though he was so tall, broad, imposing, she didn’t feel at all threatened.
It was like they were locked in their own little world.
A bubble of intimacy in all the glorious chaos around them.
He simply gazed down at her. What was he thinking? Would he kiss her?
‘Farfallina,’ he murmured, ‘that is all of the fun.’