The Celebration
Beatrice had stood beside her new sister-in-law through the entire reception line.
Smiling.
Greeting each guest by name, one after the other.
Accepting compliments on the decorations, the music, the supper arrangements, Ambrosia’s gown, Dash’s obvious happiness, the weather, the roses, and—in one particularly enthusiastic villager’s case—the quality of the trout served at breakfast.
None of those guests were Gideon.
He had not come. Of course he had not.
She had known he would not.
Hadn’t she?
He had not sent so much as a stiff, formal note expressing regret that he could not attend the duke’s celebration. For four weeks, there had been nothing.
Which was precisely what she had demanded.
So if some small, foolish part of her had glanced toward the entrance every time another carriage arrived, that was hardly worth acknowledging.
Now, the reception line had dissolved, and the ball was truly underway. All the planning, the flowers, the musicians, the tastings, the endless decisions over candles and ribbons and masks had come together beautifully.
Magnificently, even.
The ballroom glowed.
It was, in fact, a triumph.
Beatrice ought to have felt nothing but satisfaction.
And she did… for the most part.
Then a gentleman in a wolf mask crossed in front of her.
Her breath caught.
… Only because the mask was very well made.
That was all.
She looked away, to where a lady in a dramatic black domino laughed from behind a fan, a gentleman in a harlequin mask was bending over a dowager’s hand, and another with curling horns and painted red cheeks was standing near the supper room like some creature escaped from Dante’s Inferno.
A devil.
The word moved through her before she could stop it.
No. This wasn’t… the same. There was no reason to believe…
Still, memory flickered at the edge of her vision.
A mask too close to her face. The smell of something sweet and sickly. Black glass where a pair of eyes ought to have been.
Beatrice tightened her fingers around her fan.
No.
She was at Dasborough Park. Her home.
They were only masks. Made of silk, velvet, pasteboard, paint.
That was what she told herself as she forced her gaze over the room.
Most guests were easy enough to identify if one paid attention.
People moved in distinctive ways, held themselves with habits no mask could conceal.
Hair color, height, posture, the turn of a head, the slope of a shoulder—all of it betrayed them.
Mrs. Allendale’s peacock feathers did nothing to disguise the way she leaned too close to every conversation. Lord Brantley’s noble mask could not hide his unfortunate stoop. Mr. Hargreaves, dressed absurdly as a Roman emperor, remained unmistakable by virtue of being shaped rather like a plum.
There. Perfectly ordinary.
And yet she could not identify everyone.
Her gaze skipped over a cluster of gentlemen near the far wall.
Faces partially covered.
Another wolf.
Beatrice shivered before she could stop herself.
No.
She would not do this. She would not allow a room full of harmless country neighbors and curious London guests to spoil the celebration.
Masked or not.
But neither would she set aside her watchfulness simply because they had left London. Danger did not remain politely in Mayfair. It followed opportunity.
And the Vigilance Society continued.
Not in one ballroom now, nor through a neatly arranged course of lessons. The women who’d signed on had not disappeared. They had carried it with them.
As would Beatrice.
With or without Gideon.
As she had done before.
Already that evening, she had steered Miss Halbrook away from the terrace after a young gentleman with too much wine in him had offered to show her the moonlit gardens, and then inserted herself into one conversation that had grown far too intimate beside the musicians’ gallery.
Small things.
Necessary things.
Her gaze moved from the supper room to the terrace doors, from the terrace doors to the dancers, from the dancers to the entrance—
And stopped.
Surely not!
He stood just inside the ballroom.
Easily recognizable—seeing as he was the only person in the room not wearing a mask.
Everyone else had followed Ambrosia’s theme. But Gideon Rothmore stood there, bare-faced and unsmiling, tall and dark and utterly out of place among the glittering disguises.
And he was…
So handsome, just looking at him made her chest hurt.
Beatrice’s pulse gave one hard, foolish leap.
No.
And then his gaze found hers across the crowded room.
Every sensible thought she possessed scattered like birds from a gunshot.
Because he had come.
After four weeks of silence, after everything she had said, after ordering him out of her life—
Gideon had come.