Temperance thought about it honestly. “Because the person I am doing it for is someone who would do the same for me without a second thought,” she said. “Which changes the nature of it entirely.”
Albina looked at her. Something in her expression shifted, softened, became the version of her face that Temperance had catalogued quietly over three years and still found, every time she saw it, the most extraordinary thing she had ever been given.
“I would have come for you,” Albina said again. “If I had known, I want you to know that. I would have come the same day.”
“I know,” Temperance said.
“I would not have waited a single moment.”
“I know,” Temperance said again, more gently. “I know, Mother. Please do not explain yourself to me anymore.”
Albina pressed her hand once, firmly, and released it. She looked at the window for a moment, at the dark garden and the still night beyond it, and then back at the dress on the bed.
“It really is a beautiful dress,” she said, in her ordinary voice, the light one. “The color is exactly right for you. He must really know what suits you.”
“Don’t,” Temperance said.
“I was simply making an observation, and I think it’s good if you know this,” Albina went on.
“Goodnight, Mother.”
Albina left, giggling to herself. Temperance sat on the end of the bed in the quiet room, with the candle burning low and the dress on its stand beside her, and she looked at it for a long time without coming to any conclusions that she was prepared to act on.
“It doesn't mean anything,” she told herself. For now, it would have to suffice.
CHAPTER 16
“This mask is really ridiculous,” Temperance groaned.
She had chosen the simplest one. Ivory, fitted closely to the upper half of her face, with no feathers or embellishments beyond a small detail at the outer edge.
“You’ve picked the most boring one, and still you complain,” Albina replied.
“Why would I wish to hide my face?” Temperance turned her mother’s argument back on her. “Do you think me so ugly?”
Albina laughed out loud.
“Oh, no. Nothing of the sort. But I do think that it adds a little mystique to your aura, which is always a good thing.”
She was wearing it now, in the entrance hall, waiting, while Albina had gone back upstairs for something she had forgotten and Harper stood near the door with his own mask in his hand, not yet wearing it.
“Are you not going to put on the mask?” she asked him, “if I have to wear this silly thing, it is only fair that you should as well.”
“I don’t feel the need to,” he shrugged his shoulders.
“But we are at a masquerade, and the entire point is to wear a mask.”
“I find that people wear plenty masks in their day-to-day life, so this is just superfluous,” he said, only half joking.
Temperance could not help but laugh.
“Trust you to philosophize about the strangest of things,” she said. “But will you put it on for my sake, so that I feel a little less of a strange being?”
She didn’t expect Harper to listen, or for her bid to work. But he put on his mask, to her surprise.
“Do you feel better about yourself now?” he said, his tone starkly more annoyed now.
“Oh, loads.”
