A sick fear opened in Gideon’s chest.
All the fear he thought he’d mastered since she left London. It returned in an instant.
A footman at the entrance bowed and gestured toward a table arranged with masks for arriving guests.
“Masks are required, my lord. Take your pick.”
Gideon stared at the neat rows of satin and velvet.
For a moment, he could not move.
Then his gaze fixed on a simple half-mask near the edge of the tray. That of a bear.
He lifted it, held it for a beat, and then closed his fingers around it without putting it on.
“Thank you,” he said.
The footman hesitated. “My lord, the duchess wished everyone to?—”
Gideon stepped past him into the house, the unused mask in his hand, and began searching the glittering crush for Beatrice.
The ballroom was magnificent.
There was no other word for it.
Candles burned everywhere—clustered in sconces, blazing in chandeliers. Light reflected off the polished floors and gilt-framed portraits, flashed over jewels and silk, and glimmered strangely over the masked faces drifting through the crowd.
The masks changed everything.
They lent the room an unreal quality. A shimmer of danger beneath the beauty. Ladies conversed from behind painted silk. Gentlemen bowed with velvet shadows over their eyes. A dozen couples turned through a waltz at the center of the floor.
Innocence masquerading as danger?
Gideon stood just inside the entrance, the black mask still clenched in one hand.
Not long ago, he could have admired the effect.
Instead, he searched for Beatrice.
And found her almost at once.
As though some part of him had recognized her before she came into view.
There.
His breath stopped.
She stood near one of the tall windows, half-turned from the crowd, speaking to a matron in peacock feathers. Her gown was silver, or something near it, like captured moonlight or the glint of light off a blade.
And her mask?—
It was shaped like a fox.
Delicate, pointed, fierce. Silver to match her gown, with fine dark edging around the eyes and a narrow sweep of painted whiskers about the nose. It covered the upper half of her face, hiding her brow, her cheekbones, the line of her nose.
It did not matter.
He would have known her in any crowd.
