Page 69 of The Scarlet Ball

America had never gotten over its romance with royalty. In France, especially in Paris, we noted with wry amusement that we’d killed our own nobles and then promptly acquired new ones, even if they dressed less well. New York loved a duke; though, as Mrs. Howard said while Mielle pinned me into a sleek white spangled satin gown, it wasn’t quite the thing to say so.

“We are honored to attend, and if they had not sent us an invitation, we would simply say what a shame it is to see American heads bow to a coronet,” she said with some amusement.

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Howard, but the bodice will need to come in on the back and at the sides. If I just stitch two darts here and take it in at the back seam…”

Mrs. Howard gave me a sharp look, coming over to pinch a wad of fabric from my waist where Mielle indicated.

“My grandmother put me on a diet of suet when my dresses started to sag,” she told me. “Suet and nuts, no salt at all. It worked then, and it would work now.”

There was more meat on my plate, more rich soups and decadent desserts, although thankfully no suet, because I would have pitched a fit. Between that and Mielle’s skill with a needle, I filled out the white satin well enough to make a decent showing when we arrived at Delmonico’s the night of the ball.

At that point, there were four Delmonico’s locations in total, including the one at Beaver and South William, which was the first and thus the only one the Howards would recognize. There’d been some trouble that summer, two of the restaurants going into some kind of culinary war with each other. The winner was the Pearl Street location, and the loser had lost so irrevocably that no one could remember where it had been or going there at all.

Despite that, Delmonico’s was known for forbidding the use of sorceries and magic in its work. While we went about with songbirds jammed down our throats and new faces stitched over our old ones, Delmonico’s insisted on doing things with human labor and ingenuity. The food for the Patriarch’s Ball was begun ten days in advance under the exacting eye of a chef from Brussels, and the flowers were shipped in from across the country, tropical blooms from Texas, Florida, and California, so fresh you felt drunk upon entering the upstairs ballroom.

When Delmonico’s lined the edges of the ballroom with cherry trees in vivid bloom, you knew they were the real thing, tricked into believing that spring had come through heat piped into their greenhouse and electric light trained on their branches for ten hours a day.

I walked under the pink blossoms beside Mr. Howard, arm in arm with Mrs. Howard. Despite the way the room buzzed with excitement, despite the vivid beauty on display, I only felt tired. The scene came to me as if through a thick pane of bubbled glass, everything far away and distorted.

I was introduced to the duke, who had for guardians the van Aldens on either side of him. Their youngest daughter, the last unmarried, stood with them, but he didn’t look at her, or indeed at me or anyone else. He absently kissed Mrs. Howard’s hand and mine, but his eyes sharpened when they landed on Mr. Howard.

“I know your kind,” he said, and Mr. Howard gave him back a polite smile.

“If you have an interest in copper or metallurgy, you might.”

The duke squinted at him. “Why, so I do, my good man.”

“Well, he’s a different kind of monster,” I murmured to Mrs. Howard as we walked away, leaving them to their conversation. For once she didn’t admonish me for my insolence.

“Rather the opposite. His family were once great demon killers. Things have changed since Ghent, but I suspect some instincts die hard.”

She started to say more, but then Mrs. Payne appeared, probably with another request for help in her search for Bethany. I took a glass of ginger punch to settle my stomach. Just another party. Just another evening in what would, if I survived this season, be a long life of them. At least the punch was good. Across the way, I saw Martha Webster and her mother arrive. Martha was at least as tall as the duke, and he must have made some kind of joke about it, because I saw her ice over as he laughed. I thought that if she got the chance she might very well show him something his demon-killing ancestors had never seen before.

The dancing would begin at eleven sharp. There’d be light food and drinks at midnight, and real food at three. I was looking forward to getting something in my stomach. I could have said that that appetite had gotten me into this mess, but after more than a year on beer, bread, and rubbery cuts of pork that were mostly skin and gristle, I couldn’t regret the food, at least. Whatever became of me in the end, I was eating pressed duck under Rouennaise sauce and capon galantine with pistachios.

The first dances of the evening were to be in the round, no need to find a partner. With the Howards occupied, I sipped my punch and went to inspect the floral displays, thinking perhaps that I could avoid any company until it was time to begin. There were enormous peonies by the window, heads nearly as large as mine, white as fresh cream, stunning for all they were already beginning to brown at the edges. They wouldn’t last the night, would have to be replaced on the hour for fresh ones. I idly reached out to touch one, and then I jumped when there came a quick discreet rap at the window.

I moved the curtain to look, and of course it was Sebastian. Suddenly everything snapped into sharp relief, everything was real again, and the anger that I had been banking so carefully surged up my throat.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I hissed. The window was properly a door made out of glass, designed to allow entry to a shallow balcony during the summer. During the winter, it was a treacherous nest of ice and snow. Sebastian stood on it as if it were as comfortable as his own home.

He pointed at me, unblinking, and I bared my teeth at him. Yes, of course me. Always me, forever me, and I did not give a fuck. I’d asked about the guest list for tonight: He was not supposed to be here.

Let me in, he mouthed, and I tossed my head in defiance, because I didn’t have to. Let someone else deal with the demon lord on the step. Perhaps the duke would want to show off his ancestral demon-killing skills. Perhaps Sebastian would simply freeze or starve. That would be fine with me.

I started to turn away, and with a shrug, he pressed his hand to the glass. The message was clear, Let me in or I’ll make my own way in, and I could have spit. I unlatched the window, making him smile. He stepped inside, dry except for the droplets of water he shook out of his hair.

“Thank you.”

“You’re not meant to come in that way,” I managed with dignity, and he looked at me abashed.

“Which way should I have come in?”

“With an invitation, of course, which you would have if you had been asked.”

It was sharp enough to make Sebastian wince, and he shoved his hands deep in his pockets, ruining the line of his trousers. There was something rumpled all over about him, as if he had spent the night before sleeping on a friend’s settee and only now roused himself toward something presentable. “Should I go make my explanation to the hosts? My mother told me I was meant to be courteous when I was about town.”

“I am sure it does not matter,” I said coldly. It didn’t. Showing up to a Patriarch’s Ball uninvited was simply not done, but somehow I couldn’t see him being asked to leave. “You are Sebastian Rowe, are you not?”