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She did not wish to marry. While companionship and love were romantic notions she had read about in books, she knew that marriage meant children. And children meant what had happened to her mother.

At seventeen, she had decided, quietly and resolutely, that she would rather be thought of as an odd girl than conform to societal expectations. She had assumed her father’s frustration with her had a limit.

She had been wrong.

He hadn’t brought her here to find her a husband. Husbands required contracts, settlements, the tedious courtesies of the ton, including courtship and the like. He had brought her here to sell her to whichever masked man offered the most, in a room where no one would ever have to admit what had truly happened to Lord Harwood’s inconvenient daughter.

He had already turned away from her, drawn into a low conversation with a gentleman she didn’t recognize; his hand extended into something that looked sickeningly like a bargain already half struck.

I think I am going to be sick.

Laura didn’t decide to run. Her feet simply moved, carrying her past a cluster of masked men before her mind could catch up. Her instincts pushed her forward, weaving toward the doors at the far end of the room—any door, every door, so long as it led away from that platform and the price her father meant to put on her head.

She didn’t see the man in front of her until she ran into him.

It was like running headlong into a wall. That was, if a wall had been a warm, solid man who smelled like the mountains. She was left reeling. The impact drove the breath from her lungs.

She blinked her eyes and looked up, dazed.

“Now, where are you running off to?”

CHAPTER 2

“I… I… I’m not running,” Laura stammered.

“Careful.” The man’s voice came out low, more felt than heard, rumbling through his chest.

She realized that his hand had closed around her upper arm before she’d even begun to fall, steadying her with a grip that was firm and protective, the sort of strength that didn’t need to prove itself by being aggressive.

She studied the tall, dark, handsome stranger. Dark brown eyes met hers through the eyeholes of a plain black mask, making her heart flutter. A shiver ran down her spine, making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end despite the room's stifling warmth.

She stepped back, squared her shoulders, and smoothed her skirt as though that alone might restore her to something ordinary and presentable.

“Thank you,” she breathed. “Forgive me. I must… I have to go now.”

He didn’t release her arm at once. His gaze moved over her, quick and assessing. It should have offended her, given the circumstances, but it somehow didn’t. It wasn’t the look the other men in this room gave the women around them. It was the look of a man trying to solve a puzzle, or searching for the figure that didn’t add up in his ledger.

“Are you in some kind of trouble, My Lady?”

The question landed with more precision than she was prepared for.

Laura opened her mouth, not at all certain what answer she should give him, when a hand closed around her other arm.

Her father gripped her hard enough to bruise her through her long glove.

“Forgive my daughter, sir,” he said to the stranger, his tone as smooth as sweet cream, nothing like the one he’d used with her on the stairs. “She’s overwhelmed, you see. Too much excitement for a young lady! You understand.”

The stranger’s eyes flicked to him, then back to her, lingering half a second longer. Then he inclined his head to her father and walked away.

Her father was already pulling her toward the stage, his fingers digging in harder with each step, when his voice dropped to a hiss. “What is the matter with you? Running through a room like a romp, colliding with strangers! Do you have any notion what you might have cost us?”

“Cost us? Father, you brought me here to be sold like… like chattel!”

“Keep your voice down, girl.” His grip tightened. “You will behave yourself, or so help me⁠—”

Laura twisted her head back over her shoulder and found the masked stranger still watching her from across the room, unmoving amid the drifting crowd. It was as though the rest of the party no longer interested him.

Their eyes locked again. The shiver came back, worse this time, curling low in her stomach and spreading outward until her hands had gone cold inside her gloves.