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“Very good.”
With that, it was time to go. The attendance time for the ball began about thirty minutes earlier. But arriving as much as an hour into the event wasn’t unusual. It also meant more attendees, so we could blend in much easier.
Pretty Boy escorted me out to the car where Wood waited. He was working overtime this weekend. I’d have to make it up to him. His smile deepened to amused briefly before he opened the back door. “Do you want me to stay on site this evening, Miss? Or should I come back here and wait?”
The drive over wasn’t that long. “Why don’t you take a break for the first hour and then come back and wait? Do you have something to read?”
“I do,” he said, nodding. “I can absolutely do that. Mrs. Danvers told me the cook had already put aside a meal for me.”
“Excellent. Thank you.”
I slid into the car carefully. We were taking a much larger limo than I normally favored, but I actually needed the room for the skirt. Pretty Boy waited until I was tucked in before he circled the car to climb in on that side. The front passenger door closed a beat before Wood’s did. The privacy window was closed.
“You really do look like a dream, Mayhem.” The soft words tugged at me and I glanced over at him. It was difficult to make out his eyes in the dark, but I didn’t need to see them.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For all the times I’ve been to these types of events before, I’ve always favored the masquerade.”
“Because it shields you,” he said. Privacy window or no privacy window, neither of us were speaking very loudly. “It lets you just enjoy the event without having to guard your every expression.”
Surprise unfurled within me. It probably shouldn’t. Pretty Boy was full of surprises, and he read people, including me, sometimes too well. “The masks distort voices too, so you can’t always judge by inflection. That was the point of Carnival, you know. It was very repressive in those centuries, and for forty-seven days, everyone from the bread baker to the aristocrat to the paupers in the street could be someone else. You could escape reality and just—exist in this timeless bubble, free of responsibility and social judgment.”
“Is that what you want to do?” He took my left hand in his. “Escape from all of this?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “Sometimes I wish…I wish for selfish things. I was born into this world. I’ve witnessed the games, sometimes been drawn into them, and had to mind everywhere the lines were drawn.” Melancholy crept through me. My grandfather and my mother had been at war for as long as I could remember. I grew up in his household, with his staff and his oversight.
Mother was a part of my life but was never allowed to control it. Until Andrea was born, I didn’t see her as much. Though, I’d spent more time at the Reeds than I cared to admit, at least when I wasn’t at school. Time waiting for her. The time I got to spend with Adam—he’d been there when I learned how to ride. I’d half-forgotten that. Then I’d gotten lucky for a while, when I got to spend time with Emily. Mrs. Reed was one of the kindest women I’d ever met.
“Hey…” Pretty Boy squeezed my hand and pulled me back from the memories. “Where did you go?”
“The past,” I admitted. “Just remembering those days. Even then, when I was younger and home from boarding school, I loved the costume balls and the dress-up. When you’re a child, you’re not supposed to attend.”
“But you did anyway?”
I laughed. “When we get there, you’ll see the ballroom at Waltham Corners. It’s huge and done up in golden accents and rich paintings everywhere. A fine room, almost too fine. There are these little alcoves up at the top where you could sneak out and sit if you were quiet and still. Then you could watch everything.”
“So, you were sneaking around and getting into trouble from the beginning, weren’t you, Mayhem?”
“Maybe.” Adam had shown it to me. I’d been heartbroken at all the finery and not being able to watch. It was the first year he’d been allowed to attend. He snuck me up there along with some food and drinks. Then told me to stay quiet. I’d sat there all night, just—enjoying the music and the pageantry. No doubt there’d been scheming and gossip even then, but I’d been unaware of it.
I must have fallen asleep, because I woke when Adam carried me into the guest suite Mother and I were staying in for the night. She wasn’t there, but he’d tucked me in and told me to sleep and to remember—it was our secret.
One of my first secrets.
It was like that memory tore free from the past and came fluttering down to land fully formed. I had forgotten all about that.
“Tonight, I get to dance with you at a ball I used to watch from the rafters.” I’d get to dance and play—and hopefully, we would learn more about the games happening all around us.
“If there’s too much fancy dancing, that won’t be me.”
“Don’t worry, Pretty Boy. You still get most of my dance card and if you don’t know it, I can sit it out too.”
He chuckled, then lifted my gloved hand to kiss.
All too soon, we were heading down the long drive heading to Waltham Corners. We were hardly the only ones arriving this late, especially since we had to trail along with a host of other vehicles.
I steadied my heart by taking slower, deeper breaths. There was no time for our worries or our anxieties tonight. From the moment we stepped out of the car, we would be in the thick of it. Our every move analyzed even as they tried to figure out who we were, what we knew, and what we were doing.
Gossip, as always, was indeed king.
