Chapter One
“Wait, My Lady. A moment!” The man’s voice cut through the din of the masquerade, urgent and far too close.
Celine Huntington’s heart pounded as she wove through the swirling crowd, her silk slippers skidding across the polished parquet. The air was heavy with the scent of beeswax candles and her own Fleur de Minuit, the forbidden French perfume clinging to her so intensely that it almost made her dizzy.
“I only wish to know your name!” the stranger called again, his masked face bobbing above the sea of feathered headdresses and glittering domino masks.
Celine’s breath hitched, her fingers clutching the emerald-green skirts of her daring new dress—cut low at the neckline, with a continental flair that had already drawn gasps from the ton’s matrons. She dodged a couple dancing a lively quadrille.
What was I thinking, following that wretched list?
She and her closest friends, Helena and Dahlia, had come up with a seemingly innocent, if a tad daring, list. The items, now burned in her memory, made her blush anew.
Attend a masquerade ball, with no one knowing it’s you. Wear that dashing green dress and a French perfume.
Foolish, reckless, she’d wanted freedom, not this.
“Pardon, miss, might I have this dance?” Another voice, this one from a portly gentleman in a gold mask, blocked her path. His eyes lingered on her cleavage, making her skin crawl.
“No, I am afraid you may not.” Celine tried to control the ice in her voice, grateful now more than ever for the black lace mask concealing her face.
The man stepped forward, his mask glinting as he grabbed her by the elbow, swaying with the effects of too much alcohol. “Such fire! One dance, my dear, and I’ll be your servant.”
“I wouldn’t hire a leery man like you even ifIwere to be paid,” she retorted, sidestepping him.
Her temper was getting the better of her at his disregard.
The crowd pulsed around her, a kaleidoscope of silk and velvet, laughter and violins. Her perfume, that heady jasmine and amber, seemed to draw them in like moths. Or was it her dress, the bodice scandalously snug, the skirts whispering rebellion?
The ton ignores me as a spinster, but hide my face and I’m suddenly the most intriguing lady in the room.
“Please, My Lady!” the first man’s voice rang out again, closer now. “You can’t vanish without giving me a name!”
“Oh, can’t I?” Celine muttered to no one but herself, her blue eyes narrowing behind her mask.
She pushed past a gaggle of debutantes, their giggles grating on her nerves.
This was meant to be fun—freedom from the ton’s judgment. Instead, she felt like a deer in a hunt, her anonymity a magnet for every bored lord and fortune-hunter in Lady Ashford’s ballroom.
“There she is!” A third man, younger, joined the chase, and her stomach lurched.
She ducked behind a marble pillar, the cool stone grounding her for a moment.
I should’ve burned that list. Helena was right—champagne makes fools of us all.
“Miss, one word!” The first man, wearing a blue domino mask, was gaining on her, his boots clicking loudly on the floor.
Celine scanned the room and spotted a hallway beyond a velvet curtain.
Freedom.
She darted forward, her skirts swishing, ignoring the gasps of a matron whose wine she nearly spilled.
“Pardon me!” Celine shouted over her shoulder.
The mask on her face gave her a lot more confidence than she usually had, which was, on its own, more than usual for a young woman her age. On any other night, she would have been much more soft-spoken, but not tonight.
She slipped through the curtain, the hallway dim and blessedly quiet. Her slippers echoed as she ran, passing gilt-framed portraits, until she spotted a cracked door.
