“Or nonsense,” Jillian muttered. There was no mystery between them. She wasn’t entirely certain there ever had been. It unsettled her sometimes, the ease with which they seemed to be melding their lives together.
“Sometimes those—truth and nonsense— are the same thing.”
Jillian would have argued, but Henry whisked Helena into the crush of guests, leaving Jillian unescorted at the edge of the staircase. For a moment she remained where she was, caughtbetween movement and stillness, wondering why she suddenly felt as if she were standing on the precipice of something she could not see. It was simply a masquerade. Simply a party. Simply an evening among acquaintances.
It should not have felt like the turning of a page.
She drew a calming breath and descended the final steps.
As soon as her slippers touched the parquet floor, the crowd seemed to expand around her like a welcoming tide. Several masked gentlemen bowed in her direction, clearly appreciative, though uncertain of precisely who she might be. Jillian offered polite nods in return, pleased by the anonymity that allowed her to observe without being observed too closely. She moved slowly about the room, absorbing every detail—the clink of glasses, the murmur of flirtation behind fans, the mesmerizing swirling of couples on the dance floor. For the first time in her adult life, she did not feel scrutinized.
She felt… possible.
“Lady?” a masked gentleman murmured, offering his hand in invitation. His mask was feathered and elaborate, his bow impeccable. Under ordinary circumstances, Jillian would have declined with polite firmness. Tonight, she accepted.
The dance was lighthearted and cheerful, and her partner proved skilled enough not to step on her toes. Jillian drifted into the rhythm with ease, moving from one set to another, not quite chasing pleasure but not fleeing from it either. For nearly half an hour she moved among strangers who treated her not as Lady Jillian Hale, bluestocking spinster, but simply as an intriguing woman in a blue gown and silver mask.
She could almost forget herself.
Almost.
It was only when she stepped aside for a glass of punch that she felt the faint shift in the air around her. A tingling awareness crept along her skin, subtle but unmistakable, like a warm handbrushing her shoulder. She did not need to turn to know who had entered the ballroom.
Miles Fairfax.
She felt him before she saw him. No mask could ever hide him from her, nor she from him.
Jillian lifted her punch cup to her lips, forcing herself to appear composed, even bored. She pretended to study the nearest floral arrangement, wreaths of winter roses and holly so artfully arranged that it was impossible to tell where nature ended and artifice began. She heard the shift of footsteps behind her, steady and unhurried, the footsteps of a man who moved through any room with quiet confidence.
Her pulse skipped.
She did not turn.
Not yet.
Miles paused justinside the ballroom, momentarily disoriented by the riot of color and candlelight. Masquerades were not his preferred form of entertainment. Too much artifice. Too much pretense. Too many people behaving badly behind the safety of false faces and borrowed identities. He had come only because refusing would have caused suspicion, and suspicion was precisely what he and Jillian did not need. He had spent days navigating the delicate machinery of London society, parrying questions, redirecting gossip, managing introductions. Tonight should have been tedious.
Except that he was searching for one person.
He scanned the crowd, grateful for the anonymity of the mask, which lay against his face like a shield. His was simple, black with subtle gold trim. It revealed enough of his jaw andmouth to be recognizable to friends but concealed his eyes, which was all he desired. His gaze skimmed over couples at the edges of the dance floor, over flirtatious matrons and predatory debutantes, over clusters of gentlemen already several glasses into their revelry.
Then he saw her.
Jillian stood near the refreshment table, her posture elegant, her gown glinting like midnight when struck by candlelight. Her mask—velvet and silver—made her eyes seem impossibly bright, and her hair, swept up with a few stray curls framing her neck, rendered her more arresting than he had expected to bear.
She had always been beautiful. He had always known that, even when he had pretended not to notice out of sheer self-preservation. But tonight, the mask had transformed her into something both familiar and unfamiliar, a woman he recognized yet did not fully know. It stirred something inside him that had not quieted since York.
He forced himself to approach slowly.
When he drew near, she still did not look at him. She sipped her punch and pretended interest in the roses. The very picture of composure. But her fingers tightened ever so slightly around the cup, and he knew her awareness of him was as keen as his of her.
He stepped beside her and offered a quiet, “Good evening.”
She stiffened with exquisite subtlety, then turned at last. For a moment, neither spoke. Her lips parted as if she meant to say something, but no sound emerged. He felt the rush of warmth that came whenever she looked at him like that—wide-eyed and startled, as though she had not expected her own reaction.
She inclined her head. “Mr. Fairfax.”
The formality of the address made him want to smile. “Mrs. Fairfax,” he returned in a low voice deliberately meant only for her.
