"My dear friend Sofia tells me you're just back from Europe. Did you get to the Louvre?" she asks, settling into the empty chair beside me like a cat preparing to play with its food. "A private tour, naturally, to avoid the hordes."
"Of course," I manage, the same vague answer that's worked before. "I like an evening showing. It puts the pictures under the best, er, lights."
"Indeed." Her smile widens at my awkward sentence.
I follow her gaze and glance down at my hands wrapped around the delicate china, both hands, like I'm afraid it'll escape. Like a servant protecting something precious that isn't hers. My face burns as I adjust my grip to one-handed, pinkie out, the way I've seen other women do it.
"How refreshing," Mrs.Rourke continues, loud enough for our table to hear, "to see someone so… unaffected by traditional etiquette training."
The women around us titter nervously. They smell blood in the water, but aren't sure whose.
I force my spine straighter, channel the persona I'm supposed to be. "I prefer authenticity to artifice."
"As I say, how refreshing."
My hands shake as I reach for my water glass, nearly knocking it over. Several women notice, eyebrows raising.
"Careful," Mrs.Rourke says sweetly. "These settings can be so overwhelming when you're not used to them."
Alessandro's attention sharpens from across the room. I see him excuse himself from his conversation, but Mrs.Rourke isn't done.
"Tell me," she says, voice pitched to carry, "what was your maiden name again? Before you became a Rosetti?"
The question hangs like a guillotine blade.
"Hewson," I manage, but my voice cracks.
"Ah yes, new money. I suppose that explains it." Mrs.Rourke's smile turns predatory.
The other women lean in, sensing scandal. My chest tightens, breath coming shorter.
"It's fascinating," she continues, addressing the table now, "how marriage changes people. Some rise to their new station. Others…" Her gaze rakes over me. "Well, money can't buy breeding, can it?"
The words strike deep. Because she's right. I don't belong here, and I never will.
I can't breathe. The room spins slightly, all those watching faces blurring together. She's right. I'm nobody. A servant girl in stolen clothes, pretending to be someone who matters.
"Excuse me," I whisper, standing too quickly. My chair scrapes against marble, the sound echoing.
"Oh dear," Mrs.Rourke says with false concern. "I do hope you're not ill."
I flee. Not gracefully, not with dignity, but with the desperate speed of prey escaping a predator. My heels click against marble as I rush toward the bathroom, vision blurring with tears I refuse to let fall until I'm alone.
The bathroom door swings shut behind me, muffling the ballroom's noise. I grip the marble counter, staring at my reflection in the gilt-framed mirror. The bathroom's marble feels cold, perfect, like everything in this world that isn't really mine. My reflection fractures through tears.
Look at me. Chanel suit. Diamonds at my throat. Hair styled by professionals this morning. And underneath it all, still nobody. Still the servant who learned to be invisible, who scrubbed these kinds of floors, who doesn't deserve any of this.
My breathing comes in short gasps. Panic attack. I recognize it from the nights after Mom died, when the weight of raising Tommy alone would crush my chest until I couldn't breathe. My fingers fumble with the Chanel jacket's buttons, loosening them, trying to breathe. The sink's edge bites into my palms as I grip it, needing something solid, something real.
The suit feels like it's suffocating me. Designer wool, and it's strangling me. Mrs.Rourke saw right through it. Saw the servant underneath, the nobody playing pretend.
The door opens. I expect another woman, come to witness my humiliation.
But it's him.
Alessandro fills the doorway, green eyes dark with something between rage and hunger. He steps inside, and I hear the lock click behind him. The sound shoots straight to my core despite my panic.
"Stellina."
