Chapter 1
London 1889
I’ll begin this tale with two truths and a lie, for I learned years ago that deception is easiest to swallow when offered alongside something pretty.
So here are mine.
First: I was desperately, indecently poor.
The kind of poor that crept in quietly, soft-footed and patient, through the cracks of a once respectable home. It began with a single unpaid bill, then another, until I awoke one morning and realized that I owned more debt than dresses, more grief than coalfor the fire. The kind of poor that leaves a woman choosing between dignity and a decent meal.
Poverty, it would seem, when settled upon a household of good breeding, is a peculiar, humiliating thing.
It hadn’t always been that way though.
My father, once a respectable Viscount, was dead.
There were days in my childhood when laughter lived in the halls of our home, but grief is a slow poison. Somewhere between losing my mother to the asylum and watching his only daughter be shunned from his peers, he’d lost his battle with drinking and gambled away the fortune he once held dear.
By the time the last creditor came knocking, I had sold everything of value. I had grown accustomed to stitching my own hems by candlelight and learned to ignore the sharpness of my cheekbones from hunger.
Only my name remained…but even that was beginning to rot.
Second: I had once been in love with the Duke of Blackthorn.
Sylum Deveroux had loved me too—or at least I thought he had. He had seen past my scar, past the legacy of madness staining my bloodline, and for a moment in time, he had made me believe that I was worth more than hushed gossip.
But, love is a fragile thing in the hands of aristocracy, especially when you are nothing more than a penniless, mad woman’s daughter with nothing to offer a husband.
Duty wrenched him from me before I even understood what I’d lost. A well-chosen bride with a substantial dowry tore him from me without so much as a farewell.
He vanished from my life and reemerged only in gossip and headlines, his name spoken with both awe and scandal.
His betrothed never did make it down the aisle. The eve of their wedding ended in a funeral instead.
Most people believed Elizabeth had fallen from the balcony at Blackthorn Manor by accident. Or slipped. Or jumped… or she was pushed. It depended on who told the story and how much they’d had to drink. In the end, gossip doesn’t need truth to thrive and even a Duke can be tarnished with a single whispered accusation.
Sylum had disappeared from London after that, never to be seen or heard from again and I’d lost the only person I’d ever truly loved.
As for the lie?
I was attending the Samhain masquerade ball merely for amusement.
I told myself that lie as I stood hidden beyond the lantern glow, breath fogging in the cold October air, trembling fingers fisting in the silk skirts of a gown three seasons out of fashion.
I told myself that slipping into a Countess’ ball uninvited beneath a handmade mask was merely an adventure.
But the truth—therealtruth—pressed against my ribs like a second heartbeat.
I was there because I needed to find a husband.
Marriage was my only respectable escape from ruin. A masquerade was the ideal hunting ground for a woman who possessed neither wealth nor reputation… only desperation artfully disguised as daring. In such a place, one could lie without consequence, flirt without expectation, and tempt without inviting scandal.
Masks softened flaws and hid scars. Silk disguised poverty. And in the dark, no one cared where a woman came from. They cared only whether she could make them laugh, make them want.
Still, doubt anchored my feet to the stones.
From inside the manor, music thundered. Laughter flared, bright and reckless. Wealth moved easily behind those doors, breathing champagne and indulgence. I had not breathed that air in some time.
