Both the Earl and his Countess blinked at her. Phoebe waited for them to apologize, to retract their words, even if it was hopeless. When neither of them said anything but instead stared at her as though she had gone quite mad, Phoebe stepped away again, backing towards the door.
“Then I shall retire to my chambers,” she said, ducking her head. “I suppose a lady who is a pawn must rest and look her best, as difficult as you may think that would be, Mother.”
Without waiting for a response, Phoebe disappeared out of the doorway, up the stairs, and into her chambers. As soon as she slammed the door, her eyes scanned her room, searching for where she had last put her writing journal.
When she saw the cream cover peeking out from beneath her mattress, she rushed towards it. Phoebe did not even bother with shucking off her gown. She hurried to her desk, dropped the journal, picked up her quill, and began to write.
Not about heartbreak, or a stifled girl, not necessarily, but she wrote of a golden-haired heroine who walked into a beautiful, royal ball with a mask made of swan feathers.
Her dress kissed her ankles as she descended the stairs, Phoebe wrote, smiling to herself.
She did not know what she would find that night, but she did not expect it to be the black-masked suitor who approached her at the base of the staircase.
“My lady,” he murmured. “You have bewitched me from first sight. May I have this dance?”
The lady gazed back at the handsome stranger, trying to find more of his face beyond the mask. Green eyes stared back at her, framed by warm, brown locks of hair.
Phoebe bit her lip, thinking of the Duke of Talwyn.
“You may,” the lady answered. “But should we not exchange names, first?”
“What are names but feeble labels to distract from the true point of meeting?”
“And what might that point be?” A coy smile lifted the lady’s mouth.
As she wrote, Phoebe felt strangely envious of her own character’s situation. When Phoebe had been given the chance, she had not been able to be so audacious. The moment a handsome stranger had given her attention, she had all but melted into an embarrassed puddle.
Her thoughts strayed to what the Duke had said when they had been separated by the wooden lattice.
Embarrassment can be overwhelmingly honest, so let yourself be honest with me. We cannot see one another, so where isthe harm? I do not know your name, so there is no shame, no judgement, no eyes on you.
So, Phoebe poured that into her written passage.
“The point is that, without names, we may be whoever we wish. There are no eyes on us. You are the swan I must adore?—”
“And who are you, then?” The lady interrupted. “A hunter whose arrow is pointed right at my heart?”
“If it wishes to be pierced and captured, then yes.”
Her breath stilted, and she finally let herself be guided down onto the dance floor. The crowd parted for them as though they themselves were royalty. Further along, on a dais, sat the true monarchs. Princes with crowns, and princesses in their opulent, elegant dresses, their eyes assessing every guest and suitor, as if they wished to take one for themselves.
The lady counted four princesses and three princes, but she only had eyes for her hunter.
“Four princesses present, and yet you dance with me,” the lady noted, and the hunter smirked beneath his mask.
“A title does not make a woman appealing to me,” he told her. “But a voice? That is where the true beauty lies.”
“Beauty,” she echoed in a whisper. “What beauty do I have?”
Finally, Phoebe let herself put a bit of her own insecurity into the passage, and she indulged in how she might receive a response, based on what the Duke of Talwyn had said earlier.
“The sort that is infinite and endless,” he told her. “The sort that men would go to their knees for.”
“I am not anybody to bow to.”
“And what if it was not to bow, but to…” the hunter cocked his head. “Give you some other unspeakable pleasure?”
Phoebe clenched her bed sheets, biting her lip, wondering how far she dared to write this piece. Her eyes glanced back over what she had written, half ashamed to admit she was letting herself project the Duke upon this character while she was daring to let herself be a beautiful swan-like lady who bested even princesses.
