Meghan stilled on the third step from the bottom.
Me. They are speaking about…me.
Through the shock of Meghan’s discovery, her gaze found a pair of misses in jewel-toned masks. Even standing beside their respective dance partners, impish smiles told the ladies’ identities.
Meghan’s youngest sister, disguised in all silk sapphire, brought her palms together. She lifted them in a discreet little clap Meghan’s way.
The tension left Meghan fast.
No one spoke about Meghan. No one noticed her. No one saw her.
The fact no one had, nay, the fact the one man she yearned for above any other had failed to account for her reluctant acceptance of the duke’s proposal.
Tonight, the whole world stared, and not in the way the cruel ton tended to gawk at the McQuoids.
The moment her jewel-studded slippers touched the marble floor, the orchestra broke out intoKing George IV, King’s Reel.
The spell was broken and the crowd came together so fast for the lively four-set number that Meghan thought she’d imagined the grand entrance for herself.
She found herself surrounded on every side.
A stranger grabbed her left hand.
Heart hammering, she looked at the tall, spindly masked Circassian responsible for that boldness.
“The diamonds of a most praised water doth appeareth,” he lisped, the crooked set to his yellow teeth more pronounced by his partial face covering. “To make the world twice rich.” His lascivious leer erased his pretty prose.
At Meghan’s right, a Hessian helped himself to Meghan’s spare palm.
The reason virtuous unmarried ladies were denied invitations to the scandalous, masked affairs now made sense.
This swarm about her threatened everything. She needed to be invisible.
No one looked at her. At least not this way.
The threat, the risk, was nothing compared to the heady rush that came from being seen. No, not seen. Desired—even if no one knew her identity.
But there was one…
A cool, commanding voice called above the others. “Step away, gentlemen.”
Shivers of awareness traced her spine.
This man, unlike the fawning lords around Meghan, uttered neither appeal nor plea. He commanded the way kings do, and with the same unspoken but understood promise of a swift death for the defiant.
Even faster than her would-be attendants converged upon Meghan, the lesser men yielded the floor.
The gentleman’s broad-set shoulders moved like a ship cutting through waves, the crowd curled away so he could pass, until only they two stood masked face to masked face.
Meghan stilled; even the breath in her lungs caught and held.
And then he stood before her.
Her lips trembled apart.
Meghan could hide in costumes. She did so with great ease and success here now.
This man, however? This highwayman, in black from the tip of his onyx domino to his snug-fitting black breeches and equally snug black leather boots, could not. Even if the loose tangle of curls, a golden halo to his darkness, did not give him away, the harsh, sharp line of his jaw and angry slash of his cheekbones—stubbled from a day’s worth of growth—could never conceal his identity.
