And scrawled across the bottom of the invitation, an unsigned, handwritten note.
I prevailed upon Madame Leda to be sure you receive this letter. Masks or not, there is nothing that happens in her club that she doesn’t know about, and no one she cannot find. Her discretion is legendary, however; have no fear that she will unmask you, to me or to anyone else.
Still, I beg your forgiveness for the intrusion on your privacy, just as I would wish to beg forgiveness in person for whatever I did or said to make you stay away. I’m sure you are right to stay away—but I saw a chance to offer you an evening outside The Nemesis, to say those words to you again but out in the world, amongst other people, and I had to make the offer.
I wish I could ask you to take off your mask and stand beside me in the sunlight. Perhaps we cannot have that. But we could have tonight.
Bess’s breath came so quick and sharp, the words on the page began to fuzz and swim about. Gasping for air, she leaned against the wall of the hallway.
What was he offering, exactly? What did he want? Did he mean, truly, that he wanted to know who she was and to let her know him, in return?
To stand beside him in the sunlight.
It was unthinkable, unfathomable, impossible—and Bess wanted it with an intensity that frightened her.
Putting aside those final lines as best she could, Bess considered what was actually on offer for tonight. A chance to be together out in the world, but with their masks still in place and their secrets still safely hidden.
Heart pounding, she straightened, mind racing ahead to what she would wear, how she would slip away to meet him at the place he named at the end of his note. All the logistics of doing what she’d sworn to herself she wouldn’t do.
Because Bess was going. Wise or not, prudent or not—she wanted. And damn the consequences. She was sick of protecting herself, and sick to death of denying herself.
Sick of smoothing things over for herself.
It was her heart. She’d break it if she wanted to.
In the end, it was surprisingly easy to get away. Lucy had retired to her room after tea, and she never came out again.
“Just a touch of the headache,” Lucy said through the door. “Nothing to fret over. Send my regrets to the Marchioness of Huntingdon, will you? It was kind of her to invite me to her musicale; I shall be sorry to miss it.”
Bess had promised to check on her later and hurried away to her own rooms with her heart in her throat to get ready for the masquerade.
Around nine in the evening, after peeking into Lucy’s darkened chambers and seeing the lump the poor girl made in the bedclothes, Bess pulled her hooded cloak more tightly around her shoulders and stole down the back stairs.
She made her way to the street and hailed a cab that took her to the address at the bottom of the invitation.
“You sure, miss?” was the cab driver’s doubtful response to pulling up at the Hungerford Stairs, a rickety-looking set of bricked steps leading down from the street level to the Thames bank. The pungent smell of the river at high tide swirled up to Bess, making her nose twitch.
“I’m sure,” she said, and paid the cabbie with coins from her reticule before alighting from the carriage.
Nearly sick with nerves and anticipation, Bess stood at the top of the watermen’s stairs and peered down into the murk below. Boatmen used these stairs as safe places to pick up and drop off the passengers they ferried across the Thames.
She was to meet Nathaniel here and they would go together to the ball being held at a mansion somewhere further up the river. But it was so dark and desolate, a damp chill pervading everything, and Bess shivered.
A scrape on the pavement behind her made her jump. Was someone there?
Suddenly a man loomed out of the fog.
Gasping, Bess took a step back before the confident grace of his movements and the breadth of his shoulders registered in her brain. She knew that form.
It was him.
He was masked, of course, as she was. But tonight, instead of the scarred, battered leather mask he donned to become The Berserker, he wore a domino of plain black silk, the twin of Bess’s own. He wore no costume save that of a noble gentleman of impeccable taste—stark black and white formalwear that set off his lean face and athletic proportions beautifully.
Bess’s heart beat painfully hard, but she lifted her chin as though she had not the slightest doubt of her own ability to match his magnificence.
And since she was wearing one of the gowns he’d bought at Mrs. Lister’s, she didn’t truly doubt it, although she’d made a few alterations to the original design in hopes that might keep him from instantly recognizing a dress he’d personally picked out for her.
He held out a gloved hand, and she took it, not allowing herself to tremble.
