He stepped behind her and fastened the mask, his fingers steady against her temples. His mouth brushed the nape of her neck, a quiet claim before battle.
“Ready?” He took her hand, threading their fingers together. For a moment, he was not the master of Shadowmere, only a man afraid of losing her.
They kept to the shadows and slipped into the house through the servants’ quarters. The corridors were quiet and cold, the revelry muffled behind thick doors.
“Any guest found here is barred from future events.”
She pictured the maids beside Mrs Buckley’s hearth, eating scones and blissfully unaware. “Who waits on the merrymakers?”
“They’re expected to bring their own servants.” He paused at the top of the stone staircase and gave her hand agentle squeeze. “Breathe. Then act as though they’re here for your amusement. Once the shock passes, it’s only theatre.”
She swallowed hard, her throat dry as ash. “Nothing here could rival my nightmares of Mr Irving.”
She was wrong.
A masked couple pressed against the panelling, the woman’s green skirts tangled around her thighs while a man in a stag mask laughed softly against her throat, his hand already wandering where it pleased.
Halfway up the staircase, a woman in crimson silk straddled a masked gentleman too drunk to stand. Her laughter echoed against the red walls as guests flowed around them, as though the display were part of the evening’s entertainment.
Yet something other than disgust stirred beneath her ribs. A sadness for the man who still twined his fingers with hers. This was the fortress he had chosen.
With it came another truth. She did not belong here. It had been indulgent to think she might. That she could pretend.
She gripped his hand a little tighter. Not because she might get lost among these degenerates. Because their worlds were farther apart than she had allowed herself to believe.
He mistook the slight tremble in her fingers for a different kind of fear. “They won’t dare approach you. I’d have their heads if they did.”
The mask concealed the crack in her composure.
“I know.”
People parted as they walked through the elegant corridor, moving like restless shadows. Animal masks hid their faces, not the hunger in their eyes or the ruin of their mouths. The house swelled with noise, not all of it music.
Lord Templeton was on his feet before Mr Ramsey closed the study door behind them. The crackle of the fire and thelaughter drifting in from the corridor barely disguised the lord’s ragged breath.
His eyes were upon her first, like a child at a confectioner’s window. Though it would be a mistake to think him innocent. The mask he gripped in his hand was that of a wolf.
“How much longer am I expected to remain here?” the lord said, careful to appear nothing more than mildly frustrated. “I’ve a friend waiting upstairs.”
Dominic invited her to sit in the throne-like chair behind the desk while he remained standing, hands braced behind his back, a monument of stone.
“You were told to name one of my father’s creditors and bring proof of the debt. That was the bargain we struck at Mrs Flavell’s.”
Templeton ran a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply. “I’ve made enquiries. No one keeps gaming records from over a decade ago. There was no mention of him in White’s Betting Book.”
The pause stretched.
Dominic began pacing. “You gambled with my father. Surely you know the men who joined you at the tables.”
The lord swallowed. “If you haven’t been able to uncover it, what hope do I have? If you want the names of men he met in gaming hells, that’s most of the ton.”
“Give him foolscap and ink, Ramsey. Let him make a list.”
Mr Ramsey obliged by gripping the lord’s shoulders and forcing him into a chair beside the desk. He took paper from the drawer and pushed the inkwell towards the trembling fellow.
Beads of perspiration formed on the lord’s brow.
“I want at least ten names,” Dominic said.
