Both, Annabelle suspected, were correct.
“Your owl is crooked,” Helena said.
Annabelle straightened the pin. Across the room, the dancers were forming for the next set.
“There,” Helena said with a subtle nod to the side, and Annabelle followed her gaze.
Dominic was at the far side of the room with Lord Keldwick.
Even masked, even dressed as someone else, she knew him in the first second. The vine leaves were threaded through his fairhair: gold and green, easily worn, as though he had put them on as an afterthought and found they suited him without trying. Deep burgundy fabric draped across one shoulder over his evening coat. Half-mask, dark. He had a glass in one hand and was saying something to his friend.
“Dionysus,” Helena whispered.
“I see that.” She was looking him up and down as she drawled out the obvious.
Helena pressed. “Very complementary to your costume, one might say.”
Annabelle arched her brow at her friend. “What are you talking about? Athena and Dionysus, complementary? Since when? Just because they’re both Olympian gods?”
“Besides the obvious, yes,” Helena rolled her eyes. “What I meant was?—”
She was cut off by Lord Keldwick, who had crossed the room, along with Dominic. They both bowed at them.
“Lady Annabelle.” Lord Keldwick bowed. “Miss Thrupton.” A second bow, marginally deeper, and he looked between Annabelle and Dominic with a pleased smirk. “Well,” he said.
“Don’t,” Dominic said.
“I haven’t said a word.”
“You were preparing several.”
Keldwick’s eyes studied Annabelle’s costume diligently, then Dominic’s, then Annabelle’s again. “I was only going to observe,” he said, “that the obvious pairing is Hades and Persephone. The dark lord and the stolen bride…one understands the appeal, there’s a whole tradition behind it.” He gestured between them. “But Athena and Dionysus, now that is a more fascinating combination. Intellect and intoxication. Wisdom and pleasure. Discipline and complete, absolute?—”
“Miss Thrupton.” Dominic interrupted, turning to Helena. “I hope the evening finds you well.”
Helena, who had been listening with her whole face, said, “Extremely well, Your Grace.”
“I’m very glad.” He inclined his head to Annabelle, meeting her eyes through the mask for a single beat, and said, “Lady Annabelle. Enjoy your evening.”
Then he moved away, taking Keldwick with him by the arm, and Annabelle noticed that his knuckle turned white as he gripped his friend.
Keldwick looked back over his shoulder with an apologetic expression.
Annabelle watched them go.
“Discipline and complete, absolute—” Helena murmured, in the tone of a scholar pursuing a missing text.
“Helena.” She warned without quite raising her tone.
Her friend did not look in the least reprimanded. “I am simply noting that the sentence was never finished.”
“Note it quietly.” She said, even as her heart pounded in her chest.
She was trying her best not to turn her head and let her eyes track the Duke of Silverford around the room.
The first set was a country dance, and Lady Annabelle danced it with a man in a Roman toga whose name Dominic did not know and had no interest in knowing.
He watched from the window and established that she laughed twice during the second figure and that neither laugh reached her eyes.
