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Cocking his head, the equerry fixed her with a startlingly firm gaze. “I should perhaps inform you, Lady Riven, that in this court, it would be considered deeply offensive not to finish any glass of wine supplied in the emperor’s honor.”

“...Of course,” Margaret finished with a sigh, and sank down into her assigned chair. “How long do you expect Emperor Florian to be?”

“It is not ours to judge his time,” intoned the equerry, and left to return to the ballroom, closing the door behind him with a decisive click.

“Ugh!” This time, Margaret released her full-throated groan into the air, tipping her head back against the chair where she’d been trapped.

This was absurd. It could be half an hour or more before the reception line finally disbanded. If the supernatural waltz played before then, she would miss the whole event...

And wasn’t that an interesting thought? Margaret stiffened in her seat with belated realization.

Had the Austrian emperor actually wished to converse with her—a stranger, a foreigner, and a woman—in privacy tonight, despite all the stories of his reclusive and rigidly proper behavior? Or had he, instead, merely wished to ensure that she was far from the ballroom when that mysterious waltz began, unable to glimpse any clues?

In this inner parlor, the roar of the event was only a muffled din, the orchestra’s music a muted aural trail. She could easily sit here for the next hour without having any idea what was happening in the nearby ballroom—but regardless of the emperor’s underlying intentions, she would never again be allowed into any high society event in Vienna if she blatantly snubbed his invitation and defied his personal instructions.

So, it was a good thing, after all, that the room to which she’d been led was so very private.

It took only a moment to pull the folded cloak from her reticule and shake it out until it billowed through the air with an unnatural silver gleam that blurred her vision until she wrapped it safely around her. Whenever she saw the emperor start in the direction of this room to meet her, she would make her own invisible way back—and if that pompous equerry did discover her absence in the meantime, she could claim she’d only left in an urgent search for a retiring chamber.

No one would see any evidence to contradict it.

Halfway to the door, she hesitated, then darted back to lift up the wine glass and splash its contents into the closest potted plant before returning it, empty, to its table. There. Now, he couldn’t claim that she had insulted the emperor by leaving it untouched.

With local etiquette safely respected, she slipped quickly through the door to the first sitting room, and then—squeezing herself through the narrowest possible opening—back out into the loud and crowded ballroom. Fortunately, the throng of guests that clustered only a few feet from this door were facing away, looking towards the dancefloor; she eased the door shut behind her with painstaking care, wincing at the inevitable click, but not a single head turned as the small sound was covered by the general din.

Finally. With a sigh of relief, she flattened her back against the wall. Now that she was safely off display, she could give her full scholarly focus to the scene before her and absorb every detail.

Even with the many giant hanging chandeliers, this ballroom felt notably dimmer than most she had attended in the past. It took her only a minute to understand: not only were there no tall windows lining these ornately molded walls, but there were no mirrors to replace them, either, as points of reflection for the light from the chandeliers.

Of course. In England, it was an accustomed fact of life that the vampires who made up nearly half of the nobility wouldn’t be reflected in those light-enhancing mirrors as they danced past; indeed, there were several popular party games designed around that effect. However, as discretion was considered so essential here for supernatural citizens, the Habsburgs wouldn’t risk revealing any uncomfortable truths through misplaced reflections at their Imperial balls...any more than King Thomas would risk flaunting his own opera singer mistress in such company.

What other secrets were hidden tonight behind a guise of strict respectability?

The orchestra was playing in a recessed corner far from the entrance to the ballroom; if they did, as predicted, play the supernaturally effective waltz at some point in the evening, she wouldn’t find any better spot to observe than in the space left open around them. Avoiding gesturing hands and elbows along the way, she sidled along the wall, keeping her eyes out for any other figures who might sneak past nearby to cause supernatural mischief.

Instead, it was her own name that caught her attention as the latest dance came to an end.

“...Lady Riven, isn’t it?” A woman’s voice spoke in French just to her right, in an aristocratic Parisian accent rich with amusement; as Margaret froze in place—how did she see me?—the woman continued drolly, “She is an odd little creature, isn’t she? Did you see how she berated her own king like a common shrew?”

“According to what I heard from friends who met her in Paris,” answered a male, Austrian-accented voice, “that’s hardly unusual. They said she has no notion of how to behave in decent company, after so many years talking only to books as none of her classmates would deign to speak to her.”

Margaret breathed shallowly, her invisible body unmoving as couples disbanded and reassembled on the dancefloor beyond her. Keep walking. Keep walking! she urged her own recalcitrant feet.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t heard unpleasant commentary about herself in the past. As one of the first female students at Mornington College, she’d become inured to even the foulest comments from her male classmates in their attempts to intimidate her into abandoning her studies. She had learned within her first year there to erect a hard, protective wall around herself, one which their words could never penetrate.

...And yet somehow, in this elegant ballroom to which she’d come as an invited guest, along with the husband who’d gently pulled down all of her defensive walls, she found herself turning inexorably in place, drawn by a sickeningly irresistible force to witness the rest of this conversation.

“Oh, my dear, she was the talk of Paris for weeks.” The first voice was revealed to come from a French lady around Margaret’s own age but infinitely more elegant in her languid posture, trailing jewels, and glittering tiara. “It was such a vexing disappointment! Everyone had so looked forward to meeting the author of that deliciously scandalous article, only to be confronted with a scowling mouse of a woman who barely opened her mouth except to lecture us all on the most tedious details, as if we were poor, unfortunate students caught in her classroom.”

Margaret sucked in a breath at that low blow...but the conversation still wasn’t over.

“I do pity her poor husband,” drawled the Viennese gentleman, a man of average height but with fantastically large and bushy muttonchop sideburns on either side of his gleefully malicious face. “Really, it’s a shame that such a charming man should be burdened with a harridan like that.”

“It is,” murmured the lady, “especially as—according to that remarkably tantalizing article—he does have rather a lot to offer, does he not? Really, I couldn’t believe he ever allowed it to be published with such lascivious details included.”

“But then, he is a British gentleman, isn’t he?” The Viennese gentleman’s upper lip rose. “We all knew what that meant even before his wife published that sensational piece about his animalistic nature. Over there, the supernaturals don’t even pretend to be civilized, do they?”

The two broke into sniggering, shared laughter, and the sinking sensation that had gripped Margaret’s center transformed into a righteous fury.