Chapter 13: Masks

The Bal Masque filled the Monteleone's grand ballroom with six hundred people, and not one of them had a face.

Everyone wore a mask.

There were gold ones and feathered ones, half-masks on ribbons and full-faces on sticks.

A hundred small, glittering eyes moved behind them across the floor.

I wore a dress I had made in Mama's back room over three nights, deep green silk, cut low at the back, with the lace collar at my throat.

I'd sewn it into the neckline myself.

My mask was a black domino edged with gold, and I could feel my own pulse in it.

"You look," Gaspard said, and then didn't finish.

He stood beside me on the staircase landing in a black tuxedo and a plain black mask that covered his eyes and the bridge of his nose.

It left his mouth bare.

I looked at his mouth for a little too long.

"Finish the sentence," I said.

"I'm trying not to embarrass you."

"You can't."

"I can."

"What were you going to say?"

"That you look like the river at night." He cleared his throat. "That's the best I've got."

I took his arm.

My fingers rested on the sleeve, and I felt the muscle in it tighten.

I remembered exactly how that arm had felt around my waist, three nights ago, with a stove cracking.

I had thought about it every night since.

I had lain in my mother's back room with my knees pressed together and the sheet twisted in my fist.

I'd thought about the heat in his hand and the sound he made.

I was not going to be able to stop at kisses much longer.

I had not told him that, and I had not told myself.

We went down.

The ballroom was a roar of music and velvet.

Waiters carried trays of champagne through the crowd, and the musicians on the dais played a waltz.

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