“Here,” Mark says, producing another domino from his pocket. He hands it to Tristan. “This is for you.”
Tristan’s face doesn’t change, but I can sense the discomfort rippling through him. “I’m not dressed for a masquerade, sir.”
“You’re in a suit, and that’s good enough. Plus, you’ll have a mask. What else do you need?”
“I was given to understand the Constantine security was sufficient for tonight, and that you would not require me inside—”
“Then you were mistaken. I require you inside very much. Whom else will I dance with?”
Even in the velvet evening, with only the lights from the house pouring onto the drive, I can see Tristan struggle with a response to that. He flushes. “Very well, sir.”
“Good boy. Meet me inside after the car is safely parked.” And without a glance backward, Mark takes my arm and leads me up the shallow front steps into the mansion, stopping at the front door to help me affix my gold mask. A faint breeze finds its way through the high slit in the tulled skirt of my gown and caresses the skin exposed by the deep V of my bodice.
“He’s young,” I remark after Mark’s finished with my mask. “And thank you.” I almost wish I could stop and attend to some of the more invisible parts of my costume, which are both deeply uncomfortable and strangely stimulating, but I assume I’ll have time once we get inside and start circulating.
“You’re welcome. And I haven’t fucked him, if that’s what you’re trying to ask.” He hands the doorman our invitations, and then we both proceed inside, trailed discreetly by my Secret Service detail. Neither Mark nor I pay them any mind.
“Do you want to fuck him?” I ask.
We move easily through the foyer, following the elegant strains of music coming from the ballroom. “I wouldn’t object to it, no,” Mark says. “Would you?”
I think of Tristan’s pout-shaped mouth and his haunted eyes…and all those rippling, ex-soldier muscles. “Of course not.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I’m a woman of simple tastes—oh.”
Oh.
We have just reached the ballroom, and it is like something out of a movie, like something out of a poem. A play. A Shakespearean fever dream of glittering crystal, gilt everything, and tumbling roses of ivory and dipped gold. White wisteria and roses hang from the chandeliers, entire trees have been moved into the corners, and there are small alcoves carpeted in what appears to be fresh moss. The ballroom—already a cathedral-sized space, already richly adorned—is now a hymn to sumptuousness, to extravagant beauty.
And the guests?
I see swans and nymphs, pirates and nereids. A woman in a full porcelain mask sails past us, her petticoats swishing as she’s chased by a man wearing a brightly checkered harlequin’s costume. As we descend the grand staircase down the ballroom floor, couples swirl in froths of feathers and eddies of silk. Some are in waistcoats, some in dresses, some in bodysuits, and everywhere are elaborate hats and headdresses trimmed with feathers, veils, bells, flowers. Several people have wigs with model ships and tiny birdcages lodged in the curls, and several others have opted for crowns or tiaras instead. The guests are dripping with jewels, all of them to a one. The crowd shimmers and sparkles even more than the ballroom itself.
“You were saying about simple tastes?” Mark asks with some amusement.
“Shut up.”
“Ah, Morgan Leffey. Brought low like the rest of us by mortal pleasures.”
“What,” I say, turning to him with an eyebrow raised behind my mask, “about any of my time in your club has ever made you think I don’t enjoy mortal pleasures?”
“I didn’t say ‘didn’t enjoy’, I said ‘brought low’—oh, there is our hostess. Shall we go and make our gratitudes?”
“Best to get it over with, I suppose.”
Caroline Constantine greets us with queenly but gracious kisses, and then points out her youngest, Tinsley, out on the ballroom floor, radiant and dancing, perhaps forgetting for a moment that her mother’s gaze is never far. I watch Tinsley as Mark and Caroline talk, and for a brief and tired instant, I envy the young heiress. I envy her youth. I envy her innocence. I envy everything that separates us—not just time, but old sins, and incessant responsibilities, and the many lonelinesses that creep in with age…the lonelinesses that not even friends and pretty subs can keep at bay.
And then Caroline is greeting another guest and Mark is sweeping me off to get a drink. Which is when I realize that the slightly uncomfortable parts of my dress are now suddenly very uncomfortable. Several spots across my ass are stinging and hurting. Almost like the atelier left pins in the fabric. But tiny, tiny pins.
“Are you okay?” Mark asks as we walk. There’s no real concern in his voice, only a kind of wolfish amusement. “Your eyes are looking a little bright.”
“Fuck you,” I say instinctively.
“I would, but we’d tear each other apart, my old friend. I’ll take your bag—tuck your phone into that handy pocket of yours, yes, there’s a good girl. Now you should go drink and dance. I see some people I’d like to talk to.”
I finish slipping my phone into the dress pocket—it’s almost as if my date knew I’d need to keep it close—and hand my clutch to Mark. “Talk to about murder things?”
“I don’t do murdering anymore,” Mark says. “And even when I did, it was all with the approval of people like you.”
“Officially, the White House doesn’t condone—”
My voice falters and I pause, blinking into the crowd.
“Morgan?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, clearing my throat. “I thought I saw... It’s nothing. Never mind.”
Except then I see the silhouette again. Broad shoulders. Powerful build. Arms and thighs that even the best tailoring in the world can’t diminish. (And why would any tailor want to?)
I see the dark hair, the dark stubble, all of it liberally threaded with silver. Olive skin and bright amber eyes. A strong nose and a full, well-formed mouth.
It’s him.
“Mark, don’t go,” I whisper, but Mark is already gone, that whoreson bastard prick asshole—
He is walking toward me, the last man on earth I want to see, ever, ever, and I think I have to escape, I think I have to run away. Where to, I don’t know, and how, I don’t know either because this lavish ballroom is wonderful for hiding in but maybe not for running, and definitely not for running in while wearing fairy wings—and why I am wearing fairy wings at all? I’m forty-two and a grownass woman and—and I decide to flee to one of the mossy alcoves. I’m already trying to slip away when I feel a hand at my elbow. Warm. Large.
I turn to see my ex-husband staring down at me with an amused expression.
“Hello, wife,” he says.
2
“Ex-wife,” I say faintly, my breath caught somewhere in my chest.
He nods, that full mouth tipped up at the corners.
The stubble on his jaw is…edible. There’s no other word to describe it. I have the strange and dismaying realization that I could spend hours licking his face.