She rubbed her skirt between nervous fingers and tried to steady her breathing. She was a little helped by the fact that it was a masquerade ball. She wore a velvet demimask that was so purple it was nearly black. It didn’t hide her identity—that wasn’t its purpose, after all—but it still gave her a small measure of confidence. Melisande took a fortifying breath and looked about. Around her, masked ladies and gentlemen laughed and shouted, all of them confident in the knowledge that they were here to see and be seen. Some wore dominoes, but many ladies had decided to wear colorful ball gowns and rely only on a demimask for their disguise.
She was enveloped in a domino of purple silk, and she drew the folds around herself as she moved through the crowds, looking for Vale. She hadn’t see CSheinon him since the garden party that afternoon. They’d parted ways when they’d left the party—he on his horse, she in the carriage. From subtle questioning of Mr. Pynch, she knew her husband was wearing a black domino, but then so were half the men in the room. A lady moved past her, jostling her shoulder. The other woman glanced back at her dismissively.
For a moment, Melisande fought down an urge to flee. To abandon the room and this night’s purpose and seek the shelter of her waiting carriage. But if Vale could brave a crowd of elderly ladies to stalk her at a garden party in the afternoon, then by God she could brave the terrors of a ballroom to hunt him by night.
She heard his laugh then. Turning, she saw him. Vale stood nearly a head taller than those around him. He was surrounded by smiling men and one or two giggling ladies. They were all beautiful, all entirely sure of themselves and their place in the world. Who was she to try inserting herself in this group? Would they not take one look at her and laugh?
She was on the point of turning away and seeking the sanctuary of the waiting carriage when the lady to Vale’s left, a beautiful yellow-haired woman with rouged cheeks and a large bosom, laid a hand on his sleeve. It was Mrs. Redd, Jasper’s onetime mistress.
This was her husband, her love. Melisande folded her fingers into a fist and sailed toward the group.
When she was still several yards away, Vale looked in her direction and stilled. She met his eyes, gleaming blue behind a black satin demimask, and held his gaze as she walked toward him. The people around them seemed to step back, parting as she approached, until she stood directly in front of him.
“Is this not your dance?” she asked, her voice husky from nervousness.
“My lady wife.” He bowed. “Your pardon for my unforgivable forgetfulness.”
She took the arm he offered her, triumphant that he’d left the other woman so easily. He led her silently through the throng. She felt his muscles shift beneath the fabric of coat and domino, and her breath came short. Then they were on the dance floor and taking their respective places. He bowed. She curtsied. They paced toward each other and then apart, his eyes never leaving her face.
When the movement next brought them close, he murmured, “I had not hoped to see you here.”
“No?” She raised her eyebrows behind her mask.
“You seem to favor the day.”
“Do I?”
The dance took them apart while she thought on that odd statement. When they drew close again, she laid her palm against his as they paced in a semicircle. “Perhaps you mistake habit for love.”
His eyes seemed to spark behind his mask. “Explain.”
She shrugged. “My usual social rounds are in the day; yours are in the night—but this does not mean that you love the night and I the day.”
A line appeared between his brows.
“Perh Csizsizaps,” she whispered as they moved apart again, “you play in the night because that is what you’re used to. Perhaps you actually prefer the day.”
He tilted his head in query as they paced together. “And you, my sweet wife?”
“Perhaps my domain is really the night.”
They parted and glided away. She moved through the figures of the dance until they came together again, the touch of his hand on hers sending a thrill through her.
He smiled as if he knew what his touch did to her. “What would you do with me, then, my mistress of the night?” They paced around each other, only the fingertips of their hands touching. “Will you lead me? Taunt me? Teach me about the night?”
They separated and dipped. She watched him the entire time. His eyes glinted with green and blue lights. They advanced, and he bent his head to her ear, their bodies not touching at all. “Tell me, madam, will you dare to seduce a sinner such as I?”
Her breath was coming fast, her heart fluttering in her chest, alive with excitement, but her face was serene. “Is that really the question?”
“What question do you prefer?”
“Will you allow yourself to be seduced by me?”
They halted as the dance concluded and the music died away. Her eyes on his, Melisande sank into a curtsy. She rose, her gaze still locked with her husband’s.
He took her hand and bent over the knuckles, murmuring as he kissed her hand, “Oh, yes.”
He guided her from the dance floor, and they were immediately surrounded.
A gentleman in a scarlet domino pressed into Melisande’s side. “Who is this delectable creature, Vale?”
“My wife,” Vale said lightly as he adroitly maneuvered Melisande to his other side, “and I’ll thank you not to forget it, Fowler.”
Fowler laughed drunkenly, and someone else shouted a quip that Vale responded to easily, but Melisande couldn’t hear the words. She was too conscious of the press of hot bodies, of the leer of unkind eyes. Mrs. Redd had disappeared—for good, she hoped. She’d found Vale and danced with him, and now only wished to go home.
But he was guiding her farther into the crowd, his hand firm and strong on her elbow.
“Where are we going, my lord?” Melisande asked.
“I thought . . .” He glanced at her distractedly. “Lord Hasselthorpe just came in, and I had some business to discuss with him. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, of course not.”
They’d reached the knot of gentlemen standing by the entrance to the ballroom. They were a noticeably more somber group than the one Vale had been with earlier.
“Hasselthorpe! How fortuitous to meet you here,” Vale called.
Lord Hasselthorpe turned, and even Melisande could see his confusion. But Vale held out his hand, and the other man was forced to take it, eyeing him warily. Hasselthorpe was a nondescript man of medium height with heavy-lidded eyes and deep lines incising his cheeks about his mouth. His habitual expression was grave as befitted a leading member of Parliament. Beside him was the Duke of Lister, a tall, heavyset man in a gray wig. Hovering several paces away was a beautiful blond woman, Lister’s longtime mistress, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. She didn’t look to be enjoying the ball, standing all by herself.