Page 71 of The Scarlet Ball

We had been talking unaccompanied for too long. In any other circumstance, someone would have come up to join us or spirited me away. Here, more than half of the room knew what he was, and they waited to see what he would do. What I did would always be of lesser importance. In an oddly tranquil fury, it came to me how I hated them. I hated them, and I wanted to hurt them, and I never could. They had made themselves too safe with blood and with money, and if I tried, they’d swat me away. But him—the demon lord, the storm—I could somehow hurt him. I went up on my toes, setting my hand on his shoulder to steady myself as I leaned in to whisper in his ear.

“Don’t speak to me. Don’t touch me. I do not want you.”

It went through him like a bullet; I felt it in the way he stopped breathing, how the cold leaked through his skin because he briefly forgot what he pretended to be.

“I don’t want you. Do you understand? I know what you are now, and I may be bound to meet you at the Scarlet Ball, but I do not want to see you or hear your voice before then. Leave.”

I stepped back, looking him in the face so that there would be no mistake. At last, he gave me an abbreviated bow, as correct as the real Sebastian Rowe might have managed, and satisfied, I turned from him, my steps taking me away from the Howards, away from the girls who might as well have been dead Odile Dryden, away from the fucking storm himself.

The ladies’ lavatory was blessed with a small sitting room, shadowy and half-cloaked by tall ferns. The chairs were from the beginning of the century, nothing but bare boards, so I leaned against the wall instead, wresting a lacy frond from the fern next to me so that I might have something in my hands to tear to pieces.

I’m underwater, I thought. I am under so much water, and I cannot breathe.

I reached for another fern frond only for strong white hands to cover mine.

“Don’t grit your teeth, you’ll break them.”

It was Martha Webster, and if she were kind, I believe I would have struck her. I didn’t want kindness, but there was a humorous quirk in the corner of her mouth, as if to say Isn’t this all just too ridiculous?

That was what I needed, and I managed a shaky laugh.

“I don’t suppose you have any more of those cigarettes.”

“No, but here.”

She produced a little silver vial, and I hesitated, Odile fresh in my mind.

“You first.”

She gave me a patient look but indulged me, tapping a pinch of snuff into the hollow of the tendon that ran between her thumb and wrist before bringing it to her nose.

“There, are you happy?”

Not really, but I held out my hand with my thumb cocked. She gave me what I thought was a miserly amount until I sniffed it in.

“Oh, that’s not bad at all,” I said, blinking back startled tears. It was unusually smooth, no burn down the back of my throat at all, and it made my face tingle.

“I have to save my cigarettes for Julius,” she said. “He likes lighting them for me so much my throat is quite sore most days.”

Her wildfire, I remembered. He had contracted properly with the Fordham family. Mrs. Howard had told me the real Julius had been some years abroad, artistic, dissolute, probably queer. He had given over his place, his name, and his face for a lifelong allowance and a villa in Italy without a fuss, nothing like Sebastian’s bloody entry into the world. Unlike Sebastian, any eccentricities Martha’s lord displayed could be put down to foreign influences. She would train him better once they were married.

“You ought not let him lead like that,” I found myself saying. “If you let him get away with that now, your lungs will be black as pitch in ten years.”

“Advice from the master herself? Lucky me.”

I made a face at her, and Martha hid a laugh behind her hand.

“No, really. You’re not wrong, and I’ll remember it. Is that what tonight was all about? I’ve heard you’re keeping him on a short leash, but I didn’t realize you were kicking him at the same time.”

From the box seats, I realized it must look like such a game. Martha came to stand companionably beside me, shoulder to shoulder. This close, I could tell that her clothes were painstakingly well-fitted. They had to be; with the width of her shoulders and her hips, she’d have burst out of anything that wasn’t. She reminded me of those girls who went fox hunting with their clients, coming back with blood in their hair and enormously pleased with the entire thing. She would look good in a riding habit, tapping a crop in her hands. I shook my head.

“It’s not like that. I don’t. I don’t think I want him.”

“Then can I have him?”

I hid the sudden stab of fury that put through my belly with a laugh. I should only be so lucky as to hand him off to Martha. She wanted him, she knew what to do with him, but she was already ruefully shaking her head.

“God, if only I could,” she said wistfully. “The work I’d put him to. Julius, he’s fine, but to hear the old women talk about yours, I can almost see why Odile pulled the damned fool stunt she did.”