I Hid In The Slums For 6 Years To Protect Him — Then He Recognized Me At A Masquerade

Part 1

Beeswax dripped from the grand chandeliers in slow, fat droplets.

They hardened against the polished oak floors before the swirling boots of a hundred aristocrats could crush them into dust.

Sweat pooled in the hollow of my throat.

It felt tacky and irritating beneath the stiff lace of a collar that did not belong to me.

The air in the ballroom was practically unbreathable.

It tasted of expensive cloying rose water, stale breath, and the sharp metallic tang of spilled wine baking under thousands of candles.

I pressed my spine against a marble pillar.

I let the cold stone bite through the thin silk of my borrowed bodice.

I hated the dress.

I hated the heavy, suffocating weight of the masquerade mask strapped to my face.

It was a cheap thing scavenged from a discarded trunk in the theater district.

It was a half-mask made of pressed felt and molting black feathers that smelled faintly of glue and old dust.

It scratched at the sensitive skin across my cheekbones.

I was sure it would leave raw, red welts by morning.

But it hid my eyes.

It hid the sharp slope of my nose, and the exhaustion bracketed around my mouth.

Tonight, that was all that mattered.

I had not come to the Duke’s masquerade to dance.

I had not come to find a wealthy patron.

I had come because I was starving, both literally and in a strange hollow way I refused to examine too closely.

For six years, I had lived in the damp, sunless alleys of the lower city.

I spent my days stitching hems until my fingers bled.

I survived on watery oats and the bitter dregs of cheap tea.

Tonight was a rare occasion when the great houses threw open their doors to anyone clever enough to bypass the footmen.

I had forged an invitation with a stolen wax seal.

I slipped past a bored guard and wedged myself into the crushing tide of nobility.

I simply wanted to eat from the lavish buffet, and perhaps to remind myself that I still existed.

A footman passed by with a silver tray balancing dangerously on his white-gloved fingertips.

I reached out, my movements sharp and practiced, and snatched a crystal goblet of champagne.

I brought it to my lips and drank deeply.

The liquid was violently cold and so aggressively carbonated it burned the back of my throat.

I grimaced, swallowing the acidic wine, and let my gaze drag across the room.

They looked like a flock of grotesque, mindless birds.

Lords and ladies were wrapped in yards of suffocating velvet dripping with jewels.

Those gems could feed my entire boarding house for a decade.

A man in a gilded lion mask threw his head back and laughed.

It was a loud, braying sound that grated against my eardrums.

A woman dressed as a porcelain shepherdess swayed dangerously on her heels.

Her powdered wig slanted precariously toward her left ear.

It was a circus of excess.

It was beautiful from a distance, but nauseating up close.

I felt a familiar, cynical bitterness coat my tongue.

These were the people who ruled the world.

These were the people who crushed girls like me beneath their carriage wheels and never bothered to look back.

Then the orchestra shifted its tempo.

The frantic leaping notes of a country dance dissolved into the slow weeping drag of a waltz.

The crowd parted near the grand staircase.

They did not part out of respect, but out of an instinctual animal reaction to a sudden shift in the room’s gravity.

I stopped breathing.

The half-empty goblet in my hand trembled.

The crystal clicked faintly against my cheap silver ring.

Craig stood at the top of the stairs.

He did not wear a mask, which was typical.

Craig had always believed that hiding one’s face was a coward’s game.

It was an irony that made bile rise in my throat.

He wore a severe evening coat of midnight wool, entirely devoid of the flashy embroidery the other men paraded.

He looked older and much harsher.

The soft, boyish curve of his jaw that I remembered from our youth had been chiseled away by time.

Perhaps it was the immense weight of the dukedom he had inherited that had sharpened his features.

His dark hair was brushed back, but a single unruly lock fell across his forehead.

It made him look perpetually disheveled despite the immaculate tailoring.

My heart did not flutter.

It seized.

A cold, hard panic bloomed in my chest, pressing painfully against my ribs.

I wanted to turn away.

I needed to melt into the shadows, find the servant’s corridor, and run until my lungs bled.

But my boots felt cemented to the floorboards.

I watched him descend the stairs, his movements deliberate and heavy.

He looked utterly exhausted.

There were dark bruises of sleeplessness under his pale eyes.

His mouth was set in a grim, unyielding line.

He reached the ballroom floor, and the nobles swarmed him like flies to rotting fruit.

They pushed their masked daughters toward him, waving painted fans and tittering behind gloved hands.

Craig endured it.

He nodded, his jaw flexing, offering clipped responses that I could not hear over the screeching violins.

I told myself to move.

A rational voice whispered in my mind that he would never recognize me.

I was wearing a mask, and I was ten pounds thinner.

My hands were calloused, and I was no longer the naive girl who loved him.

It had been six years since the scandal.

Six years since I had taken the blame for his brother’s treason.

I had fled in the dead of night to spare his family name from ruin.

Craig never knew the truth.

Craig probably thought I was a traitor, a thief, or simply dead.

I set the crystal goblet on a passing tray with a sharp clink.

I rubbed my thumb nervously against the side of my index finger.

It was a nervous tick I had never managed to break.

I pulled my dark shawl tighter around my shoulders.

I ignored the prickle of the crow feathers against my skin.

It was time to go.

The buffet was no longer worth the risk.

I turned my back to the grand staircase and lowered my chin.

I began to thread my way through the suffocating press of bodies.

I aimed for the heavy oak doors that led to the western corridor.

I kept my head down, dodging elbows and avoiding the heavy hems of dragging silk gowns.

What I did not see as I slipped into the dimly lit hallway, was Craig stopping mid-sentence.

I did not see him brush past a stunned Duchess.

I did not see his pale eyes snapping toward the marble pillar where I had stood seconds before.

The western corridor was a shock to the senses.

The air here was significantly cooler, smelling of damp limestone and lemon wax rather than sweat and perfume.

I leaned against the wall, dragging in a ragged breath that tasted of dust.

My corset bit viciously into my ribs, punishing me for the sudden intake of air.

I closed my eyes, pressing the heels of my hands against my temples.

My hands were shaking uncontrollably.

I stared at them in the low light of the single gas sconce flickering at the end of the hall.

The calluses on my fingertips were rough, the skin around my nails bitten down to the quick.

These were not the hands of the girl Craig had known.

That girl was dead.

I had to remind myself of that fact every single day.

But seeing him, seeing the tired slump of his shoulders and the grim set of his mouth, had resurrected a ghost I had spent six years trying to bury.

I pushed off the wall, intent on finding the servant’s stairwell that would lead me down to the kitchens and out into the muddy alley.

I took three steps before a sound stopped me cold.

Footsteps echoed behind me, heavy, deliberate, and moving fast.

I froze, my shadow stretching long and distorted against the patterned wallpaper.

I glanced over my shoulder.

The heavy oak doors to the ballroom were closed.

The heavy thud of boots echoing on the marble floor meant someone had followed me.

It could be a drunken lord looking for a secluded spot, or a footman who had noticed my stolen invitation.

I didn’t wait to find out.

I hitched up the heavy skirt of my borrowed dress and walked faster.

My cheap leather boots slapped quietly against the runner rug.

The corridor seemed to stretch on forever, a dark tunnel of locked doors and looming portraits of dead aristocrats judging my retreat.

A voice hit my spine like a physical blow, rough and completely stripped of polite aristocratic polish.

I kept walking, quickening my pace toward the corner.

Before I could reach it, a large hand clamped down on my shoulder.

The grip was tight and desperate, yanking me backward with enough force to spin me around.

I stumbled, my heel catching in the hem of my skirts, and fell hard against the wall.

Craig stood in front of me, breathing heavily.

Up close, the damage of the years was even more apparent.

There were fine lines etched around his eyes, and his jaw was shadowed with dark stubble.

He smelled of rain, bergamot, and a dark, heavy grief.

I pressed myself flat against the wall, my heart battering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

I kept my chin tucked down, letting the ugly black feathers of my mask shield my face.

I pitched my voice low and raspy, flattening my vowels into the coarse accent of the city docks, telling him he had frightened me.

Craig didn’t answer.

He stared at me, his pale eyes searching the visible lower half of my face.

The silence stretched thick and suffocating.

He mentioned that I still rubbed my thumb against my index finger when I was anxious.

His voice was terrifyingly quiet, a dangerous, brittle sound.

I shoved my hands behind my back, instinctively biting the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper.

I insisted I didn’t know what he was talking about and asked him to let me pass.

I tried to step around him, but Craig shifted, blocking my path entirely.

He planted one hand on the wall beside my head, effectively trapping me in the narrow space.

The heat rolling off his body made the cold corridor feel suddenly like a furnace.

He told me that for six years he had paid men to drag the river.

He said he had torn the city apart, tavern by tavern, alley by alley.

I pushed my hands against his chest, intending to shove him away, but it was like pushing against solid oak.

I told him I was just a seamstress and he had the wrong woman.

Craig let out a harsh, breathless laugh that held absolutely no humor.

Slowly, deliberately, he lifted his free hand.

I flinched, anticipating a blow or a rebuke.

Instead, his bare fingers brushed against my cheekbone, just below the stiff, scratching edge of my mask.

His touch was burning hot, his calluses rougher than they used to be.

“I would know the sound of your breathing in a hurricane,” he whispered, as the lie died in my throat.