My Fake Kiss Saved A Stranger — And Made Me A Hunted Man

Part 1

The air at the autumn masquerade tasted of wilted roses and too much spilled gin.

I only wanted a quiet corner to rest my aching feet.

My borrowed wool coat scratched relentlessly against my damp neck.

It smelled faintly of mothballs and the desperate ambition of the tailor who had accepted my pocket watch as collateral.

I wasn’t a gentleman, and I certainly wasn’t an invited guest.

I drew lines on parchment so men with titles could argue over which side of a river belonged to them.

Tonight I was here to corner a nobleman’s steward for three months of unpaid surveying wages.

The ballroom felt like a stifling, grotesque farce.

Two hundred bodies crammed into a space designed for half that number, all wrapped in heavy velvets and suffocating layers of vanity.

A waiter jostled past carrying a silver tray of half-empty crystal glasses.

I caught the heavy sour stench of warm wine and old citrus.

My feet throbbed inside boots that pinched at the toes.

Raw blisters rubbed against stiff leather with every step.

Across the room, the orchestra dragged their bows against strings to produce a waltz that sounded more like a dirge.

The dancers moved in a slow, hypnotic circle of flashing jewels and forced smiles.

They remained entirely disconnected from the freezing mud of the streets just beyond the heavy oak doors.

Nobody here cared that the winter was going to be brutal.

I decided to cut my losses and face my landlady empty-handed tomorrow rather than suffocate in this perfumed purgatory.

Slipping away from the edge of the dance floor, I moved like water through the cracks of the crowd.

I ducked behind a heavy velvet curtain that smelled intensely of dust and stale lavender.

Stepping into the dimly lit corridor of the east wing brought immediate silence.

It pressed against my ears like thick cotton.

I peeled the rigid domino mask from my face.

My fingers rubbed the bridge of my nose where the cheap papier-mâché had dug a red groove into my skin.

A sharp, ragged intake of breath shattered the quiet.

My eyes snapped open.

Three paces away, tucked into the shallow depression of a marble alcove, stood a woman.

She looked like a ghost in the gloom, draped in a gown of heavy silver silk that caught the meager light of a single wall sconce.

Her shoulders hunched inward as she fought for shallow, erratic gasps of air.

I could smell her before I fully processed her presence.

It wasn’t the heavy, clawing rosewater favored by the dowagers in the ballroom.

This scent carried the metallic tang of rainwater, crushed stems, and pure, unadulterated fear.

I apologized, my voice dropping to a low gravel.

She flinched violently.

Her head whipped toward me, a silver half-mask obscuring her eyes.

Stark white knuckles gripped the folds of her skirt.

The torn silk hem dragged on the floor, heavy with black street grime.

A single whispered plea cracked in the middle of her throat.

It sounded like an animal caught in a snare.

I frowned at the melodramatics.

A torn hem was usually grounds for a fainting spell among the upper class.

But the trembling in her jaw was absolutely real.

Cold sweat glistened visibly on her pale collarbone.

Before I could ask if she required a glass of water, the heavy oak doors at the far end of the corridor slammed open.

The sound cracked like a gunshot in the quiet hall.

Heavy boots hit the floorboards.

These weren’t the tapping leather soles of dancing gentlemen.

They possessed the solid, brutal thud of hobnailed boots.

Rough voices barked orders to check the library and lock the terrace doors.

The woman in silver let out a tiny, broken whimper.

She quickly swallowed the sound down.

Her spine pressed so hard against the marble statue in the alcove that I thought she might crack her own ribs.

I looked at the approaching shadows stretching across the floor.

The petty dramas of the rich were none of my business.

Walking away would have been the smart choice.

Instead, a strange, utterly irrational instinct flared in my chest.

I despised men who wore heavy boots and barked orders at midnight.

Closing the distance between us took two long strides.

She shrank back, a gasp tearing from her throat as I invaded her space.

Her fingernails dug frantically into the wool of my lapel to push me away.

I hissed at her to stay quiet, my breath hot against her ear.

The boots were getting closer.

The dim light of the corridor would hide us for a moment, but the alcove was far too shallow.

Searching guards would easily spot a woman in a torn silver dress cowering behind a statue.

There remained only one way to make two people in a dark corridor look completely uninteresting.

I grabbed her waist.

The fabric of her dress felt stiff over a rigid, unyielding whalebone corset.

She stiffened like a startled deer.

I didn’t give her time to fight back.

Backing her against the wall, I positioned my broader shoulders to eclipse her smaller frame entirely from the hallway.

I dropped my head, angling my face down.

My mouth crashed against hers.

Our masks scraped together, the hardened edges biting sharply into my cheekbone.

Her lips clamped shut, tasting heavily of stale champagne and the salt of dried tears.

She shoved against my chest.

A panicked, muffled sound vibrated against my mouth.

I gripped the back of her neck to hold her firmly in place.

Her skin felt freezing, slick with cold sweat.

I slumped my posture to look exactly like a drunken guest thoroughly occupied with a willing maid.

The heavy footsteps drew level with the alcove.

My heart hammered a dull, ugly rhythm against my ribs.

I smelled the leather of the guards’ belts and the cheap tobacco clinging to their coats as they passed mere inches away.

One of the men grunted about a drunk groping a bit of skirt and ordered the others to keep moving.

The boots continued down the hall.

Their heavy footfalls faded as they rounded the corner toward the conservatory.

I didn’t pull away immediately.

Silence rushed back in to fill the empty corridor.

The woman against me had stopped fighting.

Her hands had gone slack, resting hesitantly on my rough coat.

Her chest heaved against mine, the breathing heavy and exhausted rather than panicked.

Slowly, I pulled back.

My hands stayed on her waist for a fraction of a second longer to steady her.

I took a step back, suddenly hyper-aware of the heat trapped in the narrow space between us.

My voice sounded remarkably steady when I announced they were gone.

She kept her head bowed.

A trembling hand reached up to touch her bruised lips.

I wiped my own mouth with the back of my hand, tasting the bitter dust from her papier-mâché mask.

She looked up at me with feral, desperate eyes.

I bent down to retrieve my discarded domino mask from the floor and dusted it off against my trousers.

Stepping out of the shadow, she reached frantically into the bodice of her gown.

She shoved something cold and heavy into my calloused palm.

It was a solid platinum hairpin crowned with a diamond the size of a robin’s egg.

The stone fractured the dim light into a blinding, arrogant spray of color.

I stared at a gem worth more than I would earn in three lifetimes of drawing maps.

Looking back up, I realized the alcove was completely empty.

Only the faint lingering scent of rainwater remained in the stagnant air.

The morning light sliced unforgivingly through the cracked window pane of my rented room.

I sat on the edge of my lumpy mattress, staring at the scarred wooden table by the washbasin.

The diamond hairpin sat dead center on the wood.

It belonged in a vault, not a room that smelled of damp plaster and cheap coal smoke.

I rubbed my face, my skin gritty with absolute exhaustion.

Fencing a stone that size was utterly impossible for a man like me.

A jeweler would take one look at my frayed cuffs and call the city watch.

Keeping it meant begging for a slit throat in a dark alley.

From the street below, the harsh voice of a paper boy cut through the morning traffic.

He shouted about the Duke’s bride vanishing on the eve of her nuptials.

I froze, dropping my rough linen towel.

Throwing open the window, I tossed down a copper coin for a broadsheet.

The headline detailed the disappearance of a woman last seen wearing a gown of silver silk adorned with the Duke’s ancestral diamonds.

Those hadn’t been a nobleman’s footmen looking for a tipsy guest last night.

They were the Duke’s enforcers hunting a runaway bride.

I had actively aided the theft of priceless property.

The Duke didn’t use the courts.

He used men with broken noses who dropped bodies into the river when the tide was going out.

I needed to pack my surveying tools and bury myself in the northern counties.

Heavy, demanding knocks rattled the brass hinges of my flimsy door.

My landlady never knocked.

A thick voice from the hallway demanded I open up.

I lunged for the table, shoving the heavy metal deep into my trouser pocket.

The wood of my door shattered inward, and I threw myself blindly into the freezing air.