THE MASK SHE SHOULD NEVER HAVE WORN

Caleb was waiting at the bottom of the east staircase, and one look at my face told him I had been crying.

I had spent forty minutes fixing it. Powder, a cold spoon against my eyelids, a long breath at the mirror. In eight years it had never once worked on him.

He stood with his hands in the pockets of a black dinner jacket, and the lamplight in the hall did what it always did, catching the sharp line of his jaw. "What happened?"

"Nothing. It's dust. The east wing is full of it."

"Dust doesn't make you cry for an hour." His voice dropped. "Elise."

I wanted to tell him. My mother is sending me away and I'll never see you again. The words sat right behind my teeth. But my mother had said not until after the party, and I had already said okay to everything else that day, so I did what I always did. I smiled.

"I'm fine. Really."

"You're a bad liar."

"I'm an excellent liar. I've had practice."

He didn't laugh. He watched me for a long moment, and I could see him weighing it, deciding to let it go, and I was angry at him for letting it go, and then angrier at myself for being angry. He held out his arm. "Come on. Gerald wants to show you off."

At the ballroom doors a footman held out a silver tray of masks.

"It's a masquerade," Caleb said. "Nobody told me."

I took the plainest one on the tray, a white half-mask with no feathers, because I wanted to disappear. Caleb chose black and put it on like he'd worn one every day of his life. With his eyes in shadow he looked like a man who could ruin me, and he had never once tried.

Inside, three hundred masked guests stood under the chandeliers while a quartet played near the open doors to the lake. My mother was across the room in gold, beside Gerald, and she didn't look over once. I took a glass of water from a passing tray because I didn't trust myself with anything stronger. I felt like a guest at my own party.

"Wait here." Caleb's hand pressed my elbow once, warm through the silk, and he crossed the floor to a tall woman in a silver feather mask.

I knew her. Vivienne Laurent had been to the villa for dinner twice that spring, and both times she had touched Caleb's arm the way people touch something that belongs to them, and both times he had moved away so smoothly it looked like dancing. Now I watched him lean down and speak quietly, and I watched Vivienne's back go rigid. She said something short. Then she turned and walked out of the ballroom with her chin high, and Caleb stayed where she'd left him, rubbing his jaw like a man who had just done something he didn't enjoy.

Relief went through me so fast it made me dizzy. I hated myself for it.

On the far side of the room Isabella Ferrara stood in red silk, watching Caleb, and then she turned her head and watched me a second too long. Beside her, Caleb's cousin Preston raised his glass in my direction and smiled as if we were old friends. I had met him maybe three times, each time at a party, each time with that same smile, like he was measuring me for something.

"Dance with me," Caleb said, coming back.

"You don't dance."

"I'm told I do it badly." He took the glass out of my hand and set it on a passing tray. "Come on."

He led me onto the floor. One hand settled in the small of my back, warm through the silk, and the other closed around my fingers, and my whole body went still as if it had been waiting seven years for exactly this. He smelled like cedar and starch. Every so often his thumb moved against my spine, half an inch, absentminded, and I kept my eyes on his collar so he wouldn't see my face.

"You're quiet," he said.

"I'm concentrating. You keep stepping on me."

"I warned you."

"You did." I made myself smile. I'd pictured this a thousand times, and not once had I pictured how much it would hurt to know he was only being kind. It was the best minute of my life and the worst, both at once.

Halfway through the second song he stopped moving.

"Elise." His face was flushed, and his eyes had gone glassy behind the mask. The hand on my waist had begun to shake. "Something's wrong with me."

"What do you mean?"

"I only had one drink. Somebody handed it to me by the doors." He swayed, and I caught his arm and felt the heat pouring off him through the jacket. It was a fever heat, much too hot for a cool room.

Over his shoulder I saw a bartender by the doors set down his tray, look straight at me, and look away too fast. Then he slipped out through the service door, and the crowd closed over the space where he'd been.

"Caleb, when did you eat last? Does your head hurt? Look at me." I got my hand against his cheek and it nearly scalded me, and my mind went to the obvious place, the one every girl is taught to fear at parties, and then past it to the thing nobody teaches you. "I'm getting a doctor."

"No." His fingers locked around my wrist, tight enough to hurt. "If Gerald finds out, it turns into a scandal. Take me upstairs."

"Caleb, you are burning up. This could be serious."

"I know what it is." His eyes dragged to mine, and for one clear second he was completely himself under whatever was happening. "It'll pass by morning. I've seen it before. If a doctor comes to this house tonight, it's in the papers by breakfast, and your name is in it. Take me upstairs. 

Please."

That was the thing that decided me, and I hated that it was. Not his safety. My name in the papers, four days before my mother needed the gossip to die. I put his arm across my shoulders and walked him through the crowd with a smile I didn't feel, nodding at guests who hadn't noticed anything yet. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Isabella start toward us, and I turned him toward the service stairs and hurried. Behind us, across the room, Preston lifted his glass again.

I got him to his room and he dropped onto the bed, breathing hard. When I bent to loosen his collar, his hand shot out and closed around my wrist.

"Help me."

My heart stopped. His hand was burning. He was looking right at me, his chest heaving, and for one wild second I thought he meant me, that he wanted me, and my pulse hit my throat so hard it hurt.

"I'll get your father. I'll get a doctor, Caleb, just let me—"

"Not a doctor. Help me." His thumb moved over the little silver moon, shaking. Then he closed his eyes and said, "Vivienne."

It felt like being slapped.

"Get Vivienne," he said. "Tell her I shouldn't have said it like that. Please. I need her."

I stood there with my wrist in his hot hand, and I heard my own voice say, "I'll find her."

"Thank you." His grip loosened and his hand fell onto the sheet. "Thank you, Elise."

I walked out and closed the door softly and made it three steps down the corridor before my knees gave out. I slid down the wall with my hand over my mouth.

Seven years. In four days I would be in a flat on Via Casale, and I would never be in this house again, and he would never, ever choose me. I would never get one night with him unless I took it. The thought came up quiet and clear and horrible.

Why can't it be me?

On the table at the top of the stairs lay a silver feather mask, dropped by a woman who had left in a hurry.

Vivienne's.

I picked it up. My hands shook so badly the feathers trembled. I took off the plain white mask and left it on the table, and tied the silver one over my face, and it fit.

I went back down the corridor and opened his door. He lay on the bed with an arm across his eyes, breathing hard. The lamp on the nightstand was the only light in the room.

"Vivienne?" he said, without

moving.

I didn't answer. I crossed to the lamp, put my hand on the switch, and turned it off.