The Night She was Never Meant to Know

When the light started coming through the curtains, I was still awake.

I had been lying there for hours, just listening to him breathe. It had slowed down and gotten quiet. Sometime before morning his fever must have broken, because his skin wasn't hot anymore. He was sleeping hard, with one arm thrown over the pillow and his hair sticking up. Asleep, he didn't look like the man everyone in the city was afraid of. He just looked tired.

I looked at the clock on his bedside table. It was ten to five. Outside, a bird had started up, and then another one. The kitchen staff came in at six. The house would start waking up soon.

His black mask was lying on the floor. Clara's red one was on the pillow between us.

The worst part was that I wanted to stay. I wanted to be there when he woke up and hear him say my name in that sleepy morning voice. But when he opened his eyes he wouldn't be looking for me. He would be looking for Clara. And if he ever found out the truth, he wouldn't be happy about it. He would hate me.

I slid out from under the sheet very slowly. My dress was on the floor, all wrinkled. I pulled it on and couldn't reach the zip all the way, so I just left it. My hair was a mess and I pushed it back with my fingers. I didn't even think about the gold pins.

My white mask was on the table by the door where I had dropped it. I picked it up. Then I went back to the bed and took Clara's mask off the pillow and stood there holding it for a long time.

In the end I put it down again right next to his head, where he would see it first thing. I did it on purpose. If he woke up and saw Clara's mask, he would think Clara had been there, and he would never think to look for anyone else. I know how that sounds. It was selfish, and I did it anyway.

I bent down close to his ear. I didn't dare talk, so I only moved my lips. I love you. I had never said it to him, not once in all these years, not even like this.

Dorothy stirred. His forehead creased.

"Clara," he said in his sleep. "Don't go."

I stopped breathing. Then I started to cry, and one of my tears dropped onto his cheek. I wiped it off quickly with my finger, as if that could fix anything.

The latch on his door was loud. I turned it as slowly as I could, and he didn't wake up. I stepped out into the corridor, pulled the door shut behind me, and stood there for a second with my back against it, shaking.

It was still dim in the hallway. I walked fast toward the back stairs with my shoes in my hand. I had my hand on the stairwell door when I heard heels coming along the marble in the main corridor, quick and angry.

I slipped inside the stairwell and pulled the door almost closed behind me. I stood flat against the wall and looked out through the crack.

It was Isabella.

She was still in her ball gown, the tight emerald one, only now it was wrinkled and sliding off one shoulder. Her mask was gone. Her hair was falling out of its pins. She had her phone against her ear and she looked furious.

"No, I did not go to bed!" she said, low and sharp. "I've been looking for him for hours. You told me the drink would work in twenty minutes. You told me the girl would be at his door by midnight!"

She stopped walking, maybe ten steps from where I was hiding. I could hear a man's voice on the other end, nervous and mumbling.

"I don't care that she got stuck at the gate! The whole point was for Clara to walk in and find him with another woman before breakfast. That was the plan. Instead he disappears out of the ballroom in front of three hundred people and not one of them saw where he went?"

More mumbling.

"Then find the staff," Isabella said. Her voice went quiet, which was worse. "Every waiter, every maid, every driver. Somebody saw him leave. I want to know who he left with."

My whole body went cold. Isabella. It had been Isabella all along. She was the one who put something in his glass. She wanted to ruin him in front of Clara, and I had walked straight into the middle of her plan without knowing it.

For one second, strangely, I felt like I had saved him from something. If I hadn't taken him upstairs, he would have been alone in that room when some stranger came in, with Clara right behind her. Then I remembered what I had done instead, and the feeling went away fast.

Then I remembered the ballroom. Everyone had been wearing a mask. Nobody had looked at us twice when we crossed the dance floor. That was all I had to hold on to.

"No, I'm not giving up," Isabella said into the phone. She turned around and started walking back the way she came, toward the east wing. Her voice drifted back down the corridor. "Somebody took him. And when I find out who she is, I'll make her wish she was never born."

Her heels got fainter, and then I couldn't hear them anymore.

I stayed in the stairwell for a long time. When I finally went up to the third floor, I had to hold the railing the whole way, because my legs didn't feel like mine.

I got into my room and locked the door and sat down on the floor right there with my back against it. I could still smell his cologne on my skin.

I had thought the worst part was over. It wasn't even close.