Read a preview
Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The Invitation
Sophia Langley had never intended to become a scandal.
She had intended, in fact, spent nineteen years perfecting the art of being unremarkable: modest gowns, modest laughter, modest dreams. Yet here she stood in the Duchess of Richmond’s antechamber, heart drumming against whalebone, staring at a black silk domino and a gown the color of midnight sin.
“Put it on, darling,” Lady functional—her scandalous cousin Amelia—whispered, pressing the costume into Sophia’s trembling hands. “One night. No one will know it is you beneath the mask. Not your brother. Not your dragon of a chaperone. Not even the devil himself.”
Sophia’s fingers brushed the scandalously low bodice. Scarlet roses embroidered the black lace; the skirts parted in a daring slit that revealed a whisper of stockinged calf with every step. It was the sort of gown worn by women who collected protectors instead of dance cards.
“I cannot,” Sophia breathed, even as her pulse betrayed her.
“You can,” Amelia insisted Amelia, already fastening the domino’s ribbons at Sophia’s nape. “And you will. Because if you spend one more season smiling sweetly while Lord Boreton recites cattle prices, I shall personally push you into the Thames.”
A laugh escaped Sophia—half terror, half exhilaration. Amelia was right. Another season of those tepid, proper suitors and she would expire from sheer boredom.
The mirror returned a stranger: eyes huge and dark behind the mask, lips stained pomegranate, throat rising bare above a neckline that plunged like a dare. For the first time in her life, Sophia Langley looked dangerous.
She looked wanton.
She looked free.
Amelia pressed a final kiss to her masked cheek. “Go ruin yourself gloriously, darling. I shall tell Aunt functional you have the headache.”
Then Sophia stepped through the velvet curtains into the Duchess of Richmond’s masquerade—and into legend.
The ballroom was a fever dream of candlelight and perfume. Hundreds of masked revelers swirled beneath chandeliers that dripped crystal like frozen starlight. Harps and violins wove reckless melodies; champagne fizzed in crystal flutes passed by liveried footmen who themselves wore tiny black masks.
Sophia drifted through the crush, every sense alight. A highwaymen danced with shepherdesses, Marie Antoinette flirted with a Roman centurion, and somewhere a pirate had cornered a nun against a pillar and was making her giggle in a most un-nunlike manner.
No one bowed. No one asked permission. Hands brushed waists, lips grazed gloved knuckles, laughter spilled like champagne. Anonymity was the only rule, and desire the only currency.
A gloved hand caught hers.
Sophia turned—and forgot how to breathe.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed entirely in black save for the silver threads worked through his waistcoat. A plain black domino concealed the upper half of his face, but the mouth beneath was sculpted, cruel, beautiful. When he smiled, it was the smile of a wolf who had already chosen his supper.
“Lost, little cat?” His voice was velvet over steel, low enough that she felt it between her thighs.
Sophia’s tongue tangled. Behind the safety of her mask she found courage she never knew she possessed. “Perhaps I am exactly where I wish to be.”
His eyes—storm-gray, she thought, though it was hard to tell in the flickering light—flared with interest. “Dangerous words at a ball like this.”
“Dangerous times call for dangerous words,” she countered, astonished at her own daring.
He laughed softly and drew her into the whirl of the waltz before she could think better of it.
They moved like they had danced together in dreams. His hand splayed possessively at the small of her back; the heat of his palm seared through silk and stays. Every turn brought her body flush against his—breast to chest, thigh brushing thigh through layers of fabric that suddenly felt far too thin.
“You are trembling,” he murmured against the shell of her ear.
“I am not,” she lied.
“Liar.” His lips grazed the sensitive skin just below her mask. “I can feel your heart racing. Tell me, little cat—are you afraid of me… or of how much you want this?”
Sophia’s knees threatened to buckle. No man had ever spoken to her thus. No man had ever dared. Yet beneath the shock beat a dark, thrilling recognition: this was what she had come for. Not safety. Not propriety.
Sin.
She tilted her face up to his. “Show me.”
