Girl in the Beaded Mask Read Free Page A

out the merriment of the party.
    She took a deep breath and walked toward him before she could change her mind. This was what she had come for, to find David.
    As she reached him, he finally looked over at her. He didn’t wear a mask—the scrap of black satin dangled from his hand. The silvery moonlight flowed over his face, etching the austere, elegant angles of his cheekbones and knife-straight nose. In the darkness she couldn’t see the scars on his left cheek.
    One dark brow arched, but Lulu wouldn’t be scared off by his quiet stillness. He surely couldn’t know it was her, not in the darkness and with her mask. She didn’t have to be herself, not yet. She could be a sophisticated temptress, like in a movie.
    She pitched her voice low and gravelly, like an actress she had once seen onstage in London. “It’s beautiful out here tonight, isn’t it?” she said. “Like a whole different, peaceful world.”
    He raised the glass in his other hand and took a long drink. Then he smiled at her, a crooked, wry smile that made her heart pound all over again. She had forgotten the power of his smile.
    â€œI think most people would rather be back at the party, dancing,” he said.
    No, Lulu thought. This was exactly where she wanted to be.
    â€œI like it here,” she said. “You can find dancing and jazz at any old party, but places like this are harder to come by.”
    â€œA different, peaceful world,” he said quietly, echoing her earlier words.
    â€œYes.” Lulu edged closer to him, until she could feel the heat of his tall, lean body reach out to wrap around her. Everything else faded—the music, the laughter of the people out on the lake, even her own nervousness—and there was just him, there with her. David, the man for whom she had been waiting for so long.
    â€œI don’t think I’ve seen you at one of Bertie’s parties before,” she said.
    â€œI don’t venture out from my house very often these days,” he answered, giving her another smile.
    â€œReally? Why ever not?”
    David drained the last of the liquid from his glass and put it down on a stone railing that separated the bank from the lake. “I suppose I’m not the best company.”
    â€œI think you’re doing just fine.” Lulu carefully edged even closer until her bare arm brushed the soft sleeve of his evening jacket. “I like being here with you.”
    He looked down at her, and his face was blank and smooth in the moonlight, no expression at all. “Do you?”
    â€œYou don’t chatter on and on, like all those London boys who only want to talk about cricket,” she said. “It’s quite exhausting.”
    Finally, that smile touched the edge of his lips again. It was slow and careful, as if he were out of practice when it came to smiling, but Lulu thought it was beautiful.
    â€œYou’ve come to the right place, then,” he said. “I have no interest in cricket at all. I don’t think I’ve been near an organized sport since school.”
    â€œOh, I know.”
    His brow arched. “How do you know?”
    â€œOh,” Lulu stammered, quickly trying to cover her little slip. “You just don’t look the type. I like that.”
    She brushed her hand against his, and to her delighted astonishment he took her fingers in his cool clasp. “And you’re the first lady I’ve met who prefers quiet to dancing.”
    â€œWell, not always,” she admitted, hardly able to think with his touch on her skin. Vaguely, through the glittering haze he created around them, she heard music, loud and rhythmic. She grabbed on to it like a lifeline, a last chance to think clearly again. “In fact, why don’t we dance now?”
    She stepped closer to him and slid one hand to his shoulder, taking the other tightly against her palm. At first his movements were stiff and uncertain,