Page 14 of Losing Wendy

“Are you quite well?” he asks, scanning my face for any signs of illness, I suppose, to explain my lack of attention.

“No. I mean, yes. I do apologize, Lord…” I hesitate, wracking my memory for his name.

“Evans,” he provides, quite graciously, with a full, knowing smile playing at his lips.

“Of course, Lord Evans. I truly am sorry. I’m not sure what’s come over me this evening.”

“Could it possibly have to do with the gentleman who you graced with not one, but two dances?” he asks.

Where I expect annoyance, I find only teasing.

I open my mouth to deny it, but given the way Lord Evans is looking at me, I figure there’s no use.

“Am I so obvious? How mortifying.”

Evans shrugs, his lean shoulders carrying my hand with them as he does. “It is your marriage ball, after all. One would hope you’d be able to find someone to your liking by its conclusion.”

“You’re being extraordinarily polite for someone I’ve practically spurned,” I say.

“Well, you seem like the type of lady who deserves someone to be kind to her tonight.” The smile on my partner’s face lingers, but there’s something more restrained to it now. My stomach turns with unease.

Does everyone at this ball pity me over the false assumption that I’m with child? Or do I simply give off the air of a woman who’s spent her entire life shackled to the whims of her dismal future? I’m about to toss aside decorum and ask Evans which it is, when over his shoulder I glimpse him.

My breath catches in my throat as I take in Captain Astor. My heart races. I’d convinced myself that he’d already left. There’s a part of me that wishes he’d look my way, but that part of me is a fool.

He’s mid-conversation with another suitor, this one clad in glittering cuffs of rubies. Just as I suspected, the captain is making rounds, buttering up the rich noblemen, probably convincing them to let him haul their cargo or man their vessels.

But then the captain does something strange. He glances over his companion’s shoulder at a suitor leaning casually on one of the ivory pillars, then flicks his head to the side, almost like it’s a tick.

That’s not the strange part; it’s what he does with his hand. The way he claps his fingers together.

Immediately, the suitor leaning against the pillar, a bulky pale-skinned man with a shaved head, pushes himself off his resting place and follows the path where the captain just gestured.

I follow the direction of the captain’s signal and find…

No, that can’t be right. My years of talking to shadows must have driven me mad, taught me to perceive mystery where there is none.

Because the captain can’t have been pointing to my brother Michael, who, as expected, is tracing squares (his favorite shape) into the velvet wallpaper.

“So, whose idea was it to throw a masquerade rather than a regular ball?” asks Evans, politely still even as I’ve been ignoring him.

“My father’s,” I clip, then realizing how disinterested I sound, add, “He’s always been drawn to the excessive.”

The bald man is making his way over to Michael, who doesn’t seem to notice him approaching, though surely there’s something behind the pillar I can’t see. Or perhaps I’ve made up this entire interaction in my head.

“Let me guess—you’re drawn to the simpler things in life?” Evans twirls me around, a bit too early for this particular tune. Perhaps he isn’t familiar with it.

When I’m back to facing him again, he’s pivoted, out of step with the dance again, so that I no longer have a good view of Michael. I bite my lip, aware of how my fingers are now shaking. Then, conspiratorially, I whisper, “I believe the turn isn’t until the second round.”

Evans just smiles. “Surely you break the rules on occasion, Miss Darling.”

A bead of sweat forms at Evans’s temple.

I can’t help myself. I glance over my shoulder, praying desperately that my anxieties are just that—the paranoid machinations of a woman who’s spent her entire life in dread. But the bald man has reached Michael, and he’s on a knee next to him, talking to him. Michael’s paying him no mind, of course. He rarely acknowledges the existence of strangers. But then the man pulls something out of his trouser pocket and offers it to Michael, who takes it without looking at the man. When the man grabs Michael’s hand, my brother swats him away, but with little effort.

Panic seizes my gut.

“Excuse me, but I really must—” I turn back to Evans, but the smile has been wiped clean off his face.