Page 28 of The Virgin's Dance with the Devil
“Where did you disappear to earlier?” Luisa asked soon after she’d walked through Marisa’s door. As the main rule for the evening’s ball was the strict segregation of the sexes until the ball started – the men had to arrive thirty minutes before the ladies; all guests expected to hide away from the opposite sex until the appointed time – the sisters were getting ready together.
Marisa felt her cheeks burn a tomato colour again, and she turned her face away before answering. “I went to the beach.”
She felt her sister’s eyes bore into her.
The urge to spill her secrets was suddenly close to overwhelming. “I’m going to take a quick shower. You choose the music.”
By the time she’d finished showering, the restlessness had returned with a vengeance, and with a huge dollop of anticipation thrown into themix.
With favourite music from their adolescence playing and a bottle of champagne open, the sisters made small talk as they made up their faces and did their hair, then helped each other into their dresses. It was small talk that was as forced as the small talk they’d made at the Bistro, the easy camaraderie they’d always enjoyed strained; strained through the secrets they were both carrying, but were not yet ready to confide in the other. Marisa, who’d never gambled in her life, was willing to bet her monthly salary that her secret was the most explosive.
“Your dress is beautiful,” Luisa said wistfully when Marisa had pulled the straps up.
“Compared to yours, it’s boring.” Luisa’s dress was a flamboyant number that showed plenty of cleavage and plenty of thigh when she walked. Coupled with her mask, it had a real seductive Venetian flavour to it. By contrast, Marisa’s black lace dress was plain without any form of leg slit. The spaghetti straps fell to a bodice that showed only a hint of cleavage, the skirt flaring and swishing only a little to her ankles. The fitted underdress that ran from bodice to knee prevented any modesty slips showing through the lace of the dress. It felt wonderful on her though, fitted but giving her the freedom to move without constriction.
Luisa raised an eyebrow. “Boring? That dress issexy… Come on, let’s get it tied up. Turn round.”
The whole thing was held together with corset-style lacing at the back, and Marisa obeyed so her sister could secure her in it. Then, both sisters ready, they stood together in front of the full-length mirror.
“What?” she asked, seeing her sister’s narrowed stare.
“Your lipstick’s wrong. You need red. Hold on.”
Much preferring neutral colours, Marisaneverwore red lipstick, but as soon as she’d applied it, she could see Luisa’s judgment was the right one, and suddenly the tight bun she’dscraped all her hair back Flamenco-style into didn’t seem so plain and boring compared to her sister’s more elaborate do.
But Luisa continued scrutinising her. “Have you got your hoop earrings with you? The big ones you got for your twenty-first?”
Marisa nodded and dived to her jewellery box, exchanging her plain studs with the thick, heavy gold hoops.
Now Luisa nodded her approval, her face breaking into what had to be her first genuine smile since they’d arrived in Accardiano. “Now you’re perfect.”
The order came for the men, all dressed in their finest tuxedos, to form a horizontal line. With good-natured murmuring, they obeyed.
The double doors to the ballroom opened. Rico’s veins thickened.
The women, who’d gathered together far away from the men, streamed in, each removing a seating number from a top hat. They all looked spectacular, their theatrical masks making many of them unrecognisable. As hard as he strained his eyes, he couldn’t see Marisa amongst them.
The tables had been set out like a giant horseshoe around the dancefloor’s perimeter. With his seating number in hand, he was searching for his position when he spotted a petite, slim woman in an elegant black lace dress, dark chestnut hair pulled back in a tight bun and a mask that covered much of her face taking her seat. There was something about the way her shoulders moved that made his heart thump and compelled him to take a second look.
As if she could feel his stare, she turned her gaze in his direction.
His heart stuttered before thumpingagain.
Plump, blood red lips curved shyly.
Everyone else in the vast ballroom disappeared.
Marisa tried to eat, but she barely managed half of her first course. Anticipation was playing too much havoc in her stomach for food to wind its way in. It was the same anticipation that had stopped her properly gawping at the incredible transformation the ballroom had undergone, the casino turned into a seductive delight of deep red and flickering chandelier and candlelight. It was the anticipation of seeing Rico again causing it.
He looked so handsome in his black tuxedo. Just gorgeous. She wanted to pinch his black bowtie in her fingers and pluck it off. To her disappointment, he’d been seated on the far side of the horseshoe, his back to her.
She tried making small talk with the gentlemen placed either side of her, but her heart wasn’t in it. When the time came for all the gentlemen to take a new seating number and move places, she knew neither of them was sorry to be leaving her.
This time, Rico was placed on the same section as her, but on the same side of the table. She couldn’t even look at him, not without craning her neck and looking past the dozen or so people separating them to her right. That course finished, and it was time for the men to move again. This time, she was stuck with a Martinelli cousin she’d known since childhood and a friend of the Espositos who flirted so outrageously with her she was tempted to stab her fork into his hand. Rico must have stayed quite close to where he’d already been because she didn’t see him switch.
Her luck changed with the dessert course when he was seated opposite her.
Her pulses were already racing before his eyes skimmed hers as he sat his huge frame down. The butterflies in her belly fluttered all the way to her throat, the beats of their wings so violent she took a large drink of her wine to compose herself.
