Page 110 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
She cleared her throat. ‘You like to watch?’ she asked, her voice a pained husk of too much air spent from her lungs.
‘Yes,’ he admitted, because he did. It was what he did. His only purpose. To watch, and transcribe what he saw to whatever canvas he had to hand, in whatever medium was closest. And he found no shame in watching her before. Or now.
She gasped. ‘And who gave you permission to look?’ Her eyes left his and scanned the space they shared.
‘Do you not like to be looked at?’
‘No.’ Her gaze locked back on to his. ‘Not the way you look at me.’
He inched closer, pulled by some invisible steel thread. But he resisted. Planted his feet. ‘And how do I look at you?’ he asked, but he knew the answer.
He knew his anger had been misplaced.Illogical.But still, he’d felt it, and she’d known it.
She’d understood his eyes, watching her in the auction room. The determined thrust of her chin, the frivolous wave of her hand as she’d bid on his artwork, had not been complimentary.
His sister would’ve been older than she clearly was. But his sister would never know the pleasure of waving one’s hand and getting the object of her desire simply because she wanted it. She would never sit in a ball gown, or dance in a room full of people who would have once walked past her on the street and ignored her hardships.Her suffering!
This woman was not his sister.
Sebastian’s sister was dead.
But this woman was alive.Breathing the same air he breathed.
‘Like you know,’ she whispered.
‘Know what?’
‘That I don’t belong here.’
‘You don’t,’ he agreed. He despised them all, but tonight, he’d despisedhermost. But he’d been wrong. She wasn’t one of them. The masked elite who felt no pain or empathy. She was hurting.
‘Is it so easy to tell?’ she asked. ‘So easy to see?’
‘It is.’ He swallowed. A mistake, because all he could taste was her.
‘What gave it away?’ She placed her hands on her hips, palms open, and his gaze followed the movement. ‘The dress,’ she concluded. ‘My mother would have hated it, too. She’d never have let me choose it.’
He locked his jaw. He didn’t hate it. It was a perfect choice. He liked it far too much.
‘I wouldn’t be here if she were alive.’ Her hands waved at nothing in particular. ‘I’d still be in the Cotswolds, smiling and nodding at things that did not make me want to smile.’ The muscles in her throat tightened. ‘They made me want to—’
‘Scream?’
‘Yes.’ She flushed from the neck up, and he wanted to see beneath the mask. See the heat meet her cheeks and flood it.
‘I thought screaming would make me feel better.’
‘Did it?’ he asked, because it had not made him feel better. It had drained him until he’d collapsed on the street and stayed there for a decade. But she was standing, and that intrigued him.
‘It didn’t.’ She shook her head. The stalk of pearls rising from her mask danced. ‘None of it has. Not coming here.’ She reached up behind her mask, her fingers fumbling. ‘Not this stupid mask!’
‘Leave it on,’ he commanded, because he would not give in to the temptation to see her face.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘When you can see straight through it? You know who my parents are, don’t you? You know what they did? WhatIdid?’
Questions he had no right to ask fought to be asked. He did not want to know her. Yet this creature fascinated him. And he couldn’t help it. He asked, ‘What did you do?’
Her nose twitched beneath her mask. ‘I left my brother to die.’
