He nods, and we both grab more pages, shoving them into the satchel Nicolas brought, as I ignore Lord Thomas’s sputtering and flailing.
“We have an escape plan,” I say to the ghost.
We shove in the last of the pages. It is then that we hear the pound of footfalls.
“You do not understand,” Lord Thomas says. “He is not simply approaching. He knows Nicolas is here. Someone must have spotted him.”
We’re already at the door. Then Nicolas stops short, and he curses under his breath.
“Nico?”
The moment I say his name, I hear the problem myself. The footsteps are not coming from the direction of the party. They come from the other way. From our escape route.
26
We peer into the hall. Nicolas said he left open a window in the next room. Except the next room is ten feet away, and footsteps are fast approaching the corner.
“Is there another way out?” I whisper to Lord Thomas.
The ghost nods. “Follow me. Quickly! We’ll go through the kitchens.”
We are already in the hall, running as quickly and silently as we can. A squeak sounds behind us. The men are about to turn the corner and see us. Nicolas slows.
“This way!” Lord Thomas says, waving down the hall.
Nicolas grabs my arm and pulls me to the left, along the side hall that leads back to the party.
“No!” Lord Thomas says. “You will be spotted! Child, tell him. He cannot hear me!”
I do not tell Nicolas. He knows what he is doing. Yes, we are heading straight to the party, where we will indeed be spotted. However, if we did not turn that corner, we would have been spotted by Norrington as we ran for the kitchens.
“Would you like to dance, crécerelle?” Nicolas whispers as we run as fast as my gown will allow.
I stare at him as if he is mad. Then I choke on a laugh. Yes, of course. We are heading into the party. There is nowhere to go but through it, and if we race in, guests will raise the alarm immediately. How do we sneak through the next room? By hiding in the last place Norrington will look: the crowded dance floor.
We slow as we near the room, and Nicolas reaches up to adjust a lock of his hair. It is not actually his hair, which is short and tightly curled. No, tonight he wears a wig. A white wig with loose curls that cover the back of his neck. He pulls curls over his shoulder, and I help adjust them as we walk.
He is dressed in formal attire, which could work for a guest or a member of the staff. The wig would clearly suggest “guest”—as would the mask—but it is a masquerade, and so it would not seem odd if some of the staff were in costume.
Long white gloves hide his hands and wrists, and his mask covers his entire face. With the wig, that leaves only a sliver of dark skin exposed between his high collar and mask. The curls partly cover it, but his mask is also dark, so unless one looks closely, one is unlikely to notice the color of his skin below.
It was not an adequate disguise for him to attend as a guest, but it would have worked if he were spotted briefly in the house... or if he is spotted briefly on the dance floor.
He adjusts the satchel strap around his neck. If it looks out of place, well, itisa costume ball, and they will presume he is masquerading as some sort of courier. He otherwise cuts such a fine figure that they will overlook this one oddity in his attire.
We walk into the small ballroom, my hand lifted in his as he escorts me to the dance floor. Our timing is impeccable. The quartet is just striking up a minuet, which is delightfully old-fashioned to me, and Nicolas whisks me into the dance.
So far this evening, I have been within the top echelon of the dancers. It is a country ball, after all, and so it was not that difficult to stand out. Yet Nicolas matches and then surpasses my skill, gliding about the dance floor as if he has graced a thousand in his lifetime. I feel like poor Emily, ready to swoon just watching him.
Does the man possess any actual flaws? Well, he does have an alarming propensity for getting himself into trouble, but I can hardly judge him for that, as I suffer from the same shortcoming myself.
Norrington and his men do not barge into the party looking for us. I am certain they are looking, but not here, and so Nicolas and I agree, in whispers, to half a dance as we slowly make our way to the other side of the floor, where we may slip away and escape.
The dance is hardly an intimate one. We rarely come closer than arm’s length. Yet it feels as if we are locked in an embrace. Even when I spin away, our gazes unlatch only a moment before finding one another in the crowd. I see nothing but his face, feel nothing but his gloved hands on my arms, smell nothing but the faint odor of orange-flower perfume from his shirt, hear nothing but his whispers when I pass. Whispers telling me I am beautiful, telling me I am an incredible dancer, telling me more things that I cannot understand because he switches to French for those, murmuring them in the brief heartbeats where we draw close.
I feel something, both a tightness and a fluttering in my chest, a dizziness in my mind, my breath catching each time he passes. I may never have experienced this before, but I instantly recognize it for what it is.
I am falling in love.