Page 328 of From Rakes to Riches

Well...she wasn’t one to be ordered about.

She would take a weapon. Would stay in safe and crowded areas with plenty of witnesses.

And she’d solve the murder before him, by Jove.

See if she didn’t.

That decided, she did a marvelous job ofnotthinking about him all day.

She didn’t think of him as she lingered over breakfast and read the newspapers in bed. Because such an activity would surelynotbe enjoyable with a companion. It wouldn’t do to imagine all sorts of amusing opinions he might have about things. Or wonder if he’d maybe share a nibble of her toast. A man his size probably had quite the appetite of a morning...

Did he prefer tea or coffee?

It didn’t matter,she forcefully reminded herself. It didn’t bear consideration.

Shedid notthink of him when she soaked in the bath and scrubbed the memory of his clever—no,masterful—fingers and mouth from her skin.

He’d been inside of her. Joined with her.

What a novel thing that a human could connect with another in such a way...that they were made to do just this. To delight in it.

Did everyone fit together so perfectly? Was their pleasure so overcoming and instinctual?

She wanted to find out, but something told her that to do so with another man would find her disappointed.

Better not to wonder. Not to dwell.

Did he feel altered somehow by their night together? Like it merited some sort of distinction. Like a change in the very map of the stars?

Why would he? Why would anyone?

Shedid notthink of him when she viciously chopped the heads off their hothouse flowers for her maid to arrange in her hair.

Nor when she selected a dagger to strap to her leg.

She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t hurt.

She didn’t miss him.

She didn’t evenknowhim.

Unlike Detective Eddard Sharpe, Mercy had not mastered the art of infiltration and disguise.

Not yet, in any case.

So, she was incandescently glad when Felicity insisted upon accompanying her to the Midwinter Masquerade. Social functions were not her sister’s forte, as such, but Felicity’s attachment and sense of obligation to Mathilde’s memory was no less intense than her own.

They dressed in identical sapphire gowns and donned masks the color of the moon on an overcast evening, intricately decorated with gems and filigree.

Once again forgoing her spectacles proved to make the night interesting for Felicity.

Mercy might have told her sister about her night with Raphael, if she’d been allowing herself to think of it.

But she wasn’t.

Mercy rememberedher father once reading from the Bible about a den of iniquity. The phrase haunted her now as she watched the spectacle that was the Midwinter Masquerade. It made the sedate balls she attended appear like absolute child’s play.

Killgore Keep was a grand old Plantagenet fortress that’d been renovated over the years by obscenely wealthy owners. It hunkered next to a quaint canal complete with a Tudor-era mill and extensive grounds. Amelia Trent, the widow of Captain Rupert Trent, a long-dead hero of the now defunct East India Company, was the first woman to own the keep. She spent her late husband’s ill-begotten fortune as a patroness for artists of all kinds, and a rumored haven for the darker, more deviant side of the bohemian set. Mrs. Trent was famous for her bacchanalian fêtes, and her February spectacle was said to be a bombastic balm for the late-winter gloom.

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