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.Miranda pretended she misunderstood and tried to take the gloves from her.The maid’s eyes tightened, but she released the gloves as if she didn’t care.Miranda placed them in her lap and pulled her worn gloves off.Her hands touched the air, and she tried as quickly as she could to pull the left glove on.She fumbled, and a quick look showed the maid watching her.Galina examined Miranda’s bare hands for a second, then gave her an unreadable look.Miranda tried not to hide her hands, though they twitched toward her lap, the urge great.The maid’s hands were probably equally worn beneath her own gloves, but in other ways.Water and soap, scrubbing damage.Sewing pricks or tired, stretched skin.Or maybe they were buttery soft, the pampered feel of an upstairs servant who had to touch the master or mistress of the house with bare fingers sometimes.The coarse touch of a lowly worker not good enough for the newbornlike skin of the Quality.She gripped the silk glove in her right hand, her roughened fingers sullying the material.Why had she ever agreed to go to dinner with the viscount? To go anywhere with him? Ludicrous.The whole idea was like something out of a story, but instead of living in Olympus, she would be turned into a tree or deer in the end.A punishment sent down by a pagan god of old for daring to consort with the king of them all.The maid’s eyes narrowed further, and her lips pursed.She reached forward and tugged the glove from her hand, then pulled it over Miranda’s fingers.Not roughly, but not gently either.As if she were fighting her natural inclination one way or the other.Miranda didn’t get a chance to contemplate Galina’s behavior further as the other two maids were lifting the gown and urging her into it.Fitting it around her, fastening, and smoothing it.She could see the middle of the dress in the table looking glass.She wondered what it would look like in a full-length mirror.This dress that she had never tried on.That had somehow been put together in under an hour.She couldn’t wrap her mind around it.And it fit.Amazingly well.As if made just for her.Only two pins were needed, and even those she would have done without if there hadn’t been three maids intent on making the dress into a glove.And the gloves themselves…sumptuous.So fine against her skin.Superficially covering up her inadequacies.Making her almost seem like she belonged in the strange other world the viscount inhabited.The older maid nodded decisively.“Very good.You look beautiful, Miss Chase.”The younger maid enthusiastically agreed.Galina concurred in a less effusive manner with a tilt of her head, but there was still something in her eyes.The older maid picked up a navy domino, which looked new as well.They tied the wrap in place, the hood hanging down her back, framing her hair and face.Making her into someone completely foreign and new.The last piece was a mask, which they didn’t secure, simply handing it to her.Feathered and blue—a royal blue deeper than the shade in her gown and lighter than the domino, a shade that accented both and transformed her into something exotic.The domino wasn’t a piece that had been waiting in the viscount’s clutches then.These pieces were a deliberate set.And created uniquely for her, if the fit was anything to go by.That he had prevaricated was minute compared to the question of why he had done any of these things in the first place.Boredom? The chase? But what chase was there when she folded immediately? Starry-eyed and excited.One hand on the gossip sheet that he always graced.“Come, Miss Chase, we are to escort you to the Red Room.”She followed, servants in the corridors stopping and staring.Her anxiety increased.The Red Room was just as she remembered it.Cold and dark.Just that one hint of something more.There were only two lamps lit.A large one by the entrance, standing no more than two feet from her, highlighted the doorway and anyone standing there in white gold.A much smaller, more intimate one perched on the desk.The golden candlelight cast dark and golden shades onto the viscount’s stunning face.A sea of black separated the two of them.He was seated at the desk, leaning back, his left fingers playing with a quill pen, twirling it absently, then switching to his right.He looked up, and the pen whirled off its axis.She pinched a fold of her gown, the decorum that had been drilled into her doing nothing to prevent the nervous action.His fingers gave a small flick, and a whisper of sound behind her said she was now alone, framed in the door.“Miss Chase, is that you?” He smiled faintly, but his eyes sharpened and darkened in the shifting shadows as he pulled upright.“Lord Downing.” Something strange rose in her.“I daresay I don’t know.”He slid up from his seat and around the desk.“Mmmm…then who am I taking to the gardens in her place?”A mask dangled from his fingers as he approached, and a thrilling boldness rose in her, strange, out of place, heady.Like opening a rare new book and discovering unknown wonders.Or entering a dream and becoming whomever she wished.She opened her mouth to answer as he came closer, but no words formed.“Even better.I’ll discover it for myself
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