The Girl Behind the Mask (30 page)

His email was ridiculously cryptic. I wrote my reply in seconds.

Don’t be a coward. You could be the Devil and I would still love you.

The following morning I received an invitation to a ball.

Chapter 44

News of a party at the Palazzo Donato quickly spread through the university. Several people had received invitations, including Nick and Bea. No one could quite believe it.

Of course I had hoped that my time in Venice, which coincided with Carnevale, would bring me the opportunity to don a mask of my own, but Nick had been pretty scathing about the chances.

‘All the parties around Carnevale these days are run for tourists. You pay a thousand euros for the privilege of sitting next to Dusty and Sandy from Ohio, in town for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. You wanted to sit next to a count. So did they. You end up spending the evening talking about the price of gas.’

‘Sounds very romantic,’ I said.

But even Nick had to admit that the invitation to the party at the Donato house was rather more promising. There was no price on the bottom of it, for a start. The invitations, on stiff creamy card, had been delivered by hand. They were beautiful, decorated with a simple monkey’s-head motif.

There were plenty of theories as to why the Palazzo Donato was opening its doors after so long. A favourite was that Marco had finally run out of money and agreed to open his house to some luxury-goods firm that would hold a ball that was essentially a sales pitch. But I hoped otherwise. My own invitation had come with a handwritten note.

‘You shall go to the ball,’ was all it said.

Marco was a man who had paid for Prince to sing at a girlfriend’s birthday party. Was it possible that this ball was just for me?

I was enchanted by the possibility. But I was also a little disappointed that my first meeting with the man I had been busy falling in love with would be in a crowded room. After our cybersex in the library, I had imagined he would invite me to dinner alone. For that reason, I considered turning the invitation down. Wasn’t inviting me to a party that would be thronged with other people just another way of keeping me at arm’s length? I said as much to Bea, but she persuaded me that to RSVP in the negative would be cutting off my own nose to spite my face. Besides, she and Nick were raring to go.

We can’t go without you,’ she begged me.

‘He must have had this party planned for weeks,’ I said, looking for reassurance that he’d actually planned it in days. ‘He’s invited me as an afterthought.’

‘In that case, we’ll trash the place,’ Bea assured me.

I didn’t want that. I had come to love the Palazzo Donato and its ancient treasures as much as I had ever loved any pile of bricks and mortar. I wrestled with my conscience for a little longer. Wasn’t I just doing it again? Allowing Marco to think I was at his beck and call? But if this really was going to be the only way he would see me . . . I had to go. Once we were face to face, we could sort out this stupidity. I could insist on normalising our relationship. And perhaps there was something romantic about the idea? To finally lock eyes across a crowded room? I thought of Romeo and Juliet. Star-crossed lovers. Maybe it would be just like that. Hand to hand at last.

‘Who cares how long ago he thought up this party? He’s trying to impress you,’ said Bea. ‘You must go.’

I suspected she was more interested in the ball than my heart.

‘Alright,’ I agreed.

Bea immediately adopted the ‘headless chicken’ approach to the whole event.

‘What am I going to wear?’

I, too, wondered exactly what the protocol was. Did you have to dress in period clothing or could you use your mask to accessorise something more contemporary? In the end, it was Luciana who persuaded me I should go the whole hog.

Luciana’s disappointment at having to go to the Ridotto in boy’s clothing helped me make up my mind. How many opportunities would I have in my life to wear a full-on ballgown and not feel overdressed? Bea agreed and we slipped away from the office one afternoon to visit an agency that hired dresses by the evening. Unfortunately, they had not changed their stock since the nineteen-eighties, and while the dresses were most definitely extravagant, they spoke more of ‘loadsamoney’ than ‘luxury’. All crushed velvet and cheap gold-coloured tulle.

That said, Bea eventually found a red velvet gown that fitted her perfectly and was not too ‘Wild West casino’ once she had unpicked the white lace round the neck. But with a day to go before the ball, I still had no dress and was facing spending the evening in the little black dress that had been everywhere from the Proms to London’s sweatiest nightclubs. Including the sex club where Steven and I had finally unravelled. I knew it flattered me but I was just a little disappointed to have to put it on again. It wasn’t exactly festive. Apart from anything else, it seemed like a bad omen. I resigned myself to making another shopping trip.

But when Bea and I got back to the office, I found a huge cardboard box on my desk. I was not expecting a delivery. The only thing I could possibly imagine it contained was some of my belongings, sent from England because I hadn’t responded to Steven’s email. Bea was altogether keener to know what was inside. She offered me her letter-knife to slit the parcel tape.

‘It’s really heavy,’ said the post-boy, who was still hanging around. Any excuse. He had a thing about Bea. Most men did.

‘Come on, Sarah,’ Bea encouraged me. ‘It won’t bite.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said the post-boy. ‘It was so heavy I thought there might be an animal in there.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Bea took the letter-knife back. ‘If you won’t open it . . .’

‘Careful,’ I said, as she slashed at the tape.

‘Oh!’

The flaps of the box fell open. Inside was another box. This box was altogether more glamorous, however. It was shiny white and embossed with just one word. Dior.

‘Wow,’ Bea breathed.

I stepped forward to take a look. ‘Probably just used the box to send some papers,’ I said, but my heart rate was definitely rising as I lifted the white box out of the larger one and set it down on my desk.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Sarah. Someone has sent you a present!’

As an idea formed in my head as to the identity of the sender, I found myself wishing I could open the box alone, without Bea’s running commentary and the inevitable conclusions she might draw.

Nevertheless, I lifted away the lid of the box. The contents were so tightly packed, it wasn’t immediately clear what they were. It looked as though the box had been haphazardly stuffed with scraps of silk and feathers. But when I reached in and tried to pull those feathers out . . .

I didn’t think I had ever seen such a beautiful dress in my life.

‘Oh my goodness,’ Bea sighed. The sight of the dream frock transported her as much as it did me. A fitted bodice flared into a skirt that already seemed to be dancing. Bea shepherded the post-boy out of the room so I could put the dress on. It was incredible. It fitted me closely, following and sharpening the contours of my body so that I looked like a better version of me. My perfect self.

‘Whoever sent this dress knows your measurements exactly. It’s from Marco, isn’t it?’

I didn’t need to read the card to find out for sure.

There was a mask, too. It was Bea who lifted that out of the box and stripped away the tissue paper. Having grown up in a family of four sisters, Bea had very little concept of ownership and she was enjoying this gift just as much as I was.

‘Oh wow!’ she breathed.

The mask was beautiful. It was not the half-face I would have chosen for myself but a full-face mask, gilded, with a serene brow and rosebud lips. It was only when Bea finally handed it over that I realised what was different about this particular piece. There were no holes at the side of the mask for the ribbons that would tie the mask in place. Neither was there a handle by which the wearer might hold it in front of her face like a fan. There was no way to keep the mask in place except for a button stitched to the back side of the lips.

‘Oh my God,’ said Bea. ‘It’s one of those. It’s an actual
servetta muta
.’

The ‘Mute Maidservant’. Of course I had heard of this type of mask before, but I had yet to see one in real life. I couldn’t believe anyone still made them except for decoration. Surely Marco wasn’t going to expect me to wear it? As long as I wore it, I would be unable to speak.

‘This must be a mistake,’ I said.

But I knew Marco would not have chosen this particular mask by accident. In which case, what was the meaning of it? Why did he want me to be silenced? A strange fear suddenly gripped me. The last time a man bought me clothes was the day Steven brought home that hateful beaded G-string. When I thought about the mask, I was reminded for some reason of the woman I had seen at L’Enfer – the one sandwiched between two men with a collar around her neck. This
servetta muta
was a similar symbol of servitude. I wasn’t going to put it on. I laid it on my desk and just looked at it until, thinking of Luciana’s diary entry regarding the Ridotto, I had an idea of my own.

‘I want you to wear the Dior,’ I told Bea.

‘What? You’re kidding! That dress was a gift to you. It suits you perfectly.’

‘I’m not sure it suits me at all.’

‘Oh, I get it. You want to send a message that you can’t be bought.’

‘Is it that transparent?’ I asked.

Bea nodded.

‘Well, good. Because that
is
the message I want to send. I can’t be bought. I don’t want gifts, I want to be treated as an equal, not a puppet. And that means an end to playing games.’

Bea laughed. ‘Ordinarily, I would tell you not to be so stupid. A man who sends good gifts unprompted is so rare as to be almost mythical, and this is a bloody good gift. But I can see that you’re playing a long game.’

‘I don’t want to play games,’ I murmured.

‘Nonsense. You’re playing a long game and I am only too happy to enable you by wearing your unwanted couture. It’s Dior!’ she shrieked.

‘And the mask?’

‘And the mask. What will you wear?’

‘I’ll wear your red velvet, of course.’

As I donned Bea’s red dress for the evening, and completed my disguise with an extravagant powdered wig, I pondered my decision. Perhaps I should have been flattered that Marco had sent me such an expensive dress. But I didn’t like the way he assumed I would not have already chosen something for myself and that my choice might have had significance beyond fit and flattery. Plus, why should I be the one at a disadvantage? Easily and instantly recognisable, while I had no way of knowing who my host was until he revealed himself. If he wanted to be able to observe me more closely, then I wanted exactly the same. I wanted to be able to watch him across a room and see how he acted with his guests. I wanted to see if the old playboy was still on the prowl. How would he react when he approached the woman in the dress he had paid for and realised it was not me? Would he be offended? The worst-case scenario was that he would consider Bea a more fitting recipient for the Parisian finery.

‘You look so very beautiful,’ said Nick, as Bea and I entered the room in our party clothes. ‘Both of you,’ he added. ‘I shall be the luckiest man in Venice, turning up at the palazzo with you ladies on my arm.’

Together, we three walked down to the landing-raft nearest to the university, where a gondola was already waiting for us. Marco had sent it, of course. Later we would learn that he had sent gondolas all over the city to bring his guests to the front door. Nick and the gondolier helped me and Bea into the shallow boat, which remained steady despite the unbalancing weight of lace and silk and feathers upon it. Giggling, Bea collapsed onto the cushions, sinking into her skirts. I followed suit. We squeezed alongside each other in the
felce
. Nick sat opposite. I was sure he was grateful for his mask, which made it just a little less obvious that he couldn’t take his eyes off our cleavages.

‘You know what?’ said Bea, as we made our stately progress down the Grand Canal. ‘You look far better in that dress than I ever could.’

It was true I had come to like the red velvet number more than I could have imagined when I first saw Bea pluck it from its hanger. By torchlight it was almost classy.

‘And you look like a goddess in the Dior,’ I returned the compliment. It was such an incredible dress. Wearing it had transformed Bea from my giggly friend into a more regal version of herself. A veritable queen.

The journey by gondola was the perfect way to prepare for the evening ahead. It was so wonderful to be on the Grand Canal that night. It was the Tuesday before Lent, Martedì Grasso, and tonight the parties would be more extravagant than ever as the citizens of Venice prepared themselves for the austerity of the days to come. Not that many Venetians observed the prescribed period of abstinence these days. That said, Nick had suggested he could do with a couple of weeks off the booze. But not tonight. Tonight was going to be all about excess.