Masks and Shadows (27 page)

“Of nearly five months. And this is a masked ball, Lotte! No one will even know who you are.” Sophie's eyes were alight with mischief. “It's too late for you to find another costume, anyway.”

Charlotte glanced at the windows and sighed. The sky outside was already shaded with twilight. “All I wanted was a plain domino. Black. Nothing too—”

“No more black!” Sophie's ankle bracelets and necklaces jangled as she pounced on Charlotte and dragged her back toward the bed, where Sophie's maid had laid out the bright blue officer's uniform. “You'll make a charming captain of the guard. The gloves might not fit, but everything else should work perfectly.”

Charlotte groaned. “You're impossible!”

“And you're provincial. Haven't you ever dressed up as a man before? I must have done it a dozen times at least.”

“I didn't attend many masked balls in Saxony.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “Am I surprised? Now, put it on!”

“No. I can't—”

“Lotte, it's perfectly proper here. I promise! Everyone dresses
en travesti
sometimes. Niko did, at our last ball. He made a magnificent old lady. I giggled for weeks over it!”

“I'm sure. But that's not—”

“I'd wager Signor Morelli has dressed as a woman often enough. Can't you just see it?”

Charlotte blinked. “I . . . yes, I can.” Almost too easily, actually.

Sophie echoed her thoughts. “A well-cut gown, a bit of padding around the chest . . . Niko and the other gentlemen have to plaster on cosmetics and flirt and preen to carry it off, and even then, it's all a great joke. But I don't think I'd be able to tell that it was a masquerade, with Signor Morelli. Could you?”

Charlotte sank down onto her bed. “I don't think so.” Sickening discomfort crawled through her stomach. “Sophie, I don't—”

Sophie sat down next to her, her forehead scrunched in thought. “What do you think a castrato really is, anyway? I mean, I know we call him ‘signor,' to be polite, but maybe it should really be ‘signora.' Or—how else could you say it? If someone isn't a real man or a woman, then—him? Her?
It
?”

“Sophie!” Charlotte leapt up, staring at her sister. “How could you be so cruel? Of course Signor Morelli is a man. How can you say such things?”

Sophie shrugged. “It's an interesting question, is it not? He started life as a boy, truly. But the operation came before his voice could change, and after that—I mean, without the, ah,
entire
parts that make you a man or a woman—”

“He is a man, and one of the most admirable ones I've ever met!”

Charlotte would have given anything to swallow back her words the moment they escaped her mouth. Her younger sister's eyes widened in surprise—and then, horribly, in mischievous comprehension.

“Lotte! I am shocked. Why didn't you tell me before?”

“There is nothing to tell.” Charlotte was hideously conscious of both her own maid and Sophie's maid watching them from the corners of the room. This would certainly provide fodder for gossip in the servants' hall, and probably in the Princess's chambers, as well.

“I never even imagined it. My prim and proper older sister falling under the spell of an Italian castrato—”

“I haven't done any such thing. I only meant—”

“He's very experienced, you know. He's probably slept with hundreds of lovers.” Sophie's eyes narrowed. “Women
and
men. That's what they all do, you know.”

“And what of it?” Charlotte swung around, turning her back to her sister. “If everything you say is true, then you need hardly worry that he would take any interest in me, would he? As you've pointed out many times, I'm far too unsophisticated for courtly life.” Tears stung behind her eyes, but she made her voice cool. “Now, if you don't have anything better to discuss, I think you'd better leave.”

Sophie's small hand tugged at her shoulder. “Oh, Lotte, don't be such a prude! I was only teasing you.”

Charlotte gritted her teeth. “It isn't amusing.”

Sophie sighed. “Don't you ever get tired of being so dull and serious all the time? Don't you ever just want to enjoy yourself?”

Charlotte pressed her lips together to hold back the stream of words that pushed against them.

Not the sort of fun you have. Not the sort that dishonors your family and your marriage. The sort that doesn't care whom it hurts
.

“Of course I know you aren't truly attracted to Signor Morelli, silly. I'm not a total fool! I was only mocking you a little. You do set yourself so high, Lotte. It's a bit intimidating.” Sophie's laugh held an edge. “Can't you ever be just a little bit wicked, for my sake?”

You wouldn't care for it, if I did
.

Charlotte took a deep breath, quashing her anger. What good would it do to spew venom at her own sister?

She turned and met Sophie's pouting look. “I'm sorry,” she said quietly. “I'm not made that way.”

“Well, pretend that you are, for tonight. For the ball!” Sophie grabbed her hand. “This is your chance to be someone else for one night. Someone daring and wild. Do it, Lotte! For me.”

The gardens of Eszterháza had been transformed into a fairyland. Chinese lanterns glittered in the hedges and trees and found a thousand sparkling reflections in the curving, mirrored walls of the Bagatelle. Orchestral musicians, dressed in rustic peasants' outfits, played jangling Turkish music in a nearby clearing, under Herr Haydn's direction. Servants mingled in the colorful crowd, carrying tall glasses of imported French wine and trays filled with exotic fruits.

Carlo swept back his short velvet cape and moved through the crowd of sultans, gods and goddesses, peasants, priests, magicians, and mysteries.

The masquerade had begun.

Charlotte hesitated at the edge of the clearing, wiping her bare hands on the white uniform breeches that encased her thighs. They felt extraordinary against her skin, tight and indecent above the knee-high boots. Without the usual wide padding around her hips, the weight of layers of skirts and petticoats or the tightness of a whalebone corset, she felt half-naked—and amazingly light. If she took but one step, it might carry her all the way across the clearing.

“Swagger,”
Sophie had ordered her. “
That's how they all walk! You need to throw your whole body into it.”

Swagger
, Charlotte told herself. She swaggered forward experimentally—and came to a dead halt, fighting down helpless laughter. It was too ludicrous! She couldn't do it. She shook her head and switched back to her normal pace. Hopelessly ladylike, no doubt. Ladylike and
dull
, just as Sophie had said.

Charlotte stepped forward into the light, grateful for the thin, shaped leather half-mask that covered her forehead, nose and cheeks. She took a glass of wine from a hovering servant and faded into the sidelines of the crowd.

A tall, imposing figure mounted the steps of the Bagatelle—Prince Nikolaus, clearly, although his face was fully covered by an ivory mask, and he was dressed in the robes, turban, and glittering jewelry of an imaginary pasha. Sophie wiggled beside him in Ottoman rose-pink, her blonde hair free of powder but lushly feathered and piled high above layers of jewelry. Her tiny mask, covering only a thin band around her eyes, could not conceal her open delight.

Prince Nikolaus's voice boomed out behind the ivory cherub's mask.

“Let the dancing begin!”

The finest part of any masquerade, Carlo thought, was the high-handed freedom it gave to ignore the rules of polite society. At any ordinary ball, one had to play a finely measured game of hierarchy and social expectations in choosing whom to partner. Without masks, he'd have been forced to play the dutiful guest by approaching first Frau von Höllner and then the Prince's giggling, gossiping niece, and so spend his evening being supremely bored as he partnered them around the ballroom floor. Masked, he could pretend not to recognize them, and was thus set free to seek out his own diversions.

He sipped his wine, walked the pathways of the fairy-lit gardens, and told himself, as he searched through the glittering throng of dancers, that he wasn't looking for any one woman in particular.

The jangling, exotic music shot tingles straight through Charlotte's fingers. Cymbals and triangles added an infectious edge to the sound, while a shrill piccolo piped a warning of danger—or was it only adventure? She moved closer to the orchestra, drawn inexorably by the sound.

The night sky was cloudless, filled with stars. It was a night for reckless adventure and romance, for anyone exotic and brave enough to snatch it . . . anyone utterly unlike the Baroness von Steinbeck, Ernst's dutiful young wife, her parents' dutiful oldest daughter, Sophie von Höllner's proper, prudish older sister.

Within the stiff, unfamiliar military boot, her foot was tapping to the music. She wanted to spin into it, to dance, to find her own partner instead of waiting to be asked.

It had to be this strange music that gave her such wild ideas, inchoate, impossible longings for adventures she'd never have, a daring that she'd never feel. This music, this night, the masks and costumes whirling past her in the steps of a frantic dance . . .

She sighed, spun around to walk away—

—And found Signor Morelli watching her.