LITMIR.BIZ

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shamelessly intrigued by his touch … and her reaction to both.

      Regina clutched at her suddenly queasy stomach, wishing back the sweet, honeyed drink she’d downed earlier almost as if it had been water, for it had been so hot and stuffy and even rather smelly in this horrible ballroom. What had been in that cup? Nothing too terrible, surely. It was only honey….

      She fought down the urge to cup her hands to her mouth and loudly call out Miranda’s name, knowing she could not cause a scene, draw attention to either one of them. They would both be ruined if anyone knew they had attended this clearly unsuitable ball.

      Why, there were people kissing people everywhere she turned. Giggling and touching each other in lewd ways as they passed by each other in the dance. It hadn’t been like this when they’d first arrived, but now it was. As if every tick of the clock served to strip away another fetter of society, leaving only the baseness beneath.

      “Here now, my pretty, hold there while I take a look at you.” A large man wearing the costume of a highwayman, complete with a brace of pistols tucked in the sash around his waist, had grabbed her arm and showed no signs of letting go. “I’ve come for all your valuables. Pass them over, starting with a kiss from your fair lips.”

      Never threaten before striking, but merely strike, or you may never get the chance. Regina plunged the hat pin into the fleshy back of the man’s hand and ran off when he yowled in pain and immediately let her go.

      She wasn’t sure which level of Dante’s Inferno she was in, but she needed to get out. Now.

      She looked behind her, terrified that the man who called himself Robin Goodfellow might be following her, but he wasn’t there. Nobody she knew was there, not that she knew him.

      If only she could find Miranda!

      At last, she made her way through the maze of screens and plants and couches to the main entrance and the small antechamber where a few maids and such were seated, ready to assist their mistresses if necessary.

      “Oh, Miss Regina, you’re here! Thank the Lord!” Doris Ann clasped Regina’s hands in hers, squeezing them so hard it was painful. “She’s gone. My Miss Miranda is gone!”

      Regina tugged her hands free, not without effort, and tried to calm the maid. “Nonsense, Doris Ann. She’s misplaced, that’s all, and most probably on purpose. When did you last see her?”

      “But I never did,” Doris Ann said, sniffling. “Not since we first got here. It’s nearly midnight, and you said one hour, Miss Regina, and it has been nearer to two. And she promised me. She promised she would listen to you, if you’d only come with her. I thought you both were gone, seeing as how you didn’t want to come in the first place, but now you’re here, and she isn’t, and I thought for certain she’d be with you and—”

      “All right, all right, let’s be calm, Doris Ann,” Regina said soothingly. “I’m aware that we have been here well over the agreed upon hour, but if I was … detained, then surely it must be the same with Miss Miranda.”

      “I popped my head in there when no one was looking, and there’s strange and wicked goings-on in there, Miss Regina. I heard two of the other maids talking, you understand. You should neither of you have come here.”

      “And we’ll be leaving the moment we find Miss Miranda, I assure you. Now, this is what we’ll do. We’ll go inside the ballroom and look for her. You go to the left, and I will go to the right, and— Doris Ann! Don’t you dare shake your head no to me.”

      “I tain’t going in there. There’s wicked goings-on in there.”

      “Yes, you’ve already said that. But your Miss Miranda is in there somewhere.” Or out in the gardens somewhere. “You do love her, don’t you?”

      “Yes, Miss Regina. But there’s wicked—”

      “Do you wish to tell Miss Miranda’s parents you were a part of this? That you helped Miss Miranda find the dominos and masks, that you knew what was going to happen tonight and did nothing to stop it? That you came home without her?”

      Doris Ann licked her thin lips. “I am to go to the left, you said?”

      Regina breathed a sigh of relief. At least she would have help. “Yes, to the left. And if you find her, bring her right back here. Grab on to her if you have to, and don’t let go until she’s back here. Do you understand?”

      Doris Ann nodded, looking fearfully toward the ballroom. “Oh, laws. They’re taking off their masks, Miss Regina. Weren’t you and Miss Miranda to be long gone before they took off their masks?”

      “Oh, God …”

      How could she go back into the ballroom now that people were removing their masks? They would wonder why she kept hers on, and with everyone behaving so badly, it was even possible some forward person would try to remove hers for her.

      But she had to find Miranda. Even if it was just so that she could wring her neck.

      “Is there a problem?”

      Regina recognized the voice and realized that the man who called himself Robin Goodfellow had found her, was even now standing directly behind her.

      “No. Thank you.” She kept her back to him. Had he taken off his mask? If he had, was he as handsome as she’d thought him? Would he still be laughing at her? Would he expect her to take off her own mask? Had he really meant what he said when he’d been kissing her, speaking to her in French while he thought she didn’t understand? Could she ever look at him after she’d heard what he’d said, knowing that she knew that he knew that she’d understood him?

      “All right, then. I’ll leave you to it, whatever it is.”

       No! Don’t leave!

      “Mr. Goodfellow—wait.” Regina bit her lip for courage and then turned to face him, ridiculously relieved that he still wore his mask. “I … I seem to have misplaced my companion.”

      “Ah. So she—or he—disappeared while you were otherwise occupied?”

      “Don’t be any more obnoxious than you can help, if you please,” Regina said irritably. “You know that I’m not who—what—you supposed, and not without reason, because I know I was behaving badly, so I do not fault you for that, and I will apologize for … for leading you on or whatever you think it was I may have been doing— Doris Ann, stop crying! But it is of extreme importance that I find my cous—my companion, and that she and I leave this place at once.”

      He jerked his head back slightly. “E-gods, you mean there are two of you? And yet not with a whole brain between you. All right, please allow me to offer my assistance. How is she dressed?”

      Regina clasped her hands together in front of her, trying to keep them from shaking. This was serious. Miranda could be anywhere, doing anything. Just look at what she had done, and she’d never considered herself to be half so stupid as Miranda!

      She quickly described her cousin and what she was wearing.

      Robin Goodfellow—really, how could she think of him as any sort of help when he’d told her such a ridiculous name—shook his head. “No, sorry. I pride myself on being more than mildly observant, or I did until about a quarter hour ago, but I don’t recall any petite blonde dressed in an emerald-green domino. Or wearing such a singular mask. Perhaps we should try the gardens?”

      “She wouldn’t be so foolhardy as to— Oh, never mind,” Regina said as Robin Goodfellow grinned at her in a way that had her palm itching to slap his face. Even wearing that very strange and intriguing mask, she knew that the fellow thought life was one huge lark. Maddening, that’s what he was—but her options weren’t all that thick on the ground at the moment, and Doris Ann could hardly be counted as one of them. She had no choice. “Yes, let’s try the gardens. Doris Ann, you stay here while I go with Mr. Goodfellow, and if she returns here while we’re gone, you have my permission

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