Page 59 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER ONE

I N A ROOM full of eyes watching her, only his made Aurora Arundel feel like an impostor.

She was projecting, she knew. She shouldn’t be in New York. Not for this exclusive auction of a single piece of coveted artwork, or for the masquerade ball that followed.

It wasn’t her invitation. It had been meant for her parents. But the dead couldn’t forbid her from attending tonight.

The dead couldn’t complain that she’d stolen their invitation.

Only she knew that the gold embossed invitation wasn’t hers as she moved through the black iron gates and up the pebbled driveway to the columned entrance of Eachus House.

Only she noticed her fingers trembling as she released the invitation from her sapphire-adorned fingers into the white-gloved hands of the man who stood beneath the cherub-topped entrance.

The prayer on her lips had been for her ears only, thanking whatever gods that be that she was able to keep her spine straight and her head held high as she was ushered her through the heavy oak doors and guided through hallways with painted ceilings and ornate walls, up the floating oak staircase, and finally to the green drawing room, transformed, only for tonight, only for the invited, into an auction room.

Gilded mirrors lined the vivid green walls. The velvet apple-green drapes were drawn against the night. An oak lectern displaying the name of a famous auction house was positioned in front of a marble fireplace of epic proportions, masterfully crafted with silver-accented winding vines.

Ball gown after ball gown moved around the room as everyone began to take their seats. Aurora had been handed a gold-etched paddle, and the auctioneer had taken her to her seat in front of a podium, where the wooden legs of the easel beside her peeked out from beneath a black cloth.

The room was heavy with tension. All eyes fastened on the easel’s black cloth. All hands itched to reveal what lay beneath.

This was the appetiser for the night before the red ballroom opened its doors and they were all encouraged to indulge in champagne, music and the discretion their masks would afford them for the night.

Only the staff knew who was behind the masks, and only because they knew the names allotted to the numbered paddles.

And Aurora understood it to be one of those games the elite played. The night would start this way in order to build the anticipation, to fire the blood— to heat it .

The rich didn’t care that tonight was supposed to be for charity. They didn’t care about those the charity would support in their darkest hour.

Her parents had certainly never cared.

But she did.

Up and up Aurora drove the bid. The price rising to hundreds of thousands of dollars within minutes for a painting no one would see until the bidding war was over.

And his gaze intensified with every bid she placed.

His tilted head, his elegant, bow-tied neck, arched so he could stare at her from the front row of intricately carved antique white chairs. The curved gold leaf mask covering his cheeks, his nose, and his upper lip only sharpened his green-rimmed irises, making the inner amber of his eyes glow.

She was aware of how different her gown was from all the others around her. Her mother wouldn’t have approved of her dress either. The colour or the cut. The sequins. How she shimmered under the chandelier hanging from the high ceiling. How it drew attention to her.

Her mother, Lady Arundel, wife of Lord Arundel, most definitely would not have approved of the mask she’d chosen. The dainty pearls rising in stalks from the blue-and-brushed gold mask. The shells clustered on the right-hand side, interlaced with the purest of diamonds and uniquely cut sapphires.

She knew what she looked like. A mermaid. She’d chosen the off-the-shoulder asymmetrical gown with its thigh-high slit to showcase she was, in fact, human, with legs. Each adornment she’d approved. On purpose. Because she liked them. She liked that tonight, she was daring. Uncompromising.

Yet under the onslaught of the man’s gaze, the bow on her left shoulder felt too big. Her bare right shoulder felt too exposed. Too naked. She felt too bright. Too colourful. Too breathless.

The bodice of her aquamarine dress felt too tight. And she was all too conscious of the skin and muscle beneath it. Of her breasts tightening, her nipples hardening.

Aurora swallowed, readying herself to continue the bidding. For herself. For her brother.

Pain settled inside her chest. Still acute even after all this time. Still as visceral as the night she’d been told he was gone.

She straightened her spine, squared her shoulders. She would end this. Now. She would win for Michael. For all the times she’d let him down, for all the times she hadn’t fought for him.

Her pulse raced. Her heart hammered hard inside her ribs. ‘Fifty million,’ she said. The crowded room gasped. But he didn’t. The eyes holding hers hostage didn’t blink.

‘Where’s fifty million and one?’ The rhythmic auctioneer’s chant trickled into her consciousness, but her eyes lowered to the subtle movement of his mouth.

Slowly, the pink tip of his tongue revealed itself to sweep across his full, blushed-pink bottom lip. And she felt it. The gentle stroke of his tongue on her.

A gasp leapt out from her parted lips in a hush of expelled air.

‘Anyone?’ the auctioneer continued from the front of the room.

She waited for the stranger’s mouth to move. For him to bid against her.

She wanted to hear his voice, she realised. She wanted to know if it matched the intensity of his gaze. But he didn’t speak. The set line of his bearded jaw was a sculpted thing. A beautiful thing defined by a thousand chestnut hairs interlaced with strings of red fire, kissed by shards of ice.

‘Fifty million, and holding…’

Aurora raised her gaze from his jaw to his eyes to find him still staring at her.

‘Are we all done?’

The silence pulsed.

‘And selling at fifty million US dollars…’ The gavel fell. ‘Sold.’

The stranger looked away, and Aurora released the breath she hadn’t known she was holding. Only then did the tightness— the burn —in her chest ease. She had won.

He turned his back on her, revealing his chestnut hair speckled with grey, pulled back at his nape in a low bun, sat on the crisp white collar of his shirt.

As he stood, her gaze swept over his magnificent stature. He was a giant. At least six-foot-five. A Viking ripped from an era long ago. His broad shoulders tense with a barely contained energy inside the sculpted fabric of his black tuxedo.

Without another glance in her direction, he walked out of an oak-panelled side door.

And he took the air with him. Stole it.

The room was suddenly too stifling, too thin yet too heavy at the same time. As if he’d ripped something from the very core of her existence—her ability to breathe, to inhale.

Aurora nipped at the inside of her cheek.

She was being ridiculous.

He was no one. Certainly no one she knew. A stranger.

‘Thank you for your bids. And congratulations…?’

Aurora turned back to the auctioneer as she spoke and held up her paddle, showing him the number on the front.

‘Congratulations, 265.’

The auctioneer, with her unmasked face and her long strands of black silken hair swishing on her shoulders, moved to the easel.

She raised her slender brown fingers, her nails painted in a glittering gold, matching her own billowing gown.

She gripped the black cloth, and everyone in the room held their breath in anticipation.

‘I give you Divinity ,’ she said, and pulled the cloth free.

Applause boomed from everybody in the room.

Aurora settled her gaze on the single piece of artwork she’d won.

It was lighted to perfection beside the auctioneer’s lectern.

The smallest details of the little boy’s face, painted in heavy, bold lines in a medium she didn’t recognise, were visible, right down to the smallest cluster of freckles on his right cheek.

And she realised she knew the artist. Sebastian Shard.

She understood his uncouth methods and the use of an assortment of uncommon media had made him a household name, along with his inspirational flight to fame from the streets.

It was a beautiful piece. A haunting piece. Green-and-amber eyes looked out at their audience, asking for something she had seen in her brother’s eyes the night he’d begged her parents not to disown him, pleaded for their help, not their disinheritance.

You should have helped him.

A tightness gripped her throat.

She looked over the masked crowd, dressed in their finery, the atmosphere buzzing with an adrenaline she didn’t feel. Not yet. But surely she would, wouldn’t she?

Tonight, the fifty million dollars she had paid for the piece of artwork before her would be donated to those without shelter, without a home.

To those who lived on the streets. It was a cause her parents should have invested in long ago.

They should have put aside their ugly views and done the right thing by their son as a way of making amends.

She waited for it. The exhilaration. But nothing came. No relief. Not redemption.

And Aurora began to understand that despite what she’d hoped, this one altruistic act didn’t erase all the times she’d let her parents trample her moral consciousness. They never would have listened to her anyway, but she knew her silence went deeper.

Disgust crawled over her skin.

She had so desperately needed their love, their approval…

Golden girl , Michael had christened her, and she’d played her role impeccably. She’d been the perfect daughter, and still they’d withheld the love that should have been unconditional, should have been given to both children freely.

Her chest ached. She knew that tonight didn’t redeem her. It wouldn’t bring her brother back. Wouldn’t stop the guilt she felt for remaining her parents’ golden girl while Michael had died the black sheep.

But this was a start, right?