Page 88 of The Enslaved Duet

“I don’t know how,” I hissed at him as he found space for us on the floor. “I don’t even know the music.”

“You don’t need to,” he informed as the first strains began, and he whisked me into his arms. “You just need to follow your Master.”

After a few moments of stiff fingers curled into the fine fabric of his jacket and feet that clamoured helplessly to move in the right direction, I relaxed enough to trust him.

“That’s it, my beauty,” he said, then drew my earlobe into his mouth. “Relax in my arms and show everyone what a lucky man I am tonight.”

I melted further into his embrace, my body like wax against his as I molded to his shape and adapted to his steps. We spun across the marble hall as the London Orchestra played an elaborate piece of music that soared into the vaulted ceilings and swirled beneath my dress.

“Are you happy now?” Alexander asked me, and I got that sense he had meant to joke with me, but his tone arrived too somber.

“Do you care?” I asked, as I dipped my head back on my shoulders to see the colours of the mural above mix like an artist’s palette as we revolved around the other couples.

When I looked back at Alexander, he was frowning at me as if I’d offended him.

“Yes,” he admitted, “Yes, I do.”

“Then, yes. I’m happy,” I told him. “For now.”

And now was all it would ever be.

“I have to use the toilet,” I told him, wrenching out of his arms so quickly that he didn’t have time to grab me. “I’ll be back.”

I picked up the slide train of my form-fitting dress and dashed as elegantly and quickly as I could through the crowds to the sweeping staircase where a manservant attended at the bottom.

I asked him for directions, and he led me to the powder room at the top of the stairs to the left. Instantly, I emptied my queasy stomach in the toilet, retching so hard tears came to my eyes. I rested my cheek across my arm over the porcelain for a moment to regain my breath as my tummy flipped then settled.

I wasn’t sure if I was pregnant or not, but the sudden onslaught of nausea was reason enough to be worried. The same doctor who had administered my physical in Italy, attended me every three months at Pearl Hall to check on me and give me the birth control shot.

I should have been covered, my risk of pregnancy completely improbable.

But I wasn’t sure about these things. I hadn’t even been the one to choose the form of birth control.

My face was damp with nervous sweat when I looked at myself in the mirror, but otherwise my hair and make-up remained perfectly intact.

“Don’t fall in love with him, Cosima Ruth Lombardi,” I told my reflection sternly. “You’re hormonal and crazy, and you are absolutelynotfalling in love with the man who bought you.”

My pep talk completed, I splashed cold water on my wrists and pushed outside in the hall. The orchestra was playing something more rigorous now, something with a bite and snap like hounds nipping at the heels of a fox on the chase.

I paused at the top of the stairs to watch the colourful, diamond bright festivities for a moment, feeling homesickness for the urine yellow plainness of Napoli pang in my heart.

Unconsciously, my eyes searched the room for Alexander, and I found him already looking up at me, frowning as he peered across the long room.

I lifted my foot to begin my descent, preoccupied with thoughts of explaining my hasty departure to Alexander and how I was going to ask Mrs. White—now that she already suspected—to buy me a pregnancy test at the pharmacy.

So I was completely unprepared when two hands came from behind me and shoved me with brutal force down the two-story staircase.

There was no time to recover, to grab at the slick marble railing or steady myself on my towering heels.

I could only fall.

My body went limp after I struck the stairs the first time, the back of my head cracking against the stone so hard the sound echoed in my ears the entire way down the staircase, as I fell head over feet again and again until I finally reached the bottom.

There was a ringing in my ears, but I couldn’t open my eyes to check if it was the orchestra still playing or the continued ricochet of my head impacting with the ground repeatedly. Something wet slid down my face, but I couldn’t figure out how to make my hand work to feel if it was blood or tears.

Crippling pain snapped through my abdomen like cracking plastic, so excruciating that I curled my bruised body in on itself trying to lessen its severity.

Suddenly, there was the smell of cedar and pine in my nose and gentle pressure on the side of my head as someone tried to speak to me through the encroaching darkness of my mind.