Three vestal virgins giggled in a corner with a knight in full armor, and a man she recognized as Lord Burlington was Bacchus, with a wreath of vine leaves circling his head. Several people, like herself, had come dressed as characters from classical antiquity. Nuns and friars squashed up against shepherdesses and chimneysweeps.

The room was a rainbow swirl of costumes. If she could keep people talking about her dress, or undress, in this case, then nobody would start asking awkward questions like, “Why haven’t you chosen a husband yet?”Ĭarys spied her best friend, Frances Roque, and tugged at Rhys’s arm. Tonight’s outfit-indeed, every outfit she’d worn for the past two seasons-had been carefully calculated to provide a distraction. The three of them thought she relished setting the fashionable world on its heels, but that wasn’t entirely true. No-one could guess that on the inside she was besieged by panic and uncertainty. This was the Carys Davies who appeared in public carefree and delightful, a trend-setter who cared for nobody’s opinion but her own. “What’s the point in going to a party and being ignored?” “That’s the plan,” she whispered back, smiling through her teeth. His tone was amused, indulgent, and Carys felt a familiar flash of gratitude for her easy-going sibling.

Tongues were already wagging as she and her brother Rhys paused at the top of the steps leading into the ballroom.

well, that would be a delightful, if unlikely, bonus. If the sight of her near-naked figure also managed to spur a reaction from the terminally laconic Tristan Montgomery. Her clothes were both her armor and her weapons, and although outright murder-however justified-was out of the question, there was still a slim hope that her outfit would induce a fatal apoplexy in her tormentor, Christopher Howe. Lady Carys Davies dressed to meet her blackmailer in the same way she dressed for every other social occasion scandalously.

A Daring Pursuit by Kate Bateman