Chapter 3: A Familiar Lie

The applause was still rolling through the ballroom when Alistair released Mira’s hand.

Then a Foundation trustee caught his sleeve and drew him into a knot of donors beneath the painted ceiling.

Mira remained on the dais long enough to look pleased.

“You survived,” Celeste said, appearing at her elbow with two flutes of champagne. “I was beginning to think you would leave him kneeling until the newspapers arrived.”

“That would have been dramatic.”

“You hate drama.”

“I’m learning.”

Celeste’s laugh was light, but her eyes moved past Mira to Alistair. He stood between two members of Parliament, accepting congratulations with his head inclined in that attentive way of his. When he looked across the room, he found Celeste first.

Celeste lifted her flute. “To the bride.”

“To useful friends,” Mira said.

For the smallest moment, Celeste did not drink.

Alistair was summoned to the dais for a speech. His hand skimmed the small of Mira’s back as he passed, a public claim delivered with almost no pressure. She watched him take the microphone. Around them, waiters opened fresh bottles; the quartet had traded waltzes for something bright and forgettable.

“My family has always believed the Foundation’s work is about preservation,” Alistair said. “Tonight, we have the pleasure of welcoming a future worth preserving as well.”

The guests rewarded him exactly as he expected. Mira tilted her head, let the diamonds on her ears catch the chandeliers, and counted the people who looked at her as though she had been acquired along with a particularly valuable painting.

When the applause rose again, Celeste set down her unfinished champagne.

“I should rescue the Ward trustees before they mistake this for an Ashford coronation.” Her smile sharpened at the word. “Don’t let him make you pose for another ten minutes.”

“I’ll try to endure it.”

Celeste touched Mira’s arm and slipped into the crowd. Her dark blue nails rested on Mira’s sleeve a beat too long.

Mira waited until Alistair had been trapped by three older women from the museum board. Then she crossed the ballroom\, not toward the terrace doors but through the narrow gallery that led to the old Palm Room. The Ashfords had kept it closed during most events because the glass roof leaked in winter. Tonight\, a brass sign beside the entrance read *Private*.

Celeste had gone that way.

Mira slowed before the gallery’s gilt mirror. In its foxed surface, the ballroom became a dim crowd of pale shoulders and black dinner jackets. She could see the Palm Room door reflected at the far end, left open by the width of a hand.

Alistair came through the ballroom behind her.

He did not look for Mira. He looked down at his cuff as if it had caught on something, then angled toward the gallery with the easy impatience of a man certain no one would stop him.

Mira bent over the marble console beneath the mirror and pretended to study a silver bowl of sugared violets.

The door closed softly after him.

She should have walked away. The old Mira would have. She would have given Celeste the benefit of every doubt available, then gone home and felt ashamed for imagining ugliness in the people she loved.

Instead, she stepped closer to the mirror.

The Palm Room was mostly hidden, but the glass wall caught enough of its reflection. Alistair stood with his back to the door. Celeste faced him near a long-dead orange tree in a stone urn, the skirt of her black dress bright against the dusty leaves.

“You were staring at her,” Celeste said.

“I was on a stage, Celeste.”

“You were enjoying it.”

His answer was too low to reach the gallery. Mira saw the shape of it in the mirror. Celeste’s mouth tightened.

Then Alistair lifted a hand and slid one loose curl behind her ear.

No husband-to-be touched his fiancée’s oldest friend that way. Not with his thumb resting at the soft place beneath her ear. Not while his own engagement ring flashed on the hand he held against her waist.

Celeste caught his wrist. For an instant Mira thought she would push him away.

She pulled him down instead.

The kiss was brief. It was also practiced.

Mira set down her champagne.

Inside the room, Celeste broke away first. She took something from Alistair’s lapel: a tiny blue thread, caught from her dress perhaps. He smiled and tucked it into his pocket.

Mira knew that smile. He had used it on the evening of her mother’s memorial, when a reporter had asked whether grief made the Foundation’s future uncertain. Patient. Gentle. Possessive.

Celeste said something else. Alistair’s expression changed.

He caught her chin, not hard enough to mark. Even from the gallery, Mira could read the warning in the motion.

Celeste’s face went still. Then she nodded.

Mira turned away before either of them could emerge and find her reflected in the mirror.

By the time she reached the ballroom, the music had changed again. She took a place beside Lady Pembroke, an elderly donor who had spent the last year complaining that Ashford House served its champagne too cold.

“There you are, dear,” Lady Pembroke said. “Your young man has been looking everywhere.”

He had not. But he arrived a moment later, his coat immaculate, his mouth composed. He offered Mira his arm.

“I thought I’d lost you.”

“Only for a minute.” She placed her hand on his sleeve.

His gaze dropped to the emeralds. “You mustn’t disappear tonight. Everyone wants a word with you.”

“Everyone?”

“You know what I mean.” His smile returned, polished for Lady Pembroke. “Stay close.”

Mira looked up at him. A blue filament clung to the edge of his white cuff.

Celeste joined them from the gallery. Her lipstick was perfect; the curl Alistair had touched had been pinned back into place. Only a faint flush sat high on her cheekbones.

“Mira,” she said, taking the other arm as if they were a picture arranged for the papers. “You’re impossible to find.”

“Am I?”

Celeste met her eyes. The hesitation was gone so quickly it might have been imagined.

“Tonight, apparently.”

Alistair laughed. Mira let him lead them toward the centre of the room, one woman on each arm. Guests turned to admire the three of them: the heir, the fiancée, the loyal friend.

Mira smiled for the cameras and memorised the blue thread.

Near midnight, the front doors opened.

The doorman’s announcement did not carry over the music, but the room heard it anyway. Conversations clipped short. A minister set down his glass. Alistair’s fingers closed around Mira’s arm.

A man crossed the marble entrance beneath the Ashford crest, unhurried and entirely unwelcome.

Cassian Vane had come to the engagement gala.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***