Мелисса де ла Круз - Masquerade

"In her room, on the third landing.”

Her mother had grown up in the same house, and Schuyler wished, not for the first time, that her mother was around to help her with her current dilemma. Hattie led her upstairs to the next floor, down the hallway, to a corner room in the back.

Schuyler's heart beat in nervous excitement.

"It's a shame about Miss Allegra," Hattie said as she opened the door. "The room's just like it was when she was eighteen. Before she eloped and married your father.”

The room was pristine. Schuyler was shocked to see that there were no cobwebs in the corners, or a layer of dust everywhere. She had expected a crypt, a mausoleum, but it was a bright and cheerful room, with crisp Italian linens on the bed and billowing white curtains on the windows.

"Mrs. Cordelia always insisted we keep it up. For whenever your mother wakes up.”

Schuyler walked toward the armoire in the middle of the room and opened one of its doors.

She reached inside and pulled out a shirt on a hanger. Valentino, circa 1989.

“Are you sure she had ball gowns?”

"She had a cotillion. She was presented at the Four Hundred Ball on her sixteenth birthday," Hattie explained. "Chanel made the dress. It should be in there.”

Schuyler patiently went through each hanger. At last, in the farthest reaches of the closet, she found a black garment bag embroidered with the double-C logo.

She laid the bag out on her mother's bed and unzipped it slowly.

"Wow," Schuyler breathed, removing a carefully preserved dress. She held it up to the light. It was a gold dress with a tight, strapless corset bodice and a princess skirt with folds and folds of voluminous fabric.

She held it up against herself. It would fit, she knew it would fit.

When Schuyler entered the St. Regis Ballroom, the whole room stood still. The guests stared at her as she stood by the entrance, illuminated under the spotlight, uncertain about where to go next. A few gasps could be heard from the crowd.

Jack Force, for one, couldn't take his eyes off her.

Like almost everybody in the room, for one brief moment, he had believed that Gabrielle, Allegra Van Alen, had returned to them.

FOURTEEN

The Four Hundred Ball, also known as the Patrician Ball, never wavered from the tradition set by its original organizers in the late nineteenth century, when the Blue Bloods first came into prominent position in society. The ten-course meal, with breaks in between for dancing, was set on $75,000-a-piece gold service—solid gold plates, gold flatware, and gold-crusted crystal goblets.

Along the length of the four rectangular tables, with a hundred seats at each, was a pile of sand, and each place setting was set with a golden trowel. Guests were encouraged to "dig" for treasure—their parting gifts. The Committee had been able to convince sponsors to provide expensive, eye-popping jewelry set with rubies, sapphires, and diamonds as party favors. The Junior Committee, led by Mimi, had added a modern touch: "alphabet" necklaces from Me & Ro, intricate Peruvian peacock earrings by Zani, and the most coveted piece of the season, Kaviar and Kind's diamond-encrusted shark-tooth pendant.

The menu was just the same as it had been on the night of the first Patrician Ball: a first course of Consommé Olga, then Filet Mignons Lili, Vegetable Marrow Farcie, followed by a roast duckling and sirloin of beef, accompanied by creamed carrots and parmentier potatoes.

Several towering ice sculptures depicting New York's greatest monuments and institutions, including the new MOMA building, renovations funded by Blue Blood money, and the proposed Frank Gehry port, championed by none other than Senator Llewellyn himself, were arranged next to the bars that lined the room, and champagne flowed from hidden spigots in the ice.

Mimi barely touched her food, getting up from her seat to circulate among the glittering crowd. Every prestigious family in New York, all the old names were represented: the Van Horns, the Schlumbergers, the Wagners, the Stewarts, the Howells and the Howlands, the Goulds and the Goelets, the Bancrofts and the Barlows. Members of the clan who had remained in England were represented, as well as several more exotic branches. A vastly rich Blue Blood family who had splintered from the main group centuries ago and settled in what was now modern China had just arrived from Shanghai, a city that they had recently helped rebuild. Their sixteenyear-old twin daughters, two gorgeous long-limbed Chinese socialites, would be among those presented at the ball that evening.

But there was no family more respected or revered than the Forces. Mimi was a princess among her people, and she walked through them, accepting their admiration, their deference.

She looked for her brother. He had been by her side all evening but had disappeared between the fish and meat course. By all rights they should be doing this together. Tonight was the night the coven would recognize that they had found each other, and that when the time came, they would be renewing their immortal vows.

Where was he?

She cast her mind across the room, looking for his signal. Ah, there he was, by the head table, talking to a friend on the lacrosse team, Bryce Cutting. She saw him stop and look in her direction with a sudden, joyous smile on his face.

She smiled back and waved at him, but he didn't return the wave.

Annoyed, she turned around—maybe he wasn't looking at her after all?

And that's when she noticed who was standing right behind her, at the top of the staircase, commanding the attention of the entire ballroom.

Schuyler Van Alen.

In a dress that even Mimi herself would die to wear.

Schuyler found her seat next to the dour parents of Aggie Carondolet. It was apparent that the Carondolets had felt slighted by their seating, and they hardly spoke a word to Schuyler except to inform her that they were truly sad about Cordelia. She found Bliss sitting by herself at the front table, and waved to her. Bliss waved back. "Come over," Bliss mouthed.

She gathered up her gold skirts and walked over to Bliss's side. The two girls hugged warmly.

"Sky, I have to tell you something—about Dylan," Bliss said.

"Oh?" Schuyler raised an eyebrow.

"I think he's…" but before Bliss could finish, a boy walked over and asked her to dance.

"Sure." Bliss shrugged. "I'll tell you later," she said to Schuyler.

Schuyler nodded. As she dejectedly walked back to her seat, she wondered what Bliss was about to tell her. Bliss was her only friend at the ball. What was Schuyler doing here, anyway? Why had she come? For Cordelia? For the Van Alen name? No. She had to be honest. And this was where the truth hurt. She had wanted to see Jack Force again. But it was agony.

There he was, attentively at his sister's side, the two of them gliding through the ballroom, entwined at the hip. Jack keeping a hand on Mimi's tiny waist. Schuyler had heard whispers from the Elders and the Wardens at the adjoining table…something about a bond…something about the two of them and an immortal vow. The next course was served, roast squab and a cold asparagus vinaigrette. It looked delicious, but the food tasted dry and mealy on her tongue.

“Jack," Mimi whispered softly in his ear as they made their way around the room. "It's time." Ever practical, she decided to ignore what she had seen earlier. Mimi was a master of selfdeception. If something bothered her, she refused to even acknowledge its existence. In her mind, Schuyler Van Alen was a temporary, if annoying, infatuation.

But for Jack, the sight of Schuyler Van Alen had only served to ignite a feeling he had been repressing for months. A disquieting thought nagged at his conscience. Why did Schuyler affect him in such a powerful way? Was it the resemblance to Allegra? Was that all? Or was it something new…something he wasn't prepared for and didn't expect? He shook his head, disgusted and ashamed of himself. His rightful place was by his sister's side. He would just have to act as if Schuyler did not exist.