As the dance ended, Alice’s hand was quickly claimed for the next by a masked young man. After that, she seemed to move from partner to partner. He contented himself by propping up a pillar and watching her and listening to the easy chatter of her assumed French accent which covered her still frequent mistakes in grammar.

The ballroom at the Hall was much as he remembered it, although all the masked faces, with the exception of the present Duke and Duchess, were strange. He felt suddenly homesick for the old days. He had had little freedom since Agnes’s death since he had only survived her by one month. It would have been delightful to have married again, someone young and charming.

He became aware that he had been joined by Alice. “The next dance is a waltz and I do not know how to perform it,” she whispered.

“We shall watch,” he answered, “and mayhap we shall learn.”

After a few moments, he bent his head close to hers and murmured, “It is easy. We shall perform. This new dance pleases me. How it would have shocked my contemporaries.”

He swept her into his arms and moved off with her across the floor while lights and colors and music swirled into one heady confection in Alice’s bedazzled brain. All she knew was that he had his hand around her waist and now nothing could touch her, nothing could reach her.

When the waltz finished, she stared up at him with eyes like drowned violets. He looked down at her, his own eyes hooded and enigmatic.

“It is time to go, child,” he said. “The unmasking is about to begin.”

“I say,” said Lord Harold Webb, a tall handsome buck to his weedy friend, Harry Russell, “tell me I’m seeing things. That demned pretty little French chit and that tall fellow with the yaller hair just walked through the wall behind those cursed palms.”

“You’re seeing things,” said Harry cheerfully. “Foxed again!”

Back in the hidden room, Alice pirouetted round and round to the sound of the music in her head, watched by the Duke, who was unloading the supper which he had stolen from the ball.

“You are ready to fly the coop and test your wings,” commented the Duke.

“When must I leave?” asked Alice, suddenly sad.

“Tomorrow.”

“So soon?”

“The sooner the better,” he said. “You must set up an establishment and find a respectable lady to live with you.”

“Why can’t you live with me?” Alice burst out.

“It would not answer,” he said angrily, uncorking a bottle of champagne with a brisk pop. “Whoever heard of anyone ever living with a ghost?”

“Whoever heard of a ghost?” said Alice gloomily. “I mean not the kind with chains and sheets, but a living ghost.”