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Tabitha blinked, partly to push back the tears threatening to spill down her face and partly in shock.
Being who you were born to be...?
She had spent the past four years trying her hardest to forget her birth right. The memories were too painful. All she could do was tackle each day as it came and look to the future.
Her heart thumped. Did Mrs Coulter know...?
The twinkling eyes were steady on hers. If Mrs Coulter knew Tabitha’s true identity, she was keeping her cards close to her chest.
But Tabitha had never hidden her true self. Her name was the only thing her stepmother had been unable to take from her. She’d taken everything else, though. Her home, her education, her money, her future...
‘Take a look in my wardrobe. Go on, dear.’
On legs that felt strangely drugged, Tabitha stepped through to the bedroom.
‘Right-hand door,’ Mrs Coulter called.
‘What am I looking for?’
‘You’ll see.’
And she did see.
When she opened the right-hand door of the wardrobe, all that hung on the rail was a floor-length ball gown that could have leapt off the pages of a fairy tale.
She stretched out a hand and ran her fingers over the delicate material, her eyes soaking up the pastel-pale pinks and greens overlaid with embellished gold-threaded patterns and encrusted with jewels and the palest of pink roses. An eighteenth-century princess would have been thrilled to wear something so beautiful.
On the shelf above it lay a pair of white-gold high-heeled shoes, a white eye-mask with gold detailing and gold braiding around its edges and a plume of wispy pale pink feathers shaped into a flower on the left cheek.
Hands now shaking, she took hold of a shoe and examined it in awe.
It was her size.
Dazed, she went back to the living area of the suite. ‘How...?’
Mrs Coulter smiled. ‘A lady has her ways.’
‘I can’t. I wish...’ She took a deep breath and hugged the shoe to her chest. ‘I wish I could go but I can’t. If I get caught, I’ll be fired. We’ve all been warned.’ And warned unambiguously. Any member of staff caught trying to enter the ball would have their contract of employment terminated.
But Mrs Coulter was not to be deterred. ‘We will make you unrecognisable. No one will know it’s you—no one will be expecting you to be there. In my experience, people see what they want and expect to see. They will not see a chambermaid. Come back here at five. I’ve arranged for a beautician to join us. She will turn you into a princess. And then tomorrow you can join me for lunch and tell me all about it.’ She gave a tinkle of laughter. ‘I admit, I’m not being entirely altruistic. I’m too old and my knees too shot to go to the ball myself but I can live it vicariously through you.’
Hot tears prickled the back of Tabitha’s eyes. No one had ever done such a thing for her before.
‘Do not be afraid, my dear. Tonight you will be a princess and you will go to the ball, and I will not hear another word of argument about it.’
* * *
Giannis Basinas left the apartment he used as a base when in Vienna and strolled up the rose-hedged path that led to his hotel. He could have earmarked one of the suites for his own use but he preferred to give himself at least an illusion of privacy. Privacy was a concept frequently ignored by his large, exuberant family.
It was partly down to his family that he was making this walk now dressed in an all-black, leather swallowtail suit and hosting this masquerade ball. His sisters had been dropping hints since he’d turned thirty-five that he needed to find a new wife. He’d come to the reluctant conclusion that they were right.
When his oldest friend Alessio Palvetti had pulled in a favour owed from their school days and asked him to host a masquerade ball, using a specific event team to manage it, Giannis had figured the ball could work in his favour. He could repay his debt and let his sisters believe he was serious about finding a wife. Everyone would be happy.
He didn’t hold much hope that his ideal woman would emerge tonight but this was as good an opportunity to find her as any. He’d even let Niki, his youngest sister and the biggest socialite in his family, select fifty of the four hundred guests to invite. These fifty guests were unmarried women, their wealth determined by their ability to pay the forty-thousand-euro price tag he’d set the tickets at.
If Giannis was going to marry again, he had three criteria. Firstly, and most importantly, his potential wife had to be independently rich. He would not make the same mistake as he’d made in his first marriage. Secondly, she must be of childbearing age, a criterion that was self-explanatory. Thirdly, and least importantly, she must be pleasant to look at. She didn’t have to be a model, or even be particularly beautiful, but if he was going to spend the rest of his life with one woman he would prefer it to be with someone he found attractive.
Slipping through a rear door into the hotel he’d bought less than two years ago, he made his way to the ballroom.
Giannis’s business interests were varied but mostly concentrated in shipping and property across the globe. This former palace he’d spent millions on renovating into a world-class hotel was his first venture into the tourism industry outside his Greek home. As a status symbol, there was none better.
About to open a side door into the ballroom, he spotted a female guest on the cantilevered stairs. Her fingers trailed the railing as she made her descent. Her other hand clutched the gold invitation all ball guests were required to show on their arrival.
There was something hesitant about her graceful walk that made him look twice.
He looked at her. Then looked again.
Although much of her face was hidden behind a white-gold eye-mask with a plume of dusky-pink feathers on the left cheek, there was something about her that set his pulses racing.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away.
Her beautiful dress, all delicate pale greens, dusky pinks, golds and jewels that sparkled when the light caught them, was strapless and form-fitting to the waist then puffed out to fall in layers to her hidden feet.
She looked like a princess.
She could be a princess.
He imagined the dazzling circle the skirt of the dress would make on the dance floor...
Leaving the door he’d been about to enter, he approached her as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
She was shorter than he’d thought and, up close, even more ravishing. Honey-blonde hair had been coiled into an elegant knot at the base of a graceful neck adorned with a gold choker necklace covered in jewels, and roses that matched her dress and the drop earrings hanging from the lobes of her pretty ears.
She was the most exquisite creature he had ever set eyes on.
‘You look lost,’ he said in English.
A pair of cornflower-blue eyes met his from behind the mask.
Full, heart-shaped lips curved into a hesitant smile.
‘Do you need directions to the room the guests are meeting in? Or are you waiting for someone?’ She wore a glimmering diamond on her right hand but there was no ring on her left.
She shook her head in obvious shyness.
‘You don’t need directions or you’re not waiting for someone?’ Or did she not understand him? It was a rare event to meet someone in his world who did not speak English.
When she finally spoke, her cut-glass English accent contained a huskiness to it. ‘I’m not waiting for anyone.’
Better and better.
He held an arm out to her. ‘Then allow me to escort you, Miss...’
‘Tabitha.’ Colour stained what he could see of her cheeks. ‘My name is Tabitha.’
‘A pleasure to meet you, Tabitha. I’m Giannis Basinas and it would be my pleasure if you would allow me to escort you to the ball.’
Tabitha could have screamed at her stupidity.
Why had she given him her real name?
She hadn’t even reached the ballroom yet and already she’d blown her cover. And with Giannis Basinas of all people!
She was supposed to be Amelia Coulter, the name on the invitation in her hand.
She should have turned Mrs Coulter’s incredibly generous offer down but she’d been caught up in the moment, her head turned by the beautiful dress, her heart aching for one night, just one night, of freedom from the unrelenting drudgery of a life spent scrubbing bathrooms and cleaning rooms.
This was the sort of ball at which, if her father had lived, she could have been a real guest. She would have been here by right, not deception.
If Giannis suspected for a moment that she was a lowly hotel employee she would be fired on the spot.
But there was no hint of recognition.
But then, he’d never looked at her before. And why would he? He employed hundreds of people at this hotel alone. Chambermaids came bottom of the pecking order, a faceless army who flitted unobtrusively through the corridors and cleaned the rich guests’ rooms.
The thought calmed her a little but it was with a heart that raced that she slipped her hand through his offered arm, then found it racing even harder.
Tall, with dark brown hair cut short at the sides and long at the top, Giannis had a nose that was too long and his chin was a little too pointed for him to be considered traditionally handsome. But there was something about him, whether it was the high cheekbones, the clear blue eyes or the full bottom lip, that drew attention.
It had drawn her attention from her first glance.
His was a face that had lived and had the lines etched in his forehead and around the eyes to prove it.
He might not be traditionally handsome but in the black leather swallowtail suit and black leather eye-mask he wore as his masquerade costume, which gave him an almost piratical air, he was devastating.
‘Which part of England are you from?’ he asked as they strolled down a wide corridor.
‘Oxfordshire,’ she answered cautiously.
‘A beautiful county.’
It was, she thought wistfully. She’d avoided the entire county since she’d been thrown out of her home. It hurt too much to think of everything she’d lost and everything she missed.
However, she smiled, nodded her agreement and prayed for a change to the conversation.
What would be even better would be an increase to the pace Giannis had set. They were walking so slowly a tortoise could have overtaken them.
Her mind raced as to how she could slip away from him before she had to hand over the invitation written in the name of a woman who was not Tabitha.
If she had left Mrs Coulter’s room a minute earlier or later she wouldn’t have bumped into the one person she’d really needed to avoid.
‘I went to university in Oxford,’ he said. ‘Boarding school at Quilton House in Wiltshire. Do you know it?’
That explained his flawless English.
‘I know of it.’ Quilton House was one of the oldest schools in the world and certainly the most expensive. Only the filthy rich could afford to send their children there. A few of her school friends’ brothers had attended it.
‘What school did you go to?’ he asked.
‘Beddingdales.’
He laughed, a deep, rumbly sound that played melodically in her ears. ‘My first girlfriend went to Beddingdales. I would ask if you knew her, but I suspect you’re a lot younger than me.’
‘Probably.’
He laughed even louder. ‘You don’t waste words, do you?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean...’
He stopped walking and fixed clear blue eyes on hers. ‘Don’t apologise. Honesty is a rare, refreshing trait in this world we live in.’
They reached the door that led into the area where the guests were to wait before the ball was declared open. In a moment she would have to hand over the invitation for her name to be confirmed on the guest list.
Her heart pounded.
She needed to slip away.
Before she could think of an excuse to flee, Giannis took hold of the hand tucked into his arm and brought it to his lips. His eyes sparkled as he razed the lightest of kisses against the knuckles. ‘I have a couple of things I need to check on before the ball starts. I will find you.’
Then he bowed his head and turned on his heel, leaving nothing but the scent of his spicy cologne in his wake.
Tabitha slowly released the breath she’d been holding and closed her eyes.
Her heart still pounded, although whether that was an effect of the kiss on her hand or the close call she’d just had she couldn’t determine.
‘Are you coming in, miss?’
The uniformed guard had opened the door for her.
She swallowed.
It wasn’t too late. She didn’t have to do this.
But then she caught sight of a waiter holding a tray of champagne and the longing in her heart overshadowed the fear.
She could stay for one glass of champagne, she reasoned. That couldn’t do any harm. One glass of champagne and then, when the ball was declared open, slip away and return to her room and the safe anonymity of her servile life.
But she would have one glass of champagne first.
