by Wren Weston
“Of course not. I wanted details to give you now so that I’d get details later.” Alex’s grin waned. “Did I do something wrong? I thought you’d be happy at the information. If he’s an acceptable suitor, you’ll know his interest level beforehand. Senator Dubois seemed to judge it quite high.”
Lila’s stomach turned at the implications. The name couldn’t be a coincidence. It wasn’t a hacker who had broken into the BullNet but a senator. Even worse, he had decided to intercept her at the Closing Ball. Perhaps he had leaked her activities to the chairwoman just so her mother would remove her from the security office and put her in his path.
If so, the chairwoman had played right into his hand.
How much did the Baron know about her already? How much had he told others?
Did Dubois know of the Baron’s true nature? Had he helped him work?
Perhaps it was a good thing the Baron would seek her out at the ball. She wouldn’t need to pore over Mr. Freiherr’s information any longer. She’d have him right in front of her. Tonight.
She only had to draw him out.
Lila smiled at her friend warmly. “You did very well, as always. Thank you for the information.”
Chapter 18
The chairwoman nodded at Lila’s dress and coat selection after she arrived downstairs and entered the front parlor, Alex trailing along behind. A portly woman stood beside Lila’s mother in a purple tartan dress and clapped. “Marvelous choice,” she said in a thick Parisian accent. “The dress and cut of the coat emphasize your militia past, and the heels give you the height to look down upon all other women. You will be a warrior.”
“A coat is a coat is a coat,” Lila grumbled. “Unless it’s a blackcoat.”
“You have your work cut out for you, Madame Thayer.”
But the designer hadn’t heard the chairwoman, for Thayer had already settled upon one of the white couches in the parlor, studying how Lila’s dress and crimson coat fell. Her fingers worked quickly as she sketched on a tablet. Soon, Lila would have a closet full of dresses and whitecoats in similar styles.
At least she wouldn’t be forced to tool around a tailor’s shop, picking out fabrics and having conversations about zippers. She was now very glad that Alex had not talked her into wearing anything uncomfortable. Otherwise, she might have been stuck with several incarnations of it until the designer had time to create something more suited to her tastes.
“Jewel will come in a second car,” the chairwoman explained, marching toward the door in her elegant silvercoat. Where Lila’s cut was clean and tailored, her mother’s was loose and flowing and regal, as was her dress underneath. Two pearls dangled from her ears. “She and Senator Dubois are attending a dinner at the Massons.”
“Good, you and Pax ate together, then.”
A footman opened the front door. The pair descended the front staircase, the sun setting below the clouds as they walked.
“I know he must have enjoyed it,” Lila said.
“I wouldn’t know. He spent most of his time talking about his studies and the hospital.”
“His tutor has been pleased with his progress this year.”
“Yes, Ms. Beaumont keeps me updated. If he continues to work hard and can get over his shyness, he’ll be an asset to Wolf Industries. He might not be a senator, but if we can make a passable orator out of him, then I’m sure he’ll be instrumental in smoothing out many partnerships in the coming years.”
“It’s not just shyness, Mother. It’s grief. He doesn’t want to be an asset, anyway. You know what he wants.”
“Let’s not argue about Pax tonight.”
A crimson limo purred at the bottom of the steps.
One limo. Not two.
“Did Commander Sutton approve this?” Lila asked.
“She wanted us to go in separate limos,” her mother scoffed as they approached the car. “Randolphs do not change plans because—”
“Do you want to get shot instead of me?”
“We would look weak and afraid, Lila. Highborn do not wilt. Commander Sutton has things well in hand. If she doesn’t, she won’t earn that promotion you’re holding over her head.”
“I’m not holding it over her head,” Lila muttered, crawling into the limo. She had no intention of debating the issue while they stood out in the open, not with her mother so close.
“Why aren’t you? It’s a perfect opportunity to—”
“Not tonight, Mother. Get in the car.”
Lila’s clutch vibrated. She retrieved her palm and settled into her seat.
Pick an intelligent senator, her father had written. I want my grandchild to be smart.
The chairwoman watched her expression. “Commander Sutton wants to put a guard on you during the ball.”
“I’m sure she does, and I’m sure she knows my reply. I have no interest in being followed by a looming shadow.”
The chairwoman pursed her lips. “You are prime once more, Elizabeth. You have to take your safety more seriously—”
“Said the woman who refused to go in two limos.”
“Don’t be petulant. Contact Commander Sutton and tell her you have reconsidered.”
“No, a guard would spoil my libido.”
The chairwoman seemed poised to say more, but thankfully closed her mouth.
“Pax should return to school at some point,” Lila said, wrangling the conversation back where it should have stayed. “If he’s going to make himself into a doctor, he’ll need the push to return. You wouldn’t have let me linger in such a mood.”
“Quite right, Lila,” the chairwoman said, her gloved fingers clenched in her lap. She said nothing in response to the idea of her son becoming a doctor as the limo crawled toward the gates of Bullstow.
A hundred protestors in drab workborn coats surrounded both sides of the gate, pacing and chanting behind flimsy stanchions. They carried homemade signs and shouted “Where is the boy?” at each limo as it rolled past. Some had scrawled Justice for Oskar in fat block letters. Others had written Bullstow? Bullshit! or Down with Highborn Slavers. Quite a few had donned red bands around their upper arms.
Suddenly a hundred balloons filled with liquid pegged the black limo before them.
Chairwoman Holguín’s limo, if Lila had to guess. Going to the ball incognito had not paid off for her.
“Couldn’t they have done something about these people? It is the Closing Ball.”
“It’s a protest, Mother. I believe that was the point.”
“What point? It’s a national holiday, and this is everyone they could muster? It’s not much of a protest, if you ask me.”
Lila’s clutch vibrated once again, and she checked her palm’s screen. Pick a handsome senator. There’s a better chance of a cute baby that way.
“I’ll talk to Pax about school,” Lila said, dropping her palm into her purse as they pulled up to Bullstow’s ballroom. “I’ll figure out a way to convince him that returning is his idea even if it means changing schools, but I need you to back me up. Trevor wouldn’t have wanted this.”
“No, he wouldn’t have,” the chairwoman agreed as they disembarked. The protestors grew louder now without the limo to mute their cries. “I have every confidence in you, Lila. As for returning to your own duties, I thought you might take half-days for the next few weeks. Spend your evenings relaxing with whatever new friend you make at the ball. It will give you some time to adjust to your new position.”
Lila did not reply to the insinuation.
Bullstow’s grand ballroom loomed before them, a freestanding building of marble before a long silver carpet. Dancing couples had been carved into the exterior walls by several masters, though some dancers had turned to other games, locked in various stages of undress. The lovers gripped their partners flesh so tightly that veins protruded from their forearms. Arouse
d skin bunched between their fingers.
They all looked so alive, their faces locked in ecstasy and passion. In truth, Lila had lost her virginity not too long after staring at the sculptures one summer afternoon. It hadn’t been that difficult to find a willing Bullstow boy who was keen to experiment too.
Lila supposed that was the point.
Cameras flashed from across the street, a row of poorly dressed paparazzi and journalists shouting over one another. When the group saw her, the cameras stopped, but the shouting increased to a fervor.
“Have you accepted a role as heir?” one shouted.
“Did someone try to shoot you this morning?”
“Did you consider staying home rather than attending the ball?”
Her mother ignored them.
Lila followed her example, her eyes straying across the roofs across from the Bullstow compound. If her would-be assassin had managed to find one sniper rifle, another might not be too hard to locate.
She wouldn’t be hard to find, either, not when she’d draped herself in crimson cloth.
But no shots rang out as she and her mother stepped onto the silver carpet, each side lined by young boys with close-cropped hair and well-tied cravats. All wore serious expressions and burgundy breeches and woolen coats, embroidered with a golden rose upon their breasts. The flower was the symbol of Bullstow, and the only coat of arms they’d ever known, for they belonged to no family and all families at once.
The boys hid their faces behind bouquets of burgundy and white roses, but from time to time, one of the boys would rush out at an heir or chairwoman and present a gift from his bouquet with a black-gloved hand. Even the youngest boys of seven and eight managed the task alone. Lila would have to offer a compliment to the senators later for the boys’ behavior. She never could have been that still and serious for so long at that age.
No roses came for Lila and her mother.
The farther the pair advanced, the older the boys became, until they reached a section of young men dressed in golden coats, the recent graduates of Bullstow, now interning in their chosen professions. These young men held their bouquets at their chests, keeping their faces free of petals.
Lila finally spied a familiar face. Shiloh’s brunette hair had been slicked back, and his blue eyes followed her movements. He had noticed her since the limo, had been waiting for the pair to reach them. His delicate mouth twisted when Lila turned toward him, and he bowed low, holding up his bouquet for the pair to choose a bud.
Lila ignored the roses. She kissed her little brother on the cheek, for she had not seen him in several weeks. “Are you having a good time tonight, spying on all the ladies?” she whispered, remembering how keen he was to attend his first Closing Ball. Occasionally younger heirs plucked a golden coat from the line and took them inside, sometimes going home with them thereafter.
She’d even done it once as a young heir, mostly to annoy her mother.
Shiloh blushed and cocked a worried brow.
“I’m fine. Don’t you know I can handle myself by now?”
He nodded, then jerked his chin at her coat.
“Senator Dubois has filled you in?”
He grinned, nodded, and slipped a white rose into her fingers, then retreated back to his place. Another boy behind them darted out to present another heir with a rose.
“You’re not to speak to them, Lila, you know that. You’ll get him into trouble,” the chairwoman murmured, fingering her own rose as they continued on their way.
“That’s a myth.”
Her mother turned a questioning brow to Lila. “Is that so? I’ve always wanted to know all the frivolous bits of trivia about Bullstow. Senators never answer direct questions about this place, and I can never get a good read about what goes on inside. It’s maddening.”
“You misunderstand Bullstow if you think any of this is frivolous.”
“I suppose it’s from all that sneaking about that you used to do. Still do.”
Lila felt the tug of her palm. Make sure he’s kind and a good conversationalist. Funny too. Neither of us want to endure a jerk or an insufferable bore for the next…
“Oracle’s light!” Lila muttered.
“What is it?” The chairwoman read the palm’s screen and barely restrained a chuckle. “Ah, how adorable. Your father thinks he’s helping.” She pulled out her own palm and tapped on her screen, far faster than Lila could ever hope to follow, then slipped it into her clutch.
Lila did the same.
The pair did not have to stand in line for very long at the ballroom’s entrance. The valedictorian of last year’s class at Bullstow, now a page for Senator Forrester, stood ramrod straight at the door, announcing each guest as they stepped forward. He was dressed in gray breeches and a finely tailored golden coat. A gray vest peeked from underneath, and a silken cravat completed the look. His brunette waves reached to his chin. He’d already started growing it out in preparation for his entrance into High House. All in all, it was a good showing for the boy, so long as he did not misspeak during his duties, for every chairwoman and her daughters would know his name before the night was out.
If he was lucky, he’d have a partner for the season if he caught the eye of one of those young daughters.
He had more of a chance than Shiloh, at least.
Lila shook her head at her mother before she could even say a word. A boy of nineteen was far too young for her.
The boy seemed to understand, though he still blushed charmingly. “Heir or chief?” he asked politely, confused that Lila had not worn her usual blackcoat and formal uniform.
“Neither.”
The boy nodded and cleared his throat. “Chairwoman and CEO Beatrice Ophelia Masson-Randolph of Wolf Industries, and daughter, Elizabeth Victoria Lemaire-Randolph,” the boy called out over the chatter. His voice filled the ballroom without a microphone and rang with perfect elocution.
Several New Bristol and Saxony senators turned at the announcement, likely wanting proof of the gossip that Chief Randolph had set aside her blackcoat for the season. The rest of the room stirred and turned toward the pair with shocked eyes and wide mouths. They were either so new to politics that they had few contacts who mattered, or they were slipping out of the senate due to the lack of them. The rest of the crowd was a different matter. The din hushed, and Lila tried not to laugh at how many important families had been thrown into a feverish whispering.
It made for quite a segregated ballroom.
Lila’s eyes trailed across the groups of senators, their tailored coats and breeches in the color of their respective city senates. Silver medallions displayed the towns’ symbols around their necks. Scattered among them were the black Saxony coats and gray vests of the state High House. Burnished antique silver roses dropped to their chests in place of city medallions.
The men hung apart from the women, but only because the latter clustered together into groups by hue. The ballroom was a field of color, dotted by an assortment of whitecoats and silvercoats, donned atop dresses that spanned the spectrum from red to yellow to green to violet, and every shade in between. The monochromatic coats of those who were neither chairwoman nor prime matched their family’s color or complemented it.
Starlight filtered inside the ballroom from the glass ceiling. Waiters carried trays with crystal wine glasses and champagne flutes from group to group, and tables laden with pastries and fruit crowded in the back. Thousands of roses lent the air their scent, for bouquets had been stashed on every surface.
For once, roses could not outshine their surroundings. Artists had painted the walls inside the grand ballroom with the same motif as outside. The painted couples had forgone most of their clothes and, in some instances, beds. Even the balcony overlooking the dance floor had not escaped such treatment, though most of the lovers tarried there with no clothes at all.
It was all highly inspirational.
Lila ignored the art and the fevered whispering, for somewhere in the press of bodies and color lurked the Red Baron, the one man who would seek her out before the night was through.
And she had no idea which one he’d be.
The only thing she did know was that he’d be eager and impatient.
He wouldn’t be the only one, though, especially if she added irritated into the mix. The New Bristol heirs stared at Lila as if she had betrayed them in some way. She focused on one particularly harsh expression, the new chairwoman of Web Corp.
Lila winked.
Joanna Weberly clenched her little sister’s arm and bared her teeth.
Lila’s mother had not noticed the exchange. She touched Lila’s back and steered her deeper inside the ballroom. “Come, let us find some champagne.”
Once drinks had been procured off the ubiquitous silver-trayed and tuxedoed servants, the chairwoman installed herself on a leather chair in a nook far away from the entrance. It was the first time Lila had ever seen her mother sit at a Closing Ball.
“I assumed you’d have us seated right before the entrance. That way you could offer your opinion of each man as he was announced,” Lila said, sitting beside her mother. She laid her rose upon the armrest.
“How tedious. I have no interest in sitting through the introductions of so many heirs and senators who have no potential. Eligible men of quality will flutter around us, waiting to be introduced. I will let you know my opinions then.”
“Not in front of them, I hope.”
The chairwoman ignored her. “It’s a pity that I did not force you to attend more of these. It would be easier if you knew more of the senators, but perhaps it’s better that you aren’t swayed by years of friendship and feelings. It’s better to rely on practicality in these matters.”
“Yes, sex and breeding through practicality,” Lila said, and sipped her champagne, knowing she’d need another soon.
“At least you’ve retained your judge’s position in New Bristol. Have you had your eye on a New Bristol senator, by any chance? Perhaps a promising young man who would benefit from your direction?”