Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 74
Winterly passed the plague doctors with staid equanimity and lead her down a dextral stone stairway, the darkness ever and anon interrupted by lamplight dancing morbidly off the walls. This night seemed more like a macabre pantomime than a full moon ball.
The stairway emptied the couple into a rudimentary passageway with a shallow declivity; she imagined herself being lead into the very depths of the Roman catacombs. Emma halted abruptly and pulled her hand forcibly from his arm.
Winterly turned to regard her so that his head and black horns were angled with a question.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“You are wearing a mask and a mysterious red gown, therefore, I must hazard a guess we are bound for a masquerade ball.”
“What sort of ball takes place underground?”
“The kind you may never dance at if you insist on tarrying here all night. Or do you imagine enfer lies this way?” He gestured into the darkness beyond the meagre sconce light. “Where I mean to ravish you?”
“I do,” she replied. “Your behavior thus far, you must admit, has not been wholly honorable, sir.”
“Not holy, no.”
“I must always be on my guard with you.”
An insistent, shadowy finger suddenly materialized beneath her chin and lifted her face up to his, else she’d have continued glaring at his cravat. “So suspicious,” he admonished lightly. Without awaiting a response, he closed the small distance between them and placed his lips at her ear with slow deliberation. There was a devil in his dark, lento voice. “Only quiet your mind, madam, and hearken closely…”
She did as he bade her. Her heart was beating in lively allegro, but when she closed her eyes to listen, doing her best to ignore the fact that Winterly’s lips were inching their way down towards her pulse, she caught the faint strain of music. It was almost imperceptible. It was like a discord in the unearthly weight of silence, no more natural to the ear than hearing the Hallelujah Chorus at the plutonian gates. And was that not where she was bound, on the arm of the devil beside her? To the underworld? His underworld.
“You hear it?” He pressed his lips languorously to the sensitive skin below her ear as she nodded a yes. “Nothing like a little music to steel one’s courage.”
“And nothing like a little darkness to steal a kiss,” she replied.
Winterly pulled himself away from her with an appreciative chuckle. “Touché, Miss Rose. There is time enough for stolen kisses. We’ve bided here quite long enough.” With that, he took her hand like a lover and continued on, their footfalls becoming fainter as the music loudened. “Have I told you yet how exquisite you look this evening?”
“You have now,” she said, glad of his not being able to witness the flush of pleasure beneath her mask.
“Are you ready?” There was a note of relish in his words as they reached a second set of doors.
These were opened by another pair of plague doctors. What awaited beyond the doors stole her breath. They had indeed entered an underworld—a beautiful nether realm swathed in glimmering light and riotous silk and color. It was some sort of vast, pillared undercroft. The stone walls and vaulted ceilings were bathed in a subaqueous candlelit gold. All around them a glittering array of bejeweled gowns and frightening masks moved with unearthly whimsy. Les démons de l’enfer in all their outlandish magnificence, buoyant and fluid as they spun in waves of color. Only the musicians in their black capes and matching masks were dressed in somber shades.
“We must be directly beneath the courtyard,” said Emma, leaning in so he could hear her.
“The kitchen yard,” he replied, leading them into the crush. “The other side of the south tower.”
All was bold and dark and richly vibrant. She marveled at a woman in a peacock mask of radiant emeralds who whisked past them in the waltz, the velvet of her dress a deep viridian. Emma’s gaze flew from one dancer to the next—to a Cytherean beauty, her hair as fiery as her garnet gown and her eyes concealed by a black strip of gauze and spangles. Then to an ice queen in dark silver crape, her skirts billowing like a storm as she twirled, her full mask of glittering diamonds winking. Her caped partner was equally impressive in his checkered red and black mask with its long sneering nose.
Emma gave a startled gasp as a man in a red vulpine mask leapt at her with alarming precipitance.
He laughed like a jackal as he frisked about. “‘O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm that flies in the night, in the howling storm, has found out thy bed of crimson joy. And his dark secret love does thy life destroy!’” With a vulgar whoop and a valedictory salute, he then slunk away.
Winterly’s smirk beneath the dragon horns was disconcerting as he watched the leering fox gambol away. “I’ve always liked that poem.”
“Who was that?” she asked, realizing belatedly that she’d moved closer to Winterly. Ironic really, for the dragon was far and away more frightening than the fox.
“William Blake,” said Winterly unnecessarily.
“I meant the man in the fox mask, not the author of the verse.”
“Ah, but that is the point of a masquerade, Miss Rose—we are unrestrained behind our masks and at liberty to do and say what we please; the mystery remains until we choose to remove the disguise.”
“I never really knew quite what to make of that poem.” To own the truth, it had quite disturbed her to be thus serenaded by a fool in a frightful mask. It had seemed more than just some passing lark, and the cunning fox had as good as uttered her name. Like that old crone who’d waylaid Milli at Vauxhall.
“The beauty of poetry,” said Winterly, “is that we may