And since a vampire couldn’t enter a home uninvited, Victoria presumed he or she had arrived under a mask of some sort, pretending to be one of the invitees. Which would make it even more difficult to identify the villain.

She’d pushed her way between a milkmaid juggling two, thankfully empty, pails and a doublet-garbed Romeo when she suddenly came face to face with the golden-haired lute player.

“Why, my dear Venator,” he murmured, slipping his hand around her arm in the crowd, “how delighted I am that you should have followed me so quickly. Shall we slip away to finish the…discussion…we began at the Chalice?”

“Sebastian,” she replied, tugging her arm discreetly away so as not to draw attention. If her mother saw her tête-à-tête with a man who not only wasn’t the Marquess of Rockley, but was also without a title at all, she’d come barreling over to separate them immediately. “What are you doing here?”

She didn’t know much about Sebastian—particularly whether or not he should be trusted—but one thing she did know was that he wasn’t the vampire she sought.

“Why, I’m attending a masquerade ball…the same as you, I presume. What a delight to see you here, ma chér,although I must admit that your costume could be considered in poor taste…considering the fact that her majesty met a most unpleasant end. According to my Grandfather Beauregard, it was rather a bloody incident.”

She drew back a bit. Was that some sort of warning? A renewed prickle lifted the hair at the back of her neck, reminding her that she had other business to attend to. “Why are you here?” she asked again.

Those sensual lips smiled knowingly, lifting his mask a bit. “Perhaps I came simply because I knew that you would be here…and I find that masks, though obscuring, can also be quite…freeing.” His hand slid through the crook of her arm, easing her flush against his side—or at least as flush as he could, with inches of skirts, crinolines, and panniers between them. “I noticed that you extricated yourself from Lord Rockley quite directly, as soon as you recognized me.”