Even though Ferion had promised to attend her at the masque, she couldn’t find him anywhere. At least, she noted, the Great Beast had not yet arrived. His absence might be the only bright spot in what was rapidly turning into a tense, wretched evening. Flanked on either side by two attendants, she forced herself to take the path at a leisurely seeming stroll, while she searched the laughing crowd. Blast Ferion. She shouldn’t have taken him at his word. Instead, she should have insisted he accompany her directly from their rented house in Grosvenor Square. But she had wanted so much to trust him. She had wanted to believe he had finally gotten through the worst. As she searched for her stepson, huge snowflakes wafted through the air, each one sparkling with magic. No matter what the weather was like throughout the rest of England, for the last several years on winter solstice, snow always fell in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
