I’VE come for you—and only you.” With the whispered threat came the clamp of a man’s gloved hand on the back of Claire Lécuyer’s neck. She commanded herself not to flinch or alter her features, which she’d schooled into relaxed amusement. She’d entered this crowded ballroom of her own free will and she meant to leave that way, even if she had to take a madman with her. She started to turn, but he tightened his grasp. “You don’t take orders very well,” he chastised. He didn’t know the half of it. Despite the rush of adrenaline pumping through her veins, Claire willed her voice to remain light and lilting, in keeping with the character she’d created. Tonight she wasn’t just a former cop turned private investigator searching for a missing person—she was, in this undercover incarnation, a sweet Southern belle looking for her lover among the throng. “But the night has just begun,” she said. “Who knows who is going to end up with whom?” Two hundred years had passed since the first quadroon ball, but two weeks ago, Claire had learned that the traditions of old New Orleans had been reintroduced to modern Louisiana by sexual fetishists who called themselves Nouvelle Placage.
