Masquerade/Rivals/Heiress [antikvár]

1 She sipped at the wine in her glass and watched with marked indifference the lewd gyrations of a short, fat man garbed in the costume of Bacchus, a wreath of grape leaves encircling his bald head and a toga stretched tautly around his protruding stomach. His partner wore a simple black cocktail dress, a collection of ribbons and bows in her hair, and festive makeup that included glittering pink eye shadow and blue stripes on her cheeks. Near them, a woman in a high, powdered wig, a fake mole, and a gown from the court of Louis XVI danced with a man in a red tuxedo with devil's horns on his head. Turning from the sight, she let her gaze wander over the hotel's renowned rooftop garden, ablaze with light from colored lanterns strung all around, tiny fairy lights wound through the potted plants and trees, and votive candles on all the tables. Tonight it was the site of a private masked party—one of those intimate little affairs with two hundred or so guests, many in costume but some, like herself, choosing only a mask. Hers happened to be an elaborately feathered, hand-held one in amber satin that matched the dress and fur-lined stole she wore. It was lowered now, revealing the sculpted lines of her face, its expression untouched by the band's driving rock music, the laughter, the voices that filled the night air, a babble of French and Italian with a smattering of German, Dutch, Swiss, and English rising here and there—voices of people caught up in the party madness that gripped Nice, the undisputed queen city of France's Côte d'Azur, the party madness of Carnival that encouraged its revelers to celebrate all that was flesh, to don masks and shed inhibitions, to conceal and reveal. Reveal. She finally looked at him, feeling the anger rise in her throat— along with the hurt and bitterness of disillusionment. He stood some thirty feet from her, his face partially hidden by the black satin mask he wore, fashioned to resemble a pirate's eye patch. A pirate—criminal of the high seas. My God, how appropriate, she thought. Looting, plundering, destroying in the name of —there was only one word for it—greed. She took a quick sip of the wine, but it couldn't wash away the disgust, the revulsion she felt. Her fingers tightened on the glass's slender stem. What was she doing at this party? Why was she going through the motions of pretending everything was all right when it wasn't—when nothing would ever be all right again?