In the months since they'd first kissed, Sera had continued to flirt with Don Juan Dempsey, whenever she felt she could get away with it. But she had not quite gotten what she wanted from the affair yet, other than a slow-build of romantic and sexual tension within her — because she could not risk having him over with her staff, and had not found any other venues to be available to her yet. A masquerade at the Dempsey house would offer new possibilities, because they were at his house and he was sure to know all the places to hide there.

Her clothes were old in style, and vaguely Venetian, in blues and golds that matched her mask. Desdemona, maybe — one of the wronged and distant women of Othello, certainly. She looked like a wife here, nothing incredible, nothing to draw much notice — she was only trying to get one person's notice.

Predictably, it did not take long for Henry to abandon her. Predictably, it was scarcely a beat after that that Dempsey was over her shoulder. Sera turned her head towards him, a smirk on her face. "I don't believe I have," she said easily, "It seems like a lovely home. Very adventurous."

The estate reminded her, charmingly, of a castle — a real one, not the one she was often so unsettled in.