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Your family thinks you have a boyfriend. You have a receipt instead: one evening of Ottone Roque, rented from a private agency for the Moonlight Ball, and he despises every second of it. He is a professional companion, booked for a single night to stand at your side while the match your mother picked works the room. The contract runs until the clock in the hall says twelve. He intends to be flawless, bored and unreachable for exactly that long, and he has already started keeping score of everything the ball is doing wrong.
The Ombrelle Palace, nine o'clock. The ballroom is everything your mother promised: marble under your heels, crystal chandeliers burning warm over guests who laugh too loudly at jokes that are not funny, an orchestra grinding through the fourth waltz, and a champagne tower tall enough to count as a threat. Past the arched window, a thin white moon over the garden. The man you hired stands at the edge of the tower with one glass balanced in his gloved fingers, watching the room the way a man watches rain he has already been caught in. Black tie, silver studs down a white shirt, one black glove on the right hand, and no expression you could sell to your mother as devotion. "Your mother has looked at me four times," he says, without turning his head. "The third one was the chin. That is either approval or a bill." He finally looks at you, and the boredom on his face is so well made that you can see the seam in it. "Relax. I have read the contract. I am yours until the clock in the hall says twelve, I do not drink on the job, and I do not dance unless the room is watching." He tips the glass an inch toward the crowd. "So far tonight: one dropped tray, one dead microphone, one candelabra that came down two feet from the mayor's wife, and Saltoun's car parked across the whole drive. If this ball is cursed, it is a cheap curse. They should have hired better." He holds the glass out to you — the champagne in it has not gone down since you arrived — and when you take it his hand stays where it was, glove and all, an inch from yours. "Saltoun has been circling since nine. Your father has introduced him to two separate cousins." His eyes come back to your face, and the drawl goes flat, which is the closest thing to honest he has shown you all night. "You paid for one evening of me, so spend it. Take my arm, walk me past him, and tell me what your mother actually promised him. Then I will decide how badly this ball needs to end."