like mind to us. To live crimson is to live without shame.”
“Crimson,” she repeated, running out of patience. “Why the crimson? Does it represent the devil? The church? A pagan god, or demon perhaps? Is it something to do with Britannia, herself?”
She drew herself up short. Drat, she’d begun to rapid-fire questions again.
Instead of seeming frustrated or insulted, he seemed fascinated. Francesca didn’t know whether to be relieved or mortified.
“Think about the color red, Francesca. It’s the color of extremes. It captures our attention, and it warns us of danger. It represents all things visceral and primal. Blood. Danger. Violence.” He stepped in closer. “Passion, seduction, and even love. It colors the flags of nearly every powerful empire, and yet it denotes districts in which we try to contain our vice in every European culture. We give red roses when we are in love, and we see red when we are about to take a life in anger. Why, Countess, do you think that is?”
Stymied, Francesca only shook her head.
“You’ve purloined it for your own moniker, I’m told. You and your red-headed rogues.”
A beat of terror thumped behind her ribs. It wasn’t as though she hid her relationship with the Rogues, but neither did she advertise it.
If he knew about the Red Rogues … then he’d been watching her. Listening to whispers about her.
But how closely?
“Why hide behind your ridiculous masks if you do nothing to be ashamed of?” she demanded as if she didn’t already know.
His fingers tightened around his glass, his only outward show of emotion since she’d arrived. “Because.” He thrust his strong chin toward the milling crowd, even as a restlessness pervaded the room. “Our ridiculous masks remind us that behind our civility, every human is just an animal. And animals all have certain primitive understandings.”
“Such as?” She injected insouciance into her voice to cover her excitement. Finally, some answers.
“Survival is our first instinct, to be sure. Those in power convince the masses that they allow them to survive. They pretend to help, to sacrifice the good of the few for the many and so forth … but it is they who hold sway over our lives. They who squeeze the life right out of us. They take from us what we are at our most base. Our most honest and raw form.”
“What are we?” she whispered.
“Dear Francesca, we are desire.”
She was so deflated, she puffed out most of the air from her lungs before she echoed him drolly. “Desire?
“Yes.” He nodded. “We are beings of need and of want. It is that simple.”
Francesca clenched her jaw. Her thighs. Her fists. Frustration thrummed through every sinew of her body. “You mean lust?” she huffed. “Tell me you didn’t go through all of this hoopla to invite a throng of perverts to just one more Caligulan orgy.” She said this as if it was a waste of her time. As if she’d been to several and they now bored her to tears.
It was a waste. She could think of no greater rubbish than if the entire Cavendish household had been snuffed out because of the earl and countess’s adventurous sex lives.
Nothing could be so laughably tragic.
“It’s so much more than that,” Kenway insisted. “We have urges, Francesca. Instincts. Ones we are forced to quell by the strictures of society. What are we behind the frippery that confines us and the machines we create? Unapologetic carnivores. Predators. We crave dominance. Power. Glory. Blood.” He looked over at her, and his eyes seemed to glow from behind the see-through linen. “And yes. Fucking. We desire pleasure and progeny. Immortality.”
A distinct chill cooled her frustration. “And … you have convinced these people that you will give them this … freedom?” To do what?
“No, this philosophy, this council, was around long before I joined, long before I rose to power. No, Francesca, my job is not to give people these things, but to train them to take it.”
“What?” She stared at him, aghast.
He stepped closer. “If I desired you, what’s to stop me from taking you right now? Do you think these people would lift a finger? Any of them?”
She searched the crowd, noting that some of them pretended not to watch them while others were actively eavesdropping.
Sliding her fingers into her robes, she found the leather straps beneath which she’d sheathed a knife against her arm. “I would,” she said in a hard voice. “I would stop you.”
His eyes flared. “I know. That’s why you are here.”
“Is that so?” she