For Infinity

CHAPTER 1

Spine straight. Head high. Perfectly planned movements. It was what was expected of her today. She adjusted the curtains back to their original position and fell back into her chair. She watched as beautiful girls in beautiful dresses rushed around the rather large powder room. Doing double takes in the mirror, each time finding a new thing they found to be wrong about themselves. A new thing to hate about themselves. To her defence, the debutante often did bring out the ugliest in most girls. All pitted against each other to be the most beautiful. The most desirable. With hopes of falling in love and having their fairy-tale like happily ever after. It was beyond Ines' understanding how she got a spot at the annual debutante but all she knew was that her mother had shaken her awake this morning and now she was here. The poor girl at an aristocratic debut ball, it did have a ring to it. This crowd was unlike what she was used to. The conversations exchanged. The posture and poise. The priorities. People who lived in a whole other world to hers, yet here she was. Sure, it bothered her, but Ines saw this as an opportunity. An opportunity to deceive her way into marriage. After all, to her marriage was nothing less or more than an economic transaction to get her mother and sister out of their poverty. A way to give her younger sisters the life their father failed to provide after dying a cowards death and leaving them with a mount of debts. Their mother, being a lady of very little words did her best but it had meant Ines had become the voice of her family. The foundation. And often the sole breadwinner, by any means capable of a woman ofcourse.

This ofcourse explained her inability to look her best friend in the eye and despite closing the curtains she still felt his gaze burning a hole through it. A filled with judgement and sadness. Sadness he felt for Ines but also the sadness Ines felt for him reflected through her eyes. Each of them knowing deep down they did not want to be her and yet both of them showed up to fulfill their duties as their parent's children. Ines knew Mason's father had dragged him to the ball to shop for an obedient wife just as Ines had to pretend to be one.

"5 minutes girls!" a stern voice called through the curtains. Ines looked down and the dress she wore. A light hue of yellow that contrasted well against her sunkissed skin which was gifted to her by her mother who hard probably used 5 months of a maid's wage to get it. Ines felt wrong wearing it, knowing what that money could have meant for her sisters. Her charcoal hair fell past her shoulders in her loose natural curls despite her protest to have it up, at which she was met with a smack to the back of her head by her mother who claimed it was rather unladylike of her. Unladylike. Seemed like a perfect word to describe Ines. Ines who often wore her hair in a tight updo, sat on the floor too often and to her mother's dismay was often caught wearing pants.

Soon around twenty girls were lined up at the top of a tall flight of stairs ready to descend at the call of their names. Names that were too long to be classified as such. Ines has merely given her first name with no other title, to which she received a line of judgy stares.

Now presenting Miss Ines, accompanied by....herself.

Ines smirked as she walked down the flight of stairs. All eyes on her, she focused on each step trying to hold herself together in the heels that pierced into her skin. They were to two sizes too small but it was all she could find hidden away in her younger sisters drawers. The bead gaze of aristocrats who were sizing up the girl who had the nerve to not be accompanied by a male counterpart burned through Ines as they turned to each other exchanging whispers and giggling arrogantly.

Ines locked eyes with Mason who was now at the bottom of the stairs two glasses of champagne in his hand. Most people had gone on to fix their attention to the girl behind Ines who seemed to be a twice removed cousin of the Princess or something like that.

"Ines you look-"

"Ridiculous? Trust me, I know Mason" she said snatching the glass of champagne and skulling it like water.

"What? I was gonna say the opposite" Mason laughed taking a dainty sip from his own glass.

"Very funny" she rolled her eyes unable to take a compliment. It had become a sort of skill for Ines, as someone who didn't get compliments all too often, she had become a professional in deflecting them on the rare occasion one was thrown her way.

"You know I offered to accompany you many times to this stupid debutant ball" Mason nudged her as they made their way to the back of the ballroom.

"Then you'll know I rejected your offer too many times" Ines nudged him back a little hard than he had done to her. "I don't need your father firing my mother because his precious son decided to take his maid's daughter to a ball as a pity date" she added.

It was true. Ines' mother had been working for Mason's family since Ines was 3 years old. Mason's father had been kind enough to hire her and allow Ines to roam freely around their grand house ever since. It was how she and Mason had become the closest friends. But after Mason's father remarried 2 years ago, his wife did not like the idea of Mason being acquainted with a 'lower class street rat' as she had many times expressed. So boundaries had subsequently been established in their friendship.

Mason shrugged as he leant against the cream coloured wall. "Why did you even agree to come here. I know you. It isn't just to make your mother happy"

Ines' eyes wandered the room. "Same reason as you"

"What? Ines?" he grabbed Ines' shoulders turning her to face him. "You don't seriously think you're going to find your true love here do you?"

Ines raised her eyebrow. "Who said anything about true love Mason. And here I thought you were my best friend who knew everything about me"

"Nobody could ever know everything about you. Too many secrets" he let go of her shoulders with a laugh.

Ines dusted smoothened her dress with her hands with an act of delicacy. "Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to mingle"