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“We’ve been hoping someone nice would come along,” said the woman in the swan mask. She had a warm, husky voice and a mouth that looked made for laughing. “Come in, highwayman. Please. Let me look at you properly.”
The room was lamplit gold, with a huge four-poster and a velvet armchair in the corner. The man in the wolf mask shut the door behind us, gently, and leaned against it. Broad, dark-bearded, shoulders like a rugby player.
“I’m thirty-eight,” he said. “She’s thirty-six. Ages are allowed.”
“Thirty-three,” I said. “Lift engineer. Names are not.”
“Lift engineer,” the woman said, delighted. “Oh, that’s good. I’ve never been taken up by a professional.”
We all laughed, and the nerves went out of the room like air from a tyre.
Then she stepped close and went serious. “Here’s what we want. We’ve talked about it for a year. One night, one man, someone kind. My husband wants to watch me and then join in. I want both of you, at once. But only if you do. And you say no the second you want to, to either of us, and we say thank you and mean it.”
She took my hand and laid it flat on the swan’s white feathers over her breast. Her heart was going like a bird’s.
Behind her the wolf nodded once, eyes bright through the slits, one hand rubbing the front of his trousers.
“Yes or no, highwayman?”