Affianced

Choose if you will have this hall floated with blood, or if you will grant me the decisive interview with my affianced bride which the laws of God and the country alike entitle me to demand.

"Never!" answered Lady Ashton, whose rage had now overcome her first surprise and terror—"never shall this man speak in private with my daughter, the affianced bride of another!"

Their relationship, closeted because Wani is nominally affianced, isn't the only secret they share: Wani has introduced Nick to cocaine, a different line of beauty and emblematic of the perilous gratifications the 1980's have seemingly underwritten.