Belgravia (2 page)

“I hope you won’t talk like this to Lord Bellasis.”

Mrs. Trenchard’s face softened slightly. “My dear”—she took her daughter’s hand in hers—“beware of castles in the air.”

Sophia snatched her fingers back. “Of course, you won’t believe him capable of honorable intentions.”

“On the contrary, I am sure Lord Bellasis is an honorable man. He is certainly a very pleasant one.”

“Well, then.”

“But he is the eldest son of an earl, my child, with all the responsibilities such a position entails. He cannot choose his wife only to suit his heart. I am not angry. You’re both young and good-looking, and you have enjoyed a little flirtation that has harmed neither of you. So far.” Her emphasis on the last two words was a clear indication of where she was headed. “But it must end before there is any damaging talk, Sophia, or you will be the one to suffer, not he.”

“And it doesn’t tell you anything? That he has secured us invitations to his aunt’s ball?”

“It tells me that you are a lovely girl and he wishes to please you. He could not have managed such a thing in London, but in Brussels everything is colored by war, and so the normal rules do not apply.”

This last irritated Sophia more than ever. “You mean that by the normal rules we are not acceptable as company for the Duchess’s friends?”

Mrs. Trenchard was, in her way, quite as strong as her daughter. “That is exactly what I mean, and you know it to be true.”

“Papa would not agree.”

“Your father has successfully traveled a long way, longer than most people could even imagine, and so he does not see the natural barriers that will prevent him going much further. Be content with who we are. Your father has done very well in the world. It is something for you to be proud of.”

The door opened and Mrs. Trenchard’s maid came in, carrying a dress for the evening. “Am I too early, ma’am?”

“No, no, Ellis. Come in. We were finished, weren’t we?”

“If you say so, Mama.” Sophia left the room, but the set of her chin did not mark her as one of the vanquished.

It was obvious from the way that Ellis went about her duties in pointed silence that she was burning with curiosity as to what the row had been about, but Anne let her dangle for a few minutes
before she spoke, waiting while Ellis unfastened her afternoon dress, allowing her to slip it away from her shoulders.

“We have been invited to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball on the fifteenth.”

“Never!” Mary Ellis was usually more than adept at keeping her feelings concealed, but this amazing information had caught her off guard. She recovered quickly. “That is to say, we should make a decision on your gown, ma’am. I’ll need time to prepare it, if it’s to be just so.”

“What about the dark blue silk? It hasn’t been out too much this season. Maybe you could find some black lace for the neck and sleeves to give it a bit of a lift.” Anne Trenchard was a practical woman but not entirely devoid of vanity. She had maintained her figure, and with her neat profile and auburn hair she could certainly be called handsome. She just did not let her awareness of it make her a fool.

Ellis knelt to hold open a straw-colored taffeta evening dress for her mistress to step into. “And jewels, ma’am?”

“I hadn’t really thought. I’ll wear what I’ve got, I suppose.” She turned to allow the maid to start fastening the frock with gilded pins down the back. She had been firm with Sophia, but she didn’t regret it. Sophia lived in a dream, like her father, and dreams could get people into trouble if they were not careful. Almost in spite of herself, Anne smiled. She’d said that James had come a long way, but sometimes she doubted that even Sophia knew quite how far.

“I expect Lord Bellasis arranged the tickets for the ball?” Ellis glanced up from her position at Anne Trenchard’s feet, changing her mistress’s slippers.

She could see at once that her the question had annoyed Mrs. Trenchard. Why should a maid wonder aloud at how they had been included on such an Olympian guest list? Or why they were invited to anything, for that matter. She chose not to answer and ignored the question. But it made her ponder the strangeness of their lives in Brussels and how things had altered for them since James had caught the eye of the great Duke of Wellington. It was true that no matter the shortages, whatever the ferocity of the fighting, however the countryside
had been laid bare, James could always conjure up supplies from somewhere. The Duke called him “the Magician,” and so he was, or seemed to be. But his success had only fanned his overweening ambition to scale the unscalable heights of Society, and his social climbing was getting worse. James Trenchard, son of a market trader, whom Anne’s own father had forbidden her to marry, thought it the most natural thing in the world that they should be entertained by a duchess. She would have called his ambitions ridiculous, except that they had the uncanny habit of coming true.

Anne was much better educated than her husband—as the daughter of a schoolteacher she was bound to be—and when they met, she was a catch dizzyingly high above him, but she knew well enough that he had far outpaced her now. Indeed, she had begun to wonder how much further she could hope to keep up with his fantastical ascent; or, when the children were grown, whether she should retire to a simple country cottage and leave him to battle his way up the mountain alone.

Ellis was naturally aware that her mistress’s silence meant she had spoken out of turn. She thought about saying something flattering to work her way back in, but then decided to remain quiet and let the storm blow itself out.

The door opened and James looked around it. “She’s told you, then? He’s done it.”

Anne glanced at her maid. “Thank you, Ellis. If you could come back in a little while?”

Ellis retreated. James could not resist a smile. “You tell me off for having ideas above my station, yet the way you dismiss your maid puts me in mind of the Duchess herself.”

Anne bristled. “I hope not.”

“Why? What have you got against her?”

“I have nothing against her, for the simple reason that I do not know her, and nor do you.” Anne was keen to inject a note of reality into this absurd and dangerous nonsense. “Which is why we should not allow ourselves to be foisted on the wretched woman, taking up places in her crowded ballroom that would more properly have been given to her own acquaintance.”

But James was too excited to be talked down. “You don’t mean that?”

“I do, but I know you won’t listen.”

She was right. She could not hope to dampen his joy. “What a chance it is, Annie! You know the Duke will be there? Two dukes, for that matter. My commander and our hostess’s husband.”

“I suppose.”

“And reigning princes, too.” He stopped, full to bursting with the excitement of it all. “James Trenchard, who started at a stall in Covent Garden, must get himself ready to dance with a princess.”

“You will not ask any of them to dance. You would only embarrass us both.”

“We’ll see.”

“I mean it. It’s bad enough that you encourage Sophia.”

James frowned. “You don’t believe it, but the boy is sincere. I’m sure of it.”

Anne shook her head impatiently. “You are nothing of the sort. Lord Bellasis may even think he’s sincere, but he’s out of her reach. He is not his own master, and nothing proper can come of it.”

There was a rattle in the streets, and she went to investigate. The windows of her bedroom overlooked a wide and busy thoroughfare. Below, some soldiers in scarlet uniforms, the sun bouncing off their gold braid, were marching past. How strange, she thought, with evidence of imminent fighting all around, that we should be discussing a ball.

“I don’t know as much.” James would not give up his fancies easily.

Anne turned back toward the room. Her husband had assumed an expression like a cornered four-year-old. “Well, I do. And if she comes to any harm through this nonsense, I will hold you personally responsible.”

“Very well.”

“As for blackmailing the poor young man into begging his aunt for invitations, it is all so unspeakably humiliating.”

James had had enough. “You won’t spoil it. I won’t allow you to.”

“I don’t need to spoil it. It will spoil itself.”

That was the end. He stormed off to change for dinner, and she rang the bell for Ellis’s return.

Anne was unhappy with herself. She did not like to quarrel, and yet there was something about the whole episode she felt undermined by. She liked her life. They were rich now, successful, sought after in the trading community of London, and yet James insisted on wrecking things by always wanting more. She must be pushed into an endless series of rooms where they were not liked or appreciated. She would be forced to make conversation with men and women who secretly—or not so secretly—despised them. And all of this when, if James would only allow it, they could have lived in an atmosphere of comfort and respect. But even as she thought these things, she knew she couldn’t stop her husband. No one could. That was the nature of the man.

So much has been written about the Duchess of Richmond’s ball over the years that it has assumed the splendor and majesty of the coronation pageant of a mediaeval queen. It has figured in every type of fiction, and each visual representation of the evening has been grander than the one that went before. Henry O’Neil’s painting of 1868 has the ball taking place in a vast and crowded palace, lined with huge marble columns, packed with seemingly hundreds of guests weeping in sorrow and terror and looking more glamorous than a chorus line at Drury Lane. Like so many iconic moments of history, the reality was quite different.

The Richmonds had arrived in Brussels partly as a cost-cutting exercise, to keep living expenses down by spending a few years abroad, and partly as a show of solidarity with their great friend the Duke of Wellington, who had made his headquarters there. Richmond himself, a former soldier, was to be given the task of organizing the defense of Brussels, should the worst happen and the enemy invade. He accepted. He knew the work would be largely administrative, but it was a job that needed to be done, and it would give him the satisfaction of feeling that he was part of the war effort and not simply an idle onlooker. As he knew well enough, there were plenty of those in the city.

The palaces of Brussels were in limited supply, and most were already spoken for, and so finally they settled on a house formerly occupied by a fashionable coachbuilder. It was on the rue de la Blanchisserie, literally “the street of the laundry,” causing Wellington to christen the Richmonds’ new home the Wash House, a joke the Duchess enjoyed rather less than her husband. What we would call the coachbuilder’s showroom was a large, barnlike structure to the left of the front door, reached through a small office where customers had once discussed upholstery and other optional extras but that the memoirs of the Richmonds’ third daughter, Lady Georgiana Lennox, transmogrified into an “anteroom.” The space where the coaches had been placed on display was wallpapered with roses on trellis, and the room was deemed sufficient for a ball.

The Duchess of Richmond had taken her whole family with her to the Continent, and the girls especially were aching for some excitement, and so a party was planned. Then, at the beginning of June, Napoléon, who had escaped from his exile on Elba earlier that year, left Paris and came looking for the allied forces. The Duchess had asked Wellington whether it was quite in order for her to continue with her pleasure scheme, and she was assured that it was. Indeed, it was the Duke’s express wish that the ball should go ahead, as a demonstration of English sangfroid, to show plainly that even the ladies were not much disturbed by the thought of the French emperor on the march and declined to put off their entertainment. But of course, that was all very well…

“I hope this isn’t a mistake,” said the Duchess for the twentieth time in an hour as she cast a searching glance in the looking glass. She was quite pleased with what she saw: a handsome woman in early middle age dressed in pale cream silk and still capable of turning heads. Her diamonds were superb, even if there was some discussion among her friends as to whether the originals had been replaced by paste replicas as part of the economy drive.

“It’s too late for that sort of talk.” The Duke of Richmond was half amused to find himself in this situation. They had seen Brussels
as something of an escape from the world, but to their surprise the world had come with them. And now his wife was giving a party with a guest roll that could scarcely be rivaled in London, just as the town was bracing itself for the sound of French cannons. “That was a very good dinner. I shan’t be able to eat the supper when it comes.”

“You will.”

“I can hear a carriage. We should go downstairs.” He was an agreeable man, the Duke, a warm and affectionate parent adored by his children and strong enough in himself to take on one of the daughters of the notorious Duchess of Gordon, whose antics had kept Scotland in gossip for years. He was aware there were plenty at the time who thought he could have made an easier choice and probably lived an easier life, but, all in all, he was not sorry. His wife was extravagant—there was no arguing with that—but she was good-natured, good-looking, and clever. He was glad he had chosen her.

There were a few early arrivals in the small drawing room, Georgiana’s anteroom, through which the guests were obliged to pass on their way to the ballroom. The florists had done well, with huge arrangements of pale pink roses and white lilies, all with their stamens neatly clipped to spare the women from the stain of pollen, backed with high foliage in shades of green, lending the coachbuilder’s apartments a grandeur that they lacked in daylight, and the shimmering glow of the many candelabra cast the proceedings in a subtly flattering light.

The Duchess’s nephew, Edmund, Viscount Bellasis, was talking to Georgiana. They walked over together to her parents. “Who are these people that Edmund has forced you to invite? Why don’t we know them?”

Lord Bellasis cut in. “You will know them after tonight.”

“You’re not very forthcoming,” said Georgiana.