Death Among the Ruins (25 page)

 

 

S
uch a business over what to wear! Arabella, after much debate both inward and outward, decided upon the blue domino and Venetian
Carnivale
mask given her by Charles, via Prince Palmadessola. Underneath this, she styled herself a well-upholstered, matronly female, with a wild attitude and gray hair, for the regent was partial to such women. Belinda, from the notes and sketches she had made in Arabella’s CIN, was stunning as Madame Murat, Queen of Naples. Charles flatly refused to wear any type of costume other than that of an elegant man about town paying a call upon his sovereign, for he planned on spending the evening at the gaming tables . . . “And who, pray, is going to take a large blue rabbit for a serious opponent?”

The siblings had themselves announced as “the three graces,” rather than use their proper names, and succeeded in descending the staircase and passing through the reception line without detection. But they had no sooner cleared the gauntlet than Belinda gave a strangled cry and fled from the room. Arabella was unable to discover the cause, despite craning her neck and attempting to see through eyeholes not designed for the purpose, until she was herself caught by the elbow.

“Hello, Miss Beaumont!” lisped Osvaldo, loud enough for half the room to hear him. “You see? I am as good as my word! I said I would find you again, and here I come! Where has your sister gone? I just catched a glimpse of her on the staircase, and now I cannot find her anywhere! She looks, how do you say, heavenward, tonight!”

“Do you know,” said Arabella, “I believe I saw her leave through there,” and with her fan she indicated a portal on the opposite side of the room from the door through which Belinda had actually gone.

Osvaldo took hasty leave and ran off, a hunter in quest of a Bunny. Charles, of course, had drifted away to the delights afforded by the card room, and Arabella was now alone, in hostile territory. If the regent should suspect who she really was . . . but he wouldn’t. She peered with curiosity through her slanted eyeholes at the room in which she found herself, for Arabella had often heard about this chamber. It was the infamous Crimson Saloon, an interior space so relentlessly saturated with that color that the eye wearied of it almost at once.

The furnishings were upholstered in crimson damask. There were crimson draperies at the windows, crimson carpets on the floor, and the walls were covered in crimson velvet. The crimson chairs and sophas having been pushed back against the crimson walls for the occasion, people were dancing in the crimson void thus created. Gigantic pier glasses and gargantuan crystal chandeliers reflected and multiplied the effect of the crimson atmosphere, producing a feeling of faint queasiness in some; acute nausea in others.

Some relief could be found in staring up at the Florentine ceiling, which was decorated with mythical Florentine beasts in soothing tones of blue, orange, and yellow, and when the neck tired of straining upward, one might gaze at tables, supported by richly gilt griffin legs, and at the bric-a-brac that covered their surfaces. But these collections included vases, and sadly, many of these were . . . crimson.

Arabella, who much preferred a simple interior to a fussy one, soon found her senses overwhelmed. Hence, she failed to notice the elegant maharajah who stood before her, camouflaged as he was in crimson-colored silk, until he bowed.

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the cup of crimson punch that he offered her. Then she lifted her eyes to his, and felt her heart fly into her mouth.

I can assure those readers unacquainted with this feeling that it is most uncomfortable at the best of times, but if it happens while one is drinking, it is also uncouth. Arabella choked, splattering crimson punch all over her exquisite gown of golden jacquard. (It had not, thankfully, spurted from her nose.) The rajah gave her his handkerchief to mop up, during which procedure she took the opportunity to glance at him again. His beard was false, his visage darkened with walnut oil, but he was a stunningly handsome creature all the same. At the third glance, she read the man’s very soul in his eyes, and realized that he was reading her own just as clearly.

“Thank you,” she breathed, handing back the handkerchief.

He touched his forehead, his lips, and his heart: Evidently he could not, or would not, speak. Then he bowed again and retreated backward, holding her with his gaze until he disappeared into the crowd.

Extraordinary! thought Arabella. Who
was
that fellow? And after a time she realized that the crimson color with which she was surrounded was starting to give her a headache.

Usually, when the great courtesan attended parties like this, she had a knot of admirers simpering about her, begging for a dance or for some small commission, such as fetching a bottle of
sal volatile
for her headache. But not this time. Perhaps her grandmotherly disguise had put them all off. Yes, surely that was it, for nobody knew who she was.

“Miss Beaumont! How delightful to see you again!”

It was Cecil Elliot, dressed as a cavalier. He had approached unseen, but now made her a most courteous bow, sweeping off his plumed hat with a flourish that would have done Charles I proud. Fortunately, this was executed within the limited range of her eyeholes, for it was a most magnificent bow, and not to be missed.

“How do you do,” returned Arabella coldly. “If you will excuse me, I had rather not speak to you.”

“Oh, dear! . . . But why ever not?”

“Because, Mr. Elliot, after you left the
Perseverance,
claiming you had been recalled to London, the captain informed us that you had requested the transfer yourself!”

“True enough.”

“Well. I do not entertain the company of liars, if I can help it. Nor do I encourage the addresses of gentlemen who abandon their acquaintances in mid-ocean, without informing them of impending danger.”

“Impending danger? To what do you refer?”

“I do not know what the danger was. Luckily, we escaped from it. But I naturally concluded there was something frightful in the offing, or you would not have left us as you did.”

“Oh, Miss Beaumont! My darling Miss Beaumont! If I’d had reason to suspect that your safety was in any way compromised, please believe that I would not only have apprised you of it, but seen you personally delivered out of danger. That you should think me a coward is unendurable, and unjust in the extreme. I pray that you will allow me to acquit myself to you.”

“Very well. I am listening.”

“Not here. I am afraid that the details require complete privacy.”

“Well, I cannot leave this place till I have got what I came for. Once that has been accomplished, I shall see what can be arranged.”

“You are too good,” he murmured, taking her hand and kissing it.

“How did you know it was me?” she asked, trying to hide her vexation.

“I should know you anywhere! Your voice, your walk, your carriage . . .”

“I came in a
hired
carriage on purpose, so as not to be recognized!”

“No,” he said. “I was referring to the manner in which you carry yourself.”

“Oh. Oh, dear; do you think the regent will recognize me, too?”

“Probably not—he has already had a skin full. I doubt he would recognize his own grandmother, by now.”

“I am told that I resemble her, in this costume,” said Arabella.

“I couldn’t say. But you resemble
somebody’s
grandmother, certainly. I hope your journey to Italy was a delightful one. Was your purpose achieved?”

“No, Mr. Elliot. I regret to say that it was not. Are you, perchance, familiar with the disposition of the regent’s treasure cave?”

“If you are asking whether I know its location, yes.”

“Ah! And would you be so good as to escort me thither?”

“Well, I
could,
but the room is locked and surmounted by an armed guard. I would therefore recommend you seek out the regent and request a personal tour.”

As things turned out, she didn’t need to seek very far. “Prinny,” the great, fat git himself, walked unsteadily up to her as she was helping herself to lobster salad. He was merely complimentary at first, but rapidly proceeded from there to flagrant flirtation, and finally to an all-out amorous assault.

“Your Majesty,” she said, fending him off with her fan. “Like yourself, I am a great lover—” Here she had to turn her face away in order to avoid direct contact with his greasy lips.

“I was certain you would be, the moment I laid eyes upon you!” he gasped.

“No, no, sir! You mistake me! I was about to say, I am a great lover of
art!
”

“Really?” he asked, ceasing in his attempts to grope her. “I am, too!”

“So I have heard. I have also heard that you keep a most remarkable collection of antiquities, some of them decidedly . . .” and here she put her mouth against his ear and whispered
“improper!”

“You have heard correctly, madam! Should you like to see them?”

“Oh, but I could not ask you to leave your guests!”

“Yes, you could. They can get on without me for a quarter of an hour. Elliot!”

Mr. Elliot glided over, a difficult trick when one is wearing cavalier boots, but he was what is popularly known as “a smooth customer.”

“Highness?”

“Escort this lady and myself to the treasure cave. Elliot has the keys, you see,” he explained. “An’ a good thing, too. B’cause I don’t think I could manage th’ intricacies of a lock by m’self, jus’ now.”

Arabella was incensed! So, Elliot had had the key all along, and might easily have let her into the room! He was a scoundrel, and no mistake. But then she reflected that the place
was
guarded, after all, and if anyone had caught her in there, snooping around with Elliot’s key, it could have been awkward for both of them.

Collectors are an odd breed. Sometimes they get carried away; they become a little too focused, and Arabella would have been the first to admit it. Take the regent, for example. Here he was, in the company of a beautiful . . . well, of a woman who embodied his ideal type, and all he could do was fawn over his antiquities, which, now that she saw them, weren’t even that impressive. There were a few amphorae, a couple of busts on pedestals; nothing in comparison to the collection at the Naples Museum, and no sign of her statue, either. She took off the mask, in order to be certain she had not missed it through want of a clear visual field. But then Prinny pulled a cord, and the draperies covering what she had taken for the back wall drew apart, revealing another room. This appeared to have been hacked from living stone, though it could not have been, of course, existing as it did inside Carlton House in the center of London. It looked convincing nevertheless, and was roughly paved to resemble an actual cave.

“Welcome to the masturbatory,” leered Prinny.

Here was beauty, indeed: the most magnificent statues, sculptures, and artifacts ever conceived by gifted artists with sex on their minds. For a few moments, Arabella forgot why she was there, and wandered through the ranks and rows of artworks, thinking each piece she saw more dazzling than the one before it, until finally, she came face-to-face with “her” bronze: the double-phallused Pan statue.

He was striding forward on cloven hooves, arms extended behind him with the backs of his hands forward and the fingers spread, as if he were pushing through tall grasses or low shrubs. Every visible muscle and sinew on the slim torso was bursting with virility, and from between his hairy haunches the two great, curving phalli, one thick, one thin, seemed to be leading him on to glory. Thankfully, the garish paint with which he had once been coated had worn off, but the glass paste eyes remained in their sockets, supplied with those unsettling square pupils characteristic of the genus
Capra.
The rest of the eye, which was all iris, was the color of marmalade. Another pair of horns sprouted from the head, curving gracefully back over the shoulders, and the face . . . nay, the entire figure, wore an expression of concupiscent joy.

Thy rod and thy staff shall comfort me, thought Arabella.

“George . . . you in here?”

It was the Duke of Clarence, one of the regent’s many brothers. He appeared to be even more inebriated than Prinny was, for Arabella saw him pause unsteadily before a statue of the drunken Bacchus, preparing to address it as a kinsman. His mistake was, perhaps, understandable.

“I’m over here, Willy,” said the regent. “What d’you want?”

“’S’not for me, you know. I’s my boy. Osvaldo.”

His
boy?
It was true, then! Osvaldo really was Clarence’s bastard! Not only that; the duke actually
acknowledged
the connection! Good God, what a family! If one hadn’t known them for royals, it would have been natural to mistake the duke and his reigning brother for a couple of muck shifters on a bender.

“What’s
he
want, then?” Prinny asked.

“Says you’ve got a friend of his in here (
hic
). An’ he’d like to know if he might come in, too.”

Horrors! If Osvaldo were to address her by name in front of her enemy, the regent would recall the incident—perhaps regrettable, perhaps not—when she had called him a fat git from the depths of an unfriendly crowd, nearly inciting a riot. If he were to discover her true identity now, she would be executed, probably, for impersonating the sort of woman he found attractive. But Elliot had caught Arabella’s panicked glance.