Life Mask (12 page)

Sheridan had come up a moment before and given Eliza a casual nod for greeting. Now he remarked loudly, 'One might go further and say that there's a glory in the name of poet or painter, actor or politician, that will outlive any merely hereditary titles.'

'Hear, hear,' said Mrs Damer mischievously.

'One might, if one were a downright leveller,' said Walpole, squinting at the newcomer over his tiny glass of champagne.

Sheridan wandered off with the gaudy-suited Prince of Wales and Mrs Fitzherbert, telling them something that made them laugh uproariously. 'Do you notice how Fox keeps his distance?' murmured Mrs Damer in Eliza's ear.

'Hm?'

'From Prinny. Fox hasn't spoken to him all evening! Derby says Fox is still too furious about the secret wedding. It's caused a dreadful breach between the Prince and the Party.'

'You're so
au courant
when it comes to politics,' said Eliza, 'it's a shame you don't campaign any more.'

'Nonsense! All I pick up are scraps. Now for true insight into Foxite affairs there's no one like Georgiana,' said Mrs Damer, pronouncing it to rhyme with
saner,
as everyone did. 'Do you know her?'

'I haven't had the honour...' Eliza looked over at the swarm of guests around the red-haired Duchess of Devonshire, splendid in blue satin.

'Then come with me.'

It wasn't that the Duchess was so very beautiful, Eliza thought as they got closer, it was that she wore her clothes so naturally. That rather shocking novel,
The Sylph,
was said to be the Duchess's own story, but of course she couldn't admit to its authorship. On one side of her stood the long-limbed, sleepy-looking Duke, and on her other arm hung the tiny and coquettish • Lady Bess Foster, in matching blue—beloved companion to the Devonshires for the last five years. Recently there'd been talk of Devonshire putting Georgiana aside—as punishment for her gambling away so much of his fortune—but they all looked perfectly happy tonight. The financial affairs of the Beau Monde were mysterious to Eliza; they could owe so much and be in such straits, yet never be seen in last year's fashions.

Georgiana embraced Mrs Damer as frankly as a child. 'Oo star, oo! We've decided to forgive you for hiding away at Richmond House all these months.' She and Lady Bess were wearing little jewelled miniatures on chains, Eliza saw—oh, yes, they must be portraits of each other—and the same flowery scent.

'Have you noticed our latest invention, by the way?' asked Lady Bess. She and Georgiana tossed their heads, showing off an unusual arrangement of ostrich feathers that stuck out sideways.

'It'll be copied all over Mayfair by Saturday,' Mrs Damer assured them.

'They nearly put my eye out a few times tonight,' grumbled the Duke of Devonshire. 'Delightfully acted, I must say, Mrs D., and delightfully managed too'—with a nod to Eliza.

Mrs Damer made the formal introductions.

'It was all simply
ravish
,' said Georgiana. 'We've only ever read aloud from Shakespeare. Why couldn't we put on some theatricals of our own at Chatsworth? Something with
childies
in, so our Little G. and Harry-o can play.'

Eliza remembered that the Duchess was much resented by her in-laws for having produced only daughters so far. 'I could supply you with some charming comedies featuring little girls,' she offered.

'Oh, yes,' said Lady Bess, clutching Georgiana. 'Let's us, Canis,
pwitty pweez
'—turning to the Duke.

'Well, perhaps, Racky,' he said, 'if you and Rat are
vewy dood,'

Eliza kept her face pleasantly blank, but when she and Mrs Damer moved off she risked a grin. 'Do they always go on that way?'

'I'm afraid so,' said Mrs Damer. 'Vastly affected—but one can't help but love Georgiana for her warm heart.'

It was on the tip of Eliza's tongue to ask if it was true what people said, that Lady Bess went out riding alone with the Duke, betraying her friend behind her back. Could such an astute politician as Georgiana really be oblivious to what was going on at Devonshire House, or was it possible that she didn't mind? But no, she'd better not say any of this to Mrs Damer, for fear of offending; as a newcomer, Eliza was better off keeping her eyes and ears open and her lips sealed.

T
ONIGHT EVERYTHING
had changed, Derby thought, with a light-headedness that didn't come from the champagne. The World was treating Miss Farren as the next Lady Derby. He'd introduced her to Prinny and Mrs Fitzherbert, to the Duke of York, to Field Marshal Conway and Lady Ailesbury, to a brace of other tides—and she'd been received by them all with rapturous respect. For Derby, it was like that moment in a cockfight when one's bird got the other by the throat.

He felt like laughing aloud. He was in a spin. In all the confusion he'd forgotten his cane. Could he have set it down in a dark corner of the stage after making his last exit? He ran up the steps and went in behind the flats.

There was Eliza. She must have retreated from the crowd of guests; she was picking up bits and pieces, a handkerchief, a folded page torn from somebody's part. For a moment there was no glamour to her, no brilliance; she was simply a young woman picking things up off the floor and Derby had never seen anything lovelier.

She must have heard his breathing; she turned.

'Ah, I was just hunting for my cane,' he said, aware that he sounded drunk. 'Have you seen it?'

Eliza shook her head.

It was the first time that they had ever been alone together. The thought struck Derby like a knife in the ribs. This was no accident, this was a stage set for the great scene. He took a step closer. 'I wonder,' he said, 'I wonder, Miss Farren, whether you saw that paragraph in the newspaper the other day? In
The World!
His tone was uneven.

'Oh, I don't read such stuff,' she told him.

That was an equivocal answer. 'Perhaps some friend brought the item to your attention? It was a libel, about—' He had been going to say
my wife,
but he feared to pronounce the phrase and break the bubble. 'About me. I just wanted to tell you there's no truth in it.'

'I wouldn't credit anything said of you in a newspaper.'

He couldn't tell if she was lying. It didn't much matter. His destiny was the manager and Derby knew his lines by heart; hadn't he been practising them for years? He went close to her. 'How long are we to go on pretending?'

'Pretending, My Lord?'

'Six years is a long time.'

'I pretend nothing,' she said.

'Rehearsing, then, if you like. For six years I've paid you every possible attention, every homage of the most particular and striking kind.'

A lesser woman would have stepped back, but Eliza only narrowed her eyes. It was a tiny gesture, not one that would be visible from the gallery.

He rushed on. 'You can't be in any doubt about the nature of my feelings.'

'Feelings?' she retorted. 'I think I should call my mother.'

Derby seized her by the hand, astonished by his own gall. 'For once, just this once. Let's speak privately.'

She looked down at his knuckles till he lifted them. A more ordinary woman would have tugged her arm away, he thought; Eliza could do it with a single glance. 'I've nothing to say of feelings.'

'Let me speak, then.' Derby disliked the note of pleading. 'Just listen,' he said more firmly.

'What kind of speech am I to listen to?'

'Not a declaration of love—' he assured her.

'I'm glad to hear it.'

'Not that,' Derby pressed on, 'because after six years you can't need me to spell out what every look, every word's revealed to you and the whole World beside. Also because I'm not a boy of eighteen to declaim starry-eyed speeches.'

She jumped in as soon as he paused for breath. 'Also because you're a married man.'

Derby was chewing his lip. 'Irrespective—'

'It's true.' Eliza's heart was banging. She'd never said those words to the Earl before, never thrown the fact in his face. She'd thought—hoped—it need never come to this. Why should he need reminding? Why did he have to wreck everything? The scene was all wrong, she thought.
Leave off, ladies and gentlemen, "we'll try that again from the top.

'I don't deny it, in a strictly legal sense,' Derby blustered. 'Though I've never laid eyes on the lady in question since she left Knowsley nine years ago, I swear it.'

Why didn't you divorce her then, and be done with it?
Eliza wouldn't say it; she'd made herself that promise a long time ago. She'd never protest, never beg, never let him believe she was waiting for him.

'You know my peculiar situation as well as I do,' he pleaded, 'everyone knows it, despite those lies in the newspaper about a reconciliation.'

She stiffened.
What reconciliation?

'But surely two sophisticated individuals—surely in these awkward and exceptional circumstances, it could still be possible for us to ... to rise above our difficulties and come to some kind of discreet arrangement,' he said unhappily. He blinked twice, three times.

The word stuck in her craw.
Arrangement.
It was a petty, sneaking, shopkeeping sort of word. Had Eliza come so far and made so many sacrifices, won the nation's respect as a new kind of actress, kept her dignity, turned herself from a pauper into a lady, only to be accosted with an offer of an
arrangement
? 'Good night, Your Lordship,' she said loathingly and turned on her heel.

She was almost at the door, but Derby got there before her, surprisingly agile. He didn't touch her, but he barred her way. There was nothing
exceptional
about these circumstances, she saw now, sickened. It could be any run-of-the-mill comedy of manners: the predictable tos and fros of it, the crowing and clucking, like a cock and a hen in a barnyard.

'You misunderstand—'

'I understand you perfectly,' she told him. She wouldn't play the shrieking harridan. 'My profession has made me only too aware of the meaning of that soiled word,
arrangement.
Mrs Jordan has an
arrangement
with Mr Ford, the father of her child. The sums and conditions may vary; the nature of the bargain not at all. Whether in an Oxford Street emporium or a Spitalfields shack, a sale is a sale.' Her delivery was perfectly crisp. 'You're not the first to have asked me to stoop to this, only the wealthiest.'

Derby's narrow eyes were bruised. 'I mean my proposal in the most honourable spirit—'

'There is only one kind of honourable proposal.'

'—everything done very handsomely and quietly, with tact and discretion, so the World won't object—full contracts—I mean a marriage in all but name—'

She was aghast at his stupidity. 'Derby, you know my circumstances. My mother and I have no property, no rich relations, nothing to fall back on. I've only my talents and my energies, and I've bent them all on my profession. It's bad enough that half the scandal sheets in the country call me your
platonic inamorata
,' she said, her voice rising towards shrillness. 'A marriage in all but name? Tell me, what do I have but my name?'

'My dearest, if I could offer you your due,' he groaned, 'I would. You know I would, the very moment I were free. If the Countess—when the Countess—her health—'

She flinched at that. He shouldn't have dropped so gross a hint; it sounded as if he were betting on his wife's death.

Derby's face had fallen; she could tell he knew he'd made a mistake. He drew himself up, though he was still so much shorter than her. 'Like it or not,' he said sternly, 'you have my love. You've had it for long enough to know its nature; it's no fleeting lust. And I don't believe your heart is coldly pious enough to think such love disgusting.'

'What do you know of my heart?' she barked. He was right, of course. This wasn't about piety. Dignity, if anything.

'All I ask is that you show me some mercy. Consider bending your principles so that we might both know some happiness in this uncertain world.'

She stood a little closer to him. She said, 'My happiness is none of your concern.'

Then she was gone, leaving the Earl standing there like a fool behind her. Like a bad actor who'd forgotten his exit line, Eliza thought, and hung on, shifting from foot to foot, while the crowd started to titter.

A
NNE WAS
trying to remember if she'd ever been happier. Such a night! As Mrs Lovemore, she'd made more than a hundred of her oldest friends and nearest relations laugh and cry out. For once she hadn't been the artist in the silence of her workshop, toiling over beauty in stone; she'd been the living statue. She looked for Eliza Farren to tell her how grateful she was—but she couldn't see her anywhere.

The First Gentleman of Europe enveloped her in a sweet-smelling embrace, one of his frizzed side curls poking her in the eye. 'Mrs Damer! You made me weep in your big scene.'

'I did?' she asked, foolishly gratified. The Prince's black velvet suit was lined with pink satin and ornamented with gold embroidery and pink spangles, which didn't make him look any thinner, and he was wobbling in pink shoes with high heels.

'Proof positive,' said Prinny, holding up a crumpled handkerchief with tiny letters embroidered all over it in gold; G. for George, she realised. 'Mrs Fitz had to poke me to silence my sobs.'

It was hard to think of the slow-moving woman by his side taking the liberty of poking anyone, least of all the heir to the British throne. The Widow Fitzherbert was older than her husband, but ageing well, with her smooth plumpness and golden hair. She wore a tiny jewelled cross at her throat, Anne noticed; you had to grant her that, she wasn't ashamed of being a Catholic. Her expression was oddly calm for a woman whose reputation was being fought over so bitterly in the Commons. She'd been through so much, she must be used to wearing a mask of serenity.

'But tell me,' Prinny said, seizing Anne by the fingertips, 'how's your
real
work going? When are you ever going to carve me something for Carlton House?'