Tarnished (5 page)

“She is, much to London’s delight, throwing a ball in honor of her son’s successful return,” Fanny continued. “The Honorable Helmsley has requested your company.” Every word dropped between us like the most delicate of hammers; finely made and damnably hard.

I set my jaw. “I don’t want to.”

“We are going,” Fanny pronounced firmly, with the finality of a sealed bargain.

“When is this ball?” I demanded.

“Tonight.”

My stomach twisted. “Fanny, I don’t—”

“We are going,” she repeated, no louder but much slower, “tonight.”

I would have slumped, but my corset refused the allowance. As the toast I’d managed to eat surged back into my throat, I swallowed hard and managed, “As you wish.”

Fanny waited until I’d picked up my tea, unaware that I was trying to drown the knot of hysteria gathering in my chest, before returning her own attention to her meal. “Now,” she continued lightly, “we must think carefully on your gown. It will take all day to prepare.”

I wanted to groan. Instead, shifting in my seat, I glared at my food and attacked it with as much restrained savagery as I could get away with. I had to find a way to sneak away from this rotted ball. I had no interest in this pompous Earl Compton, and even
less
interest in his mother, who had decided early in my social appearances that I was something to be pitied, watched like a squirming bug, and as she put it,
kept from my own ambition
.

The Marchioness’s little salon was known in Society columns as the Ladies of Admirable Mores and Behavior. The gossips referred to their vicious circle as L.A.M.B.

I entertained fantasies of taking the slaughter knife to the whole lot of them.

No matter how well-intentioned Teddy’s request, I knew no such invite could have gone through without the Marchioness’s approval. The very lateness of its arrival suggested her hand in it. For some unknown reason, she wanted Mad St. Croix’s daughter at her ball.

And Fanny, bless her ambitious heart, was going to serve me on a silver platter.

As the woman droned on about colors, fabrics and style, my fingers tightened on the delicate handle of my teacup. I wanted to be anywhere but that ballroom.

Specifically, I wanted to be below the drift and collecting my bounty, talking to the street doves—bloody bells, I would have settled for Micajah Hawke’s smug scrutiny.

“And, Cherry.”

I blinked, mouth smiling automatically. “Yes, Fanny?”

Her blue eyes met mine, as direct as an admiral at his own helm. “If you make one misstep, I’ll see that your books are locked away for a fortnight.”

My throat ached from holding back my temper. It lanced into a sharp pain behind my right eye, and my free hand fisted into my skirt. “Yes, of course,” I murmured.

It wasn’t her fault. I’d always been a difficult child.

But for this brief moment in time, I seriously considered setting fire to her skirts.

W
ith no more warning than Fanny’s imperious directive, I found myself upstairs after breakfast, stripped down, scrubbed from head to toe and draped in a robe as Betsy and Mrs. Booth collaborated on the design of my hair.

Esther Booth was the reason the house didn’t fall to disrepair. She ran it with an iron disposition disrupted only by the subtle indulgences of her husband, and although they were lacking in children, she’d done all right by me.

Even if I was forced to sit still for hours as Betsy and Mrs. Booth argued, debated, experimented and improvised on my waist-length tresses.

“You could cut it all off,” I offered, angelic innocence.

My housekeeper gasped. “Saints preserve us,” she muttered under her breath, even as Betsy shot me a quelling frown.

I shrugged.

Finally, my hair was pinned and fresh flowers acquired for the crowning touch. I hate, hate,
hate
flowers in my hair. They invariably fall off at the most awkward of moments. Like into my soup bowl at a social parlor or crushed to a perfumed death on the ballroom floor.

And the fragrance of lilies makes me sneeze.

Nevertheless, as the sky darkened and afternoon tea came and went with nothing but a few delicate cakes to sate my growing hunger, I watched as if from a distance as my maid and housekeeper dressed me like a paper doll.

I enjoyed listening to them chatter, but I was nervous. Worse, I was annoyed that I’d be trapped in a stifling ballroom, enduring gossip and speculation and study like some kind of caged animal, while my bounty remained below. Unclaimed. Unspent.

“And we are done!” announced Mrs. Booth, but I wasn’t given much time to inspect my appearance before I was hurried from the room, all but stuffed into my cloak and elbow-length gloves, and guided out into the night.

London gleamed prettily in the dark. Lights shone from the Chelsea square, especially with the gas lamps flickering merrily. The city above the drift glimmered and danced; a glittering dowager festooned with diamonds.

Below, she was pocked and diseased, her skirts hanging torn and stained around her roughened knees, but only the faintest roil of fog wafted over the edges of the elegantly decorated canals to remind the peerage of the impure dregs beneath them.

The time of the horse and carriage as emblems of status was long gone, passed now to rustic country estates or idle pleasures at Hyde Park. Our carriages were gondolas, as they have in Venice, and our footmen gondoliers. Slimmer than the ferries that only moved up and down, these vessels could float like a ship on air.

The night was filled with the soft hum of the aether engines installed at the bottom of each. They sucked in air and steam, filtered it through a process developed by the late Dr. Angelicus Finch, and extracted—so the science periodicals explained—the aether found in the very atmosphere.

Because of this, the discharge expelled through the array of finlike pipes inset into the tail was colored blue, and you could mark the business of an evening’s road by the flares and shades of azure lighting the night. Chelsea was often lit by a subdued blue glow.

The St. Croix carriage was not one of the more spectacular, lacking in gilt and trim and boasting only one pan-flute array of pipes at the tail, but it offered a private box with curtains. More important, it was also outfitted with a clean-air machine. Useful for those occasional days when the fog shifted up.

As I gathered my skirts around me and took Booth’s steadying hand, the houseboy at the front of the gondola caught my eye. He grinned a gap-toothed smile and winked.

“Face forward, Leviticus,” Booth directed solemnly.

I couldn’t help my smile as I settled into the box. I knew little enough of the brat affectionately called Levi, but he’d earned an extra coin or two from me over the few months Booth had taken him under his tutelage. I asked him his age, once. He’d claimed sixteen.

I’d called him a bald-faced liar and sent him to the kitchen.

We have reached a sort of truce. I no longer force him to scrub the pots, and he refuses to go lower than twelve.

Booth handed Fanny into the padded box seats beside me. The widow was lovely in a silk mauve gown and matching lined cloak. Her gray hair had been swept into a clean chignon, with only a few thick curls draped beside it. A spray of feathers bobbed delicately by her subtly powdered cheek.

I arranged the folds of my yellow skirts and tried not to think about what was coming as the gondola lurched into motion.

I knew I looked fetching enough. Betsy and Mrs. Booth had simply outdone themselves, choosing the vivid yellow gown to contrast with the fire buried in my hair. Ivory lace frothed from the gown like a spill of cream, drawing attention to its low waist, small bustle and length of the hem. I wore no rouge, even secretly as many women did, and the gown’s color turned my eyes to a brilliant shade beneath the curls Betsy had created with hot tongs and paper.

Sunshine yellow was my favorite color.

My cloak was ivory, not white, my dancing slippers bronze, and a single, wide yellow ribbon trailed from my throat. My gloves were also ivory and elbow-length, my fan was draped on a ribbon from my wrist, and the yellow and white flowers in my curled and coiled hair were pinned viciously in place.

I was as ready to meet the enemy on the field of battle as any soldier facing unrelenting odds.

Fanny said nothing, perhaps unwilling to rock the uneasy truce we’d settled upon, and it wasn’t long before the gentle sway of the gondola eased to a slow halt. I knew without pulling back the window curtains that we’d moved into the flow of traffic. There would be many gondolas making for the Marquis Northampton’s fine London estate. The occasional patch of blue light flared around the curtain rim, and a vague din of conversation trickled through the thick box walls.

My fingers clenched in my skirts.

When out and about in London proper, you could tell a great deal about a family by their gondola. Whether covered in gilt or carved in dark, rich mahogany; layered in trim and tassels or plain and unadorned, each gondola was as unique as a flower.

There were craftsman who excelled at gondola design, and whose trade many wealthy families desperately vied for.

But it was
how
a gondola traveled that claimed the most significance. If she sat too low into the drift or too high out of it, if your gondolier was too unskilled to keep her steady on the fog as if it were real water, then you bore the label of
faux
sophistication. New money, no sensibility.

Anyone who was simply anyone hired a gondolier who could keep his boat steady.

Fortunately for my already fragile reputation, Booth was an excellent gondolier.

“Cherry, you are frowning,” Fanny said abruptly, and I realized that as I’d concentrated on the noises outside, my eyebrows had pulled together.

I deliberately relaxed my brow, but my fingers only tightened into my gown. “I still don’t understand why we’re here,” I said sullenly.

“For the love of all that is holy,” Fanny sighed, and I caught myself before I frowned again. Ladies of good breeding didn’t frown. They didn’t scowl, or pout, or twist their mouths into anything more offensive than a quiet smile.

Ladies were to be silent and gracious and understanding.

Ladies certainly—I smothered a sudden giggle as it welled into my throat—never climbed walls with the intent to wriggle through tiny windows. They didn’t steal from a gentleman’s pockets, cosh ruffians over the head or deliver men for bounties paid.

They certainly didn’t enjoy the fine flavors of Oriental opium.

I was no lady. But I didn’t say this aloud. Instead, I held up a gloved hand and promised, “I shall behave, Fanny. I’m not so stubborn that I’d destroy my reputation because of one marchioness.”

“
The
marchioness,” Fanny corrected. I watched the artfully frayed feather dip and sway with every bob of her head. “The only marchioness who matters. If she turns on you, my dear—”

“I know.” A cut from the Northamptons was as deadly to a reputation as arsenic to a drunkard. I had no choice but to be on my best behavior.

I could give two tosses what the vile woman had to say about me; I enjoyed my solitude. But anything that marked me would mark Fanny, Booth and the others. I wouldn’t force them below the drift for anything in the world.

And it was that I had to repeat to myself with every passing minute.

The gondola eased once more to a stop and rocked gently. Within moments, the door to the box opened, and I accepted the white-gloved hand as it appeared in my vision.

“You look stunning,” Fanny said reassuringly as I stepped into the twinkle of a thousand lanterns.

The Northampton home stood like a majestic queen at the far end of a drive lined with lamps. The cobbles were pristine, already filled with the slow plod of guests mingling, conversing and greeting one another along the way. The night sky seemed lit to gold, an aura of light and music and sound hovering just over the tremendously large manor.

Blinded, I barely noticed as the hand in mine tightened. Then a familiar laugh forced me to shake the stars from my eyes. All at once, I realized that Booth was helping my chaperone out of the gondola, and the hand in mine belonged to my dear friend instead.

“Ted—!” Fanny cleared her throat behind me, and my instinct to seize his hands in both of mine quickly transitioned to a small, graceful curtsy. “My Lord Helmsley,” I demurred instead. Lace pooled around my feet, but I peeked up through my lashes to see Teddy bend slightly at the waist, head inclined, in form-perfect propriety.

Theodore Helmsley was not the most handsome of London’s bachelors, but I’d never held that against him. To be truthful, he was rather hawkish in appearance, with a blade-thin, hooked nose and a build far more suited to the life of a circus juggler than a viscount’s son. Still, dressed to the nines for a ball, he cut a far more interesting figure than the fat old men and milquetoast dandies that often filled the floor. His black tailcoat was perfectly tailored, his waistcoat and trousers also black and just as fine. Like all of the gentlemen, his white shirt collar was winged and his bow tie white.