The Scandal of the Season (10 page)

At this moment they were pushed by the force of the crowd through the doors and into the ballroom.

It would have been impossible to prepare for the furnace blast of noise and brightness that hit them. Hundreds of wax candles—a bright dazzle of light—sparkling jewels—sumptuous masks—brilliant smiles, but no faces. A roar of talk, rolling across the room upon tides of music; two orchestras on raised platforms at either end. Headdresses rose from the crowd like birds: peacock's feathers and ostrich plumes. Powdered wigs and towers of hair like confectionary; glittering diamonds. There was a quick clicking of heels upon the boards, a swish of petticoats, a clack of fans flounced—heat, light, sound in billows. Venetians, Turks, Spaniards. Chimney sweeps, cinder wenches, muffin sellers, butchers' boys, coachmen. Admirals, judges, courtiers, and kings. An immense confusion of strangers, disguised in strangers' clothes. And scattered everywhere among them, the black-and white-clad figures of the dominos, their heads and faces covered entirely in voluminous silk hoods.

As soon as she entered the room, Arabella saw that she was not the only figure present from classical antiquity. She was greeted by a handsome and attentive gentleman dressed as Phoebus, whom she could see was an old acquaintance, Charles Luxton. Luxton immediately invited Arabella to dance, and she accepted, knowing that her costume was likely to show to best advantage in animated motion. Arabella had known Charles Luxton for several years, and she encouraged his public attentions for the sake of his personal attractions, which were well suited to her own. She knew, however, that he would inherit only a small estate in an undistinguished part of the country, and that his bride would therefore be a lady of much less considerable fortune, and somewhat less exalted appearance than herself.

Shortly after the dance with Mr. Luxton had come to an end, Lord Petre approached Arabella. She became aware of her every movement, and turned her head toward him in an arch gesture, at once invitation and dismissal.

He addressed her with a bow. “Oh, how that glittering taketh me!” he declared.

Arabella was pleased with the compliment. She shivered with excitement, but replied in measured tones, “The remark is not your own, sir. You are quoting Robert Herrick, but you thought I would not know it.”

Lord Petre raised his eyebrows. “I hardly knew Herrick's lines myself, until I saw you attired like this,” he replied. “At least I did not understand them. But since I have seen you, I can think of nothing else: ‘Then, then methinks how sweetly flows / That liquefaction of her clothes.'”

Though she had heard the lines before, Arabella had never liked them so well as she did now. But she turned the subject.

“Since you are from the Ottoman world, you cannot be expected to guess which of the Roman goddesses I represent,” she said.

“You, a goddess? I had taken you for a siren.”

“Do you not see the bow I carry? I am Diana, queen of the hunt, goddess of chastity.”

“I rather thought you had stolen the bow from that cupid standing by the buffet,” Petre replied. “He looks very much in need of one, and as though he will not otherwise manage to pierce a heart all night. Perhaps you will offer him yours, for you surely require no instrument to bring your game to ground.” He looked handsome as he spoke, tall and powerful, but she was determined not to acknowledge it.

“It is my experience that game hath a wonderful way of fleeing, just as it appears to have been caught,” she answered. She was testing him, she knew, but what it was that she wanted him to say, she could not exactly tell.

“You have a great knowledge of the sport, madam.”

“Naturally. So do you, I imagine.”

“I know its art very well, but I have seldom seen an object that I thought would be worth the pursuit,” he said.

“And yet it is held that the greatest pleasure is to be derived from the chase itself, not from the value of the spoils,” was her reply. “Perhaps you should attempt it, as a matter of investigation.”

“I believe that I shall. And when I do, madam, be assured that I shall keep this conversation in my mind.”

With another bow he was gone. Arabella was disappointed that he had not asked her to dance, and in her moment of discontent she plucked unthinkingly at the string on her bow so it twanged. Lord Petre heard it above the noise of the room, and looked back at her with a playful smile. He was toying with her, and yet it plainly showed that he, too, had moved away with reluctance. Her spirits rising again, Arabella made her way into the crowd.

Alexander, meanwhile, was walking around the room with Jervas, who had taken a glass of wine and a slice of cake for each of them, and was now observing the comings and goings with his accustomed ease.

“That nymph would do a good deal better if she were not speaking in the manner of pit bawdy,” he said. “And behold that Quaker against the buffet, drinking off two bottles of wine at once. Maskers should stay a little closer to their characters, at least until midnight.”

They were overheard by a man in the suit of a court jester, somewhat overstuffed as to contents, who bore more than a passing resemblance to Richard Steele.

“I would agree with you, sir, had I not lately given my heart to a lady who danced so gracefully that I took her for a countess,” Steele said. “But a few minutes later I observed her at the supper tables, lodging edibles in her bosom and pocket and then sneaking furtively away through a side door. I suspect that my ‘fine lady' lives very close to Covent Garden, and that she entered the masquerade in order to smuggle out a week's worth of cold suppers.”

Jervas laughed and replied to Steele, but Alexander's attention was caught by a young page boy walking nearby, whom he recognized as Teresa. How lovely she looked in her boy's suit. She was talking to a Turkish gentleman—Lord Petre! He paused. He was close enough to the pair to hear them speak, but Alexander was fairly sure that Teresa had not seen him.

“Your disguise becomes you well, madam,” Lord Petre was saying. “I hope you shall profit by it.”

“I have profited already, sir,” Teresa replied in an attempt at the playful style, but with a little too much deference. Alexander felt a pang for her.

Lord Petre replied lightly. “Your choice is capital,” he said. “I have a great admiration for
Twelfth Night
.” He thought for a moment, and then declaimed, “If music be the food of love, play on, / Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken, and so die.”

“You are not inclined to love, sir?” Teresa asked.

“I care not for it. When the hart is being hunted, it seldom wishes to be snared.”

All of a sudden, Alexander noticed that he was not the only party listening to Lord Petre's conversation with Miss Blount. A person in a domino costume had also stopped near the pair, just as Teresa said, “I fear that the man in black robes has overheard us. Do you know him?”

Lord Petre turned around to look at the domino. “Oh, that is no gentleman,” he said with a smile. “Observe the ribbons upon the slippers—are they not distinct? Indeed, I hazard a guess that she is Charlotte Bromleigh, Lord Castlecomber's wife. I have seen her wear them before.”

Alexander turned away, fearing that Teresa would notice him standing there. So Lord Petre was to be Teresa's object in town! She would undoubtedly be disappointed in her hopes, he reflected bitterly—but then almost immediately he felt a sinking in his heart. Lord Petre had begun the conversation. And how eagerly Teresa had pursued it. Alexander had never seen her so willing to please, nor so flattered by a man's attention.

Not five minutes later, however, Alexander was startled to see Lord Petre standing alongside the woman dressed in domino robes. The pair were just beyond the doorway of the main assembly space, and the nature of their exchange was easy to guess, for they leaned close together as intimates. But when the black-clad figure walked back into the main gathering, Alexander saw that the shoes had no ribbons on them. It was not Charlotte Bromleigh at all. Lord Petre had been meeting a man! Alexander stared, but the figure soon disappeared into the crowd.

He tried to find him again, but it was too late. The ball guests surged around in a rough swell of movement. As he watched, Alexander saw for the first time that many of them were dressed in the robes of the Catholic Church. He thought of the pope-burning, noting that several were attired in obvious mockery of their characters: monks holding bottles of wine; a priest strolling about with a gaudily dressed whore on his arm. But others could easily pass for real clerics. As he recalled the murdered masquerade guest in Shoreditch, he looked apprehensively around at the whirl of faces, their expressions hidden by the blank masks.

Near where Alexander was standing, Arabella had come to the end of a minuet with the dancing bear who had alighted earlier from a coach-and-six. Unbeknownst to her, she was being watched by one of the many dominos, whose face was obscured by the dark folds of his costume.

Suddenly Arabella sensed that somebody was just behind her and she wheeled around. Seeing the faceless hood looming above her, she gasped.

“I do not know you!” she cried out. “You frightened me!”

For a moment the domino said nothing, but then he pulled off his hood and mask. It was James Douglass.

“Oh!” Arabella exclaimed. “Lord Petre's friend from the Exchange.”

“Indeed, madam,” Douglass answered with a bow. “I overheard you speaking just now on the subject of disguise.” Arabella looked at him closely, waiting for him to continue. Something about him chilled her, but she was intrigued, longing for what he might tell her of his puzzling relationship with Lord Petre.

“A woman masked is like a covered dish,” Douglass said. “She gives a man curiosity and appetite, when, likely as not, uncovered she would turn his stomach.”

Arabella took a step backward. What a cruel thing to say. “You have little regard for woman, sir,” she answered.

“On the contrary, I consider woman to be of inestimable value,” Douglass replied, and his eyes wrinkled into a provoking smile.

Arabella half wished that he would go. But she could not resist her urge to hear more of the baron. “Yet you value only those parts of a person that strike the eye,” she insisted, determined not to let Douglass disconcert her.

“That is precisely what value
is,
madam,” Douglass answered. “The value of gold is no more than the price that can be obtained for it. So it is with women.”

Arabella tried to laugh, and decided to make one final attempt. “I cannot think that you would say the same of men,” she said. “Surely you do not judge your friends, at least, by their manner alone. You must want to penetrate
their
deeper characters.”

“Deep characters do not interest me,” Douglass answered, and he looked at Arabella closely. “A man is defined only by his actions.”

“But very often people disguise their true motives and real intentions,” Arabella replied. She looked around, taken aback by his sudden seriousness, and wanting to escape Douglass's presence.

But he continued to look at her as though he meant that she should listen carefully. “You are mistaken, madam,” Douglass said. “When a man really has something to hide, he will not be so foolish as to appear disguised. Women are vain, and fancy that they can penetrate men's secrets by intuition alone. But they are always mistaken.”

“Nonsense!” Arabella cried, stepping away from him. “A penetrating woman will perfectly understand a man's real character.”

Douglass shrugged, nodding toward a group of dancers who were standing before them. Lord Petre was among them, dancing with a woman dressed magnificently in the costume of a Venetian noble. Arabella turned away so that Douglass could not see her face, determined that he would not perceive her disappoinment.

Alexander was still thinking about Lord Petre's encounter with the stranger when Jervas joined him. He stood expectantly, waiting for Alexander to speak. Alexander realized that his disappearance from the conversation with Jervas and Steele must have seemed very abrupt.

“Glad to meet you again, Jervas,” he said. And seeing the Ottoman come past with his dancing partner, he asked, “Who is that lady dancing with Lord Petre? She has a very pretty style.”

“If I were to hazard a guess, I would say she is Lady Mary Pierrepont,” Jervas answered. “I see a gentleman named Edward Wortley standing to one side watching them, looking as jealous as Othello. He's been trying to marry her for years, but apparently her father won't budge on the settlement.”

“Oh—so that is Mary Pierrepont!” said Alexander. “She is as beautiful as your painting would have her.”

“Quickest wit, sharpest tongue, and biggest flirt in London,” Jervas answered with a laugh.

“Lady Mary Pierrepont is permitted to take liberties that other women are forbidden,” said Alexander. “She is a Protestant, and the daughter of an earl.”

“Well, she does take liberties, of that you can be sure. I heard Wortley say that she knows every man of fashion in London—some of them far too well.”