by M C Beaton
The Marquess of Sunningburgh was drawn to London, not to find a bride during the Season but to please his friend, Captain Tommy Flanders. Peace had brought the captain to London and he was looking forward to cutting a dash. The marquess promptly wrote to invite the captain, now plain Mr. Tommy Flanders, to stay at the Sunningburgh town house in Park Lane, and then set out for London himself.
Wealth and the enjoyment of putting the Sunningburgh estates back into good heart had relaxed the harsh lines of the marquess’s face, lines that had been stamped there by eight years of war and bloodshed. His Spanish tan had long faded. His black eyes once more held the old devil-may-care sparkle of his early youth. He was now thirty-two years of age but had never felt better in his life. He looked forward to having some fun in Tommy’s lively and undemanding company. Somewhere, always at the back of his mind, that forced betrothal nagged, but Lady Lucinda had shown no signs of keeping him to it and so it remained tucked away.
It was a memorable spring—memorable because it had come at last after one of the hardest winters England could remember. The Great Frost, which had frozen the Thames into a solid sheet of ice, had finally let go of its grip on the land. Six weeks of heavy snow had followed, and over on the Continent, beyond that curtain of snow, Napoleon’s empire lay in ruins. Then the sun shone down and it promised to be the Season to end all Seasons. London was already mad with celebrations. Everyone wanted to cheer the end of winter, to cheer the peace, to cheer the victors, and to cheer the new French king, Louis XVIII—dubbed Louis the Gouty by one and all—who was resident in London.
The marquess, comfortably installed in Park Lane, might never again have thought bitterly of his forced betrothal to Lady Lucinda Esmond had not Mr. Tommy Flanders insisted they attend a masquerade ball….
* * *
“I do not approve of masquerade balls,” said the Dowager Countess of Lemmington severely.
“Oh, but we must go!” exclaimed Lucinda. “This invitation is from the Prince Regent himself.”
“Pah. Young jackanapes.” The countess sniffed. She had never come to terms with the fact that the Prince Regent was now fat and middle-aged and was no longer the dashing Prince Florizel of her youth.
The change to London had worked wonders for the countess. They had arrived two months before the Season, and despite Lucinda’s protests that she did not wish to marry, the countess had been successful in introducing her to a suitable young man and—wonder upon wonder!—Lady Lucinda had not only accepted the young man’s proposal of marriage but was to wed him in a mere four weeks’ time!
The old lady was satisfied, for she had never believed any of Lucinda’s protests against marriage. All girls wanted to get married and have babies.
She did not know that Lucinda had fallen in love with her fiancé, Sir Percival Magnus, because she wished to escape to a home of her own and Sir Percival was the first fop she had ever met.
He was the opposite of everything Lucinda feared in men. There was no hint of brutish masculinity about his exquisite manners and studied speech. He had golden hair and blue eyes and was hardly ever serious. He was, although Lucinda did not know it, a sort of male version of Lucinda’s former dream friend, Mary. As yet sexually unawakened, Lucinda was sure she was deeply in love, not knowing it was Sir Percival’s very sexlessness that was the attraction. To her, it was an awakening, a realization that she could get married and escape from all her well-wishing relatives—for before, she had naively expected in this new nineteenth century that a mere female would be allowed to run her estates and had only recently begun to understand that marriage allowed a woman all the freedom a single virgin was not allowed to have.
The old countess might wish that Lucinda had chosen someone less effete, but she was delighted her granddaughter was happy, and delighted to be able to crow over her younger relatives who had vowed that such an old lady could not effect any proper introductions for a young girl. Despite the drawback of his effeminacy, Sir Percival was of good family and had all the mannered comfortable elegance of a house-trained cat.
The countess had also become accustomed to Lucinda’s beauty, although her love for her granddaughter burned fiercer than ever before, and she now saw her as the pale little girl she had been before her father died. Although she did not know it, her own eagerness to see Lucinda settled was because of her terrible guilt over having caused the death of the earl. Sometimes, on good days, the guilt almost faded and the old lady could persuade herself that the earl had fallen by accident. But most nights she was tortured and wracked by dreams of divine retribution. Never before particularly religious, the countess was now plagued with all the horrors of hellfire.
She protested again, but weakly, over the visit to the masked ball, and then finally agreed to take Lucinda on the condition that she, the dowager countess, should not have to wear fancy dress.
Lucinda summoned her fashionable dressmaker to discuss possible costumes. It was during one of these consultations that Sir Percival Magnus came to call. Although he was a slim young man, he worried about his waistline and could never thin it down to a small enough size to suit his fastidious eye. He had just bought himself a new Apollo corset and had only discovered on the road to Berkeley Square that it creaked abominably. The sight of the splendid and richly appointed town house that would soon be his failed to work its usual magic. Sir Percival’s beautiful brow furrowed as he wondered how to eliminate the creak.
The shoulders of his bottle-green morning coat were padded, as was his chest. His cravat was a miracle of starch and his shirt points were quite the highest in London. His Hessian boots shone like black glass and his canary-yellow pantaloons were molded to his rather thin legs. His face was quite beautiful and his skin very fine and white. His brow was broad, and his wide blue eyes, fringed with thick lashes, looked out on the world with an amiable expression of fashionable stupidity. Intelligence was frowned on. His guinea-gold hair fell across his marblelike brow in sculptured waves. He was a very clean young man, faintly scented with rosewater. He did not use paint except on the palms of his hands, which were tinted pink with cochineal.
Due to his encouragement, Lucinda had already bought a great deal of very fine jewelry. When he was ushered into the drawing room, most of this jewelry was lying at Lucinda’s feet, spilling out of a large box like Aladdin’s treasure, while she discussed with the dressmaker the best pieces to go with the costume they had planned.
“Do come and look at these ravishing sketches Madame Boulet has made,” cried Lucinda. The sight of all the jewels had taken Sir Percival’s mind off his creaking corset and he eagerly studied the sketches. His face fell.
“Vastly stately,” he said. “But I would have thought some sort of Turkish costume would be more the thing.”
“Lady Caroline Lamb is to wear such a costume and so will several other ladies,” said Lucinda. “Grandmama is amazing at finding out all the gossip. She says it is because everyone talks more in front of a very old lady, as if she were already in her grave, than they do in front of their contemporaries.”
“But why go dressed as Queen Elizabeth? She had red hair, you know, and her teeth were all black. You don’t look like her at all.”
“I am only going as an Elizabethan lady, not as the queen. It is because I have all these marvelous jewels. It is not quite correct for a modern miss to wear so many. But the Elizabethan ladies wore such a lot. I shall glitter like a fireworks display and be deliciously vulgar.”
“But we shall not match! I am going as a pasha.”
“So is Lord Byron.”
“Oh, fiddle-de-dee. What a monstrous bore. Now I shall have to think of something else. ‘Pon rep, I am weary with thought already.”
“Why not go as an Elizabethan gentleman?”
“I do not like the costume. ‘Twould not flatter my better points.”
“I am sure you will think of something,” said Lucinda warmly. “You are so clever about clothes.”
And I shall be even cleverer when
I get my hands on your fortune, thought Sir Percival dreamily. “We are to be masked,” he said aloud. “I do not like that. I prefer everyone to see my face.”
Lucinda jumped up, spilling the sketches from her lap. “What is that squeaking sound? It sounds like a mouse!”
“Nothing,” said Sir Percival hurriedly, cursing his squeaking corset.
“I do not think I want to attend a masquerade,” said the Marquess of Sunningburgh, “even one held at Carlton House. Or should I say, particularly one held at Carlton House. The very act of putting on a mask makes people behave quite disgracefully.”
“I want to behave disgracefully,” said Mr. Flanders cheerfully. “I have been so good of late. I have been genteelly paying court to all sorts of respectable misses. You must join me when I pay calls.”
“I admire your energy.” The marquess yawned. “Who is this Season’s beauty?”
“I cannot remember her name. Evidently there is some creature so romantically beautiful that strong men faint at her feet. But she is to wed, and shortly, Sir Percival Magnus, who is almost as beautiful as she.”
“I have not seen any female as yet I would describe as a raving beauty,” said the marquess reflectively.
“How do you expect to?” countered his friend. “You are hardly likely to see any in the clubs of St. James’s or in Gentlemen Jackson’s boxing saloon!”
“Perhaps you have the right of it. I find myself peculiarly disinterested in women. But I would like heirs, and I cannot do that alone. I will go to this wretched masquerade with you. What costume are you going to wear?”
“I am going as a Turk.”
“A very fair Turk.” The marquess smiled, looking at his friend’s ingenuous face and mop of blond curls.
“Oh, I shall darken my skin and wear a wig. What of you?”
“I shall find something or other.”
“There is not much time. I know you. You will leave it to the last minute and then go in ordinary dress.”
“Not I. You will not recognize me.”
“You might find your heart’s desire at this masquerade.”
The marquess wondered whether to tell his friend of that odd betrothal but decided against it. It had all happened so long ago. He remembered all the marvelous revenge he had plotted under the hot Spanish sun. But the Earl of Sotheran was dead, and no doubt that pale, odd child had forgotten the whole episode. The marquess had quite forgotten that in the intervening years that child had grown up to a marriageable age.
The evening of the masquerade found Lady Lucinda pacing up and down on the Chinese carpet in her drawing room wondering what could have possibly happened to her fiancé. It was now nine o’clock and he had promised to arrive at eight to escort both Lucinda and the dowager countess.
The countess, attired in her usual old-fashioned panniered gown and blazing with diamonds, sat in a chair deep in thought, her little, wrinkled brown face dwarfed by a huge white wig.
“I think we should go ahead without him,” said Lucinda at last.
“Very well,” said the little countess indifferently. It was one of her bad days. She had been out to take the air in the park earlier and had seen someone who looked remarkably like the earl. But she roused herself enough to summon extra footmen to accompany them as bodyguards because Lucinda appeared to be bedecked in the entire contents of her jewel box.
Lucinda was wearing an Elizabethan gown, its wide skirts embroidered with emeralds, diamonds, rubies, and seed pearls. The neckline of her gown was cut low at the front and ornamented with a high, stand-up lace collar at the back. Around her neck she wore necklaces of jewels and a long rope of magnificent pearls. On her black hair, which was curled tightly for the occasion and piled up on her small head, she wore a little tiara made of diamonds of the finest water, which sparkled and blazed with prisms of light. She looked magnificent, but there was no one to tell her so, for the countess was too immersed in her own gloomy thoughts, her fiancé was unaccountably absent, and her correct French lady’s maid did not consider it her place to say anything.
As their carriage moved forward slowly in the line of other carriages toward Carlton House, Lucinda took out her black and gold mask and put it on. With the mask covering her face, she began to feel less insecure, less vulnerable, and totally different.
It was a warm, mild evening. There was a hectic air of festivity and celebration all about. Lucinda began to feel excited. Her life in London had hitherto been very quiet and correct. She had not gone about very much. Her grandmother, by dint of bullying various friends, had amassed a collection of suitable young men at a quiet rout shortly after their arrival in town. It was at this rout that Lucinda had first met Sir Percival. Her speedy engagement to him had cut her off from noticing any other men. Although she had been granted vouchers to the famous Almack’s Assembly Rooms, she had so far failed to put in an appearance. She went instead to the opera with her grandmother and Sir Percival but never stayed for the ball afterward, being content to go home early to bed.
A carriage drew abreast of theirs. In it were three debutantes, giggling and laughing. Lucinda suddenly envied them. They looked so very young and carefree, they made her feel older than her years.
But her life with her father had made her long for quiet security, safe from scenes and upsets and difficulties. It was pleasant, she reminded herself firmly, to be engaged so soon to such a perfect gentleman and to be safe from the hot clutches of a noisy buck.
Carlton House was a blaze of lights. The fashionable may have damned it as vulgar—”too much gold on gold”—but to Lucinda’s country eyes it looked like a palace in a fairy tale.
A supper was to start off the festivities and it was held in the conservatory. The Prince Regent made his entrance, not in fancy dress, though some could be excused for thinking it so, but in the uniform of a field marshal that he was entitled to wear, having just created himself field marshal. Even the seams of his coat were heavily embroidered with gold thread, and the gossip went around the room as the guests waited for him to be seated first that his coat cost as much as it weighed—two hundred pounds.
He was joined by the Bourbons, the French royal family.The main supper table filled the two-hundred-foot length of the Gothic conservatory. In front of the Regent’s seat was a large circular basin that fed a stream that meandered among banks of flowers down to the end of the table, and Lucinda was amazed to notice live gold and silver fish swimming in these artificial rivers. All of the dishes were solid silver.
It must have been the biggest display of jewelry in London. No matter what the costume, the wearer appeared to have emptied their jewel box all over it. One duchess was so weighted down with jewelry that she had to be carried to her chair by two footmen. There were so many people in Turkish dress that at times the gathering looked as if it might be taking place in Constantinople rather than London.
Mr. Tommy Flanders muttered that he felt quite shoddy since his only jewelry consisted of several diamond and sapphire stickpins that he had stuck about his costume.
“I am glad I am a rich man,” said the marquess. “For I swear if I were still a poor captain I would be tempted xxx thief.”
But he was enjoying the spectacle and his black eyes glinted through the slits in his mask. He was dressed as Sir Walter Raleigh. He had a heavy chain of white gold and rubies decorating his doublet of black and gold velvet and one perfect pearl earring hung from one ear. With his rakish good looks and thick, curling black hair, he looked as if he had stepped out of a sixteenth-century painting.
“There is your counterpart,” said Mr. Flanders.
“Where?”
Mr. Flanders, never a slave to etiquette, pointed with his fork in Lucinda’s direction. The marquess looked curiously at the heavily bejeweled and masked young lady in the Elizabethan dress. He felt a queer surge of excitement mixed with one of recognition.
“ ‘Fore George,” he muttered. “I know her. I must know her.”
“Talk to her
afterward and find out,” said Mr. Flanders, raising his quizzing glass to take a better look at Lucinda. “What jewels! What hair! And that white skin of hers owes nothing to blanc.”
Lucinda looked down the table and saw for the first time the dashing man in the Elizabethan dress. He saw her look and smiled, a mischievous, tantalizing smile, and she looked quickly down at her plate, very much shaken.
Where was safe and orderly Sir Percival whose eyes did not burn like coals behind his mask in the way the handsome stranger’s black eyes had shone as he looked at her? Sir Percival did not have a sensual mouth, nor did he exude any uncomfortable air of masculinity. Where on earth was he?
Alas for Sir Percival. In the hope of catching the Prince Regent’s eye—for the Prince was known to be romantical about the Scotch—he had attired himself in Highland dress. But the deep prejudice against the Scottish people, particularly the Highlanders, still burned deep in the English breast. On leaving his house, he had been set upon by a gang of bloods who had threatened to tear him limb from limb and it had taken all of Sir Percival’s servants’ strength and energies to rescue him.
Bloodied and battered, Sir Percival had sought comfort for his humiliation in a draft of opium and had promptly fallen into a deep sleep. His servants had carried him to his bedchamber and had laid him tenderly on the bed, where he continued to snore blissfully, his kilt rucked up about his thin shanks and his mouth hanging open.
Lucinda picked at her food, her appetite unaccountably gone, and listened to the talk of the dandies. She was seated between two gentlemen who, on failing to rouse much conversation from her, began to talk across her. For quite half an hour, they discussed the shape of cravats without a glint of humor to enliven the intensity of their conversation. Not yet accustomed to the mock solemnity of the true dandy, who affected to be interested in nothing but clothes, Lucinda was shocked by the triviality of their discussion. Sir Percival admittedly never said anything to strain the brain, but he did try to entertain her with light gossip and by discussing the latest plays or operatic diva.