These Golden Pleasures

by Valerie Sherwood

  “What are you doing up?” she snapped. And before Roxanne could answer, “Get to bed!”

  Silently Roxanne turned away, but her world was cartwheeling about her head. Reba had said she would bet Clarissa had tried out Rhodes’s big square bed! No doubt Clarissa was planning to make sure that Rhodes stayed with her, as she herself had thought to do. Or that he took her with him when he left.

  Dull pains knifed through Roxanne’s heart at this new treachery. Rhodes, merry Rhodes, was dallying with Clarissa in his bedroom by night even while by day he pursued Roxanne. Oh, she had been right about him—right!

  Roxanne clenched her fist and a sob escaped her. How she hated herself for loving him. Why couldn’t she hate him—instead of eagerly waiting each day to see his face?

  As she crawled back into bed she thought she heard the front door open. And then light footsteps on the stairs—Rhodes’s footsteps. No, it must be Gavin, she told herself. Clarissa would not have slipped up to Gavin’s room when she was madly in love with Rhodes.

  The next night Rhodes came into the dining room just as Roxanne finished cleaning up. Nobody was around, and although she tried to avoid him, he moved too fast and blocked the kitchen door with his big body. She turned about to go the other way, but he caught her lightly by the shoulders.

  “Roxanne,” he murmured.

  She flinched away from him and stood stiff and immobile in his grip with her head turned away. But his lips caressed her hair, found her ear, worried it. He pressed his teeth lightly into her earlobe, and she heard him chuckle.

  “Don’t,” she said sharply and drew away from him. “I don’t wish to be one of your women!”

  He spun her toward him merrily, so that she was brought up against his strong chest. “Ah, now, don’t tell me there’s someone else,” he chided. “Not, for instance, my brother Gavin?” His face clouded a little when she didn’t answer. “I’m a far nicer fellow,” he said softly, his index finger exploring her neck, wandering down her bosom.

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” said Roxanne haughtily, slapping his hand away and trying to struggle from his grasp.

  Though his hands dropped to his sides, still he blocked her way. “Then it is Gavin . . .” he murmured. “Surely you’re not thinking that Gavin’s the marrying kind?”

  “And why not?” she demanded.

  He sighed. “Foolish Roxanne,” he said. “Gavin will marry for advantage. He’s got the future of the company to think of.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said flatly, just for the pleasure of contradicting him. “You don’t know Gavin at all.”

  He stared down at her flushed rebellious face. “Perhaps I don’t,” he muttered. “Let’s hope so.” And turned on his heel and was gone.

  Roxanne stared after him, frowning. Rhodes had the annoying trick of sounding sincere. And even though she knew she couldn’t trust him, her heart gave that the lie. She opened the kitchen door violently and almost banged into Lizzie, who looked amazed at the grimness of Roxanne’s expression.

  The encounter—although it had shaken her physically as any contact with Rhodes always did—had made her think seriously of Gavin for the first time.

  Why should she not marry him? she asked herself coldly.

  He had not asked her, of course, but that seemed a minor matter in her present furious state. She was well aware of the intense light in Gavin’s eyes when he looked at her, of the way his eyes followed her about.

  Later in the week, Roxanne woke and again heard footsteps—this time creeping down from the fourth floor. At the third floor stair landing they stopped abruptly. Time passed—too much time. Roxanne sat up on one elbow and frowned. People didn’t walk halfway downstairs in the dark and just stand there. Could Clarissa have fainted? Feeling a tingle of alarm, Roxanne slipped out of bed, moved on silent bare feet to the door, opened it soundlessly and crept into the hall.

  Downstairs she heard the front door close, heard Rhodes’s light step taking the stairs up two at a time. She could see that the gaslights on the stair landing were lit, but burning low.

  Standing in the darkness of the servants’ wing, Roxanne saw Rhodes pass by. His step faltered and he uttered a low, surprised “What the devil—!” His eyes were riveted on something before him which now moved into Roxanne’s view: Clarissa, half undressed, looking sleepy-eyed as if she had just crawled out of bed, gave him a provocative look and with a rebellious toss of her head disappeared down the hall into her own rooms. It was glaringly clear to Roxanne that Clarissa had seen Rhodes arrive—perhaps by looking through Gavin’s window—and had hurried down and waited for him to come upstairs. She had wanted him to see her—undoubtedly to make him jealous.

  Roxanne shrank back into the darkness, and after a moment Rhodes went on up the stairs. The next morning his face was expressionless as he greeted Clarissa at breakfast; Clarissa gave him back an angry look and spat out a good morning.

  Clarissa’s strategy had not worked.

  And now Roxanne understood that it had been Gavin into whose bed Clarissa had crawled that first night. She had made him a substitute for the disinterested Rhodes.

  The showery April days passed, and Clarissa’s temper was as changeable as the weather. When, one day in late April, Gavin again left for Boston on another of his business trips, Clarissa swept the entire contents of her desk to the floor in a fury. As a result, Roxanne spent half a day trying to get the ink from the gilt and crystal inkwell out of the carpet.

  Rhodes was seldom around these days. He was busy at the dockside, Roxanne knew, for on her strolls she had sometimes seen him there, talking to seamen, supervising the loading of ships’ stores on the Virginia Lass. She wondered idly where those furled sails would take him when at last they billowed to the wind: the spice islands, the South Seas, Tahiti, the Caribbees?

  When he was at home, he constantly clashed with his father. At dinner, Roxanne heard the older man criticize Rhodes’s behavior bitterly: he had been seen gaming last night, at a brothel the night before.

  Once after dinner she heard Rhodes growl at Gavin, who was temporarily back in town, “Who could be telling him these things? Has someone been set to spy on me? Or is it you, Gavin?”

  Gavin shrugged. “What would it gain me to spy on you? I’ve enough on my hands holding the company together.”

  “Oh, is that what you’re doing in Boston so much these days? I wondered.”

  “If you took more of an interest in the Line’s financial affairs, you’d know without my telling you what I’ve been doing in Boston!” retorted Gavin hotly. “You’d do well to listen to what Father says—else he may fling you out without a cent!”

  Gavin went on upstairs, and Roxanne, in the front hall, was about to brush by Rhodes when he grasped her by the shoulder.

  “What have you got against me?” he demanded angrily. “I’ve done nothing to you and yet—by God, this whole household is mad! My father rails at me, and sets spies on me! I’ll be glad to sail away from Baltimore!”

  Roxanne considered him coldly. “Clarissa is the answer to your problems, Rhodes!” she said, taunting him, and he let go of her and stamped away with a curse.

  It had not been announced, but it was soon understood that Clarissa would marry Gavin. Knowing looks were exchanged among the servants; they whispered, nudging each other. Oh, Miss Clarissa was a smart one, they agreed, going to goad Mr. Gavin into setting an early date for the wedding!

  Roxanne, remembering how stricken Clarissa had looked that first night as she had tiptoed down from Gavin’s room, was sure that Clarissa had started the affair to make Rhodes jealous, but it had gone too far and now she was committed to Gavin.

  Whether this bothered Rhodes, Roxanne could not tell. The Virginia Lass was being outfitted and a mast replaced; Rhodes was leaving soon, everybody knew that. He seemed upset sometimes when he looked at Clarissa, and drummed his fingers and frowned. Perhaps he really was jealous, Roxanne thought, and wondered why he had not improved his f
ortunes by marrying this heiress who had so hungered for him. That would have made him independently wealthy and got him out from under his disapproving father’s thumb.

  In any event, Clarissa was very nasty to Rhodes, making sarcastic, cutting remarks and then flouncing off with a withering look. Roxanne supposed a woman scorned—especially a woman as spoiled as Clarissa— would always find defection hard to forgive.

  Rhodes had another violent quarrel with his father—this one over his roistering in the town. It happened one day after dinner when Rhodes was about to go out. Joab Coulter stood in his bedroom door glaring at Rhodes. They had words, and Joab told Rhodes, in a voice that seemed to boom forth from a cavern, that he would burn in hell for his follies, and then slammed the door.

  Roxanne, who had come out just at the end of this exchange, watched Rhodes’s discomfiture unsympathetically. He turned to find her cold blue eyes on him and jammed his hat on his head.

  “No doubt you're right, Roxanne,” he said bitterly. “Ambition is the wisest course. You and my brother Gavin have something in common. You both believe a wealthy marriage is the answer to everything.” He studied her, eyes narrowed. “Perhaps it is!” he muttered, and swung on his heel and left.

  Chapter 15

  Spring was late in Baltimore that year—damp, and sometimes the winds were biting. Several of the staff came down with colds, and even Clarissa, usually in blooming health, complained of a sere throat. The doctor was promptly called, to make sure it wasn’t diphtheria, a dread disease. But he pronounced Clarissa’s complaint laryngitis, and recommended rest in bed and a sweet-tasting alcohol-based cough syrup.

  Clarissa pouted, saying she wouldn’t stay in bed! Especially since those new people, the Staffords, were giving that great fancy dress ball tomorrow night! But when tomorrow came she had a high fever, and in the afternoon she was forced to admit that she was unable to attend. She sat up in bed to pen a note conveying her regrets to her hostess, and to the young gentleman who was to have escorted her.

  “And this?” Roxanne asked, holding up the invitation to the ball.

  “Throw it away!” screamed Clarissa, falling back against her pillows and pulling the covers up around her. “And get out! Talking to you makes my throat hurt!”

  She reinforced her last remark by coughing, and Roxanne, with the invitation on its creamy vellum and the two scented notes on monogrammed paper in hand, went down to bring up Clarissa’s costume from the laundry, where Ella was pressing it.

  Roxanne took the billowing, gold-spangled, creamy satin ball gown from flush-faced Ella, who’d just, finished it and who murmured, “Ain’t it beautiful?” in an envious voice.

  It was indeed, thought Roxanne, staring down at it as Ella arranged its folds over her outstretched arms.

  “Cook says it’s meant to be a queen’s dress, and that Miss Clarissa will wear a white-powdered wig with it.”

  “It’s a Marie Antoinette costume,” explained Roxanne. “She was a queen of France who was beheaded. They wore powdered wigs and beauty patches of black court-plaster on their faces then.”

  Roxanne held the lovely costume lightly over her arms as she went up the stairs, dreamily wishing she were attending the ball tonight.

  At the third floor landing, she paused. Why should she not attend the ball? In her hand was the invitation which was to be presented to the footman at the door. In her arms was Clarissa’s ballgown. And in her room—for a last curling and combing—was the big powdered wig Clarissa meant to wear with it.

  Thoughtfully she looked down at the costume. In mask and wig, she could present her invitation—and who would know she was not Clarissa? The Staffords were new to Baltimore; as to the others, no one knew what Clarissa was wearing to the ball. She could slip out! If the servants saw her, they would assume Clarissa had decided to go to the ball after all and think nothing about it. And it was not a gown Clarissa would be wearing again soon. It would be promptly packed away in a box for use at some future ball. Why, Clarissa would never even know she had worn it!

  Roxanne’s eyes sparkled. She would do it! She would attend the ball!

  Swiftly she turned down the steps into the servants’ wing instead of going into Clarissa’s rooms. She spread the lovely dress out on the bed and proceeded to comb and curl the wig. She would leave them there. If Mrs. Hollister should chance to enter her room while she was out, she would assume Roxanne was repairing some spangle that had come loose, or a seam that Clarissa had burst.

  On light feet, Roxanne journeyed across Baltimore and delivered the note of apology to the boring young gentleman who was to have squired Clarissa to the dance, then home again to get ready.

  Later that afternoon, Roxanne slipped into Clarissa’s darkened bedroom, past her sleeping form, and got a pair of sheer silk stockings. Clarissa had so many that one pair would never be missed. She also took the gold kid ball slippers Clarissa was to have worn which were just a trifle large but could be lined with something, a piece of muslin perhaps. And Clarissa’s dainty ivory fan and the satin purse she had planned to carry. Recklessly, Roxanne decided that she would be in no deeper trouble for going the whole way than half. So she picked up the satin cloak Clarissa had planned to wear over the costume and crept out

  Back in her room she realized irritably that she had forgotten the black satin mask and returned for it. As she opened the drawer, Clarissa awakened.

  “What are you doing, blundering about?” she demanded. “You’ve waked me—oh, my throat hurts.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Roxanne blandly. “I was putting some of your things away.” As she spoke, she picked up not only the mask but a pair of Clarissa’s mousquetaires; prudently she did not select the new ones—for once worn nothing would make such tight gloves look new again—but a pair Clarissa had worn before.

  “Bring me some hot milk,” ordered Clarissa, holding her throat. “And some of that cough syrup.”

  Roxanne hurried out with the things tucked in her apron, and stopped by her room to leave the mask and gloves before she ran downstairs to fetch the hot milk.

  While Clarissa drank it, Roxanne opened a drawer and idly pulled out some of Clarissa’s lovely under-things.

  “What are you doing?” asked Clarissa.

  “These need mending,” explained Roxanne. “Some of the lace has come loose.”

  Clarissa nodded indifferently. “Take this glass away and let me sleep,” she said in an irritable voice. “I don’t want to be disturbed tonight at all—it will only make me furious to wake up and realize others are dancing!”

  It would make her even more furious if she woke up and realized just who was dancing—and in her gown, thought Roxanne. When she took the empty glass away, she had beneath the lacy undergarments a bottle of Clarissa’s Paris perfume, her Paris powder and big swansdown puff.

  “Sleep well,” she said gently.

  “Oh, go away,” said Clarissa in a rude voice.

  Roxanne departed triumphantly to consider her treasures. After dinner, she lugged hot water up to her room and took a bath in a small tin tub she had borrowed from Mrs. Hollister.

  At last, powdered, perfumed, luxuriously gowned as a mock-queen, Roxanne inspected herself in the mirror with satisfaction. Her color was high—she had no need of rouge spots. Her sheer silky skin gleamed through its light dusting of perfumed Paris powder, and her huge satin skirts moved seductively as she walked. The costume’s décolletage was very daring, cut so low the nipples of her high rounded breasts almost peeped out; she had been surprised that Clarissa had had it cut so low. But when the dress was being fitted, Clarissa no doubt had intended to make Rhodes, who was also going to the ball, jealous by wearing that revealing décolletage while being escorted by another man.

  A slight froth of off-the-shoulder lace almost met the tops of the tight white kid mousquetaires. Roxanne had spent all of twenty minutes urging them onto her well-talcumed arms, and feeling those arms going numb, she practiced fluttering her hands the way Cla
rissa did, while waving the filagreed ivory fan. The effect was very fetching.

  Her bodice was tightly molded in lace-appliquéd satin spangled in gold, and from her waist a huge lace-appliquéd cream satin skirt billowed out, its hem and train gorgeously spangled. When she lifted the train, a lacy touch of Clarissa’s borrowed underwear showed beneath it, as well as Clarissa’s golden ball slippers, now padded to fit Roxanne’s more slender feet.

  With the white powdered wig firmly anchored to her own dark-blond hair, the black satin mask shadowing her sapphire eyes, and a bit of black court plaster artfully calling attention to one flushed cheek, she could have been mistaken at a distance for Clarissa. Only the more perfect molding of chin and neck gave her away.

  Regally she moved to the door—and paused. This was the part she dreaded most—sneaking out of the house.

  The servants had gone to their rooms early, for it had been a hard day in the laundry. Rhodes and Gavin were presumably out. Joab Coulter was safe abed. Taking a deep breath, Roxanne hurried down the front stairway, meeting no one. Down the front hall, out the front door—she had made it!"

  On the steps she paused and looked about. There were no hacks for hire clattering by as she had hoped there would be. She walked rapidly down the street, her satin cloak clutched about her, and managed to flag down a horse-drawn hack in the next block.

  The driver was not too surprised to see a masked Marie Antoinette step out of the glow of the street light into his cab, because masked balls were all the fashion, and kings and queens and knaves and potentates all rode—sometimes even in backfiring automobiles—up to the lighted doors of Baltimore’s great houses.

  Roxanne had remembered to drop some money into Clarissa’s satin purse so that when the hack swung up before the Staffords’ handsome Victorian mansion, she was able to pay the driver. Her heart was beating wildly as a hired footman handed her out of the hack. Roxanne hesitated, wishing that she had not embarked on this venture. But at that moment, a large party spilled out of two just-arrived carriages, and Roxanne melted in with them, surrendering her invitation to the footman and gliding through the downstairs hall of the Staffords’ handsome home. There, a maid took charge of the ladies, ushering them into a room where they were divested of their cloaks and where they could leave their purses. Many took their masks off and inspected their faces in the mirror—Roxanne did not. She turned and drifted out, mingling with the guests. In the great white and gold ballroom which the Staffords had just finished decorating—indeed they had given this ball to show off its magnificence, almost as recent as their own—she was immediately claimed for a dance by a harlequin-costumed young man.