Derwent, Hayes and Company was assured of invitations. The Honorable Rachel Wheatley’s attractive daughter Cynthia would curtsy to the Prince among the daughters of the other great hongs: John Swire and Jardine, Matheson foremost among them. But Lady Blake had rigorously excluded Kelley and Walsh, booksellers; Halliday and Wise, provision merchants; and Lane Crawford, ships’ chandlers. Their daughters would not be presented to the Prince.
Those firms traded at retail, and Lady Blake would not permit the presence of “tradespeople” to sully the Royal occasion. It did not matter that the original wealth of the great hongs came from forcing opium upon the Chinese at gunpoint. It did not matter that they had been smugglers, tax evaders, and, when expedient, pirates. Nor did it matter that they still shipped opium to China, despite the expressed disapproval of the Queen Empress’s prime minister. The hongs were, most obviously, not engaged in retail trade.
Mary Philippa Osgood hugged her secret in delight. Because of John Williams’s impulsiveness and her own gentle wiles, she would attend the Royal Ball, whatever Lady Blake might say. Her tears, not all feigned, had leached reluctant and admonitory consent from her father. Bandmaster John Philip Osgood had stormed up and down their small parlor, firing admonitions like a ship-of-the-line repeatedly going about to loose successive broadsides.
“’Twill be t’ end of you, my girl—mayhap t’ end of me,” he’d thundered. “What’ll the Colonel say—or t’ Colony’s lady—when you’re seen where you never belong? Comes of mixing with your betters.”
“Father,” she’d pleaded, “it’s the most important thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Aye,” he’d replied, his North Country accent thickening, “and likely t’ most important thing ever happened to me—t’ end of me.”
“But, Father,” she’d sobbed, “Lieutenant Williams would be offended if I didn’t come.”
“Lass, he only asked you like a stray pup he pitied. He’s a good-hearted lad—even if no proper officer and too hasty.”
The battle had raged at intervals for three days while Ah Sam shook his heavy head in amazement. Mary had finally triumphed.
“If you must, you must,” John Osgood had reluctantly agreed. “And, if you must, you’ll do’t handsomely. Who’s t’ best dressmaker in this heathen place?”
“Madame Rachelle, they tell me. But she’s frightfully expensive. I wouldn’t dream of—”
“Off you go, lass! Off you go! If you’re bound to play t’ fool, you’ll be dressed as well—or better—than t’ damned nobs’ daughters.”
Elizabeth Metcalfe took Mary to Madame Rachelle’s atelier on Wellington Street. To her surprise, Hilary Metcalfe accompanied them. His forceful personality—and, no doubt, his wealth—prevailed upon the temperamental, overworked French-Russian couturier to promise her gown on the afternoon before the Ball. Mary suspected that he had supplemented the Hong Kong $150, about £15, her father thought ample for the grandest dress. Hilary Metcalfe gently rebuffed her protestations and her thanks.
“Madame Rachelle owes me some favors,” he said cryptically. “I’m just collecting a bit on account.”
Mary had heard snide whispers when promenading at Scandal Point, the grass-covered junction of Kennedy Road and the Garden Road footpath where European ladies in their Sunday finery gossiped after church. At Scandal Point she was accepted, if only by the wives and daughters of retail merchants who knew that the Metcalfes received her. Feminine love of scandal leveled social barriers, and feminine malice wafted spiced rumors to her ears.
“My dear,” Mrs. Wise had confided. “It’s said Mr. Metcalfe set Madame Rachelle up in business. They say he brought her down from Shanghai, but tired of her. Whatever—it was a handsome gesture.”
Mary had feigned shocked disbelief, though a spring of pleasure bubbled in her heart at learning that gruff old Hilary Metcalfe had once played the ardent lover. But she forgot all else when she displayed her ballgown to the Metcalfes in Madame Rachelle’s crowded atelier.
Daringly omitting the customary train, the floor-length gown was, Madame Rachelle rhapsodized, “in the Grecian mode.” The fine white silk, gathered above the waist, flowed into a full skirt. Her shoulders were covered, and the flying panels of the gown’s sleeves danced in the air with every movement. The deep décolleté was outlined with antique strips of gold-and-green Chinese embroidery crossing beneath her bust. Otherwise unadorned, the dress’s simplicity set off the jewelry Elizabeth Metcalfe had insisted upon lending her. Ruby eyes shining, a white-jade butterfly danced atop its gold spring on the hairpin thrust into her red-gold hair. Identical jade bracelets set with diamonds encircled her slender wrists, their green-and-crystal iridescence shimmering.
“You’re lovely, my dear,” Miss Metcalfe sighed. “The frock’s different, quite different—and so striking. But do remember a modest manner. And do set a guard on your tongue!”
“Liz wants you to be a movable doll, my dear, but just be yourself,” Hilary Metcalfe boomed above his sister’s advice. “You know I’ve sometimes thought it’d be better if you were a boy. You’ve got three times the spirit and brains of any of our local coxcombs. But right now I wouldn’t wish you anything but what you are—the most beautiful girl in Hong Kong. Not just Hong Kong—the most beautiful girl on the China Coast.”
She was still tingling with pleasure at that gruff accolade—and John Williams’s sharp intake of breath on first beholding her when his hired carriage clattered through the gilt-iron gates of Government House. But she braced herself as they alighted before sweeping steps guarded by Fusiliers in red-and-gold dress-uniform crowned with plumed shakos. Her stomach was an icy pit, and her palms were damp within long kid gloves. She felt a hot flush and knew with fearful certainty that her face was glowing red beneath its discreet dusting of rice powder. She leaned on John Williams’s extended hand.
If you’re doing something most people will disapprove, she told herself, then do it with a flair, my girl. If you’re being foolish, go the whole hog.
Government House floated on a fountain of light. Torrents of brilliant rays streaming from every window transformed the squat structure into a crystalline fairy palace. Lanterns glowed in the surrounding trees, like rainbow-hued butterflies. The pungent-sweet scent of frangipani drifted on the gentle breeze that fluttered ladies’ skirts and rocked the lanterns amid the green leaves. From the center of the grounds a great flame-of-the-forest tree thrust its crimson fire into the blue-satin sky. An orange moon nestled in the hills of Kowloon across the bay.
John Williams offered a red-sheathed arm, and Mary’s fingers lightly touched the gold piping. The hard muscles beneath the fine barathea trembled. They joined the queue on the steps to the entrance hall, and she saw with sudden dismay that Captain Lord Peter French stood beside her. The encounter with that arrogant son of the aristocracy in a setting so different from the informality of the Metcalfes’ parlor was her first trial of an evening that would be an ordeal.
“Good evening, Lord Peter,” she smiled her sweetest. If you will be foolish, do it well—and be damned to everyone.
“Your servant, Miss Osgood,” Lord Peter replied with cold hauteur. “Good evening, Lieutenant.”
The perfumed, perspiring queue shuffled into the entrance hall where Sir Henry Blake was receiving his guests. The Governor’s white uniform was a panoply of gold epaulettes, rainbow ribbons, and jeweled orders. Lady Blake’s low-cut chartreuse ballgown fringed with bobbles at the neckline, hips, and hem was, Mary felt, an unfortunate accent for her plump shoulders and sallow cheeks. Prince William stood beside the Blakes, a gracious Royal smile pasted slightly askew on his high-bred features like a made-up bow-tie. Cut high in front, the gold-encrusted jacket of his formal evening uniform swept to long swallowtails in back. A silver-hilted dress sword hung from the blue-and-white cummerbund girding his waist, and the pale-blue riband of a Knight of the Garter crossed his chest. Around his neck hung the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Swords a
nd Diamonds bestowed by his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II. The two golden stripes of a lieutenant on his sleeves enhanced his youthful dignity. His Royal Highness’s petulant lower lip belied his smile of state, but curved in honest pleasure when he glimpsed Mary awaiting presentation to Lady Blake.
“How d’you do?” the formidable matron snapped unsmiling when John Williams presented Mary Osgood. Oblivious to his wife’s frosty eye, Sir Henry beamed in welcome.
Prince William extended his hand to help Mary rise from her deep curtsy. Though she had practiced for a week, her heel momentarily caught in her hem.
“Steady there, Miss!” The Prince’s light tenor had charmed a thousand debutantes and their mothers. “Can’t have the prettiest girl of the evening hurting herself. The butterfly in your hair dances charmingly.”
“Thank you, Your Royal Highness.”
As she stepped aside, Mary’s head swam with delight. The sailor-prince was not only as handsome as his repute, but regally gracious. As if from a great distance, she heard John Williams’s voice.
“A charmer, isn’t he? I suppose it’s his job. But he’s right: you are the prettiest of all.”
“Thank you, John,” she murmured, still bedazzled.
“But I don’t think we’ll be seeing him again. We’re far below the salt, practically in the kitchen.”
They sat down to dine amid streams of light cascading from hundreds of candles in crystal chandeliers. Mary barely heard John Williams’s whispers and she pecked at the profusion of courses: dressed crab in the shell, cold lobster mayonnaise, turtle soup, Macao salmon garnished with tiny shrimps, roast duckling, stuffed goose, a lemon sorbet, a baron of beef, lamb-en-croute, a mango sorbet, crown-shaped gâteaux, a multitude of cheeses, and a cornucopia of fruit.
The mixed bouquet of perfumes was almost as exhilarating as the hock, the claret, and the champagne. Among the gentlemen’s black tailcoats and dark-hued uniforms, the ladies’ pastel gowns shimmered like a painter’s palette. Their silks, satins, and taffetas were tortured into panniers, drapes, trains, and bustles. Her own simply cut, virtually unadorned white dress, Mary realized, made her most striking and, perhaps unfortunately, obtrusive. If her mere presence was in truth foolish, it was undeniably spectacular. She shrank into herself.
The apparently interminable dinner finally drew to a bloated close. Lady Blake’s eyes swept around the table. Their trains swaying, the chosen ladies withdrew to a smaller parlor. Mary was left standing indecisively with the fourteen other young women who were excluded from the charmed circle. The gentlemen were already passing the port along the polished mahogany table.
John Williams looked up in impotent apology as she fled with the other outcasts to the shelter of the powder room. An overdressed blonde with an enormous bust encased in purple silk sat before the mirror, tears trickling silently down her cheeks. Mary sank into a wicker chair, waving off the aged amah’s proffered assistance in refreshing her toilette. She should not, she realized with cold self-contempt, have defied propriety by coming to the Royal Ball. High-spirited daring was one thing, deliberately playing the fool quite another. And she had played the fool in the most public manner possible.
She passed a half-hour of dull misery before the orchestra struck up to summon the party to the dancefloor. John Williams claimed Mary as Prince William led out Lady Blake for the first waltz.
“The old cow’s had His Royal Highness with her cronies, formally presenting each of them,” he whispered. “You’d think he was a performing bear and she his keeper.”
When the first dance ended, Lady Blake firmly led Prince William to a corner behind a veritable stockade of chairs which kept all but the elect from approaching the Royal presence. The Prince dutifully partnered matrons selected by Lady Blake or the few younger ladies she judged worthy to repose briefly in the formal Royal embrace. The slightly protuberant Royal eyes grew glazed with boredom, and the Royal lower lip drooped in undisguised irritation.
The evening that appeared a minor disaster for Mary Philippa Osgood was a protracted ordeal for the handsome Prince, who was condemned to dance with Lady Blake’s hand-picked Gorgons. Despite her own misery, Mary almost laughed aloud as she watched Prince William steering the angular and Honorable Rachel Wheatley around the dancefloor. At least she herself had John. She smiled into his eyes and pressed closer to his brilliant red tunic. The heart beneath the gold braid quickened its beat.
Despite the glowing decor and the spirited music, a heavy dullness settled over the ballroom. The Prince’s displeasure was apparent to even the least sensitive—to all, it seemed, except Lady Blake herself. When a diversion presented itself, the relieved guests rushed with a single will to the open french doors. A joyous dissonance from the garden sounded—the beating of drums, the clashing of cymbals, and the shrill lilting of pipes.
The surge separated Mary from John Williams and swept her into the garden. A gaudy paper dragon danced among the lantern-hung trees, twisting in serpentine coils, capering sideways at the drums’ command, and bounding high on fifty pairs of brown legs. The red-painted jaws in the enormous head grinned gleefully beneath pop-eyes glowing with lantern light. Around the cavorting monster, Chinese musicians sounded their gay cacophony on drums, gongs, pipes, and flutes.
The crush forced Mary into a cul-de-sac in the red brick wall surrounding the garden. When the dragon darted mock-ferociously in her direction, a gentleman backed into her, treading on her toe.
“So sorry. Terribly sorry.”
Mary looked up into Prince William’s blue eyes, which were alight with amusement. She bobbed a curtsy, but his hand was under her arm.
“Do you know what this dragon’s all about, Miss—ah—Miss?” he asked. “Lady Blake didn’t tell me about his performance.”
“Yes, Sir,” she answered tremulously. “The dragon is the symbol of China, the symbol of majesty and joy—and he’s dancing just for Your Royal Highness.”
“Pleasant custom, Miss—Miss—do forgive me. I’ve forgotten the name of the most charming girl here. Where did she hide you when we were dancing?”
“Osgood … Mary Osgood, Sir.”
“Well, Miss Osgood.” The Prince spoke over the din of gongs and drums; the dragon, having found its Royal prey, was jubilantly weaving its coils around them. “I want to know more about this. Does anyone talk the lingo? Could someone ask that headman-looking fellow what it’s all about? Grandmama would want to know.”
“I could try, Sir,” Mary ventured.
Prince William beckoned to the dragon’s leader, who was immensely stout in flowing green-silk robes.
“He says,” Mary interpreted timorously, “that the dragon always dances to honor great occasions. It’s a royal dragon, an Imperial dragon, and it rejoices at your presence. He also says—but I don’t think …”
“Carry on, Miss Osgood. Tell me everything the old boy says. This is the best fun I’ve had since this damned—pardon, Miss Osgood—this glorious ball began. A whacking great dragon that practically talks—and the prettiest girl in Hong Kong.”
“He also says, Your Royal Highness,” Mary blurted, “that the fierce dragon is loyal—utterly loyal to yourself and the great Queen Empress. But he hopes there will be peace between the Queen Empress in London and the Empress Dowager in Peking.”
“Does he, by Jove? Tell him I’m all for peace, too, Miss Osgood.”
Mary essayed a farewell curtsy, realizing that it was not merely foolish, but foolhardy to monopolize the Prince’s attention. But his hand clasped her arm as the dragon capered away, and she yielded to the temptation.
“I mustn’t keep you from your dancing partners, Sir.”
“You won’t escape me so easily,” Prince William laughed. “I command you to dance with me. My prerogative, you know. You can’t refuse.”
“As a loyal subject,” Mary coquetted over her fan, “I wouldn’t dream of disputing a Royal command.” If you’re being foolish, she thought, why not foolhardy?
Dancing with a Royal prince, Mary found, was much like dancing with any other young man of twenty-six. He held her too close, and she strained away as gracefully as possible. She was aware of only two other persons as they whirled to the lilting song “Poor Little Buttercup,” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s newest light opera, H.M.S. Pinafore. As if the Gorgon had turned herself to stone, Lady Blake sat frozen on the chair guarding the entrance to her Royal stockade, her small eyes fixing the twirling couple with a basilisk glare. Bandmaster John Philip Osgood stared from the bandstand with horror stamped on his heavy features. An eternity passed before the music stopped and the Prince stepped back laughing.
“Capital, Miss Osgood. You’re a feather in a breeze. We’ll do it again, but now duty calls. Can I take you to your friends?”
Friends? Mary looked around desperately. John Williams was nowhere in sight. With overwhelming relief, she saw the Metcalfes seated with a slender, middle-aged man in a full-dress suit.
“Thank you, Your Royal Highness. My friends are there.”
Prince William offered his arm, and she was suddenly aware of the enormity of her offense. In her misery, she was barely aware that he acknowledged the Metcalfes’ homage with a nod and commanded: “Now promise you’ll save a dance for me.”
When she looked up, Hilary Metcalfe was beaming at her, and his sister’s smile was joyous.
“I’ve done it now,” Mary said in low-voiced despair. “Everyone’ll hate me for dancing with the Prince. It was better when they just ignored me.”
“Mary, you still don’t understand Hong Kong.” Hilary Metcalfe’s laughter resounded; “You’ve done it, indeed. You’ll be deluged with invitations. The middle-class matriarchy can’t resist the Royal touch. You’re not just acceptable, but the belle of the year. It’s mad, but it’s true.”
“But I thought—”
“Hilary’s right, Mary,” Elizabeth Metcalfe assured her. “You should be very happy. Even that jade hairpin is hallowed. I’d like you to keep it for remembrance.”
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