Danse De La Folie

by Sherwood Smith

  Amelia had stopped fidgeting. Tired of ignoring her aunt, she had caught some of this, then she looked at Clarissa in astonishment. “When have you been on Finchley Common at midnight?”

  Clarissa and Kitty could not help but laugh. Then Clarissa said, “Here is another recollection. Lady Sefton and my grandmamma Norcaster have been friends any time these past thirty years.”

  “The Duchess of Norcaster?” Kitty asked.

  “Indeed. So she is well disposed toward my family.”

  It was true. Lady Sefton proved to be a kindly woman who, aside from a rather odd way of speaking, reminded Kitty of Mrs. Finn, the Tarval Hall housekeeper. Consequently, Kitty was able to converse with the easy, pretty-behaved poise that was her habit when she was not self-conscious, and she pleased the lady very well.

  Tildy had joined them, chattering to young Lord Molyneux, stiff in his proper blue jacket and knee breeches. The little boy was polite enough, only brightening when at last Lady Sefton rose to leave.

  She promised the vouchers, which sent Amelia shrieking upstairs the moment the street door was heard closed.

  The next morning, Amelia was cast into agonies of vexation when her mother calmly informed her that they must spend the morning returning certain calls. Not all, as she was not Out, but their near relations and young ladies their own age must certainly receive their due. Amelia, who had planned to lie in wait upon the deliveries of the post, muttered that she hoped no one would be at home so they could leave cards and return to Brook Street.

  Some were home, and others weren’t. They called in Mount Street, and found the Bouldestons at home.

  Here, Lady Chadwick observed the stiff care with which her guest behaved, which surprised her enough to pay more attention to her hostess and family than she otherwise would have.

  Lady Chadwick preferred to believe the best of people. Life was too fatiguing otherwise. Everybody had smiled and been kind when she was growing up, and after she’d had a wonderful year on the town exactly as she’d expected, her parents told her that marrying a widower with a child gave her two persons to love, and she would gain great credit thereby, which again had been true.

  Clarissa had written that she would find Lady Kitty charming and diverting, which was true, so she was ready to love whomever Lady Kitty loved. But Lady Kitty gave no evidence of loving these Bouldestons, in spite of the elder one’s gushing compliments.

  Lady Chadwick said nothing when they came away after their quarter hour, but noted the great breath of relief that Lady Kitty drew as soon as they stepped into the street.

  The next day, the highly anticipated vouchers arrived as promised. Among the stream of invitations there also arrived the following note:

  My Sweetest Catherine:

  How Transported I was when you and the Harlowes called. I meant to Speak of this then, but it was Driven out of my Head by my Delight at seeing you looking so well, and in company with the charming Miss Harlowe and Miss Amelia, and the beauteous Lady Chadwick, whose hat Mama declared the most beautiful hat she has seen in fifty ages.

  Since you are no Schoolroom Miss, I am Certain that you are not expecting poor lady Chadwick to Present you Formally along with her Daughter. Therefore I take it you are going to begin attending Society Functions at once.

  I am in transports at the notion of one who is to be my most cherished Sister (as soon as my papa can be Brought to Consent to my marriage with your dear Brother) attending Lucasta’s ball. Mama has writ to Lady Chadwick and the Harlowes, but I felt I must send your invitation myself. If you come, I will take it upon myself to Present you to the most eligible Men we know.

  With all my love—

  L. Bouldeston

  Kitty read it through twice, then said to Clarissa, “May I trouble you upon a point of etiquette?”

  Clarissa signed assent, and Kitty handed her the note, which Clarissa also read through twice, her face unreadable. At length, she said, “Do you wish to attend this ball?”

  “Not this one in particular, but I do wish to attend any ball. However, only when it is proper.”

  “Well, then, that is simple enough: you decline, with thanks. There is already a conflict for the rest of us, for one of my step-mother’s connections has already secured us for a soiree that evening. As for...” Clarissa frowned down at the note, then up. “As for these assertions, I must beg pardon, but Miss Bouldeston labors under a misunderstanding, I believe. My step-mother intends to introduce you at Amelia’s ball, I thought you understood that. It is what she meant when talking earlier about making certain your gowns complement. And it is only four days after Miss Lucasta’s, so it is not long to wait.”

  At that moment, Lady Chadwick herself appeared. Clarissa said to Kitty, “May I?”

  On Kitty’s nod, she held out Lucretia’s note. Lady Chadwick read it, and then looked up. For once, she was almost animated. “Yes, I just received an invitation for us. I will have to decline on our behalf, for my cousin’s soiree is that evening, and we are already expected. But I must say, I am somewhat surprised this assumption that I would be so remiss as to introduce you into the town without as much as a by-your-leave.” Lady Chadwick laid Lucretia’s note down. “I must say...”

  Without vouchsafing any actual utterance, in spite of that curious beginning, she walked out again.

  Kitty looked after her in puzzlement, but Lady Chadwick’s daughters were too used to their mother to be surprised.

  o0o

  The days sped by, each filled with activity. There were last-minute touches to arrange for their toilette. There was the dancing master to make certain Amelia and Kitty were ready for the intricacies of the ballroom floor.

  The day of Lucretia’s ball came and went. Kitty encountered Lucretia the next day in the park, and was favored with a description of how successful it had been: the girls had danced every dance, a thousand gentlemen had darted penetrating glances their way, but Lucretia was ever faithful to her dear Carlisle.

  However, she also knew that he would not wish her to languish away any more than he would want her to be rude to those who desired her company, and so she was forced to accept the invitations flooding in, and it was to be hoped that her dearest Catherine would have as much luck, but even if she had not, Lucretia would make it a rule to look out eligible gentlemen for her. “I am quite laughed at for my fidelity to my sex,” she said, “but you, of course, must be held above them all.”

  The day of Amelia’s ball dawned at last, and after two days of rain, it was even clear, promising a night of signal success.

  From early in the morning the house was rendered chaotic by an army of hired servants bent on transforming the entire ground floor into a bower of flowers. The younger girls were hugely entertained by watching everything, and getting in the way. The older members of the family heartily wished the day over. Only Amelia and Kitty were delighted by every detail.

  Lady Chadwick bestirred herself when her eldest daughter Hortensia, now Lady Badgerwood, arrived with her dandy of a husband, and a full coach of baggage plus half-a-dozen supernumerary servants, all for a two-day stay. This arrival could not have been worse timed for the laboring servants, Kitty noticed, a fact of which the embracing ladies remained sublimely unaware.

  Kitty also noticed that Clarissa seemed quiet, even subdued. She attributed it to headache caused by the noise, until Mrs. Latchmore came into the small back room, where the girls sat to be out of the way, exclaiming, “Oh, Clarissa, have you heard anything from Lord Wilburfolde? Was he not to arrive today? I so looked forward to introducing your intended to the world.”

  Clarissa looked up from her book of poems. “I believe he was intending so, yes.”

  Kitty kept her gaze on the letter she had begun to her brother, not daring to comment.

  At a quarter to eight, the family gathered in the dining room, which had been set up with card tables. Lord Wilburfolde had still not arrived, and Mrs. Latchmore was fretting about that as she bustled about, shifting a
candlestick here, a pack of cards there, and twitching a tablecloth that was already straight.

  “We shall be quite out of the ordinary, tonight,” Hetty exclaimed. “What a handsome family we make!”

  She smiled at her mother, who had changed her choice of dress three times in the past two weeks. This new dress had arrived that morning. It was the very latest fashion from Paris, brought by the Duchess of Devonshire, who had taken advantage of the Peace of Amiens to go to France, where she visited the Tuileries to be introduced to the First Consul and his charming wife. Lady Chadwick had been among the ladies invited to view the duchess’s new clothes, sending them all to their dressmakers.

  This gown was not made of diaphanous muslin, carefully dampened, for Lady Chadwick had decided notions about what was glorious and what was notorious. But the Grecian tunic over white, with the embroidered bunches of grapes, and the graceful headdress of laurel leaves and rubies to resemble grape clusters binding up her hair, was graceful and smart.

  Hetty was lovely in blue sarcenet, her husband a Pink of the Pinks in evening attire with the added glitter of fobs and seals and an ornate quizzing glass on a chain. He stood with Lord Chadwick against the far wall, enjoying a fortifying glass of sherry, joined by James, looking tall and lanky in his evening-rig, as he termed it.

  Hetty turned her step-sister’s way. “And you, Clarissa, I do not recall you ever looking better. Is it being engaged? I hear it adds to everyone’s beauty, for the worry is over. And you, Lady Kitty—you will set hearts afire tonight, I think!”

  Clarissa colored. She looked elegant in jonquil crape with lace at the neck and hem, but privately she took pride in Hetty’s heartfelt compliment aimed at Kitty, for it was very true that Kitty was splendid in a spider-gauze gown of white with a satin under-slip of palest green, and pale green velvet ribbon at the waist. Simple, demure, yet devastatingly elegant. Her headdress was as simple, merely two bunches of white roses threaded by green ribbon that matched the spring green of her eyes.

  Amelia twirled around, hands out-held. “And I?” She looked ethereal in pure white, with two white roses in her hair. The only color was the rose of her sash, the blue of her eyes, and the guinea-gold of her hair.

  She touched her neck, where her first grownup necklet of pearls lay.

  Hetty kissed her sister. “I think you will be even more popular than I was last year.”

  “Do not twitch at that lace, you will make sad work of it before your first guest,” Mrs. Latchmore scolded.

  Amelia dropped her hands, but then raised them again. “I hope I do not look like I am trying to copy Lucasta Bouldeston, for I hear she wore white, too, and Mary Yallonde wrote me a note yesterday, saying that Lucasta called on her, and hoped I would not be all in white, for I’d look such a figure after she—”

  “You know very well that girls always wear white,” Lady Chadwick said calmly. “I do not know how Miss Lucasta got such a silly notion.”

  “And hers was trimmed with floss, and spangles,” Mrs. Latchmore added. “For I had it myself from Mrs. Somerset.”

  Amelia then went on nervously, “I do not want to dance the first dance with anyone old. I want to fall in love, just like Hetty did at her ball—”

  “If his grace attends, the honor must go to him, dear,” Lady Chadwick said. “And be sure it will get out that your first dance was with a duke. After that, you may accept whom you please, but it would look better if you honor...”

  She lowered her voice, talking quietly until Amelia whimpered, “But he’s fat!”

  “Oh lord,” James said, rolling his eyes. “When Tildy comes out, I shall be in another country, see if I’m not.”

  Just then the door knocker rapped, and the family moved to the landing to form the greeting line.

  o0o

  Some time later, Kitty’s face ached from smiling, and her knees from curtseying over and over. Scores of people had passed by as Lady Chadwick said her name what seemed a thousand times.

  But at last the stream of arrivals slowed to a trickle, at which time Lady Chadwick, usually so vague, tipped her head as the clock chimed sweetly eleven times. “It is time to open the ball,” she said.

  Kitty followed the family into an anteroom. The brilliance of the candles, the hot air, the murmur of voices seemed to be drowned by the curious rushing in her head. She moved without being conscious of it to a chair, and sat down abruptly.

  “Lady Kitty.” A voice broke into the fog.

  Kitty looked up, and blinked until she recognized James’s face. “Here,” he said, and pushed something into her hands.

  She sipped, and her mouth took fire, spreading coals down as she swallowed. “What is that?” she gasped.

  “Brandy.” James grinned. “Drink it off.”

  “No. Please, take it away. That is, thank you. But it tastes horrid, and I should very much not like to smell of spirits. I am very much better, thank you.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. That is, I was standing, watching your Mama talk to that last group of people, and then, I don’t know.”

  “Eat anything today?”

  “Of course. That is,” Kitty amended as she recollected the picked-at dinner, then the tea swallowed at breakfast. “What a goose I am.”

  “Hetty did the same thing last year. But she fainted right on the landing. Badgerwood was there to help—but they’d been making eyes at one another for two weeks. He lived with his family across the street, you know. Thing is, Clarissa sent me, for they are making up the first set. I’m to lead you out.”

  “I thought you despised dancing.” Kitty laughed up at him.

  “Not with you, I don’t. For one thing, we’ve practiced together, and I know you will not tread on my toes. And for another, I know you won’t bullock me into a second one.”

  Together they walked into the ballroom, where Kitty spotted Lord Wilburfolde next to a pale Clarissa. “Oh, he’s here,” Kitty said under her breath.

  James muttered, “Just arrived.”

  Kitty turned his way. “You don’t like him?”

  James evinced surprise. “He’s not a bad fellow, just a slow-top.”

  “I am convinced Clarissa does not want to marry him,” Kitty murmured. “Can you help me think of a way to save her?”

  James’s eyes rounded. “Nothing to be done. Puffed off in the papers, family wants it—Lady Wilburfolde. Lord!” He made a warding motion. “No gainsaying her. If Boney ever met her, he’d mend his ways. Besides, it’s Mama’s and my aunt’s business. If I were to go poking my nose in, they might take it into their heads to try foisting a wife onto me.”

  Kitty thought that Ned and Carlisle would not be so poor-spirited, not to mention selfish, but she liked James, so she kept that to herself.

  And so at last the dancers begin the dance, each pair appearing to be in perfect amity, led off by Amelia and the stout, middle-aged Duke of Norcaster, with Kitty and James after. Clarissa and Lord Wilburfolde followed Hetty and her husband. The music began, everybody smiled, and they were in motion. Once Amelia trusted that she would not falter, she enjoyed the exhilaration of being the center of attention.

  Kitty and James probably had the most fun, exchanging joking comments all the way through. Kitty was completely unaware of how very well she looked on a ballroom floor, more graceful than the self-conscious Amelia, her eyes and cheeks glowing.

  Clarissa’s cheeks also glowed, but from suppressed irritation when her betrothed, after their first exchange of greetings, inquired, “Have you written in response to my mother’s letter yet?”

  “I have not, Lord Wilburfolde.” And because he waited for an explanation, she felt obliged to utter a social nothing, “I have been so very busy.”

  “Miss Harlowe, I feel it my duty to point out that my mother is strict about the rules of etiquette.” And when Clarissa nodded acknowledgment, “Then you must realize she will regard herself bound by the rules of civil discourse not to write again until she has
received an answer.”

  Clarissa was surprised, and not pleased, to discover a petty retort rising to her lips. He was thoroughly in the right, and she had erred, and yet she was not sorry. She was surprised at her own spitefulness. To scold herself, she said, “I beg pardon. I will amend my error.”

  He thanked her with painstaking courtesy, and went on to enumerate the sacrifices his mother was making in staying alone at The Castle while Edmund attended his betrothed in the metropolis.

  By the end of the dance, Kitty and Amelia were surrounded, the young bucks gravitating to Amelia and the more sophisticated to Kitty, so that neither robbed the other of attention.

  “My dance, I believe, Worthington?” A tall gentleman, his hair worn short in a Bedford crop, appeared at Kitty’s side as the orchestra struck up for the fourth time.

  Mr. Worthington, fair-haired and smiling, said, “But this was my dance, was it not, Lady Catherine?”

  “How am I to answer?” she replied, looking from one to the other. “I confess I do not remember where we are at.”

  The new gentleman said, “Bare-faced piracy. I am convinced that it was my dance.”

  Kitty sent an appealing glance up at Mr. Worthington. “Is it permitted to request of you to return for the next?”

  Mr. Worthington bowed, then sent an ironic glance at his rival. “I find I must surrender to force majeure, but only to spare the lady, otherwise I should call you to account, sir.”

  “Name your time and place, sir. I expire happily if I might dare to request a single rose before I die.”

  There was a little more banter like this, nothing that hadn’t been heard on countless ballroom floors, but it was all new and dazzling to Kitty. She glowed with pleasure, bestowed the rose, then moved happily enough out onto the floor with her new partner, thinking, Now what was his name?