Observing her sister’s desolate expression, Arabella forgot their host’s extreme generosity, forgot her own position, forgot everything, in fact, in the searing heat of her all-consuming anger.
“No?” she lashed out. “Our mistake, then! You must have spent three quarters of an hour in Belinda’s lap that day, having spent the previous quarter of an hour lapping at her lap. And you most certainly are a dog, sir!”
He smiled again and shook his head. “You do not understand, because you are Protestants.”
“Actually, we are not,” said Belinda quietly.
“But you live in a Protestant country, so you think like Protestants. I am sorry if I have hurt your feelings,” he told her, “but you see, we are different. Protestants must behave themselves at all times, while Catholics may do anything, anything, as long as they tell a priest about it afterwards. If we break the law, we are subject to legal punishment, of course. Otherwise we go home to our families with clean consciences.”
“That’s a neat system!”
“We like it.”
At that moment, all the church bells began to ring for Vespers.
“If you will excuse me,” said the prince, rising and kissing Belinda’s hand in farewell, “I must attend confession.”
Chapter 28
NO PLACE LIKE ACKERMANN’S
A light snow, the first of the season, had sprinkled itself over the iron railings and gray stone doorsteps of Regency London. Arabella and Belinda had risen early (for them) and run out of the house, in order to lose no time in applying for news of the family scandal.
“I shall take the left side of the window,” said Arabella, “and you take the right. Then we can work our way towards the middle without missing anything.”
But in its reportage of the ways of the world, Ackermann’s window, like great literature, is both highly instructive and “monstrous entertaining.” So, despite their single-minded purpose, Arabella and Belinda soon found themselves diverted by a plethora of non-essential information: Napoleon had suffered heavy losses and been defeated at Moscau. Arabella had actually heard about this, because people had talked of little else wherever she went. But of course, she had not actually seen Napoleon, as she did here, clad as an infant in a cockade and diaper, weeping floods of tears and leading an army of human and horse skeletons through a blinding snowstorm.
Next to this was a picture of British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries in America, setting fire to things and generally misbehaving themselves. It was most gratifying to find the princess regent, Belinda’s particular enemy, presented as a fat, tantrum-throwing hussy. Of course, the regent himself was always depicted as bloated and repulsive, but Arabella never tired of seeing his caricature. It made her laugh, every time. And here was Lady Ribbonhat, too, with her enormous head and dwarfish physique, embroiled in some sort of contretemps concerning a mud puddle, a London constable, and a lot of cats.
The sisters reached the center of the window at the same moment, and found themselves looking at a double Beaumont family portrait. In the left frame, Arabella and Belinda were shewn, out of doors, this time, and with their clothes on, demurely walking along the street on either side of Charles. His arms were spread protectively behind them, in a pose vaguely reminiscent of that sketch of the Pan statue. But the frame on the right shewed the same scene from the rear, with Charles’s hands lasciviously fondling his sisters’ respective rumps. The caption read “Sibling Ribaldry.”
Belinda groaned and clutched her muff to her breast. “Whatever shall we—”
“Ladies! Welcome home at last!”
Lord Egremont tipped his hat and smiled at them, as he rode past on his gleaming chestnut mount. Farther up the street, Lord Alvanley could be seen approaching on foot.
“Miss Beaumont! Miss Belinda! London has not been the same without you!” he cried. And he shook them each by the hand with evident satisfaction.
“Alleluia! The Miss Beaumonts have returned!” shouted the eccentric Mr. Beckford, waving from the window of his ornate carriage. “We’ll have a house party at Fonthill in your honor!”
They were hailed by nearly a dozen well-known worthies in the space of five minutes. Nobody seemed to be taking the scandal very seriously. As the sisters proceeded from one establishment to another, the shopkeepers served them with as great a pleasure as ever, and Arabella finally professed herself glad to be home.
“Apparently, it was not a problem, then,” she said as the carriage made its way back to Brompton Park. “We need not have taken the men with us after all.”
“No; and Mr. Kendrick need not have risked his own life in fighting to save yours,” Belinda replied . . . somewhat spitefully, Arabella thought.
“I am not saying I wish I had not taken them. I am merely observing that an overhasty misjudgment may produce unnecessary expenditure.”
It was the last remark spoken by either of them until the carriage rolled in at the gate, where they encountered the rector’s horse in their stable, and its owner in their smoking room, sharing the proverbial feedbag with Charles. The gentlemen were enjoying Mrs. Moly’s bredela, small, Alsatian Christmas cakes, of which Arabella was particularly fond. But if Kendrick was slow to rise when his hostess made her entrance, she hardly remarked it.
“Bunny, my love,” said Arabella, removing her gloves, “ring for more bredela and two more plates.”
It was scarcely gone two hours since breakfast. But this was the orange and cinnamon variety and it was nearly Christmas and Mrs. Moly only made it once a year and, after all, ’twas the season.
“It is good to see you, Mr. Kendrick,” said Arabella, “although I should have thought you would want to go home to Effing after such a long absence from it.”
“I spent last night at my club,” he said quietly, “in order to do some snooping. And I shall go home, presently, for I daresay you are sick of the sight of me. But I have some news about your bronze, that I thought you might be glad of.”
Kendrick had traced the Herculaneum artifacts, listed at the shipping office as “unspecified cargo,” from the docks to a removal van, and from said van to their present location.
“Yes. I know,” said Arabella, removing her bonnet and patting her hair in the large looking glass. “They have been locked away forever in the bowels of the British Museum.” She dropped into a chair, with the force of conviction.
“Well, no, as a matter of fact. That was what I supposed, too, but I wanted to make certain. And I am glad that I checked, because your bronze, and all the other treasures, are currently reposing at Carlton House!”
“Oh, no!” she groaned. “I had nearly become reconciled to the failure of my endeavors. Eventually I might even have come to acknowledge some kind of lesson from this. But,” she said, through gritted teeth, “that my wonderful statue should end up with the Great Git, at Carlton House? This is simply not to be borne!”
“Oh, that reminds me,” said Charles, heedless of the emotional turbulence boiling up before him, “the incest scandal which you predicted with such dire forebodings has completely blown over. If you ask me, it never was a problem in the first place! Kendrick and I could have remained ensconced here at Lustings the whole time you were gone, eating whatchamacallems and staying safely out of harm’s way! Of course, I shouldn’t have found my Fortuna figurine,” he admitted. “In any case, though, the scandal is quite over; everyone has forgotten about it.”
“Not everyone,” said Arabella, pouring out tea for Mr. Kendrick. “Bunny and I have just seen another cartoon about our family in Ackermann’s window.”
“Everyone who matters, I meant. En garde!”
He thrust a pasteboard rectangle under her nose, so close to her eyes that she could not read it at first.
“What is it?” she asked, pushing his hand away.
“Exactly what it looks like: an invitation to the snow ball.”
“The what?”
“The regent’s winder ball. D’you think I’d have had a
n invitation to that, if I had been judged a social leper? I am not going, of course.”
“Oh!” said Belinda. “The winter ball, you mean!”
Upon the instant, Arabella felt a fountain of renewed hope and energy surging through her, expanding upward and outward in all directions, like the contents of a champagne bottle that is uncorked at a picnic, after a rough journey in a hackney carriage.
“Yes, Charles,” she said. “You will go to the ball, and furthermore I shall go, too, with you as my escort!”
“But won’t that revive the scandal?” asked Belinda, gnawing her nether lip.
“I shall be in disguise!”
“That is what you always say, and yet everyone always knows who you are.”
“Oh, nonsense. You should come too, Bunny. The invitation says ‘Charles Beaumont and guests.’ A ball is just what you need, dear, to restore the pink to those adorable cheeks!”
It did not occur to her to include Reverend Kendrick in their party. Perhaps this was owing to the fact that he was sitting in the shadow cast by one of the bookcases, but the fact was, she had quite forgotten he was in the room at all.
Chapter 29
HIGH STAKES
Such a business over what to wear! Arabella, after much debate both inward and outward, decided upon the blue domino and Venetian Carnivale mask given her by Charles, via Prince Palmadessola. Underneath this, she styled herself a well-upholstered, matronly female, with a wild attitude and gray hair, for the regent was partial to such women. Belinda, from the notes and sketches she had made in Arabella’s CIN, was stunning as Madame Murat, Queen of Naples. Charles flatly refused to wear any type of costume other than that of an elegant man about town paying a call upon his sovereign, for he planned on spending the evening at the gaming tables . . . “And who, pray, is going to take a large blue rabbit for a serious opponent?”
The siblings had themselves announced as “the three graces,” rather than use their proper names, and succeeded in descending the staircase and passing through the reception line without detection. But they had no sooner cleared the gauntlet than Belinda gave a strangled cry and fled from the room. Arabella was unable to discover the cause, despite craning her neck and attempting to see through eyeholes not designed for the purpose, until she was herself caught by the elbow.
“Hello, Miss Beaumont!” lisped Osvaldo, loud enough for half the room to hear him. “You see? I am as good as my word! I said I would find you again, and here I come! Where has your sister gone? I just catched a glimpse of her on the staircase, and now I cannot find her anywhere! She looks, how do you say, heavenward, tonight!”
“Do you know,” said Arabella, “I believe I saw her leave through there,” and with her fan she indicated a portal on the opposite side of the room from the door through which Belinda had actually gone.
Osvaldo took hasty leave and ran off, a hunter in quest of a Bunny. Charles, of course, had drifted away to the delights afforded by the card room, and Arabella was now alone, in hostile territory. If the regent should suspect who she really was . . . but he wouldn’t. She peered with curiosity through her slanted eyeholes at the room in which she found herself, for Arabella had often heard about this chamber. It was the infamous Crimson Saloon, an interior space so relentlessly saturated with that color that the eye wearied of it almost at once.
The furnishings were upholstered in crimson damask. There were crimson draperies at the windows, crimson carpets on the floor, and the walls were covered in crimson velvet. The crimson chairs and sophas having been pushed back against the crimson walls for the occasion, people were dancing in the crimson void thus created. Gigantic pier glasses and gargantuan crystal chandeliers reflected and multiplied the effect of the crimson atmosphere, producing a feeling of faint queasiness in some; acute nausea in others.
Some relief could be found in staring up at the Florentine ceiling, which was decorated with mythical Florentine beasts in soothing tones of blue, orange, and yellow, and when the neck tired of straining upward, one might gaze at tables, supported by richly gilt griffin legs, and at the bric-a-brac that covered their surfaces. But these collections included vases, and sadly, many of these were . . . crimson.
Arabella, who much preferred a simple interior to a fussy one, soon found her senses overwhelmed. Hence, she failed to notice the elegant maharajah who stood before her, camouflaged as he was in crimson-colored silk, until he bowed.
“Thank you,” she said, accepting the cup of crimson punch that he offered her. Then she lifted her eyes to his, and felt her heart fly into her mouth.
I can assure those readers unacquainted with this feeling that it is most uncomfortable at the best of times, but if it happens while one is drinking, it is also uncouth. Arabella choked, splattering crimson punch all over her exquisite gown of golden jacquard. (It had not, thankfully, spurted from her nose.) The rajah gave her his handkerchief to mop up, during which procedure she took the opportunity to glance at him again. His beard was false, his visage darkened with walnut oil, but he was a stunningly handsome creature all the same. At the third glance, she read the man’s very soul in his eyes, and realized that he was reading her own just as clearly.
“Thank you,” she breathed, handing back the handkerchief.
He touched his forehead, his lips, and his heart: Evidently he could not, or would not, speak. Then he bowed again and retreated backward, holding her with his gaze until he disappeared into the crowd.
Extraordinary! thought Arabella. Who was that fellow? And after a time she realized that the crimson color with which she was surrounded was starting to give her a headache.
Usually, when the great courtesan attended parties like this, she had a knot of admirers simpering about her, begging for a dance or for some small commission, such as fetching a bottle of sal volatile for her headache. But not this time. Perhaps her grandmotherly disguise had put them all off. Yes, surely that was it, for nobody knew who she was.
“Miss Beaumont! How delightful to see you again!”
It was Cecil Elliot, dressed as a cavalier. He had approached unseen, but now made her a most courteous bow, sweeping off his plumed hat with a flourish that would have done Charles I proud. Fortunately, this was executed within the limited range of her eyeholes, for it was a most magnificent bow, and not to be missed.
“How do you do,” returned Arabella coldly. “If you will excuse me, I had rather not speak to you.”
“Oh, dear! . . . But why ever not?”
“Because, Mr. Elliot, after you left the Perseverance, claiming you had been recalled to London, the captain informed us that you had requested the transfer yourself!”
“True enough.”
“Well. I do not entertain the company of liars, if I can help it. Nor do I encourage the addresses of gentlemen who abandon their acquaintances in mid-ocean, without informing them of impending danger.”
“Impending danger? To what do you refer?”
“I do not know what the danger was. Luckily, we escaped from it. But I naturally concluded there was something frightful in the offing, or you would not have left us as you did.”
“Oh, Miss Beaumont! My darling Miss Beaumont! If I’d had reason to suspect that your safety was in any way compromised, please believe that I would not only have apprised you of it, but seen you personally delivered out of danger. That you should think me a coward is unendurable, and unjust in the extreme. I pray that you will allow me to acquit myself to you.”
“Very well. I am listening.”
“Not here. I am afraid that the details require complete privacy.”
“Well, I cannot leave this place till I have got what I came for. Once that has been accomplished, I shall see what can be arranged.”
“You are too good,” he murmured, taking her hand and kissing it.
“How did you know it was me?” she asked, trying to hide her vexation.
“I should know you anywhere! Your voice, your walk, your carriage . . .”
“I came in a hired carriage on purpose, so as not to be recognized!”
“No,” he said. “I was referring to the manner in which you carry yourself.”
“Oh. Oh, dear; do you think the regent will recognize me, too?”
“Probably not—he has already had a skin full. I doubt he would recognize his own grandmother, by now.”
“I am told that I resemble her, in this costume,” said Arabella.
“I couldn’t say. But you resemble somebody’s grandmother, certainly. I hope your journey to Italy was a delightful one. Was your purpose achieved?”
“No, Mr. Elliot. I regret to say that it was not. Are you, perchance, familiar with the disposition of the regent’s treasure cave?”
“If you are asking whether I know its location, yes.”
“Ah! And would you be so good as to escort me thither?”
“Well, I could, but the room is locked and surmounted by an armed guard. I would therefore recommend you seek out the regent and request a personal tour.”
As things turned out, she didn’t need to seek very far. “Prinny,” the great, fat git himself, walked unsteadily up to her as she was helping herself to lobster salad. He was merely complimentary at first, but rapidly proceeded from there to flagrant flirtation, and finally to an all-out amorous assault.
“Your Majesty,” she said, fending him off with her fan. “Like yourself, I am a great lover—” Here she had to turn her face away in order to avoid direct contact with his greasy lips.
“I was certain you would be, the moment I laid eyes upon you!” he gasped.
“No, no, sir! You mistake me! I was about to say, I am a great lover of art!”
“Really?” he asked, ceasing in his attempts to grope her. “I am, too!”
“So I have heard. I have also heard that you keep a most remarkable collection of antiquities, some of them decidedly . . .” and here she put her mouth against his ear and whispered “improper!”
“You have heard correctly, madam! Should you like to see them?”
Death Among the Ruins (Arabella Beaumont Mystery) Page 24