The Scandal of the Season

by Sophie Gee

  “My congratulations upon your marriage,” Sir George said affably. “Lady Margaret is a charming woman.”

  Dicconson gave an indifferent shrug. “We were married last month,” he acknowledged. “But you probably heard that she tried to get out of it. She told her father that I drank too much. When he put it to me, I looked at him and said, ‘Sir, your daughter whores too much, but I do not object.’ He laughed of course—knew it was true as well as I did—and he gave me another thousand. So it all went off without any more nonsense. Excellent arrangement upon the whole.”

  Dicconson had made no attempt to greet Lord Petre upon joining the group, but now he swung around and demanded, in accusatory tones, “When do you choose a wife, my lord? There are plenty of girls about, and some of them rich.”

  Lord Petre made no reply, but Dicconson went on undeterred. “My cousin, for example, Miss Catherine Walmesley—I am her guardian, you know. Her parents died last year, and there are no other children in the family. She must be about fifteen, I suppose. Pious as the Madonna, and if you looked at her too closely you’d be sick—but she’s worth fifty thousand pounds. Dunkenhalgh, the Nottinghamshire seat, is so damn dark you’d never see her anyway. You should marry her.”

  “At present I have no thoughts of marriage,” Lord Petre said, turning away from him and walking out of the room. Sir George hurried along at his side, the lapels of his coat flapping around the stout barrel of his stomach. With an irony that he knew would be lost upon his companion, Lord Petre observed, “Charming family, the Dicconsons. I like the father, particularly.”

  Sir George agreed.

  As they walked back to the supper room they passed by a series of small chambers off the main ballroom. The door to one of these was wide open, and Sir George and Lord Petre glanced in as they went by. A pair of revelers was fornicating upon a sofa, their masks, shoes, and stockings tossed across the floor to the doorway. The woman’s skirts billowed around her waist as her lover pressed down upon her in a liquorous embrace; the couple moaned and panted without the slightest consciousness that people might be observing them. The scene was one of joyful excess. As Lord Petre continued walking, the tableau was fixed in his mind: a confusion of white thighs, tangled clothing, and the transported smiles of pleasure. It effected a piercing return of the emotions he had felt earlier, though now with the complicating additional sensation of self-disgust.

  The supper room was nearly full. On the far side, a little knot of men was standing in a tightly packed formation around a person whom Lord Petre could not see, but he guessed from the men’s attitudes that she must be female—and that they admired her. Curious, he moved closer to see who she was.

  As soon as he did so, he smiled. She was a tall woman, with hair dark and sheer as a horse’s flank, and high, lean cheekbones that gave her whole bearing a proud, equine reserve. She was listening to the men with a detached, even a bored expression, but she did not fidget. Though she wore a silk domino gown, she had turned down the bahoo, leaving her head bare, and her jawline and shoulders were framed by the luminous black of the fabric. In one hand she carried her mask.

  Lord Petre stepped forward so that he would be directly in her line of vision, just beyond the circle of gentlemen. She did not see him immediately, for her companions pressed forward eagerly, their voices pealing out in clear boyish notes. After a moment, however, her glance lifted, and she met Lord Petre’s gaze. She inclined her head incrementally, in the barest sign of acknowledgment, her nostrils slightly flared in place of a smile. And then, deliberately, with no alteration in her manner, she stepped through the barricade of her admirers, scattering them like pheasants. Ignoring their dismayed cries, she moved forward in her sleek, inky robes, the ribbons on her slippers catching the light. Lord Petre bowed to her.

  “My Lady Castlecomber,” he said.

  “My Lord Petre.”

  As she spoke, he noticed Arabella enter the room. She saw Lord Petre instantly, and stood stock-still in the doorway, alert as a fire-work.

  But he continued to talk to his new companion. “How does your husband, my Lord Castlecomber?” he asked.

  Lady Castlecomber put up a hand to lift the folds of her hood away from her graceful neck, and said, “My husband is in Ireland.”

  He raised his brows, and repeated, “In Ireland?”

  She returned his look with a smile, and said evenly, “Yes, he is abroad for some time.”

  As they talked, he could feel Arabella’s eyes on them; it was as though she were standing close enough for him to feel her breath, and he felt himself blaze up like tinder at the thought of it. The sensation made him reckless with desire, and he asked, “Does my Lady Castlecomber receive visitors while he is away?”

  “Only those visitors whom she likes,” she replied, in a low voice. Lord Petre took a step closer to her, and put out his hand to touch the little indentation made by the top of her wrist bone, brushing along her hand with the back of his own. She looked down, watching the progress of his fingers.

  “Are you going to pay me a visit, Lord Petre?” she asked.

  “If you will let me,” he replied. She smiled at him again, and he bowed and moved away, taking care not to look at Arabella. He marveled that, wanting her as violently as he did, something had moved him nonetheless to arrange this meeting with Charlotte.

  They had been bedfellows on and off for years, ever since Charlotte had married, and he had met her with her husband at an assembly in town. Lord Petre and she were not lovers in the sentimental sense; he doubted that Charlotte had ever been in love in her life. She was not that kind of girl, which was exactly what he liked about her. She fucked him like she did everything else—for love of the moment, with perfect execution and abandon. Lord Petre took a glass of wine from the buffet and drained it in one swift movement, putting it down with too much force.

  Arabella, meanwhile, had made herself sit down beside Sir George. She turned and smiled at him, hoping that he would say something that would allow her to laugh and incline her head to where Lord Petre was standing. At the very least she hoped that he would look at her with admiration—to confirm to anyone who happened to be watching that Arabella Fermor was irresistible, even to the ponderous Sir George Brown. But to her dismay, Lord Petre turned abruptly away from the supper buffet, and walked out of the room.

  She had been utterly discomposed to find him flirting with Charlotte Bromleigh—Lady Castlecomber now, Arabella reminded herself. She had known Charlotte, or known of her, all her life. Men had always found her handsome, though in Arabella’s opinion she looked like a horse. But Lord Petre had actually touched her hand, when he had never attempted to touch Arabella’s own. He had not even asked her to dance.

  Alexander noticed Arabella’s inattention, and guessed its cause. Of all the observations that he had made during the course of the evening, this one interested him the most. If Arabella Fermor had set out to conquer Lord Petre’s heart, he reflected, she was not likely to require the support of auxiliary troops, least of all from her pretty young cousin.

  Just as he thought of her, Teresa entered the room on Douglass’s arm, tripping unevenly along and gazing up at him flirtatiously. They sat down together and from the corner of his eye Alexander could see the quick, animated movements of her hands and face. Douglass looked at her as though she were a tempting delicacy—a morsel that he craved, even though he suspected she would not agree with him. On Alexander’s other side, Martha was talking to Jervas. Her face was still flushed from dancing, and her hair had started to tumble down around her neck. Every few minutes Jervas picked up a bottle of wine from the table, splashed some of the liquid into his own glass, and then held it up to Martha with an inquiring look. Each time Martha accepted another drink, she glanced unconsciously toward Alexander. He stood up impatiently.

  But suddenly his attention was arrested by James Douglass who sprang to his feet, gave a hurried half-bow, mumbled good night, and rushed from the room.

  Teresa
was smoothing the front of her coat, her head bent to hide her face, which had gone white. Her fingers worked fretfully at a knot in the ribbon of her mask.

  Alexander turned to Martha and Jervas, and said loudly, “Mr. Douglass was certainly in a great hurry to be gone.”

  Teresa, hurt and self-conscious, heard the note of triumph in Alexander’s voice, and said, “That is his manner. He is often like it.” She was recalling the day at the Exchange when he had disappeared from the conversation with Lord Petre.

  Alexander was about to reply, when a new idea came to him. He scanned the room, looking for Lord Petre, but could not see him. He was no longer speaking to the woman in black, Charlotte Castlecomber, who was now standing at the buffet with the dancing bear. Nor was he with Arabella. No—he was gone, gone just ahead of Douglass. Alexander walked away as abruptly as Douglass had done, and though Jervas looked toward him inquiringly, Alexander avoided his eyes.

  He walked through the ballroom, now empty and cavernous. Only one orchestra was playing, its notes echoing desultory and wooden against the walls. The room was dimly lit by half candles that had not yet burnt out, but he was fairly sure that Lord Petre was not there. Four or five hooded dominos could be seen in the gloom, long and dark like shadows.

  He hurried down the stairs of the assembly rooms, out to where the carriages and coachmen were waiting. Again no sign of the Turk. Though he had no idea what he expected to see, a vague fear came upon him. Perhaps Douglass had taken Petre unawares, and struck him down in the dark. What if Douglass were to find Alexander, too? For a second he hesitated, thinking of his father’s warnings. But curiosity propelled him. He rounded the side of the building, where only a few carriages were left in the deep night shadows, abandoned by their coachmen. The bored horses stamped occasionally and nudged at their nosebags, blowing their vaporous breath into the morning air. But nobody was about, and he turned to walk back inside. The men had got away.

  As he did so, something flashed in the corner of his eye. He swung about: a lantern had been put out, and he realized that somebody was opening a carriage door from the inside. Alexander stood stock-still. He knew that his breathing must be deafening; he was certain that he could be seen and heard in spite of the darkness. A long moment passed. Then two figures stepped out, masked but unmistakable: the sinister folds of the domino and the turban of the Turk’s headdress. Alexander shuddered, and swayed slightly to keep his balance. He was sure that they would find him.

  But the night was very dark. He sensed that the men were walking away from each other; he could hear them moving in separate directions, Lord Petre toward the assembly rooms and Douglass down a narrow street. Alexander swallowed, his legs weak underneath him. He waited a minute, and another one, his breath quick and shallow over the drumming of his chest. But the alleyway was silent. He edged forward to the courtyard again. Suddenly he saw the Turkish headdress directly in front of him. He stopped short, but a moment later he heard Lord Petre talking to his footman, giving directions for another stop in the carriage. Alexander slipped away out of sight behind the wheels of the coach, and up the stairs of the building.

  Unaware that he had been seen, Lord Petre drove away from the masquerade. He was thinking of the meeting he had just had with Douglass. It had shaken him, and excited him, more than he had expected.

  “I thank you, my lord,” Douglass had said as he took the proffered banknotes. “We are just in time—I meet our agent tonight.”

  “There was some trouble in obtaining them,” Petre had replied.

  Douglass hesitated. “Are they all here?” he asked.

  “I believe so.”

  “When the King is on the throne, you will know that you have played your part, my lord,” he said. “Few men will be able to claim as much.”

  “Few men have the chance,” Petre answered. “Many have given their lives to this cause. I have given but a few hundred pounds.”

  “If our rebellion is to succeed, there are grave times ahead,” said Douglass.

  “Nothing to what my fellow Catholics have already endured,” Petre replied. “You rebel in the name of the Stuarts, Douglass; I in the name of the Catholic martyrs. We have suffered for two hundred years.” He paused, and then asked, “Was it an agent that you met at the Exchange the other day?”

  For a moment Douglass looked puzzled. Then his face cleared, and he answered, “That man’s name is Dupont, a friend. He deals in a commodity that is as precious as ebony, and of a good deal more use to most Englishmen.”

  Lord Petre was confused. What could Douglass be talking about? But then he understood. “I suppose you mean that he is a slave trader,” he replied. “But what has he to do with our enterprise? What business do we have with human traffic, or with a man who deals in it?” he demanded.

  “I am afraid that in one respect, my lord, our business resembles Dupont’s very exactly,” Douglass said. “Like him, we are willing to pay a great price for the safe delivery of our human cargo.” They were both silent a moment.

  “Are you afraid to continue?” Douglass asked.

  “Certainly not,” Lord Petre answered.

  “I am relieved,” replied Douglass, “for the part you play in this drama is destined to be greater, and considerably more heroic, than that of Dupont or any other party. You are to be our liaison in the court.”

  Lord Petre laughed mirthlessly. “The court!” he said. “Well—you could not have chosen a man who knows that world better, or who admires it less.”

  “I am glad to hear it.”

  “There is nothing you could ask of me touching that world of falsehood, hypocrisy, and betrayal that it would not be my pleasure to discharge.”

  “Nothing at all, my lord?”

  “Nothing at all,” he echoed.

  “What if I were to tell you that there are men in our party who would like to see the Queen killed?” Douglass asked.

  Lord Petre drew breath sharply. He ought to have guessed that something of this nature would be planned—if Queen Anne were still on the throne, how could James III be restored to it? But he went cold at Douglass’s words. He had assumed that the Queen would be removed by diplomatic coercion.

  “But the Queen is a Stuart, too,” he protested. “And childless; she has no heir.”

  “She is in the hands of advisers who do not support the Stuart cause,” Douglass replied in a cold voice.

  So that was the plan, thought Lord Petre. To kill the Queen before her successor had been decided. For a moment he felt panic rising. He could never be part of such an action. But no: this was the first real test of his resolve. Protestants had murdered his fellows in cold blood. They had forced the rightful king from the English throne. Future ages would remember the Jacobites not as assassins but as heroes—honorable men. The hero’s course awaited him.

  In a steady voice he said, “If I can be persuaded that such a course of action will achieve the outcome we seek, there is nothing that I would not do on behalf of James Stuart’s—His Majesty’s—cause.”

  He then pushed the carriage door open—it was a fraction too soon. A careless slip; Douglass had still been checking the notes. Tonight no one had been about to observe them. Even if they had been seen, nobody would have guessed the cause for their meeting; people did exactly as they pleased at masked balls. But at this moment Lord Petre’s train of thought was cut short. He had arrived at Lady Castlecomber’s town house.

  When Alexander had left the room in pursuit of Douglass and Petre, neither of the Blount sisters paid much attention to his departure. Teresa joined Jervas and Martha after Douglass’s departure, and Jervas continued to talk, turning to one lady and then the other, flattering and charming them. But the girls had grown listless and silent, their happy energies dissipated.

  As the supper room began to empty out, Teresa said to her sister, “Shall we ask Arabella for the carriage home?”

  And Martha replied, “Perhaps Mr. Jervas will hand the three of us inside.” The girls we
nt in search of Arabella, and as soon as they found her Jervas escorted the ladies downstairs.

  When the girls’ carriage had left Jervas turned back inside in search of Alexander, hoping that he, at least, would not be ready for bed.

  Inside the coach, Arabella shook open the fur blanket to spread across their knees. But it was not quite large enough for three, so while Arabella’s lap was amply covered, the other two sat stiffly, feeling slightly too cold.

  Arabella broke the silence. “I have heard that Lady Mary Pierrepont’s father plans for her to marry Clotworthy Skeffington, heir to the Viscount Massereene. Rumor has it Lady Mary told her father she would rather give her hand to the flames than to him.”

  “I heard that she is secretly engaged to Edward Wortley,” said Teresa. “But if she marries him, the earl will cut her off with nothing. Wortley is said to be passionately in love with her, but you know that she is to inherit a fortune.”

  The carriage hit a deep pothole, and they were all flung forward. Teresa quickly put up a foot to stop herself falling. She knew that she sat well in the coach—like a rider upon a well-managed horse—much better than Arabella, who was scrambling to regain her seat.

  “Only Edward Wortley would presume to imagine himself worth such a sacrifice,” Teresa added. “Such a sulky, self-important sort of man.”

  “Oh, he is the type of person whom women like Mary Pierrepont find fascinating,” said Arabella, confident again. “He has no charm to speak of, his dress is dull and his wig ill-kempt—and he talks loudly about how wicked the Tories are and how noble the Whigs, as though it were a universal truth to which everyone must assent. He has no small talk, no light conversation, and he never compliments anybody upon their dress or offers to bring them refreshment. In short, he is the sort of clever man who believes that his cleverness can redeem every other fault—and presumably Mary Pierrepont is vain enough of her own powers to believe him.”

  “Lady Mary doubtless knows that it is harder to turn away from a life of wealth and luxury than she acknowledges to the world,” Martha interjected, tired of hearing Teresa and Arabella showing off their idle bits of gossip. “I imagine that she will not marry Wortley when it comes to the point.”