By a Lady

by Amanda Elyot

  Lady Oliver refused to permit herself to be discommoded by the placid look on C.J.’s face and found a new focus for her disdain by remarking upon C.J.’s pale blue silk gown.

  “Euphoria, I trust that your niece will have a more suitable frock to wear to a ball in the Upper Rooms.”

  Lady Dalrymple beamed triumphantly at her bosom friend. “My dear Augusta, on your own recommendation Miss Welles is wearing one of the day dresses Madame Delacroix designed. It so artfully becomes her, does it not? It was delivered this afternoon along with one evening ensemble. The rest of my niece’s gowns will be ready in no time.”

  Lady Oliver wrinkled her nose in evident disapproval. “Euphoria, I wish to make it quite clear in front of the young lady that I shall not permit her to dance more than once with my nephew, and even that I will consider to be an act of charity toward the poor relation of my dearest friend.”

  Mr. Fairfax evinced some discomfort at his being privy to such a conversation. His wife’s pink ears perked up, however. The grand behavior of the upper crusts of society into which her nouveau riche status accorded her the privilege of mingling never ceased to impress her. “Such condescension,” she exclaimed approvingly to her shuddering husband, who attempted to shush her lest her remark be overheard.

  “How kind of you to express such concern, Augusta,” Lady Dalrymple said sweetly. “If Percy were to dance more than three sets with my niece at her very first ball, the entire city of Bath would expect him to offer for her.” She laid the ace of hearts on the felt-covered gaming table.

  “Ha-ha, I do believe she has trumped us,” Mrs. Fairfax giggled, whereupon her husband motioned for the footman to remove his wife’s sherry glass from the table.

  THE FAIRFAXES HAD DEPARTED for the Assembly Rooms, and Lady Oliver had insisted on following in her own barouche, hoping to have the occasion to speak privately with her stubborn nephew before the festivities began in earnest.

  Lady Dalrymple was in her front drawing room, gazing into the dusky sky through her telescope, when C.J. came downstairs to model her new ball gown.

  “What do you see, Aunt Euphoria?”

  The dowager turned around, startled. “Heavens, child! You gave me a fright.” She appraised C.J. in the gauzy white dress. “Aphrodite herself would be jealous; that is what I see. Come, give your aunt a kiss.”

  C.J. obeyed, taking care not to trip on the slight train at the back of the fine muslin gown as she tested her delicate new shoes. What a shock she had received when Saunders, while dressing her, had remarked that for her first ball, her young ladyship was certainly “putting on the dog” with her dancing slippers. C.J. was familiar with the expression but thought it was a quaint colloquialism from the Jazz Age. She had nearly gagged when the sour-faced lady’s maid curtly remarked—or so it sounded to C.J.—that the “dog” she referred to was one that had given its skin to make the finest of dance slippers, wondering aloud if the poor victim had been a spaniel or a terrier. Clearly there were some things about her present situation to which C.J. might never become reconciled.

  “I meant, what do you see through the telescope?” C.J. asked her “aunt.”

  The countess smiled. “The future, I suppose. One imagines that there must be so much out there that we can never know. Have you ever seen such an instrument?” Lady Dalrymple asked, referring to the telescope.

  “Never in person,” C.J. answered truthfully.

  “This one was given to me by William Herschel, a dear, dear friend of mine . . . and Portly’s, of course. Such a clever man. Brilliant. I think he may be a Jew,” she said, lowering her voice. “A handmade telescope very much like this one was the instrument he used to discover Georgium Sidus from his house right here on New King Street, in 1781.”

  C.J. gave her ladyship a look of total incomprehension. “Discovered who?”

  “Georgium Sidus is a planet, my dear. There are seven of them . . . maybe fewer . . . I can never remember. Most are named for Roman deities, of course. Venus and Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury . . . then there’s Georgium Sidus, to be sure, and my favorite, although I don’t believe it’s a planet—the moon.”

  C.J. wondered which planet Georgium Sidus was. “Roman planets, and an old Roman city,” she said. “I wonder how the earliest astronomers decided to name so many of the planets for Roman gods. Why not name them after the Greek ones? Or the Hebrew prophets? Or the kings of England?”

  “Well,” the countess answered, “Sir William did decide to name his discovery, despite its being accidental, after our monarch, who, naturally, was his royal patron. Georgium sidus is the Latin for ‘star of George.’ Heavens! Such a clever question. Portly would have been a great admirer of yours, child. Oh yes, he placed great store in an inquisitive mind, especially in a young woman. In time you will learn that there are those, like Augusta Oliver, who have little or no use for what they cannot immediately see, smell, and taste, although she was not always as you see her now. Her grief—not to mention the scandal that ensued—has embittered her for many years.”

  C.J. perched delicately on the footstool, prepared to hear the shameful tale of woe. “But that is another story for another time,” Lady Dalrymple added definitively. “My dearest Portly believed as the Hindus do, in the reincarnation of the soul. ‘The eccentric earl,’ he was called. And I do believe in my heart that his spirit still very much resides with us.” Her eyes were moist with tears.

  “I daresay you are right to believe that, Aunt Euphoria,” C.J. added, her own eyes misting over. “Perhaps souls do indeed live forever—they only inhabit different bodies along the way. But even if that might not be the case, I think it is a duty of the living to maintain the memory of the departed so that their spirits do indeed live on in our recollections and our thoughts. In that way do they achieve an immortality.”

  Euphoria gave her “niece” a warm hug. “I had never thought to find anyone else who did not think my notions mere folly. You are very like him in many ways.” Suddenly, Lady Dalrymple clutched her bodice.

  “What’s the matter, your ladyship?”

  “My heart,” she gasped huskily.

  “Did I upset you? Goodness—are you in pain?” C.J. endeavored to conceal her genuine alarm. She dashed over to the embroidered bellpull hanging near the huge double doors and gave it an energetic tug, setting off a bell in the servants’ quarters belowstairs.

  Lady Dalrymple shook her head. C.J. could not decipher whether it was to be interpreted as a yes or a no.

  “Can I loosen your stays?” C.J. regarded the dowager’s evening dress to see where she might be able to give her some breathing room. Although the narrow-skirted Directoire gowns were all the mode, many fashionable women of Lady Dalrymple’s generation dressed in an earlier style, in what was commonly regarded as the Georgian fashion. Lady Dalrymple’s stiffly boned bodice, or “stomacher,” was like an insect’s carapace, armoring its wearer and providing little range of motion or flexibility to her rib cage. No wonder women were always in danger of hyperventilating.

  Collins entered the drawing room with a pitcher of water and a crystal goblet, which C.J. asked him to leave on the small table beside the striped divan. She poured a glass of the cool liquid for her “aunt,” then spilled a bit of lavender water onto her lace-edged handkerchief and applied it to Lady Dalrymple’s brow.

  The countess attempted to dismiss C.J.’s ministrations. “There, now you’ve gone and spoilt your nice linen square, and you will need it for tonight.”

  “Nonsense, Aunt. Madame Delacroix had more than a dozen delivered this morning with my dress.” She squeezed Lady Dalrymple’s hand. The countess was breathing heavily, increasing C.J.’s concern.

  Lady Dalrymple took a dainty sip of water. “It was but a brief pang,” she assured her “niece.” “Dr. Squiffers says I must avoid anxiety whenever possible.”

  “I am so dreadfully sorry, Aunt Euphoria. I had no idea that you were afflicted with a delicate medical condition.” C.J. took her lad
yship’s hand in her own and gave it a gentle kiss. She couldn’t help admiring the countess’s large emerald ring. She’d never seen a real gem quite that large, and the fire emanating from the green stone gave it an exceptional depth and luster.

  “Think no more of it,” the dowager urged, her voice a weak command. She forced a smile. “Now tell me what you are thinking—as long as the state of my health is not the subject of the conversation. I can imagine nothing more tiresome.”

  C.J. straightened Lady Dalrymple’s lappeted cap, then leaned in to bestow a kiss upon her forehead. “I suppose,” she began hesitantly, wondering if there would ever be an appropriate time to tell her benefactress the truth about her arrival in Bath. “I confess . . . I am a bit anxious myself about my first ball. I’m dreadfully afraid I shall make a mess of things and cause you no small degree of mortification.” C.J. furrowed her brow.

  “That is a very unbecoming expression for a young lady,” chastised the countess. “It leads to wrinkles before their time. Look at my face. I am threescore and two. Augusta is two years my junior, and looks like my stepmother. Why? Because frowns create more wrinkles than smiles and turn a peachy countenance to a prune. If there is one thing an old woman can hope to teach a young lady, it is to recognize happiness and to embrace it freely. Life will always be full of the inevitable sorrow and loss, but I have indeed been fortunate: I have lived to love a man very deeply with every fiber of my being,” she said with a little sigh.

  C.J. knelt beside Lady Dalrymple, and the two women held each other. After a couple of minutes passed, C.J. could feel her ladyship’s breathing grow stronger and steadier. She did not look up for fear of causing her embarrassment, but she was sure she heard Lady Dalrymple choke back a sob.

  “Come now, child, you mustn’t get mussed up before your very first ball,” the countess chided gently, nudging C.J.’s torso from her ample lap.

  Chapter Eleven

  Our heroine’s first Assembly Ball, whereat her English country dance experience proves a godsend in that she starts off on the right foot, but with the wrong arm, leading to a highly embarrassing faux pas; and her rosy view of the aristocracy is cruelly shattered.

  C.J. FELT AS THOUGH she had stepped inside a pistachio-colored confection when she and Lady Dalrymple entered the grand hall of the Assembly Rooms.

  In a modern postcard, the straight-backed walnut chairs that ringed the empty ballroom’s perimeter stood like so many silent sentinels, waiting to be used by the phantom dancers who graced the well-polished wooden floor with quadrilles and polkas, the occasional mazurka, and eventually—though not formally until 1812—the waltz. One was left to imagine how the room might have appeared in its heyday. Now that C.J. was getting an eyewitness account of its glories, she had expected to find a crush of people, owing to their fashionably late arrival; but only five or six couples were dancing a longways set, their small number dwarfed by the majesty of the room itself.

  Lady Dalrymple did little to conceal her disappointment. “There is a paucity of revelers because it is so late in the season,” she informed her young protégée, sotto voce. “A pity you did not arrive in Bath sooner.”

  Taking in the scene, C.J. noticed several young ladies gowned nearly identically in filmy white muslin, escorted by their doting mothers dressed in deeper tones. The chairs, by their very lack of comfort, were conducive to dancing, and fortunately, several of the tunes were recognizable to her ear. Still, to watch some of the couples executing intricate maneuvers nevertheless generated flutters of anxiety that should the inevitable invitation to make one of a set arise, she would risk exposing herself as an impostor.

  The strident voice of Mrs. Fairfax could be heard well above the music, thus Lady Dalrymple had no trouble reconnoitering with her acquaintance in one corner of the room. The parvenue, eager to dispose of her two marriageable daughters before the season’s end—and with time rapidly running out—raised her quizzing glass to one eye and surveyed the eligibles across the room.

  “What think you of the way Mr. Essex dances?” she said, scrutinizing a young pup in a leaf-green coat and formfitting white breeches energetically executing a hay in the middle of the floor.

  Her good husband found it difficult to maintain his pretense of ignoring her when he felt such an adamant tug on the cuff of his sleeve.

  “He bounces too much,” Mr. Fairfax replied laconically.

  Mrs. Fairfax returned the quizzing glass to her right eye and squinted. “Upon re-examination, I quite agree with you, my dear Mr. Fairfax. Yes, you are invariably such an excellent judge of character. Too much exuberance on the dance floor undoubtedly connotes a juvenile temperament.”

  “And Lord knows, our daughters are silly enough without encouraging their suitors to share their frivolity,” her husband drawled.

  Two young ladies approached the older couple with glasses of negus, the sugar-sweetened, mulled, and watered-down wine customarily offered at such gatherings.

  “Quite a dear you are, Harriet.” Mrs. Fairfax patted the hand of a very pretty girl, her face framed with golden curls. She took a sip of the negus and handed it to her husband. “Mr. Fairfax, do taste this and tell me whether they have used port or sherry this evening. I can never discern. Lady Dalrymple, I believe you have met my eldest daughter, Harriet; and this,” she added, indicating the strawberry blonde hovering near her opposite shoulder, “is my younger, Susanne.” The young women curtsied to the countess, and turned to gaze upon the newcomer in their midst.

  “Ah yes. The poor relation,” Mrs. Fairfax announced a bit too loudly and with an entire lack of tact. “Girls, allow me to name you Lady Euphoria Dalrymple’s niece . . . Miss Cassandra Jane Welles.”

  The young ladies curtsied daintily and acknowledged the poor relation’s presence in a tandem of soprano voices. “Miss Welles.”

  “Miss Fairfax, Miss Susanne. It is a pleasure to meet you.” C.J. wondered if in this light her own gown was as nearly transparent as those of the Miss Fairfaxes. Even at twenty-first-century parties, where young women clearly in the marriage market displayed deep cleavage and long legs, one still didn’t wear diaphanous attire and pretend it was a hallmark of modesty. C.J. surveyed the room once again. Good heavens! A ballroom filled with virgins (surely she was the only one in white who did not qualify), whose garments left nothing to the imagination. She ventured that a gentleman could place a wager on the calculation of a lady’s weight, just by eyeing her in her white muslin.

  “Aunt Euphoria, allow me to fetch you some punch,” C.J. offered, hoping to avoid being within earshot when Mrs. Fairfax gossiped behind her fan to her two daughters, tut-tutting over poor Miss Welles’s misfortunes.

  She wended her way across the gleaming parquet floor and out into the Tea Room, where enormous silver epergnes dripped with fruit: plump, fresh grapes in three different colors, plums, figs, and fragrant Seville oranges. With two kinds of cold punch, lemonade, and the warm negus in huge urns filled near to overflowing, the table, groaning under its weight, resembled refreshments at a bacchanalia.

  The display was just shy of perfection, however; and C.J., not wishing to call attention to the problem, and not having an inkling whom to hail for assistance in any event, thought it would be best to tackle the issue alone. Just as she had steeled her nerves to do the deed, an exceptionally elderly couple, nearly blind and ambulating only by the grace of God and sturdy walking sticks, approached the punch table. The couple probably would have noticed nothing, were they to swallow the offending object, but C.J. could not content herself to stand idly by.

  “Stay back!” she warned. The urgency of her tone and the volume of her voice instantly drew a curious crowd. At least she had the presence of mind not to ruin a brand-new, buttery-soft kid glove. While keeping her spectators at bay, C.J. struggled to tug the skin-tight, elbow-length glove down the length of her arm. Having succeeded, she plunged her right arm—all the way up to the elbow joint—into the punch bowl, jumping back so as to avoid spla
shing herself and ruining her new gown. But the object of her consternation, a common housefly, was not as easily trapped as she had initially thought. Its wings were not beating as though the mite were drowning, so C.J. assumed that the poor bugger had drunk himself to death and she was merely to play the role of undertaker. The shadows in the liquid danced and her target bobbed up and down upon the waves created by the intrusion of her arm as she struggled to capture the cadaver.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Fairfax was furiously semaphoring her husband to locate a chair, so that Lady Dalrymple could make herself comfortable, when a flurry of movement at the entranceway caught her eye. “Harriet, Susanne, stand up straight. Lady Oliver and her nephew have arrived. Make yourselves presentable for the Earl of Darlington.” She seated herself with an exaggerated show of gentility and lowered the quizzing glass to her lap.

  But the earl was not advancing toward Mrs. Fairfax and her party. His steps took him in an altogether different direction. “I would dare to kiss your hand in greeting, Miss Welles, but it seems to be . . . occupied at present.”

  “Gotcha! Good heavens!” C.J. jumped when she heard the voice behind her. Her arm flew out of the deep punch bowl, and the assembly ducked for cover. “I apologize, your lordship. My very first ball, and I seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, necessarily. The wrong arm, perhaps,” he added, appraising her bare appendage and clutched fist. “What have you got there?”

  C.J. inclined her head, indicating that he should come closer. “There was a fly in the punch!” she whispered. “And I thought it best to surreptitiously remove it on my own, rather than call the majordomo, or whomever I must alert in such circumstances. Alas, I ended up with an audience.” She opened her fist and looked curiously at the wet black spot nestled in her palm. “That’s funny. It has no wings.”

  “That is because it is not an English fly.”