by Amanda Elyot
“She’s with him . . . Miss Welles, I mean,” said the slender Charmian, in her excitement about to forget her station entirely by tugging on Caliban’s sleeve. Realizing she had nearly touched his bare skin instead, Mary drew away in horror and wrinkled her nose. “You’re so dirty, your lordship,” she whispered.
“Caliban’s not dirty . . . he’s misunderstood,” replied Darlington. “Besides, this horse is a bit long in the tooth to play Romeo.”
“Good heavens, I hope Romeo’s not your favorite Shakespearean character. One should never die for love,” Lady Dalrymple exclaimed. “Particularly a man of your parts and years. One must live for it.”
“We are wasting time on airy persiflage,” proclaimed the formidable Queen of the Fairies, brandishing her gemstone-encrusted wand as though it were a mace. “We must go after them!”
“First we must learn how to recognize him, Augusta. What is my brother attired as?” asked Lady Dalrymple, subduing her slithering armlet with a gentle stroking gesture.
Mimsy dissolved into peals of laughter. By way of explanation, as she was too overcome with mirth to form a proper sentence, she began to pantomime the configuration of Manwaring’s elaborate headdress. “An ass!” she finally replied, convulsed with giggles.
“How appropriate,” remarked Lady Oliver tartly, dismissing the maid with her wand. With great haste, the foursome donned their black domino masks and returned to Darlington’s coach for the ride to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Containing the stunning denouement of our adventure and a revelation beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.
THE ONLY PERSONS not in Shakespearean costume were the liveried staff, and even they were all attired like servants of the Sun King, Louis XIV, in powdered periwigs and pale blue coats embroidered in gold.
C.J. was helped from the small swan-shaped boat at the bankside and stepped into a fragrant fantasyland. Even the illumination was magical. Paper lanterns were suspended from the tall trees that were planted in neat rows, forming an arboreal arcade open to the clear night sky above.
“Some prefer the newer Ranelagh Gardens,” Manwaring told her, “but I’m still partial to Vauxhall.” He gestured toward the pavilion, drawing C.J.’s attention away from the laid-out walks paved with tiny pebbles of golden-colored gravel and the marble statues and tableaux cleverly tucked into lush groves.
“You must first meet our hostess,” he said, leading C.J. into the pavilion, designed to look like the enchanted palace of a genie. In the center of a 150-foot rotunda sat an orchestra of perhaps a hundred chairs engaged to play minuets and mazurkas, polkas and pavanes throughout the night, while guests danced or chatted away in the tiers of boxes that ringed the room.
The murals on the walls took C.J.’s breath away.
“Oh yes, those are Hogarth’s work,” Manwaring said, admiring the paintings. “Best man for the job, if I do say so myself.”
“I imagine he got paid handsomely to satirize what we do here,” C.J. mused. “And thoroughly enjoyed himself in the process.”
“Ahh, our hostess.” They approached a blond woman, delicate and diminutive, dressed fittingly as Titania, Queen of the Fairies. “Welcome, players all,” said Lady Chatterton, bestowing a kiss on each hairy jowl of the beast that stood before her.
“Greetings, your ladyship,” boomed the marquess through Bottom’s heavy headdress.
“Manwaring! How delightful!” replied Lady Chatterton in her silvery voice. “I would recognize thee anywhere.”
“And this is my daughter, Cassandra.”
C.J. doffed her velvet cap and made a leg. “The pleasure is all mine, Lady Chatterton.”
“Is she an actress?” inquired the hostess of the marquess. “Verily, your daughter has the legs for the trouser roles. Is it Rosalind or Viola?” Lady Chatterton asked C.J., waving her beribboned wand, cleverly configured to serve a double duty as her mask.
C.J. thought for a moment, then answered, “‘Believe then, if you please, that I can do strange things. I have, since I was three years old, convers’d with a magician, most profound in his art, and yet not damnable.’ ”
“Rosalind it is then!” Lady Chatterton exclaimed, delighted. “How clever you are! And ’tis indeed since you were about three years old that you last saw your father, isn’t that so?”
Uncomprehendingly, C.J. smiled politely, pretending to take Lady Chatterton’s meaning.
“Dance, drink, and be merry, my friends, for tomorrow the servants will clear away the traces of tonight’s revelry,” their hostess exhorted. “A pleasure, my dear, to see you reunited with your father,” she added, as she was whisked away by Mark Antony.
The marquess watched the retreating figures and wondered if the Roman general was a rival for the attentions of his love. “I go in search of some punch, my child. Feel free to stroll about at leisure,” he told C.J., leaving her side for the allure of intoxicating elixirs.
“OH YES INDEED, Lady Dalrymple. I conversed with your brother not several minutes ago. And what unalloyed joy to see you again in London,” Lady Chatterton told the dowager countess. “And Lady Oliver, of course.” The two Titanias regarded each other with masked hostility. “Why, Darlington, how . . . brave!” the hostess exclaimed when the earl removed his mask to greet her.
“How fortunate it is that we are having warm weather,” the nearly naked nobleman remarked airily.
“Albert is Bottom the Weaver tonight,” Lady Chatterton informed them. “And quite a fine Bottom too,” she added with a wink at her old bosom friend Lady Dalrymple.
“The ass is far too burdened for my taste,” said Lady Oliver sourly.
“We must find them,” Darlington said, ill disposed to waste precious time in pleasantries. “I believe it will be best if we all pursue different directions.” Like a general, he dispatched his troops. “Lady Dalrymple and Mary, go that way to seek his lordship. Aunt Augusta, you search the pavilion for him. He is no doubt to be found not far from the punch bowl. I shall look for Miss Welles out here among the groves.”
It proved a daunting task indeed to find the Marquess of Manwaring. Just as there was more than one Titania in attendance, Bottom proved to be a favorite as well among Lady Chatterton’s guests. “Aha!” cried Lady Dalrymple, only to embarrass herself at having grabbed the wrong ass. In the excitement of having learned of her presence, no one had thought to ask how Cassandra was costumed. Lady Oliver thought they should look for a Lady Macbeth or perhaps Katherine, the shrew, while Lady Dalrymple was convinced her “niece” was sure to be a spirited Beatrice or the loveliest Juliet in the gardens.
Darlington commenced his search along the gravel footpaths. The paper lanterns cast a rosy glow on the already golden way beneath him. “Cassandra!” he called into the secluded groves. “Miss Welles!”
Having traversed the length and breadth of the gardens for some minutes without finding success in his endeavor, he leaned against a tree to catch his breath.
“You look fatigued, Caliban.” The voice came from a youth seated on a marble bench nestled within a cluster of trees.
“Who’s there?” Darlington asked, and the youth adjusted his mask to preserve his anonymity.
“A friend,” answered C.J., attempting to disguise her voice by pitching it in a lower register.
The earl regarded the lad in his doublet and hose of amethyst. “Ohh,” he sighed. “What a fortunate youth you must be. You are far too young, sir, to know what anguish it is to break a lady’s heart.”
“In truth, I have not broken a lady’s heart . . . that I know of . . . but indeed, for all my tender years, too well I know what it is to have one’s heart broken. Come, sit beside me. If you have such a tale of woe, you will find my ears amenable to the hearing of it.” C.J. motioned to the space beside her on the bench.
“The sad saga is not mine own,” Darlington began, “but that of a bosom friend,” he continued, quite sure of his intimate familiarity with th
e shapely legs of the “youth” at his side.
“Pray confide it, if you may,” C.J. said, secure in her personal knowledge of the musculature of the half-bare man seated next to her. He had not thought to disguise his voice, or, perhaps in his haste to leave Bath to find her, remembered to remove his signet ring.
“It is a cautionary tale, good youth.” Darlington sighed. “I had a friend who used his lady ill. He loved her from the depths of his soul for her beauty and her clever wit, and for the generosity of her person in so many bountiful ways. They had an understanding between them, which afforded my friend the delectable opportunity to gain the most intimate knowledge of his lover’s body. Never before had he experienced such rapture—he told me—and was certainly ready to offer for her and to make extravagant wedding plans.”
In the dark C.J. bit her lip. “What happened?”
“My friend learned the truth about the destitute condition of his estate and the attendant devastation upon the lives of his tenants. Against his judgment, he permitted himself to be persuaded by his aunt to break off the understanding and enter into a formal betrothal with an heiress who was his aunt’s godchild.”
“How cruel! Did he make amends to his jilted lady?”
“Not nearly what she deserved. And for all that, he learned that she was carrying his child. He was torn between love and duty. Or more aptly put, love and money.”
“Pray continue, Caliban.”
“He realized how grave an error he had made when his love was injured in a dreadful riding accident. While she languished twixt our world and the next, he made plans to extricate himself from the betrothal and then journey to Canterbury to request a Special License from the archbishop so they could marry, posthaste, wherever they chose. When he discovered that his love had most suddenly departed for London, he followed her trail, thus obliged to postpone for a day or two his expedition to Canterbury.”
“He threw over the heiress?” C.J. asked breathlessly.
“My friend had no alternative. He could not bear to lose his love, and to see her suffer alone raising their child, shunned by polite society, knowing that he was the cause of their mutual misery but lacked the courage to remedy the situation. So he risked his own nearly guaranteed ostracism.”
“That is quite an extraordinary tale, sir. How does it end?”
“That remains to be seen, good youth. My friend now agonizes over whether his lady—should she learn that he fully intends to marry her with all the pomp and circumstance accorded his station—would accept his humblest and deepest apologies for all the pain he caused both to her and to her esteemed aunt. He desires to know whether his mistress would consent to his suit after all the unpleasantness that has passed between them. And naturally, my friend wonders if this lady is too angry to accept him now, and if she still loves him as he does her.”
“I should hazard a guess,” C.J. began, “that once your friend’s lady hears his account and is convinced of his unswerving devotion to her for the remainder of their days, she might be exceedingly pleased with his decision to reunite and to join their bodies and souls in holy matrimony.” She angled her body toward Darlington’s. “If you will permit me to try a little exercise, I can demonstrate to you just how grateful—how happy—your friend’s mistress would be.”
C.J. climbed onto the earl’s lap, straddling him. As she gripped him with her legs, her lips met his in a deep kiss. Tingles of sensation exploded along her spine like thousands of tiny Roman candles. For the briefest moment she prayed that whatever body paint the earl had smeared all over his bare torso would not smudge the great Siddons’s velvet doublet. Oh, well.
In the distance a crowd had gathered to watch a parachutist jump from a hot-air balloon and descend softly with his gossamer canopy, as if on a cloud, to the ground below. The lovers could hear the boom, crackle, and hiss of Lady Chatterton’s fireworks display.
C.J.’s practiced hand slid under the folds of Darlington’s loincloth. He emitted an ecstatic groan when she touched him. She began to readjust her position to kneel before him.
“My lady must be pleasured first,” whispered the earl, pulling her legs back around his waist. He slid C.J.’s violet-colored hose over the firm globes of her buttocks and down past her thighs, feeling the heat of her bare sex pressed against him.
“Will you touch me . . . there?” she asked, widening her legs for him. “I want to see the colors again.”
Darlington slipped two fingers into her soft wetness. “Ohhh, Cassandra, my dearest Cassandra. Will you marry me?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be on your knees when you ask me that?” C.J. teased, her eyes glazing over with bliss.
“I can stop doing this and go down on bended knee if you would like me to,” the earl said, reaching the most sensitive core of C.J.’s sex.
“Later,” she gasped, tears of mingled joy and satiation coursing down her cheeks. “I want to give myself to you,” she whispered huskily, feeling herself open to him even farther as she spoke the words.
Darlington was ready for her and eased inside, burying himself to the hilt in her heat. Like one body the lovers moved with a slow, undulating rhythm. C.J. could feel every inch of Darlington’s flesh; each pause he took caused her to crave his reentry all the more. She trembled with the anticipation of each renewed stroke and the full union of their bodies that it would bring.
“I feel so alive,” C.J. murmured, flinching slightly from the electricity Darlington’s touch produced when he slipped his hands underneath her doublet and linen and caressed the bare skin along her back. She placed her hands on his shoulders, arching away from him as she came, allowing his strong hands to support her. “Pink. I saw pink,” she said breathlessly. “What does that mean?”
Darlington gently touched the base of her spine, causing C.J. to shiver with pleasure. “The first level of the chakra—red, and sometimes it can seem pink—is the grounding seat of Kundalini, the creative life force.”
“Only the first level?” C.J. joked, tugging her tights back into place. “The first time we made love, I saw green. I’ve regressed!”
“But now you carry the creative life force within your womb—our child. Red is where it all begins.”
“I want to make you see indigo,” C.J. whispered, darting her tongue in and out of Darlington’s ear. She found him again with her warm hand. “Indigo—and violet.”
There was a shout and a whistle, and the sound of crunching gravel announced the approach of intruders upon the lovers’ idyll.
“God in Heaven—my nephew has taken to drowning his sorrows with boys!” exclaimed a horrified Lady Oliver. “And at a time like this! To be caught in flagrante!” She nearly fainted from the shock. “Our family will be ruined forever! Percy! Rouse yourself immediately from this pastoral torpor!”
“If that’s a boy, I’m more of an ass than you already think, Augusta,” said the marquess, highly amused by the scene before him. Still, he would have found more to smile at had one of the amatory combatants not been his “daughter.” Hadn’t he troubles aplenty without the apple of his eye falling so near to the tree that ostensibly bore half the responsibility for bearing her? All his careful wooing and repeated assurances of his reformation had come to naught, for Lady Chatterton would surely refuse his suit now.
The hostess herself and an elderly man dressed as Prospero stopped short at the sight. “I have been wondering all evening when someone would take advantage of our Arden,” Lady Chatterton said with surprising gaiety. “Shall we allow them a moment or two to . . . compose themselves?”
Lady Dalrymple, huffing and puffing down the gravel path, with Mary in tow—desperately trying to keep pace with her mistress while simultaneously cooling her off with the ridiculously large feather fan—joined the rest of the search party, who by now had discreetly turned their backs while C.J. removed herself from the earl’s lap.
“Well, it appears that Darlington has found my niece,” the countess remarked with a wink at
her brother. Manwaring moaned with paternal misery. At least his sister had been spared the brunt of their shocking discovery. It was not the activity itself that appalled him, rather that the indiscretion had turned it into a nearly public display. Who knows how much further his “daughter” might have taken things, swept away as she was by her passions? Evidently, Cassandra had a lot to learn about their society—and Darlington should have known better. For the first time in his life, he found his views aligned with those of Lady Oliver, who was busily overdosing herself with smelling salts.
“Cupid’s dart hath the surest of aim,” said Lady Chatterton, giving Bottom a friendly spank on his posterior with her wand. “And without any more ado, ladies and gentlemen, I bring you Shakespeare’s most powerful magician.” She gestured grandly at the extravagantly attired “wizard” beside her.
Manwaring peered out from the eyeholes of his headdress. “Now it rings a bell. I believe that’s the shylock m’daughter was speaking of but yesternight!”
“Look closer, your lordship,” said Lady Chatterton dryly. She directed the tip of her wand toward the bearded man’s opulent robe covered with ancient signs and symbols. “This is no Shylock, but ’tis Prospero.”
Prospero, in the person of the pawnbroker Mathias Dingle, retrieved a small blue velvet pouch from the folds of his voluminous robe. “If you please, your ladyship,” he said addressing their hostess, “would you be so good as to shine your lantern on this pouch.”
Lady Chatterton obliged, and the pawnbroker removed an odd-shaped piece of silver from the pouch and handed it to C.J., who was now seated beside Darlington on the marble bench. She was still blushing an unflattering shade of carmine from their having been discovered as they were. “Can you read it?” Dingle asked her. C.J. peered at the metal object. “Please hand her the lantern, your ladyship. Now, can you read the inscription, my child?”