Danse de la Folie (19 page)

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?

“Dare I asked, Lady Catherine, whether you are tolerably
pleased by tonight’s festivities?”

“I’ve been told it is fashionable to protest an ennui, but
truly, everything is so fine, the musicians excellent, and in short, boredom
for me is to sit in the countryside with little to do.”

“An idea the most criminal, such beauty sequestered in the
country unseen,” her partner said gallantly.

There was a lot more like it. Kitty enjoyed it all, did not
believe a word, and danced happily as the hours chimed away. People were all so
kind! For where gentlemen took an interest, the wiser young ladies exerted
themselves to strike up a conversation with the fascinating new beauty who was
said to be sister to a marquess.

And so it was thus that the last arrival of the evening
found them: Mr. Philip Devereaux.

Arriving so late, Devereaux did not expect to be greeted. It
was his responsibility to locate his hostess and make his bow. Just discernible
within the card room were Lord Chadwick and his son playing least-in-sight.
Immediately before Mr. Devereaux was Amelia, her roses drooping as she romped
in a circle dance with a number of other very young ladies and gentlemen, the
latter whose wilting shirt-collars evidenced the warmth of the room as well as
the exercise.

Standing side by side in the line were Clarissa and Lady
Catherine, the former looking more animated than he remembered ever seeing her.
But her smile faded into politeness when the hands-across brought Clarissa in
contact with her partner. Wilburfolde was concentrating on his steps, his lips
moving... yes, he was counting aloud, with brow-furrowed concentration.

Lady Chadwick was seated against the wall with the more
dashing dowagers, shining down half the younger generation in her Grecian robe
that managed to be flattering and yet not revealing. Emily Cowper studied the
embroidery through her quizzing glass, cooing compliments.

“Ah, Devereaux.” The Duke of Rutland appeared out of the
crowd. “We had about given you up.”

“I could not get away before this,” Mr. Devereaux responded.
“Permit me to make my bow and my pardons to our hostess.”

“’Tis the nature of spring.” His grace lifted his hand in an
airy wave. “Some will say it’s not a successful evening unless they arrive late
at no fewer than six balls before morning.”

Lady Cowper laughed, and Mr. Devereaux bowed over the hand
of his hostess.

As always, the sight of a handsome man animated this lady,
and so it was not at all with her customary languor that she welcomed him,
adding with simple maternal pride, “Amelia opened the ball with your uncle. It
is Hetty all over again. And my guest no less. You may call it a double
success.”