The Scandal of the Season (11 page)

Alexander wanted to ask more, but his attention was claimed by a delightful new sight. Among the group of dancers in the room were Martha and Teresa, who faced each other, performing the parts of gentlemen in the gavotte that was presently being played. Each was evidently delighted by the novelty of appearing in men's attire. Teresa, as was to be expected, danced rather better than Martha; she was really quite adept in fitting a gentleman's steps to her own spirited gait. Martha was struggling to move around the obstacle of her little broadsword, and each time she turned or bobbed, she became caught in the ribbons of the sword knot. It banged against her repeatedly, making her seem clumsy and awkward in her step, like an adolescent boy learning to dance for the first time.

But absorbed in the enjoyment of the dance itself, she was untouched by a consciousness of being watched; she had the happy look of a girl whose pleasures are still unworldly. The sight struck Alexander so forcefully that it threatened to bring tears of affection to his eyes, but he was forced to collect himself, for the dance was over, the sisters bowed to one another, and Martha dashed up to where Alexander was standing. Teresa was on the point of walking over to them as well, and he felt a rush of anticipation, but she was approached by the man who had just revealed himself to be James Douglass. She stopped to speak to him.

As it was now after midnight, Alexander took off his mask, and Martha did the same.

“How well you and Teresa looked when you were dancing, Patty,” he said.

She thanked him. “We are both enlivened by being in town again, though I am sure that Teresa often considers its diversions to be wasted upon me.”

“Ah, but you may not return to the country, for I depend on you to praise my jokes,” said Alexander.

Martha smiled, and said, “I know that you saw Mr. Tonson a few days ago. Did he like your new verses?”

“Not at all, I am afraid to say,” Alexander answered. “But he praised my
Essay on Criticism
.”

“Oh! My congratulations, Alexander,” Martha exclaimed. “I knew that it would be admired.”

They were interrupted by Teresa, and Alexander looked at her with a serious expression. “You are in uncommonly lively spirits tonight,” he said.

“Do you mean to compliment me, Alexander?” Teresa asked lightly. “You have a habit of giving praise that is so very weak that I would almost be relieved if you were to come forward and damn me directly.”

“A nice conceit. I shall remember it. Miss Blount does not care to be damned with faint praise.”

As the pair laughed together, Martha looked left out.

Teresa, oblivious of her sister's feelings, exclaimed, “What a diverting evening this has been. The company is excellent—everybody so happy. I have had more pleasure from one outing in London than from months together in the country.”

“That is because the pleasures of the town are new to you,” said Alexander, again in a stern tone of voice.

“I do not agree with you, Alexander,” she said. “Arabella is enjoying herself excessively, and she is quite used to being in London.”

“Miss Arabella Fermor would not be seen with a long face if she were passing the most disagreeable three hours of her life,” Alexander replied.

Jervas joined their conversation. “Am I to assume that you have now made Miss Arabella Fermor's acquaintance?” he asked.

“I have not met Miss Fermor, but I have looked upon her—which must supply the happiest portion of claiming her as a friend,” Alexander answered.

“Did I not tell you that she was the most beautiful creature alive?” Jervas exclaimed, forgetting in his enthusiasm that the Miss Blounts were standing by. “She is radiant as the sun.”

“You have stumbled upon an excellent comparison, Jervas,” Alexander said, still feeling censorious, much disappointed that Teresa showed little interest in him. “There is a sameness about Miss Fermor's beauty that does indeed resemble the sun's. Her smiles are without variety; she shines upon all alike.”

“You are not quite correct, Pope, for I fancy that she shines rather more brightly upon my Lord Petre than any other person,” replied Jervas, who had caught sight of them speaking earlier in the evening.

“If that is so,” Alexander answered, “it is because Lord Petre is foolish enough to venture forth when the lady's beams are at their brightest. Other men would stay indoors, for fear of a heat stroke.”

A
s it happened, Lord Petre was feeling out of sorts. He was tired of smiling and talking to women whose faces he could not see. He had not minded dancing with Lady Mary, who was very handsome, and whose company was diverting. But though he had known her for many years, he had never felt a serious attraction—just as well, since her family were Protestants and Whigs, and his were Catholic Tories. She was the cleverest woman of his acquaintance, and since Lord Petre was a clever man himself, this might have proved a powerful allure. Yet he did not share some men's taste for intellectual women, however pretty they might be. There was too much that was restless about Mary Pierrepont's mind; there was a desire for constant provocation that he found tiring.

These were idle reflections, an attempt to tear his mind away from its new preoccupation, Arabella Fermor. He was unnerved by how completely she had captivated him. He replayed their moments together—the glittering, loose gown she wore; the look of absorbed concentration as she had tied her mask; that talk of Herrick and hunting; her gorgeous smile.

He had known her since she was a child, and even then it had been generally acknowledged that she would be beautiful. But Petre had met beautiful girls before. The attraction that he felt for Arabella made him feel physically hungry. Standing beside her, he had been barely able to suppress an urgent, overwhelming desire to take hold of her lovely form and tear at it like an animal. He had experienced nothing quite like it until now. He felt angry and excited; he felt a sort of desperation. And yet he had no choice but to stand and make the gallant small talk that was expected of him, wrestling his mind away from the overpowering impulse to take her into his arms.

He left the ballroom and stood instead at the card tables, mechanically watching the play as it was carried on. In truth he saw nothing. His mind's eye was entirely absorbed by recalling Arabella's form and figure; the tip of her tongue touching upon her teeth as she spoke; the hair disordered about her face: innocent as a child's, yet knowingly, artfully caught up. Of course it was impossible to do so, but how he wanted to take hold of that lithe, warm, breathing frame and crush it beneath him.

He must attend to the gathering. There were friends here; there were his family's acquaintance; he had to appear himself. There should be nothing odd, nothing remarkable about his conduct, particularly when the real business of his evening was the meeting he had arranged with Douglass later on. He felt in his pocket; the banknotes were there.

But already he was conscious that Sir George Brown was beside him, heavy and dull, though still a friend to whom he owed consideration. Sir George leaned over the card table, breathing so heavily upon the head of a player that he was actually causing the hairs of his wig to move. Lord Petre would have laughed, but he remembered suddenly that Sir George was Arabella's cousin, and experienced a new stirring of longing and passion.

He forced himself to speak. “How do you do?” he asked, and Sir George sprang to a standing position, nearly knocking the player's wig off altogether.

“Tremendous, tremendous,” Sir George blustered in his usual style, the light powder of snuff stirring gently upon his person as he spoke. “Never better, my dear fellow. My word, how smart your turban is. Perhaps I should have done something of the same with my costume. But look, it is my friend Dicconson—over there—hello, sir; hello, William!”

Dicconson was another Catholic acquaintance, lately married to a baronet's daughter. He had been to stay at Ingatestone while Lord Petre's father was alive, but Lord Petre had always disliked him. Dicconson submitted reluctantly to Sir George's greeting at last, and walked across to where they were standing.

“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.