Tonight she was confident that her place as the reigning queen of the interesting party would be confirmed. “I’m not sure I understand, Henrietta,” her husband said fretfully. Henrietta Mucklowe told herself for the fortieth time that if she had been lucky enough to have a more interesting spouse, she wouldn’t have such imaginative parties. Because if Freddie weren’t Freddie, they might actually have something to talk about at home, and she wouldn’t spend most of her time dreaming about fantastic entertainments.“Masks, dear,” she repeated. “The footmen will be giving one to everyone as they come in. And they must wear them; it’s a requirement of entrance.”
Freddie looked nonplussed, so she explained, “Like wearing knee britches into Almack’s. You can’t get in without them.”
“What about York, eh?” Freddie asked. Occasionally he did have a pertinent point. “You can’t just tell a royal duke that he’s got to wear a mask or be done with it.”
“Perhaps he won’t come.”
“Saw him today.” Freddie grunted as he readjusted the garters on his stockings. “He told me he wouldn’t miss it after that other ball you gave.”
“Byron was a very good idea,” Henrietta said, with a nod of self-congratulation.
“Not that, the pheasant last year. Cook’s a genius.”
“That too,” Henrietta said. If one had to snare a royal duke by food, she was willing to do it. “You have to wear a mask, Freddie.”
“A what?”
“A mask!”
“Oh. All right.”
Another marital disaster averted, Henrietta made a brief tour of the downstairs. Hundreds of masks, all stitched from black silk (for men) or rosy silk (for women) waited at the entranceway. Candles were lit and footmen stood ready to replenish them. Three hundred bottles of champagne lay waiting, stuck haphazardly in pails of cold water. All ready. The house hummed gently, an empty tidewater pool about to be filled to the brim.
And then, abruptly, it all began. She heard the high, excited tones of Countess Mitford at the door. Within an hour there was a snarl of carriages that stretched for blocks in every direction. The butler was holding up marvelously, not allowing anyone in without a mask firmly attached to his face. In truth, as soon as people entered the house and saw that everyone was wearing masks, and gained a sense of the possibilities, there was no complaining.
Chaperones grew rigid with alarm, but it was too late. Daughters strained forward like young whippets eager to race. Mothers clutched their arms, whispering instructions, but every girl in the room knew that the rules were off for the night. Anyone might dance a waltz if she were masked. Any girl might dance with the worst rake in the room, if they were both masked. How could she know who she danced with? How could she be responsible for her actions? And yet, each person had the prickling sense that the most important person would surely find him.
Wives held their heads high and glanced roguishly to the left and right, looking for their lovers. Husbands trotted off to the card room, knowing that for once their expression wouldn’t betray their hand, or moved in a slow prowl toward one of the two ballrooms, searching for a memory, a girl they once loved, a youthful evening.
There was no one who greeted the masks with more joy than Miss Josephine Essex, formerly known as the Scottish Sausage.
She handed her pelisse to the footman without blinking an eye. In the past month she had almost had to wrench her sheltering, comforting pelisse from her body, so uncomfortable was she with her figure. But that very afternoon Madame Rocque had delivered the first of her evening gowns, and Josie was wearing it. Rather than being seamed to follow the lines of a corset, this gown was wrapped to fit Josie’s own body. It was a kind of indigo violet, far too dark for a debutante, but Josie didn’t care.
“My goodness!” Griselda had said that afternoon. Which was enough. Josie dressed more happily than she had in her life.
True, when she looked at herself in the mirror, wearing only the smallest corset designed to support her breasts, she had an agonizing pulse of anxiety. She could actually feel silk swishing around her unbounded hips. Surely she looked too large, too undisciplined, too bulky?
But then she took a deep breath and walked toward the glass, walking the way that Mayne had taught her. Even thinking of his lithe muscled body wearing the rags of her pink dress made her giggle. And watching the way the dress gave her a woman’s shape—a shape she’d had all along—made her eyes narrow.
He was right.
Mayne was the veteran of a hundred affaires, if all the stories were true. How had Imogen described him once? As having a Lucifer-like exhaustion. Josie couldn’t help grinning at herself. His mouth had lost that dissolute droop when he was bound up in sparkling pink silk and undulating across the floor toward her.
Now she adjusted her rosy mask—luckily, a color that went perfectly with her gown—and glanced around for Griselda.
Griselda was wearing the daring crimson gown that Madame Rocque delivered for her. Actually, in some ways Josie hardly recognized her chaperone. When they first met, several years ago, Griselda was the quintessential pretty, English gentlewoman. She dressed with the exquisite propriety of a widow interested in two kinds of reputation: that of sexual propriety, and that of good taste. She was a merry, adorable person who showed little interest in the opposite sex, other than a fervent wish to discuss their foibles. In point of fact, while she generally had a beau or two hanging in her train, they were often foolish young men, good for nothing but bleating poetry and providing an arm on the way into supper.
But somehow, in the last few months, Griselda had changed. Josie couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Yet as she glanced back, she was fully aware that her chaperone would be the least chaperonelike woman in the room. Madame Rocque’s crimson dress was fashioned in such a way that swaths of dark crimson came over the shoulders and crossed—but they didn’t actually meet until almost Griselda’s waist. Now that was a gown that a debutante could not wear.
But, of course, Griselda was a widow. “I will certainly not wear a pink mask,” she was saying. “I’ll take one of the black ones, if you please.”
The footman seemed to be bleating something about Lady Mucklowe’s instructions, but it was of no use. Josie could have told him that. Within two seconds Griselda was happily tying a black band around her eyes.
“You look wonderful,” Josie whispered to her. “That black makes your hair look positively silver.”
“Silver!” Griselda squealed.
Josie laughed. “I didn’t mean it that way. It looks like moonlight. I do like the fact you didn’t put ringlets in your hair tonight. They wouldn’t suit the gown.”
“I thought it was time for a change,” Griselda said with some satisfaction. “Now, darling, just because we are wearing masks is no reason for improprieties.”
Josie opened her mouth but Griselda held up her hand. “Josephine, I am not a fool. I am as aware as you are that many a marriage is made under the threat of a lost reputation, and likely a few fathers will burst out of these doors demanding that some reprobate offer marriage by the morrow. But you, my dear, have no need to resort to subterfuge. Just wait and see.”
“I don’t mean to engage in subterfuge—” Josie began.