“Where?” Josie asked, glancing around. “What’s she wearing?”
“Yellow,” he said. “And a black mask.”
“Griselda demanded a black mask as well.”
A tall man with appreciative eyes and a lock of brown hair falling over his forehead paused beside them. “Skevington,” Mayne said, “may I entrust you with Miss Essex? I thought I’d poke about and find my fiancée, and of course Miss Essex’s chaperone is lost in the crowd.”
Skevington had a quite charming smile. “Nothing would give me more pleasure,” he said, bowing.
“Skevington over-dresses,” Mayne said, waving at the man’s embroidered waistcoat. “But it’s not a mortal sin.”
Josie smiled up at her new companion. “’Tis far worse to be over-opinionated.”
“To be over-enthusiastic is surely a mortal sin,” Skevington said. He showed no pique at the slur to his waistcoat, and Josie liked him the better for it. “At the risk of showing great over-enthusiasm, Miss Essex, may I request a dance?”
“In truth, I would prefer to walk from this room,” she said.
Skevington had a lean, intelligent face with kind eyes. They left Mayne, and Josie did not glance back, just walked with her new sultry sway and hoped he was watching.
Then she couldn’t bear it and turned her head.
He was gone.
17
From The Earl of Hellgate, Chapter the Fifteenth
I asked Helena to marry me, Dear Reader. She refused. She called me her pearl, her golden one, her cherished dream, and yet she rejected my hand.
T hurman thought masks were a rotten idea. How could he build a reputation if no one knew who he was?
He’d caught sight of Darlington; his features were unmistakable. Darlington was leaning against the wall of the ballroom, and by concentrated attention, Thurman was able to see that he was watching Lady Griselda Willoughby dance with Mr. Riffle. He had to grin at that. Darlington was losing his twig if he thought that Lady Griselda would marry him. True, she had one of the neatest estates on this side of Hampshire, but she would never interest herself in a loose screw like Darlington.Wasting his time, Thurman thought. But he had no time for Darlington. Darlington was yesterday’s news, and he was bursting with the ambition to make himself into Darlington’s successor. He was already in a good way to doing it. Last night he’d gone to the Covent Garden Theater and surreptitiously written down a number of clever remarks. Then this morning he’d gone to St. Paul’s and hung around the middle aisle, where all the clever inns of court men came to gossip, and he’d picked up even better scraps and fragments. He had them all snugly written down, and he’d already used two to great effect.
Of course, no one knew who he was, so he’d have to think of tonight as something of a practice run. But that was all right. It took timing to get a jest right. When he first came in, he’d told Lady Mucklowe that the only happy marriages these days were to be found among the servants. That line garnered laughter in the theater the previous night, but somehow it didn’t work with Lady Mucklowe, who stared at him, and said, “Young man, I am relieved that I do not know who you are; I should dislike having to reproach myself for inviting you.”
Thurman was relieved by her ignorance as well. But after that, two jests that he’d heard in St. Paul’s had gone over very well to little groups, and one of the men had said, “By Jove, that’s quite clever!”
He had an excellent line to do with courtship in mind, and so he prowled around until he found a large circle of people standing just inside the windows leading to the garden. Thurman didn’t really approve of that; his mother had been adamant that night air might give her darling son a chill of the lungs, and he had always listened to his mother. But driven by an ambition stronger than self-preservation, he strolled up to the circle.
With the mask, it was all very easy. He simply walked up as if he belonged there. He found that the circle was clustered around a young lady who was sitting on the library table in such a way that her ankle was perfectly visible.
It was a nice ankle, Thurman saw with a glance, but it stood to reason that the young lady was not all that she could be. Manners are a lady’s best defense against impropriety, his mother used to say, shutting her lips tight.
Likely this young lady wouldn’t mind a racy joke or two. Thurman took in the ravishing nature of her dress, her vivid chestnut hair, luminous white skin, and lips the color of spring raspberries. She was laughing with a deep, husky chuckle that made it clear she was no chaste maiden.
They were all talking about some Shakespeare play being put on at the Hyde Park Theater. “I shouldn’t want to see it,” Thurman put in. “The very name Shakespeare sends shivers down my spine. Memories of Rugby, you know.”
“I was frightfully idle when I was at school,” Skevington said (for Thurman recognized him due to his height). “I’m afraid I couldn’t recite more than a line or two to save my life.”
Of course, Skevington went to Eton. “Gentlemen know whatever they need without books,” Thurman said, “and if one’s not a gentleman, then whatever one learns is bad for him.”
The girl turned her head and looked at him. She had large eyes, thickly fringed with lashes. Christ, she’s beautiful even with a mask on, Thurman thought, though normally he wasn’t one who paid much attention to these things. A bit too fleshy for his taste. He let himself eye her rather boldly, because after all, she was clearly not a lady.
“I think I’d like to go into the garden,” she said, sliding off the table without waiting for a gentleman to extend his hand. Another sign of her lack of training.
So they all drifted into the garden, she carrying them along like the petals of a flower. Thurman was thinking that he really ought to go find another group to practice his lines on; he had a good one saved up about a mother’s love, when Skevington said something that made him stiffen all over.
He had the girl’s arm, and he was walking just in front of them. A couple of the fellows had drifted off, and only three of them were trailing after. “Miss Essex,” Skevington said, perfectly clearly, “would you like to return to the…”
But Thurman didn’t hear the rest over the roaring in his ears. It was the Sausage: it was. She’d done something to herself. She’d changed herself.
She’d stopped being a sausage and become this—this ravishingly insouciant girl whose curves were practically making Skevington kiss her toes.
He stopped short and watched Skevington draw her back to the house. All of a sudden the frustrations of the last few days crashed into his mind again. The Scottish Sausage was about to become the toast of the season; he could see that.
She was still the Sausage, though. Now that he looked at her, she was as plump as ever—plumper even. Disgusting. Mother always said that women should eat like birds; they didn’t need the same strength that men do.
Someone should tell her that she couldn’t just swan around like that, thinking that no one would notice that she was even fatter than before.
He might even be the very person to do it.
18
From The Earl of Hellgate,
Chapter the Fifteenth
She mocked me by taking me in the private gardens behind the town house of the Duchess of P———. No, not the formal gardens, Dear Reader, the Duchess’s private walled kitchen garden. She took me there and it’s with a heavy heart and a sense of sin that I recount to you that she danced in her folly…danced on the flagstone paths…danced without her gown, without her chemise…as bold under God’s sky as any sparrow.