Chapter 20
Chapter
When most readers encounter the word “ball,” they perhaps imagine the sort of decorous Regency entertainments where matrimony was the aim of all who attended.
Such affairs were conducted according to certain rules of decorum, and these rules were applied with a rigidity that would have done a mediaeval convent proud.
But those were the balls where debutante virtue was guarded, where virginal young misses were presented to society for inspection and interrogation with an eye to marrying them off to the appropriate suitor.
This evening was a different matter entirely.
To begin with, there was no liveried majordomo at the door, announcing guests as they arrived.
There was no hierarchy of ladies’ maids arrayed outside the door, waiting to administer smelling salts and burnt feathers to heads giddy with the waltz.
There was no battalion of chairs circling the room for the chaperones to sit in stoic stiffness, only their feet tapping out the rhythms of glories long past. And there was considerably more nudity.
Not nakedness, dear reader. Do not imagine anything so crude.
But there were entertainers of every variety, most in costumes which presented bared legs, dressed only in tight-fitting stockings or perhaps with undraped backs that undulated with muscle.
That was just the women, balancing on balls they moved across the marble floor or contorted themselves into impossible shapes.
There were long ropes of silk hanging from the ceiling, each ending in a bar or hoop bedecked with flowers, and from these hung more shapely young women, moving their limbs gracefully in time with the music.
Their male counterparts were likewise athletically displayed, most naked to the waist, exposing pectorals and latissimi dorsi of which they ought to have been rightly proud.
(Of their iliac furrows I say nothing, but it may be inferred they were extremely pleasing to the eye.)
Some of the young men were also engaged in the acrobatic arts, but a few were eating fire or juggling balls of mercury glass in which reflections gleamed from the light of a thousand candles.
No modern gaslight for Lord Ruthven! No, this ballroom and its décor might have been drawn directly from the pages of a Renaissance volume, all lushly draped fabrics in the rich colours of all the jewels of Araby.
Along one side of the ballroom were ranked tables heaped with a veritable cornucopia of ripe fruits, delicate pastries, and enormous slabs of roast meats, some still oozing pinkly onto their platters.
Another table held libations, great crystal bowls of bloodred punch with tiny glasses.
In keeping with the theme of the ball, the servers were all dressed in black costumes as tightly fitted as a second skin.
Onto these had been painted the bones of the human body, perfectly articulated, and in the dim light of the ballroom’s edges and against a backdrop of heavy black cloth, they gave the faintly sinister suggestion of dancing skeletons.
“How very original,” I said faintly.
“Whatever you do, do not eat or drink anything,” Stoker ordered.
“You think they would poison their guests?” The notion was startling and not one I had considered.
“I think they would certainly introduce intoxicants of the more exotic variety,” he said dryly. “Something to induce euphoria or perhaps even hallucinations. It would heighten the effects of the entertainment, make everything seem even more otherworldly.”
“One of these days, we shall really have to find proper friends,” I told him.
Stoker made no reply, but a seriousness had settled over his features as he surveyed the scene. “Let us dance,” he said, taking my hand and leading me into the fray.
On the dance floor, several dozen couples were moving to the tunes being played by an orchestra which sat in the gallery above.
The musicians were dressed like the servers, in skeletal costumes, and the conductor wore his with particular élan, leaping about as he waved his arms in a grotesque imitation of the danse macabre.
“Do you think our host had to pay them extra to wear the skeleton suits?” I asked as Stoker swung me expertly into a waltz.
“For the next six minutes, I do not wish to think of our host or his accursed entertainment,” he said, his lips brushing my ear as he bent his head to mine. “I want only this.”
He wove us neatly between a pair of laggardly couples who seemed to be struggling with the steps.
We swept around and around, our feet keeping time with each other in that peculiar synchrony that Stoker and I shared.
We did not often dance together, but every time we did, I was reminded afresh how neatly our minds paired, how unique was our communication that required no words.
We moved as one, circling and sweeping, arcing and whirling until the candle flames streamed like banners past my eyes and the colours of the draperies and the other gowns melded and broke and melded again like the breaking images in a kaleidoscope.
The orchestra increased the pace, the conductor now almost frantic in his gestures, whipping his musicians into a frenzy.
Stoker also quickened his pace, guiding and holding, leading and commanding as he matched the rising tempo.
To the unobservant, it might occasionally appear that I took the dominant role in our relationship.
That, of course, was entirely inaccurate.
Stoker more than held his own, particularly when it was a matter that demanded bodily engagement.
Whilst I was quicker to give voice to my thoughts, Stoker often expressed his through his sheer physicality.
For a strong woman, a woman of determination and courage, there is no greater pleasure than giving oneself up fully to another when there is perfect trust.
And so I surrendered to his lead, flowing and following in the steps of the dance as they turned sinuous and sensuous.
I do not know how long we waltzed—it seemed hours, but there were no clocks in the ballroom, and for the duration of our dance, the candles never seemed to burn lower.
It was as if time itself had stood still, rooted into one moment and content to remain, captured as if in amber, perfect and unchanging.
I was vaguely aware that other guests had stopped dancing, edging away to watch us as we swept past them, our gazes locked as tightly as our bodies, admitting none other to our enchanted world.
Around and around the floor we moved, the dance spinning out like a fairy tale without an ending.
The notes rose higher still, flames that burnt out of control, leading us higher and faster, my skirts whipping out behind us in a rippling froth of scarlet silk.
The conductor fairly leapt as he urged his musicians to greater speed.
The fingers of the violinists flew on the strings, their bows screaming a tune born of hellfire.
The violins shrieked as strings snapped under the strain, each dying in an eldritch wail that echoed through the ballroom.
And still we danced on as if bewitched, until at last, the music reached its thunderous crescendo and then the tune died away, each instrument falling silent until only a single violin was left to play the final mournful notes.
The passion of the piece had burnt itself to ash, leaving only a curious despair behind—despair and a terrible, heart-aching longing that could only be expressed in a single, quavering note held impossibly long until at last it too ceased with all the finality of a passing bell.
For a long moment there was no sound in the ballroom when the music had died away.
Stoker and I had finished in the center of the room, our feet positioned on a black star inlaid in the middle of the dance floor.
I felt as if I were only recently come to earth, born afresh in some new knowing after the reckless destruction of that dance.
“Veronica—” he began.
“My dear! How exquisitely you dance.” Our host materialised at my elbow, one cool hand slipping around my arm where my glove ended, laying bare my flesh.
I turned my face towards him, reluctantly drawing my gaze from Stoker. “Good evening, Lord Ruthven.”
It was no guess; he was the only man in the ballroom not wearing a mask.
He was dressed head to toe in black, the jacket of heavily figured silk in an extraordinarily elegant cut which suggested something decidedly not European.
The collar of the jacket was quite high in the style of the maharajas, and the tails of it reached almost to his knees.
He wore no medals or other embellishments, only the jewelled ruby stickpin, now fitted neatly to his jacket just below the collar, and a ring on his right hand, a signet of some sort in heavy, antique gold.
“You look terribly distinguished,” I told him. “You will put our English gentlemen to shame.” It was a gambit to see if he would admit to not being English, but he did not rise to the bait. He merely smiled, keeping his lips pressed together in the peculiar way he had.