Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The masquerade was a crush by the time they arrived.
After standing in line to present their tickets, they could scarcely move among the people thronging the path leading to the Rotunda.
Despite the entrance fee, Ranelagh Gardens masquerades were hugely attended, even the outdoor summer balls.
The bourgeoisie were delighted to pay for the chance to mingle among royals and the nobility, and the Cyprians were always in the market for new customers.
Lucasta had agreed to meet her friends by the Chinese pavilion, and she was grateful that Annis and Minnie were tall; there was a chance of locating them in the crowd.
Lucasta had been warned that some of the costumes would shock her, and that was true.
Near the canal where musicians floated in an anchored boat and played a lovely little chamber piece, a woman laughed as a naughty devil snatched away the neckerchief covering her chest. Beneath she was completely bare, not even a shift to cover the bosoms spilling over her tightly laced stays.
The woman wriggled her shoulders in a generous display, while the men in the vicinity hooted their appreciation.
Cici let out a whoosh of breath.
“That is—the most convincing devil costume I have ever seen,” she whispered. “Pitchfork, horns, everything.”
“I was hoping such antics would wait until after dark,” Trevor said, a tight set to his mouth. “I meant to get you away before the worst started.”
Trevor, turning prim? Lucasta would not have thought it.
She had no intention of baring anything, of course, but the wild spirit of play infected her.
She could see why moralists crusaded against masquerades, claiming they encouraged licentious behavior, upset the social order, and encouraged transgression.
She very much felt like transgressing tonight.
She’d already been licentious, kissing Jem in his draper’s shop. Her toes curled into her slippers at the memory of that kiss. There’d be no more kisses like that, now that she knew the truth of him. She’d had her one and only taste of passion.
“There you are! Yoo hoo! Queen Hera!”
The Gorgons had commanded one of the best spots, a railing along the perimeter of the Chinese pavilion.
This elegant structure overlooked the canal and one of the walks, framed by the looming shadow of the Rotunda.
They could observe the crowd on shore and watch the small boats punting over the water with their gaily dressed occupants.
Lucasta clung tightly to Trevor’s arm as they edged along the plank leading to the Pavilion, built in the center of the canal.
“Mr. Pevensey! Are you Zeus, to match our Lucasta?” Minnie laughed.
“If only I had been so wise as to inquire in advance. I am Julius Caesar.”
Trevor didn’t look delighted to see the Gorgons. They’d been cordial but cool to him, following Lucasta’s lead, and he frowned as Selina drew Lucasta away.
“Miss Pevensey.” Annis pounced on Cici. “Are you Pope Joan? How witty! I adore it.” She winked. “Next time you will have to make her…” She rounded her hands before her belly. “Enceinte. For full effect.”
Cici laughed. “I knew Trevor would never condone it.”
“Indeed I would not,” said her brother in a freezing tone.
“Lucasta, the strangest person has been asking about you,” Selina said.
Lucasta’s heart gave a foolish leap. “Je—I mean, Rudyard?”
“No, I think I would recognize Lord Rudyard, even in disguise. This was someone else, dressed in the most frightful furs and robes, with a mustache and a beard. I found him quite alarming. He quizzed us terribly on our relation to you, and when we expected you, and what company you were keeping. I think we ought to do our best to avoid him.”
“That’s him in the boat,” Minnie said as one of the long, narrow wooden boats nosed up to them. “Do you know him?”
“Not in that costume,” Lucasta answered.
The man in the boat wore enormous silk robes dyed the orange-yellow of costly saffron and over that what looked like a bear pelt, with claws dangling over a very broad chest. He seemed a stocky sort, not at all Rudyard’s sleek build, and a drooping mustache and black beard disguised his face.
The features beneath were not known to her, but there was something predatory, and familiar, in the gleam of his eyes as his gaze lit on Lucasta.
“Queen Hera! The goddesses of Olympus now assembled! Will you do me the honor of floating with me, o Empress of Heaven?” the stranger called out.
“Thank you, no,” Lucasta called back. “I do not think it wise, o menacing one, to trust my divine self with a person unknown to me.”
He wore a black wig and an odd kind of headdress with a furred rim and flaps over the ears, but something about his prominent nose teased her memory. She knew that nose, but from where?
He shot a scornful glare to the side as another boat on the crowded canal bumped into his, a jester and a lady in mask and domino laughing, and Lucasta’s stomach twisted. He was definitely not a mild-mannered sort of man.
“Who should not wish to be in the company of the Ruler of Heaven?” her suitor bellowed.
“Let me make myself known! I, o Queen, am Kubla Khan, great Khan of the Mongols and Emperor of China. The Venetian explorer Marco Polo served at my court for a time. My grandfather was the greatest conqueror the world has ever known, and my empire spans half the earth. Surely of all mortals I am fit consort to a goddess and queen?”
“Who is he?” Annis drew close, watching the stranger curiously.
“I haven’t a notion,” Lucasta replied. But he was making a spectacle of himself and her. Much like Rudyard had contrived to do.
She had a word or three she wanted to say to Smart Jeremy, milord Rudyard.
And also, if she were to be fully honest with herself, she wanted Jem to see her in costume. It was her most flattering gown yet.
Annis leaned over the rail, her draperies fluttering in the slight breeze. “You dare much, petty mortal! Great Hera has no other consort but mighty Zeus. Now begone, or I shall loose one of my arrows on you.”
“Let’s go look in the Rotunda,” Minnie muttered. “You’re right to mistrust this one, Lucasta. He’ll ravish you or worse.”
“What’s worse?” said Selina grimly, putting her elbows to the task of cutting them a path. Minnie leveled her spear, which helped.
“A shame to leave when the musicians are playing Handel’s Water Music.” Lucasta sighed. “The G major is my favorite suite.”
“There will be music in the Rotunda,” Annis promised. “Come, come.”
Trevor glared across the crowd as the girls pressed their way out of the Pavilion, but the crowd of Cici’s admirers barred his way.
The girls swept along one of the gravel paths, where liveried footmen were setting up the torches that would be lit as dusk descended.
Lucasta lagged as the strains of a Boccherini quintet reached her ear.
There were musicians set up all over the gardens, and the cello was particularly lovely.
All of this—the gardens, the music, the stately buildings, the gorgeous extravagance of the crowd—all was a treat she’d been looking forward to for weeks.
She’d never experienced anything this lavish in Bath.
Yet there was a pall over everything with the knowledge that Rudyard, by his own friend’s admission, was making a game of her.
She wanted to hear him say Ashley was wrong.
He’d put her name forward to the governors of the Foundling Hospital, not to make her beholden to him, but because he believed in her passion for music.
That his praise about her being fascinating had been a true olive branch for naming them Gorgons, and that dressing her through means of Mlle.
Beaudoin was not a way to display his shop wares, or not only a way to display his wares.
She wanted to hear him say he had meant all those trips to Rose Hollow, bringing her among his family as if she belonged there.
She wanted to know what he meant with that kiss.
Inside, the Rotunda was close and hot from the press of bodies, from the lights of the chandeliers dangling on long ropes from the ceiling, and from the many candles lighting the alcoves lining the wall.
The niches along the lower level seated diners at small tables, and the boxes above held attendees who wanted to enjoy the spectacle without being jostled or trod upon by the crowd.
The multi-story, tiered box with its carved wooden canopy was packed with musicians, and the familiar strains turned Lucasta’s dark mood melancholy.
“Mozart’s Paris symphony,” she told her friends. “What a pity the acoustics in this building are so poor. Look, they even have the clarinets.”
“Mr. Plimpton. We require you to settle a question for us, in all honesty, if you please.” Annis marched up to a dashing Cavalier wearing a red sash over a leather jerkin, a huge, plumed hat, and a pair of knee-high leather boots with enormous cuffs.
Plimpton lowered his wine glass, a look of alarm on his face.
Lucasta stifled a moan. All of sudden, she didn’t want to confront Jem. She didn’t want to know the truth.
She wanted the dream to linger as long as it might.
“Anything for a…” Plimpton’s gaze flickered over Annis’s cascading white robes, from the quiver of arrows over her shoulder to the leather sandals laced about her ankles. “Lady?”
“Is it true that Lord Rudyard set out to make Lucasta a diamond?” Minnie wanted to know. “On some strange fancy fashioned of his own pure brain?”
“Well. Ah.” Plimpton sniffed his wine, as if he meant to hide behind it. “He—er—made a declaration to some of us that he wished to see Miss Lithwick become the reigning queen of the season.” His eyes flicked to Lucasta, then away. “And it worked, I’d say.”
Lucasta curled her hands into fists.
“Because he took some grudge against her,” Annis said. “Or thought to make her the subject of talk.”