Chapter Three
“Just who am I supposed to be?” Louisa asked, regarding herself in the tall cheval glass in Lady Emmeline’s bedchamber.
“Oh, whomever you like. You don’t need to be anyone.” Emmeline gave an airy wave of her hand. “You’re a lady of the Georgian court. The King’s mistress, if you wish. Or a courtesan to a French king, if you’d rather a bit of intrigue.”
“I can’t wish to powder my hair,” Louisa said. “It will make me sneeze abominably.”
“Oh, I agree. You mustn’t cover your splendid hair. It would ruin the effect,” Lady Katherine said. She circled Louisa, studying the fall of the sleeves and hem of the antique gown, hooped over a set of panniers.
“But it might help someone recognize me.” Louisa’s hair color, with its reddish tones, tended to make her distinct.
“Forgive me, Miss Louisa, but I don’t think Grandmama’s guests will be among your customary acquaintance,” Emmeline noted.
“Of course,” Louisa said, feeling foolish.
The Duchess’s masquerade would include her friends and hangers-on, men and women who circled in social realms far above Louisa’s scale.
This lot might write bank drafts in support of the Sisters of Benevolence Hospital as a charitable endeavor, or they might leave their indiscretions at the back door wrapped in swaddling clothes pinned with a small remembrance, but they would not know Louisa’s face.
“A few patches,” Katherine suggested, holding a small cutout of black silk on her fingertip. “To add to the effect.”
“I feel quite unlike myself.” Louisa smoothed her hands over the yards of scarlet silk, touching the intricate embroidery on the stomacher of the open robe and the full sleeves that fell away at her elbow.
She would have to be careful how she moved within all this fabric so she didn’t come near a lamp and accidentally set herself on fire.
“I believe that is the purpose of a masquerade, my dear.” Katherine pressed a small patch in the shape of a butterfly in the soft skin before Louisa’s ear. Louisa expected to find the effect ridiculous, but instead, it was strangely enchanting.
“You have such flawless skin,” Emmeline noted. “I refuse to cover that complexion with powder. The mask will be sufficient to create a sense of allure.”
“But I do not intend to allure anyone,” Louisa answered. “I only hope to meet the ally your grandmother has found for me and negotiate an agreement.”
She was glad that the Duchess had coaxed her into bringing her granddaughters into the scheme, as Louisa had no idea how to navigate through this alone. She hadn’t been to a costume ball since before she was married.
“Miss Bickford,” Katherine said sternly, “if you are going to wear that gown and that mask, and look so very fetching, you must decide to be seductive. It would be a crime to waste such an opportunity.”
“You, young lady, are not yet married,” Louisa retorted. “Neither of you should know the least bit about seduction.”
Emmeline giggled. “Were the choice left to our dear departed Mama, we would still think babies were found in a parsley bed. But one cannot be raised by Grandmama and not learn about the seductive arts. Do you suppose she won Grandpapa simply because she was a duke’s daughter?”
“It could not have hurt,” Louisa murmured. Her own marriage had been arranged entirely on the grounds of her family connections; her bridegroom had not even seen her until Louisa was delivered to his door.
“Thank you, Mason, that is well done of you,” Emmeline said to the lady’s maid who was inserting the last pin into Louisa’s coiffure.
Pads, false hair, and vigorous brushing had created an elaborate upswept effect, leaving the back of her neck exposed and vulnerable.
Bare to the axe that could fall any moment if she did not succeed in locating the man the Duchess said could help her.
Louisa had no identifying information save that her would-be protector was tall and it was very likely his breath would smell of drink.
Louisa had gathered, from the slight shake of the Duchess’s head as she gave this description, that the man was something of a rogue.
Well, what could she expect from someone the Duchess implied owed the family a favor?
Heroic men were thin on the ground these days.
“Mason, you have quite a gift for this,” Louisa commented as the girl handed her a set of long silk gloves. “I remember when you would curl my hair before meetings with patrons of the Hospital. You would like the girl, Alice, who has that office now.”
“And ye never scolded me when I burned ye,” Mason replied. Her eyes were bright, her expression focused as she surveyed her handiwork. “I’m ever so grateful ye recommended me ’ere, mum.”
“We’re ever so grateful to have you,” Katherine said, arranging her shawl. “Are we ready to go down, my dears?”
Emmeline had chosen to costume herself as Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great, and Katherine was St. Helena. “Finder of the True Cross, mother of Constantine the Great, and patron saint of abandoned women,” she said as Louisa helped her arrange the drape of her stole.
“You don’t anticipate being an abandoned woman, I hope,” Emmeline said, adjusting the enormous necklace of rubies that her sister wore.
Emmeline was the elder sister by three years, but Katherine had achieved the higher marriage.
Emmeline’s Charles was only the second son of a baron, while Katherine’s Frederick was heir to a marquess.
Still, Louisa sensed the matches suited them.
Katherine wanted to be an influential political hostess, as her grandmother had been, and so would wed an ambitious man.
Emmeline was a dreamer who wanted to travel and write poems, so she had chosen a man who was but an indifferent politician—his constituency in Cornwall was known to be a rotten borough—and who preferred the leisure to write and tour.
Louisa wondered briefly what her life would have been if her parents had taken her wishes, tastes, or personality into account when selecting her husband.
Would she still live in the Moselle? Would she oversee a grand chateau with vineyards and spend her holidays floating down the river on a pleasure cruise?
Would she have a loving family? Children of her own?
She pushed those thoughts away. They were unfruitful. She had better than a family at the Benevolence Hospital, and all the children she could handle.
Now, she must do what she could to keep them.
Emmeline and Katherine were obliged to stand in the reception line to greet their guests, along with the Duchess, who was arrayed as the Empress Theodora of Byzantium. Louisa was free to float about and inspect Rutland House at her leisure.
She moved through a strange echo of her old life, as if she were a ghost revisiting the past. The elegant chambers with their high ceilings, rich furnishings, and expensive artworks: all this had been her world, once.
The oil lamps cast their glow over gowns of silk and coats of velvet, feathers and ribbons and jewels.
The click of her heeled shoes on the marble floor of the hall sounded in her ears, above the hum of conversation and flirtatious laughter of women who danced fans before their faces, sending meaningful messages to the gentlemen who bent close.
She marveled at the variety of costumes, from the daring to the frightful, all of them extravagantly expensive, all of them likely to be carelessly cast aside at the end of the evening.
The wealth on display on the guests alone could fund the operations of the Hospital for years, perhaps for the rest of Louisa’s lifetime.
All this coin spent on a night of revelry and enchantment, while not half a mile away, a house full of orphaned boys and abandoned girls and desperate, outcast women slept under woolen blankets on cots of twill and canvas or, for the older inhabitants, ticks of straw, grateful they would have three meals furnished them the next day.
All, save for the Sisters who had devoted themselves to the work of care, hoping their lives could, somehow, provide more.
Louisa didn’t ask for more. She only asked to keep what she had.
She made her way to the ballroom where most of the guests had collected, wanting to show themselves to advantage, eager to see if they could guess the identity of the others.
She had told the thief—for what was a blackmailer but a thief, and a bold one—that she would wear red.
She would do no more to make herself an easy mark.
Perhaps, if he could not locate her in the crush, he would give up this pursuit and leave her in peace.
Or perhaps he would find better fortune if he approached someone else.
Many women were wearing red. The King was dying—he had not emerged from Windsor Castle for years and it was expected he would not live out the year—and a change was in the air.
His successor was the Duke of Clarence, whom his detractors called Silly Billy, and at five and sixty years of age, he was not likely to be the dashing figure that the current King had been in his youth.
Any shift in power meant new opportunities, new alliances, and new foes emerging.
None of this explained why her assailant had chosen to make a target of her.
“At last we meet,” came a voice at her ear. A man’s voice. She startled, and he said swiftly, his voice low but distinct, “No, do not turn around.”
Louisa raised her fan before her face so it would not seem she stood talking to herself. Was this the ally she was meant to find? The shiver of warning that ran down the back of her neck said it was not. This man smelled of coal smoke and wet linen.
“I would expect no less than for you to skulk about in shadows,” she murmured.
Thoughtlessly, she had placed herself beside one of the tall marble statutes that graced the hall, the spoils of a previous Rutland’s Grand Tour. The thief had hidden himself behind the statue, where he could be shielded from view and come at her unseen.