And her Grace herself, encountering the Earl of Frome and his friend Lord Weyburn on the very morning of her rout, in Berkeley Square, stopped her carriage and beckoned them over, screeching out at them in her high, hard voice, poking out of the carriage her hard, bright-painted face. ‘Have you heard the gossip, gentlemen? Something quite amazing out of Italy—Lady Corby produces her at my reception this evening. I trust you will be there?’
Lord Frome bowed his acknowledgements. ‘Your Grace was so good as to send me a card; I shall be happy.’
‘And I most happy to hear it. It’s not often you leave your Gloucestershire pastures for London.’ And no loss either, she reflected, wagging her head at them, with its preposterous pile of powdered hair. A dull dog, Lord Frome, not a spark of dash in him and his waistcoat at least four inches out of length to be modish. ‘And Lord Weyburn?’
No dull dog here! An eye of fire, a proud lift to the head, every gesture elegant with a natural elegance, owing little to the studied poses of the mode—every button, despite a cool indifference to the world of the bucks and macaronis, placed precisely where a button ought to be: tall, handsome, haughty, tempering the mannered drawl of present fashion with a natural quick decisiveness of speech that robbed it of affectation. ‘I thank your Grace: I am this moment setting out for Starrbelow.’
Her Grace protested. She would be disappointed. He must put off his journey, delay it a day, oblige her. ‘You of all men should remain and meet the fair Italian. The scandal is, you know, that La Corby sees in her the future Lady Weyburn.’
‘Then I fear that Lady Corby also will be disappointed.’ He bowed, briefly smiling. ‘You astonish me, Edward,’ he said, looking after the carriage as she drove away, chagrined. ‘Do you really go tonight to such a house as Gossip Wit’s? And to meet this riff-raff?’
‘If you will not squire your cousin there, Charles, then I must.’
‘Christine? Does Christine go there?’ His dark face clouded. ‘Who takes her?’
‘Her mother, I presume. It’s no business of mine, my dear Charles, to question Miss Lillane’s engagements.’
‘But it’s business of mine. My aunt is a silly old woman, no fit chaperone for her daughter.’
‘Her daughter does well enough, I think,’ said the Earl of Frome, smiling. ‘And though I have no love for their several Graces—they are still Duke and Duchess of Witham. Everyone does go there.’
‘Including the Corby and her performing monkey: really, the Duchess stoops to anything for a sensation.’
‘I daresay Christine will not be troubled very much,’ said the Earl, peaceably, ‘by the poor performing monkey.…’
Lady Corby was enchanted by the opportunity held out by her Grace’s—elaborately fished-for—invitation. ‘It is perfect! No such situation for an entrée exists in the whole of London. Everyone of any consequence at all will be there. The Blue Gallery is a hundred yards long: one must come in through a great door at one end and parade the whole length of it to be presented to the Duchess—and it’s the custom for the mob to stand back either side of the carpet to watch the new arrivals. Sophia will be seen by everybody in Town.’
Sir Bertram sat with neat crossed legs on a brocade-covered couch; on a couch opposite a young man lounged, a rather tall, gangling young man with a forward falling lock of yellow hair; for he had taken off his wig and hooked it negligently over the arm of a chair. He spoke with just enough of an accent—faintly German—to be rather engaging. ‘How do the women know these things, Sir Bertram? Her ladyship, to my knowledge, hass never been once inside Witham House.’
‘Well—her ladyship goes there tonight at any rate,’ said Lady Corby, tartly. ‘And we shall see.’ She said, sharply: ‘Turn round, Sophia. Madame Turque cannot reach the side-fastenings.’
How can I turn round, thought Sophia: with two men sprawling on couches watching me? Fashions in etiquette seemed lax in Venice to what they were here, but their notions of modesty had been very different. And this dress! Made to some design of Aunt Corby’s, boned over the ribs and up to the bosom only: the bosom itself covered by nothing but a gathering of muslin held in place by a few clever stitches. I must speak to her, she thought; I can’t go like this into public.… And yet … The custom of having male company present during one’s toilette, though apparently accepted, made such discussion impossible. She hesitated.
The young man on the sofa looked up at her with a teasing glance of his lazy brown eyes. ‘Yes, turn, Miss Sophia. Madame Turque can see nothing—and neither can we.’
What am I to do? thought Sophia again. The fastening of the bodice felt insecure, it needed attention. ‘Aunt Corby,’ she murmured, ‘this décolleté is too low.’
‘Nonsense, child, it’s the height of the mode. Is it not, Bertram? Reassure her.’
Sir Bertram got up with his usual precision and walked round with a critical air. ‘I doubt, my love, whether “height” is the word. Are you wise? An unmarried girl.’
‘She will have the gauze scarf round her bosom and shoulders: you have forgotten the scarf.’
‘All the bucks will be praying,’ said the young man from the sofa, ‘that she vill forget the scarf.’
‘Now, Anton, behave yourself!’ She rapped him over the head with her fan, dancing before him, tiny and exquisite in her dark velvet dress, with the young doll-face over the hard face of age and experience. ‘Come now, Sophia—turn round.’
No, thought Sophia: I will not turn round. I must consent to be put on show in the marriage market, because my father has sent me here; but when that is done, if offers come I shall refuse them and then I can go home to Venice. But I shall not put myself on show for these two men to amuse themselves at my expense: they are not in the marriage market. At least, she supposed Prince Anton was not—or surely her aunt would have advised her. Her heart sank a little at her own temerity but she said steadily: ‘Aunt, I am sorry, but I am not accustomed to be dressed with gentlemen present.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Lady Corby again. ‘I want their opinion.’ She still stood beside Prince Anton as he lounged, his long legs thrust out before him. He had caught at the folded end of her fan as she tapped him with it and continued unconsciously to hold it, she retaining the other end—an oddly intimate grouping as though, but for the intervening six inches of ivory, they would with an habitual familiarity have been holding hands.
He looked over at Sophia appraisingly. ‘If her ladyship asks my opinion—’
Sophia lost her temper. ‘Well, sir, but I do not ask your opinion; or require it.’ She swung round on him in a rush of white rage, so that Madame Turque started back and spilt her box of pins. ‘I am not used to have gentlemen assist at my toilette, and I wish you to go. Since my aunt won’t request you to leave, I request you myself. I shall not go on with my fitting until you withdraw.’ But she saw her aunt’s doll-face grow pinched at the nostrils—an already too familiar danger-flag; and her heart quailed. ‘I apologize, sir, if I disoblige you.’
‘Not at all,’ he said, smiling up at her languidly from the sofa. ‘On the contrary, you infinitely oblige me—you have turned round.’
She stood paralysed with rage and shame, clasping her hands before the half-transparent gathering of muslin at the bosom of her dress; and a slow blush, warm and russet-red as a berry, mounted in her pale cheeks. He looked up for the first time, lounging still, into her face; and suddenly rose to his feet, letting go of the folded ends of the fan as he did so. ‘Madame, I beg your pardon. I haf offended you.’ He took her right hand and held it for a moment in his own and then stooped and kissed it with a foreign click-together of the heels. ‘I forget that you are not yet altogether of the ton: and permit me to add, madame, may it be long before you are so.’ He straightened himself. ‘I will withdraw at once: I embarrass you.’ As he walked to the door, Lady Corby following like an agitated bird in his wake, he said to her: ‘If I may advise your ladyship—I vould suggest that the décolleté is perhaps a little too lo
w.’
Madame Turque continued to pick up her scattered pins. ‘Now Mademoiselle has made herself an enemy,’ she said. She added, ‘I do not refer to His Highness Prince Anton of Brunswick.’
Sophia wore white for this first, all-important, appearance: a billowing dress of the fine white muslin that had only very lately come into fashion, banded with blue, the deep bright sapphire of her eyes. She wore no rubies in those days and no pearls, for she had none; but round her smooth shoulders, above the hurriedly pinned-up bosom of the dress, was caught a translucent blue gauze scarf all spangled with stars of the same bright gold as her hair. So attired, with her uncle and aunt on either side of her—deliberately self-effacing, for this one occasion, in their dark velvet and brocade—she entered at last the glittering portals of the haut monde: and slowly walked forward down the long gallery to where the Duchess of Witham stood, receiving her guests.
In all the fashionable London of the eighteenth century, there was, as Lady Corby had said, no better place to see and to be seen.
Graceful as a white swan in her whispering muslin, down the long, mirrored gallery she came, slowly pacing the polished pathway left by long custom in that house, through the throng of guests—so that each arrival might at leisure be observed, judged, found wanting or, as too seldom happened, approved. At the far end of the gallery, the Duke teetered a little out of line to peer towards her, and the Duchess, flamboyantly young and vital by his side, stepped forward also to stare down the long gallery as she came, gravely advancing upon them under the shimmer and sheen of the chandeliers—the aunt and uncle bowing to right and left, simpering and smiling, a-gloat already at the impression their sacrificial lamb was clearly making upon the expectant throng. Slowly, shyly pacing forward, heart thudding, hands trembling as they clutched the gold-bordered ends of the cloud of gauze—all unaware that beneath the gauze the ill-made bodice had slipped awry, that the lovely breasts, jewel-centred with rubies, lay exposed in the haze of blue transparency for all the world to see. There was a gasp and a titter, hardly stifled, the old Duke tottered a little more forward, licking salacious lips, the Duchess raised painted eyebrows and glanced to where Royalty huffed and puffed in an excess of paraded outrage. Male voices passed the news back, whispering, through ranks of the whispering crowd: ‘Naked to the waist, by Gad!’ The whispering grew into a murmur, the murmur into open exclamation—‘La Corby’s brought the girl here naked to the waist!…’
The Corbys checked a little in their march but, mystified, continued; and—a girl stepped forward. Against all tradition in that house, right in the path of their progress a girl stepped forward and laid white hands against the creamy shoulders and bent forward and kissed the warm cheek lightly, and stepped back again; with flags of crimson now flying in her own cheeks—but with the disordered muslin now twitched back into place. Sophia, all unaware, beyond amazement however at anything this extraordinary London could do to her, accepted the kiss of a stranger and moved on. The uncle and aunt bowed frigidly to Miss Christine Lillane and, uneasy, still mystified, moved on, too.
And in their wake the vultures flocked in and the picking-over of the bones began. ‘A pretty exhibition, upon my word!’ ‘At some houses, perhaps—but here! And with Royalty present!’ ‘They are out to catch a fortune—anything for sensation.’ ‘At least they have achieved the sensation: all the beaux are dicing already for first try for her favours.’ ‘The sensation, yes: but will the fortune follow?’ ‘Not through a wedding ring. A man may look on while his wife exposes her—dowry—to society; but till he has had the handling of it himself, he likes to believe that no one else knew the extent of it.…’ And the Duchess, murmuring half-apologies spiced with triumph: ‘The Corby woman is a vulgar upstart, Majesty, does not know her manners: we invited her only in the hopes that the girl might prove some entertainment,’ and, in response to confidential enquiries in the well-known, guttural growl: ‘Not ready yet, I take it: a month or two will do it but for the moment I truly believe she obeys where she’s instructed—and, though your Majesty might not think it by Lady Corby’s way of going about it, matrimony is the object: with the accent on the “money”.…’ (As far as the house of Hanover was concerned, she reflected, she might as well look for the one as for the other.)
Prince Anton of Brunswick sought out Miss Christine Lillane. He begged an introduction from a common acquaintance, who passed on and left them together. ‘Madame, permit me to speak a word of—gratitude. So kindly an action infinitely became you.’
She flushed a little again, curtseying. ‘I couldn’t see her held up to shame, poor child.’
‘“Poor child”?’ he said, smiling down at her in his own teasing way. ‘Of the two are you not probably the younger?’
‘I am near eighteen,’ she said, a trifle coldly. ‘And much, much more in experience of the world.’ This tiny, shiny world of high fashion, of the ton, which all about them was a-sparkle with the gossip, the scandal, the piquant fun of it.
The Duchess bore down upon them. She was a high blonde, rather tall, garish, noisy, impenetrably pleased with herself. ‘Well, my dears!—a pretty trick. But really at Witham House!—and with Royalty present.…’
‘Duchess, it was an accident, you cannot think otherwise?’
‘Ah, it’s you, Miss Lillane?—and it was you that stepped forward? Well, well, it was kindly meant in you, child, but you spoilt a most daring pretty trick, there can be no denying it. ’Twas got from La Woffington, half the world was agog when she did the same thing at the opera: but poor Peg was stripped to the middle to achieve it, and, of course, wore no scarf: and most dismally failed with it anyway, for none took any note but the ladies. What should the gentlemen care for seeing in public what they all knew by heart in private?…’
Prince Anton bowed, flourished, kissed a much-ringed hand. ‘An accident. I attended the lady’s toilette, I know all about it.’ He flourished again, looking up into her handsome, ravaged too-early-raddled face. ‘Your Grace is too good at heart to think so ill of an untaught little girl out of Italy.’
‘Oh, ah, yes—a Venetian, isn’t she? I’d forgotten. Well, then, that accounts for it—who knows what fancy tricks these Italians will be up to? And the aunt, of course—’ She broke off a mite hastily. A Royal Highness was a Royal Highness still, even only of stuffy little Brunswick; and this particular highness was known to be the aunt’s lover. ‘Lady Corby, of course, would not know what the minx intended.’
He caught Christine’s eye and she gave him an imploring glance—and a monstrous pretty creature she was, too, he thought, so brilliantly fair where Sophia Devigne was creamy and warm of skin: much resembling the haughty cousin (a gentleman of whom Anton, the easy-going scapegrace, was not particularly fond) in quiet beauty of line and moulding, though her smooth brows sloped upward in tapering wings where Lord Weyburn’s were dark, with a downward tilt. He gave her a reassuring nod. ‘Permit me, Duchess. This vos an accident, I know it, I promise you: neither the young lady nor Lady Corby prepared it. And now—Miss Lillane was prompt in covering up the damage: I came to ask her assistance in covering up the truth also as far as the girl herself iss concerned. I find Miss Lillane already in sympathy; and so beg you also, your Grace, to enter into a little conspiracy. To us—this iss a little thing, many ladies habitually expose the full bosom: though not, certainly, in such company, nor on such an occasion—’
‘And not in the case of a young unmarried girl,’ said her ladyship, ‘making her début.’
‘Ah, there your Grace has it: she is very young—and very modest also, your Grace; through Lady Corby, I know her a little. A young girl, inexperienced, afraid as yet of life. If she knows nothing—and I swear to it!—will you not be kind? Let her not find out. To her it will be—shame: she will not hold up her head again. I know this young girl, Duchess, she is proud and she is modest, and she vill be ashamed. Don’t let her know! Be merciful!’ He kissed her hand once more, pleading: ‘You alone can do it—command that sh
e shall not be told.’
‘Not be told?’ said the Duchess. ‘Not be told! Why, child, you must be infatuated with the pretty puss yourself, if you’re taken in by that: but you shan’t convince me.’ She passed on with a rap of the fan over his whitening knuckles, a graceful inclination of her head to Miss Lillane. ‘All planned in advance,’ she confided happily to the next gossip in her way, ‘and her ladyship’s lover in a taking at our having so easily divined the plot. An Italian, my dear, and up to all the tricks and so young! Untutored, he calls her; but she knows her way about, I warrant you; and with the aunt behind her …’
The Corbys, not unversed in the art of ignoring snubs, were nevertheless puzzled at the equivocal reception accorded to their wonderful discovery. The ladies, not usually slow to advance and look over the newcomer, looked indeed, but from behind their fans, raising arched eyebrows at one another: such bucks as gathered round were not those whom one would have chosen nor, in view of her air of virtue, youth and good breeding, expected: it was as though in some point of harmless yet essential etiquette she had somehow blundered. Only Christine Lillane, moving slowly forward through the room on the Earl of Frome’s arm, came forward—he hanging back with an air of disapproval—and took the stranger’s shrinking hand in her own. ‘I have to apologize, madame, for an earlier intrusion. I mistook you for a friend.’
‘In this company, madame,’ said Sapphire, ‘I find it comforting even to be mistaken for a friend.’
‘Then you must permit me to call you a friend indeed,’ said Christine. She looked about her and made signals with her winged brows. ‘And in proof of it, let me present—come, my lord, where have you disappeared to?—the Earl of Frome: so that now you have two friends—’
Lady Corby interrupted them, advancing upon them suddenly with those pinched white nostrils of her ill-controlled rages. ‘Accompany me at once, Sophia, if you please. We are leaving.’
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