A Chance to Dream

by Lynne Connolly

  Violetta did her best to look shocked. “Of course not, my lady!”

  “How much do you know of us?” Lady Perdita demanded.

  “I know your mother is known as the Triple Countess, and you and Lord Blyth are her children by her second husband, the late Earl of Blyth.” Violetta carefully filtered her extensive knowledge of the family as she spoke, repeating nothing that was not general knowledge. “Your mother lives with her third husband, Lord Taversall, and their family.”

  Lady Perdita nodded. “Very good. Our elder brother, the Earl of Rosington, is the most fortunate, his father having left him with a tidy fortune and no siblings.” Lady Perdita’s pretty mouth turned down. “Our revered mama is prolific, and has always done her duty by her husbands. I do not find it an incentive to marry. She was married to her first husband, an old man, for the money, she ran off with Blyth and lived to regret it and now she’s so happy it is quite a sight to see.”

  Lady Perdita’s bitterness astounded Violetta. It would have made her happy to have a brother or sister to share with, but as an only child she’d only had her mother to rely on. It had made them closer, but Violetta always had a feeling of isolation and a yearning for someone of her own, someone special.

  She knew better than to hope that could be Lady Perdita. She was an employee here, made clear to her by every movement of the other two ladies towards her, even to the hard chair she sat in. Besides, she was wary of letting too much slip.

  “I will have the housekeeper show you about,” her ladyship said. “It is important you know your way around, because I will require you to fetch and carry for me.”

  Violetta murmured a reply in the affirmative.

  “When we have company, you will stand by my chair and take no part in the conversation. I will require you to be at least presentable, but no more. I wish you to be devoted to me.” Violetta listened to the requirements and tried to think humbly, but the more Lady Perdita spoke, the more her arrogance irritated Violetta. “Now I wish you to leave,” the lady continued. “You will have the room close to mine so you will be ready for my call. Listen.” She picked up a bell from the side table and shook it. A pleasant but penetrating tinkle. “When I ring, I expect you to attend me immediately.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Violetta stood and kept her hands folded neatly before her, head down.

  The door opened to admit a footman.

  “Have Miss Lambert shown to the bedroom that has been prepared for my companion. She has permission to visit her family this evening.” Lady Perdita turned to address Violetta. “Be back first thing in the morning. I will expect you to be ready to take up your duties.”

  Violetta curtsied and left the room to the sound of a giggle from Lady Judith. She had no doubt her slightly eccentric appearance would cause discussion as soon as she had gone. She followed the footman to the end of the corridor and through a small door to the backstairs. “We’ve been told you are to stay with us, Miss—”

  “Lambert,” Violetta supplied.

  “Lambert. If you want anything, just shout down the stairs. I hope you don’t mind me taking you this way. I thought you might like to know about these stairs, because you’re near the end of the corridor.” They climbed a flight of narrow, wooden stairs and he opened a door. They were back in the main house, on the second floor. “This is where the family bedrooms are, ma’am. His lordship’s suite is across the staircase and yours is next to her ladyship’s. I hope it suits.”

  Moving to a door, the footman opened it for her. The room contained everything necessary to her comfort; a bed with a light canopy, a washstand and a tall clothes press. A single candlestick stood on the plain nightstand that presumably contained a necessary in its lower cupboard. No carpet or rug covered the polished floorboards, and the shutters at the windows were bare, with no drapery to soften them. “This was her ladyship’s dressing room, ma’am, but she had the sitting room on this floor converted for her use instead.”

  It was obvious the furniture had been moved in recently, as some of the pieces didn’t quite fit in the places allotted to them and fresh scrapes marked the bare, planked floor. It was all simple, country stuff, probably brought down from a servant’s bedroom. She tried not to be disappointed. Companions were sometimes treated as equals, but obviously not in this household.

  Her cloak had been brought up and thrown on the bed. No chance of more than casual help from a maid, Violetta guessed, so she must learn to fend for herself. Even at school, she’d had fellow pupils to help her with her stays in the mornings. Remembering the girlish companionship with a pang of nostalgia, Violetta picked up the cloak and put it on, finding her bonnet hung on a peg screwed to the back of the door. At least there was a mirror, even if it was a trifle spotted. It looked as though it had been a grand piece once, but was in an outdated style, the frame elaborately carved in a dark, dull wood.

  Outside, Violetta went down the main staircase, elegantly curving into the neat hall and left the house by the front door. She would do that until instructed otherwise. She made her way across the square where she hailed a hackney cab. Time to go home, to her other disguise.

  Chapter Two

  “La Perla Perfetta!” Violetta heard the announcement, felt rather than heard the anticipation in the room, the rustling of heavy silk, the low murmur. Putting her hand to her elaborate silk mask, she made sure it was firmly fixed in place. It had become a habit for gentlemen to try to remove it, but her mother forbade it. Flicking her fan open in a flurry of feathers and spangles, she put up her chin and entered the drawing room.

  The murmurs rose appreciatively and she let them look. Used to the reaction she could arouse, she allowed herself to smile, but only a little. She knew she was a man of fashion’s dream. Dressed in her trademark pure white, her mask covering the top half of her face, her shining black hair drawn back into a simple style, she let them look.

  The glitter of spangles, precious gems and candlelight reflected off the room’s numerous gilded pier-glasses and demonstrated the success her mother, La Perla, had found amongst English society. The French gilded chairs and costly Aubusson carpet bore mute witness to her personal wealth.

  Uncle Lucius—Lord Ripley—came forward to lead Violetta to her mother. La Perla sat in state, in the chair she preferred, set between the two large windows of the salon on the first floor. Only the highest, the most expensive courtesans were allowed into this room, and Violetta in her guise as La Perla Perfetta was one of them. Except that La Perla Perfetta was a virgin, and likely to remain so, if her mother had any say in the matter.

  La Perla was magnificent in cobalt blue, her hair, still black with a very little help of walnut juice, her face carefully made up but in no way the white mask some society ladies preferred. La Perla at fifty, was still lovely. She acknowledged her daughter’s low bow with a gracious smile, motioning her to rise.

  Violetta stood next to her mother’s chair, watching the company. As usual, the cream of society had attended her mother’s public salon. The only segment significantly absent was the ladies. Occasionally, with careful connivance, a respectable woman made a heavily disguised appearance here, but only in the rarest circumstances. The gowns were as expensive and brilliant as those worn in the Duchess of Queensberry’s drawing room, the conversation as scintillating, for La Perla was the queen of the demi-monde, the ruling monarch of her world. And Violetta was her daughter, and her heiress.

  Once Violetta had found it thrilling to appear so, especially after her sojourn in a stuffy finishing school in France. Now it was almost routine.

  Lord Ripley, standing on the other side of La Perla’s chair, cast Violetta a frowning glance. He knew then. La Perla must have told him. Violetta loved him as a father, but she dreaded his knowing what she had done. Perhaps her mother had done her a favour by telling him. At least she would not have to tell him herself.

  She turned at a familiar voice. “La Perla Perfetta, you are such a welcome sight!” A man she knew well, dress
ed elaborately in dark purple with red trimmings. Wealthy, privileged, he took her hand and pressed a fervent kiss to her palm. A wet kiss Violetta longed to wipe off. “When will you relent and allow me to take care of you?”

  The meaning was not equivocal. “I am still considering your generous offer, Lord Quenby.” Violetta allowed her native tongue to suffuse her voice, lending it a heavy Italian accent. It was one more layer in her disguise.

  “My daughter is a prize. She does not bestow her favours lightly, my lord,” La Perla added, in an accent on which her daughter had modelled her own, but hers was natural. “You must be patient. She will make her decision soon. It is not your person, or yet your fortune that makes her hesitate, but her standards are of the highest. You must prove worthy of her.”

  This was the game they played, keeping the gentlemen coming and constantly attendant. Violetta had not yet taken one, though she was discreet about her refusal, unless the man in question proved importunate or ignorant, assuming she was his for the taking. She was not. However, Lord Quenby had shown admirable restraint and had never behaved in a less than gentlemanly manner to her. Some of the women in this room wielded a great deal of power and influence. Perhaps more so than their respectable equivalents, since they held their own fortunes, ran their lives as they saw fit, unlike a wife, who, when all was said and done, was wholly owned by her husband. It was generally assumed La Perla Perfetta would be one of the most important when she chose to take her place. Violetta had tired of the game long ago, although it was impossible to allow it to drop. Soon she would leave it all behind. The sooner the better, she decided, except for one aspect. She would not be able to see her mother as much as she would like, and it would always have to be in secret.

  She studied the elegant, attentive male by her side and wondered. Did she really want it, the respectability denied her as the daughter of the best courtesan in London, or was it a dream, something she would not want at all? It was the reason for the mask, a precaution she had accepted at first, but now sometimes regretted. She was not ashamed, she thought fiercely. She was proud of what her mother had wrought. All by herself, refusing to allow anyone, even Lord Ripley, to help her.

  Violetta knew she could do worse than Quenby. He would initiate her into the world of intimacy with respect and consideration, she was sure. La Perla always left the decision up to her but so far, no man had appealed to her. Lord Quenby was kind, and Violetta was tiring of playing a part, always hiding behind a mask of one kind or another. If it had not been for her Aunt Virginia’s concerns about Lady Perdita, she would never have considered another disguise. Or so she told herself, but when she thought of appearing in public as herself, terror gripped her in its paralyzing vice. She had never appeared in public as Violetta Palagio, except for one brief visit to her family in Italy after her father’s death. She didn’t know if she could sustain the illusion of being herself any more.

  So she smiled at Lord Quenby, allowed him to monopolize her company, feed her titbits from the supper table, even, at the end of the evening, to steal a chaste, closed-mouth kiss. Perhaps it was time to give up her foolish dreams and become what her mother had been. Perhaps.

  Having seen Quenby off the premises, Violetta lifted her skirts and climbed the marble stairs to the drawing room, empty now except for her mother, Lord Ripley and the servants, busy clearing away the results of the evening’s revels. Very few gentlemen left alone, but they had all left. Even in the days of her active career, La Perla had rarely allowed guests to stay in this house. That way lay imprisonment and disgrace, the label of a house of ill repute, the life of a common prostitute. La Perla had never been a common prostitute.

  By common consent, they moved to a smaller salon, one they had not used that night. La Perla leaned back in the comfortable sofa with a weary sigh and held out her hand. Lord Ripley immediately took it and sat next to her. Violetta, used to such sights, was not perturbed, but warmed by the sign of affection between her mother and the man she had always loved.

  While not in the first flush of youth, or even the second, La Perla was still a lovely woman. Dressed simply but with a style that proclaimed a lifetime dedicated to the art of self-presentation, La Perla never used a clumsy move, never appeared in slovenly dress. The beauty that had captured a generation was still blazingly real. “My dear, tell us all about the experience. Has it changed your mind? Will you come home?” Her voice still held its Italian lilt, unlike Violetta’s which had disappeared with the last guest.

  Violetta ignored her mother’s question for a moment. “I’m glad you’re back, Uncle Lucius.”

  “Yes indeed, my dear, back from my duty visit. I brought my daughter to Town, but she knows better than to expect me to be at home too often.” His deep voice rumbled, happily familiar.

  “He will make his home here,” La Perla said firmly.

  “I always have.” He turned back to his mistress. Their affection was immediately obvious; the intimate smile they exchanged expressed it all. The affair between the Marquess of Ripley and La Perla had always been a love affair. Looking at him again, the dark eyes and friendly, handsome smile, Violetta wondered for the umpteenth time if Ripley was her real father, but they never spoke of it, and her mother had never told her. She was almost convinced of it now, but instead of the shame she should have felt, she felt only pleasure that this man, not the violent man her mother had been married to, had given her life.

  Now he turned back to Violetta, seated in a deeply upholstered armchair opposite the sofa. “Tell us all about your day, my dear. Did you succeed in your plan? Please tell me you did not!”

  Violetta smiled. The marquess had aged, true, but he still stood tall and strong. He was dressed formally, in full-dress coat and wig, but Violetta knew that under the fashionably queued, white-powdered confection, his short, dark hair was only grizzled at the temples and showed no sign of a receding hairline.

  “I succeeded magnificently,” Violetta announced. “I have the position of companion to Lady Perdita Garland.”

  “Oh, Violetta, how clever!” La Perla was charmed.

  Violetta beamed. “I want to help the family all I can.”

  “I know that. It is a clever disguise, cara, the Charlotte Lambert one, but don’t you think they will recognize you?”

  “They won’t.” Violetta lifted her hands to her mask, pulling out the pins that secured it to her hair and loosening the strings. She removed it and dropped it on the small table beside her.

  “So many disguises!” Lord Ripley murmured. “Your mama says you have a wig and spectacles in this part.”

  The wig was necessary. Violetta’s hair was almost a trademark, as unlike the tresses of most English maidens as could be. The blue-black shade proclaimed her Mediterranean origins as clearly as if she had spoken Italian all the time. “The wig is excellent. You have some very clever people in your employ, Mama.”

  “I have drawn the best to me. I never fail to pay them their worth.” It was a simple fact. La Perla reached a white hand to the coffeepot reposing on a table by her side and poured three strong black cupfuls, but added a quantity of cream and sugar to one of them. This she passed to the marquess, who took it with a smile. “I have need of good people to help me.” The marquess touched her hand with his own, briefly, a gesture speaking of years of sympathy and comfort.

  Violetta couldn’t imagine how her mother’s lover had coped with the men who had come into the house and left it again over the years. She never asked, and Ripley never volunteered the information, remaining always urbane and accepting of La Perla’s necessary profession. It must have been hard for him to bear, though.

  After escaping the clutches of a man who’d nearly killed her, La Perla had been determined not to allow any man control over her ever again. Violetta’s memories of her life in Italy were vague, but the few, terrifying flashes never left her. It must have been so much worse for La Perla, who had, for the sake of her child and her family, withstood the abuse for seven
years before leaving. Violetta knew why she had left, and deliberately blocked the scene from her mind most of the time. She did it again now.

  Ripley was a constant in their lives, doing everything he could to dissuade La Perla from her choice of profession. He failed, but remained, watching and waiting for her, knowing she needed him. Violetta knew he had never been so happy as in the past five years, when La Perla closed her bedroom door to everyone except him. They were for all the world like a happily married couple. Except they had never been married to each other, and never would be.

  She took a sip of the rich, dark brew. “You’re right, Mama, Lady Perdita needs help. She is old for a single lady, but her brother is eager for her to take her place in society now he can suitably dower her. Aunt Virginia may not like it, but I’m there now, and I’ll give her daughter all the help I can.”

  The marquess sat up a little straighter, his brow creased in a frown. “You’ve met Judith, haven’t you?”

  Violetta grinned. “Yes, I met your daughter, sir. She didn’t recognize me.” His daughter, so perhaps Violetta’s half-sister. What a tangle!

  “I can’t approve of this.” There was no sign of amusement on the marquess’s face. “You are mad, girl! Did you help her, Donata?”

  “Naturally. I did not wish it at first, but you would not know her, my dear, as Miss Lambert. Violetta sincerely wishes to help her godmother’s daughter.” La Perla frowned faintly, which was a serious expression for her. She tried to keep her face perfectly smooth at all times in the general way of things, a strong believer in the theory that using too much facial expression was eventually aging. It was not vanity that had inculcated these actions, as it might have been in a society matron. It was the deep vein of practicality that ran through La Perla as a streak of gold through rock. In her profession it was necessary to retain one’s looks as long as possible. “I told Violetta about Lady Perdita, and I think her way of helping is ingenious. Virginia will not be pleased, though. I know Lord Blyth’s reputation but he is above all things always in control of his emotions. A cold man, I do not believe Violetta stands in any danger in his household. Violetta is her own mistress, Lucius. She wishes to do this for Virginia, and we should not deter her.” Violetta smiled gratefully at her mother, who flashed a grin back.