A Favor for the Prince

by Jane Ashford

  There was an Elizabethan-looking dress in deep blue silk shot with bronze. Its bodice came to a sharp point in the front, and a starched ruff, rather crushed, was pinned to one sleeve. Ariel smiled. Her mother had gone to some masked ball as Good Queen Bess, she thought, and it was just like her.

  There was a classical sort of toga made of pale cream silk, but when Ariel handled it she could barely tell which was the neck and which the hem. She didn’t trust its draped folds; it looked as if it would fall off at the slightest movement.

  Finally, in the back of the wardrobe, she found just what she wanted. It was a Gypsy costume, with a snug narrow bodice and a skirt made of layers and layers of multicolored ruffles all trimmed in gilt ribbon and embellished with little gilt coins. The dress swayed and twinkled in her hands as if it had a life of its own. There was a matching scarf to tie over her hair, and in a small pocket she found hooped earrings that also tinkled with little bits of gilt. With a black mask, it would be a marvelous costume.

  Ellen was equally excited as she helped her carry the dress downstairs. They were in Ariel’s bedchamber agreeing on how it should be pressed when Ariel noticed something outside. Her stable yard was occupied by a gigantic chestnut, guarded by a stable boy she had never seen before. “Do you know who that is?” she asked Ellen.

  “That’s Billy,” answered the girl, surprised.

  “Billy?”

  “He used to work in the stables at Langford House, but now he’s… Oh, I expect Lord Sebastian’s here to visit Hannah.”

  “Ah?”

  “Major Lord Sebastian, I should say.” The girl frowned. “I think.”

  “He is the one in the cavalry regiment?” asked Ariel.

  “Yes, miss.”

  Ariel contemplated this information. “All the brothers seem very fond of Hannah,” she ventured.

  “She was their nurse, miss. And she still…helps them out, like.”

  “How?”

  Ellen shrugged. “I don’t rightly know, miss. She listens to them talk.”

  “Does she?”

  Ariel considered resisting the temptation before her and rejected the idea with a shrug. “Would you put the dress away for me, Ellen?” she asked. “And, er, tidy up?”

  “Of course, miss,” said the maid, looking a bit surprised at this sudden change in direction.

  Leaving her to wonder, Ariel ran lightly down the stairs, moving very softly when she reached the final steps that led into the kitchen. Voices were floating up toward her, and she paused to listen.

  “The damned girl ignores me,” she heard Lord Sebastian Gresham say.

  Hannah made some inaudible reply.

  “Well, I’m sorry, Hannah, but it drives a man to strong language,” he answered. “I know I’m not repulsive to the ladies.”

  Ariel crept closer, but she still couldn’t catch more than a murmur of sound from Hannah.

  “Don’t say comeuppance,” objected the visitor. “Hannah, I’m serious this time. I mean to marry the gel. I swear you’ve never heard me say that before.”

  Just outside the door, Ariel heard Hannah say, “No.”

  “I always meant to marry an heiress,” added her companion. “I was in no hurry though. There’s a fresh crop of them every year. But this one is…something special.”

  “I’m sure she won’t refuse you,” said Hannah comfortably. Ariel was close enough now to hear the click of her knitting needles.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” protested Lord Sebastian. “She won’t so much as look at me. There’s a flock of fellows around her every minute. I can scarcely snag a dance.”

  Ariel pushed open the kitchen door and went in, then stopped abruptly. “Oh. Hello, Lord Sebastian,” she said.

  He leaped to his feet, looming very large in this low-ceilinged room. He wore his uniform, and the buttons and braid glittered impressively. His magnificent whiskers curled along his cheeks, completing the picture of an extremely dashing cavalryman. “How do?” he said. “Just having a jaw with Hannah.”

  “How nice,” said Ariel. She sat in the chair opposite him at the kitchen table and looked up with a sweet, expectant smile.

  “I, er, I should be on my way,” he responded.

  “You cannot go yet. I see Hannah has the teapot all ready.”

  Looking slowly from one of them to the other, Hannah rose to pour the boiling water over the tea leaves.

  Lord Sebastian shifted from one large booted foot to the other.

  Hannah got out another cup and brought the tea things to the table on a tray. There were macaroons, Ariel noticed. She wondered if she would have been offered them above stairs, or if they had been procured for Lord Sebastian’s enjoyment. She reached out and took two. “So, I understand you are pursuing an heiress,” she said cordially.

  Lord Sebastian choked.

  “What is her name? Hermione?”

  He goggled at her.

  “I may have it wrong,” added Ariel blithely. “You know how it is with gossip; everything is twisted around.”

  “Gossip?” he cried. “You can’t mean people are talking…no one could possibly know. Hardly knew myself till yesterday.”

  Ariel waved a hand. “It only requires the least hint. What is her name?”

  Lord Sebastian sighed. “Georgina,” he replied. “Lady Georgina Stane.”

  “Much nicer than Hermione,” commented Ariel. “When shall I wish you happy?”

  He sighed again. “Never.”

  “Really? Is there some obstacle?” Ariel saw that Hannah was watching her very closely. There might have been a twinkle in the older woman’s eyes, or it might have been a trick of the light.

  Lord Sebastian hesitated. The struggle between discretion and a strong desire to pour out his woes was evident on his face. The latter finally won out. “She don’t care a snap of her fingers for me,” he complained. “I have to fight my way through a battalion of fops and fortune hunters just to speak to her, and then, likely as not, she flits off just as I open my mouth. It ain’t what I’m used to,” he muttered darkly. “I don’t wish to brag, but the ladies are generally dashed glad to talk to me.”

  Ariel remembered that Lord Sebastian had quite a reputation among a certain set of ladies. “It sounds just like The Rake Reformed,” she offered.

  “Eh?” He eyed her as if she’d spoken in a foreign language.

  “That is a play my mother once acted in,” she added. “The situation is very similar.”

  He simply stared.

  “You see,” she explained kindly, “young ladies are sometimes instructed not to take anything seriously from a… a certain sort of man. They are told that he doesn’t mean what he says and that he is simply amusing himself at their expense.”

  “That’s an outrage,” complained their visitor, who had been guilty of precisely this fault on many occasions.

  “The stratagem that the hero used in The Rake Reformed might be just the thing for you,” she said.

  “Stratagem?” She had his full attention now.

  “Yes, it was rather clever. But, well, you have to really mean to marry the lady.” She had no intention of helping him deceive a fellow female.

  “I do,” vowed Lord Sebastian.

  She decided to probe a bit further. “Because you want her money?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Couldn’t marry without it,” he claimed. “But it ain’t just her money, though. Met a score of girls with money since I joined up. But Georgina…” He trailed off thoughtfully.

  “What is it that you like about her?” Ariel asked.

  The large cavalryman looked surprised, as if it had never occurred to him to think about this. His brow furrowed. “Dashed if I know,” he concluded at last. “Odd, ain’t it? There’s just something about her. Can’t get her out of my mind. Likel
y to make an ass of myself when I see her. Don’t make sense, but there it is.” He spread his big hands.

  “I’ll help you,” Ariel resolved. “The best thing would be for me to meet her, or at least observe her. Why don’t you take me along the next time you’re likely to encounter her?”

  “I can’t just show up at a ton party with you on my arm,” protested Lord Sebastian, aghast. “It’s not the thing. People know who you are, and besides—”

  “They won’t notice me,” put in Ariel, who had already thought of this obstacle and formed a plan to overcome it. “But I see what you mean. We need someone else, someone to give us the proper appearance.” She frowned. “An older woman, very respectable-looking but not too striking—”

  “This ain’t a good idea,” said Lord Sebastian loudly.

  Ariel’s eyes had drifted to the right. “Hannah,” she said.

  Lord Sebastian’s eyes seemed to bulge.

  “I could get her a perfect gown from the theater,” Ariel continued. “If you got us in the door, we could—”

  “You’re mad,” cried the visitor. “But it don’t matter, because Hannah ain’t. She’ll never go along with this scheme, will you, Hannah?”

  Both of them turned to look at the older woman.

  She gazed back at them imperturbably. “What would I do?” she asked.

  “Hannah!” sputtered Lord Sebastian.

  “No one will notice us,” promised Ariel. “Or if they do, they will dismiss us as unfashionable nonentities.”

  “Can you be certain of that?” asked Hannah.

  “It don’t matter, because I won’t do it,” said Lord Sebastian, looking stubborn.

  “Do you know how the hero won his bride in The Rake Reformed?” insinuated Ariel.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care. Life isn’t some dam… dashed play.”

  “It was exceedingly clever.”

  He stuck out his jaw. “Why don’t you just tell me about it then, and I’ll see if I want to give it a try.”

  Ariel shook her head. “I must observe Lady Georgina first, to make certain.”

  “Blast it!” He frowned again. “You think you can get her to take some notice of me?”

  “I believe so.”

  He glowered over this for a bit longer, then made a gesture as if throwing something away. “Very well. I suppose I shall be very sorry for this, but let’s give it a go.”

  Ariel smiled up at him. “If there is the least problem, we will abandon the scheme at once,” she promised.

  “Umm.” He considered. “The Coningsby ball is tomorrow. Hundreds invited. Be a good place to escape notice.”

  Although she sincerely hoped to help Lord Sebastian in his courtship, Ariel saw no reason why she could not use the occasion to gather information about her mother. The ball would likely offer less scope than gatherings at Carlton House, but one could pick up a great deal simply by being alert.

  “Perfect,” said Ariel. “Well be ready.”

  “Maybe you will,” he muttered. “But will I?”

  * * *

  Ariel stood back from the long mirror and made a critical survey of her appearance. She wore the gown that had been her old schoolmistress Miss Ames’s favorite. It was made of pale blue muslin with long sleeves and a high neck with a small frill encircling it. The bodice was otherwise unornamented and slightly loose on her; the skirt fell in heavy plain folds to her feet. All in all, the dress looked as if it had been sewn for a somewhat larger, heavier woman. Ariel looked childlike in it, her curves obscured.

  She had bundled her glossy brown locks into a knot at the back of her head, without so much as a curl at the temples. And she had dusted her face with some of her mother’s powder, dimming her glowing complexion to a pale shadow of itself. She looked countrified, short of money, and unimportant, she thought with satisfaction. Any member of the ton who did happen to glance her way would dismiss her instantly as unworthy of close scrutiny, and she was certain that no one who had seen her at Carlton House would recognize her tonight.

  She moved in the mirror. She could almost hear her mother saying it—mannerisms were as critical as costume to a character. She bent her head and lowered her eyelids, slumping her shoulders just a little, as if conscious of her own insignificance. She took a tentative step, like someone who asks permission to exist. The transformation was complete.

  Turning, she went downstairs to the front parlor where Hannah was waiting for her. The older woman wore a dress of rich materials but little style with a matching turban that announced her position as chaperone. “What do you think?” asked Ariel, walking across the room in her beaten-down gait.

  A laugh burst from Hannah, quickly stifled. “No one would take you for the girl who left here to go to Carlton House,” she admitted.

  Ariel straightened and grinned. “I told you.”

  “So you did, miss.”

  * * *

  The street before the Coningsby town house was choked with carriages letting off elegantly dressed passengers and moving on. It took a full twenty minutes for them to reach the entry and be ushered into the towering front hall. Attendants took their wraps and then they climbed the curving staircase along with a throng of others to where their hostess and the daughter she was presenting this year waited to greet them. Lord Sebastian had timed it so that they arrived at the peak hour, when most of the invited guests would also be filing past. No one could keep track of all the names at such a time, he assured them. And besides, Lady Coningsby was a bit of a lightweight in the brains department.

  Consequently, they were able to move by her with a muttering of names and a bare minimum of courtesies. “Slipped us in ahead of a countess,” Lord Sebastian murmured as they continued on. “Knew she’d be champing at the bit to speak to her.”

  The ballroom was already crowded. As he had been instructed, Lord Sebastian found them a pair of gilt chairs against the wall and settled them there. Then he went off to find his Georgina and signal Ariel.

  Ariel sat primly in the straight chair observing from under lowered eyelids. She had decided that it would be best to stay on the sidelines at first, until the dancing was well under way. She would drift through the crowd later and pick up what she could.

  For the next half hour, Ariel secretly watched Lord Sebastian’s chosen. Lady Georgina Stane had golden hair and pale skin. She was slender and willowy. Her face was piquant rather than beautiful, with large expressive eyes, a straight nose, and a pointed chin. At the end of the half hour, during which Georgina talked and danced and stood silent by the long windows on the far wall, Ariel made up her mind. Georgina appeared to be a woman of some intelligence, and impatience. She gave short shrift to the more fatuous-looking of her admirers and appeared to brush aside fulsome compliments. She obviously enjoyed the ball, but not all of the attentions her large fortune attracted. She was just the sort of person on which the stratagems Ariel had been concocting would work.

  This established, Ariel rose and suggested to Hannah that they take a turn about the room as a change from sitting. Hannah agreed, and they began to walk, Ariel keeping to her shy shuffle and subdued manner. They skirted the edges of the large room, forced to move very slowly by the press of people. Ariel listened to every scrap of conversation, prepared to linger if she heard anything of interest. But they made the circuit of the room without happening upon any mention of Bess Harding’s death, which had apparently already faded from the consciousness of the ton. This wouldn’t do, thought Ariel. She had to have a way to bring up the subject, but it would be quite out of the question for the character she was portraying tonight.

  “Good God,” said a male voice nearby. Footsteps rang on the parquet floor, and then a large figure loomed. “What the deuce are you doing here?” it said.

  Ariel looked up to confront Lord Alan Gresham in evening dress.

 
Before she could reply, he said, “Hannah!” in a shocked tone.

  “Not so loud,” urged Ariel. At least one person had turned to look, she saw.

  He stared at her. “What are you up to? If you have—”

  “We’d best go somewhere more private,” interrupted Hannah.

  “Yes,” agreed Ariel fervently. She took Hannah’s arm and hurried toward the exit, trusting that Lord Alan would follow them, and forgetting for the moment that she was supposed to shuffle modestly along the floor.

  They moved down the hallway outside the ballroom, glancing into the open rooms they passed. All held groups of older guests drinking and talking or playing cards. But at last, near the end, they came upon a small parlor that was empty. Ariel ducked in, pulling Hannah after her. Lord Alan was hard on their heels, and he closed the door behind him.

  “What the devil are you doing?” he demanded. “I called at the house, and I was told by the maid that you had gone out to a ball.” He looked her up and down. “Why are you dressed as a schoolgirl?”

  “I didn’t wish to be recognized.”

  “Recognized,” he echoed. He looked at Hannah as if for a more sensible answer, then winced at the sight of her turban.

  “By anyone who saw me at Carlton House,” she explained.

  The thought of what some of those who had seen her at Carlton House might do if they encountered her alone and unprotected—and in this ridiculous disguise—made Alan’s jaw clench. She really had no idea of the sort of libertines and roués who had marked her appearances there, or of their ideas of amusement. “You are here without an escort and without an invitation?” he asked.

  “We have a perfectly good escort,” Ariel informed him.

  “Who?” he demanded. He was upon her in two steps, grasping her upper arms. “Who?” he repeated, conscious of the flare of jealousy her admission had roused in him.

  “Enough of this, now,” said Hannah sharply.