“I’ll never fit into your gown,” Josie protested.
“Of course you will. Oh, you’re a little slimmer in the waist,” Griselda said, “though who could tell when you were all sewed up in that corset?”
“I’m not—” Josie said, but found herself talking to the wind.
Madame Rocque’s establishment was at number 112, Bond Street. Josie had never seen anything quite like it. The antechamber was made up with all the intimacy of a lady’s boudoir. Everything, from the silk-covered walls to the delicate chairs, was buttercup yellow. A dressing table hung with yellow silk stood to one side, and laid reverently over a chair was an exquisite gown, the kind Josie would never dare to wear. It had no seams, and Madame Badeau had said that seams were essential for someone like her.
She wandered over to gaze at the gown. It was just a swath of ruby-colored net, sewn with the smallest glittering beads that Josie had ever seen. It looked outrageously expensive, and supremely comfortable. Why shouldn’t it be? The bodice was nothing more than a wide vee that appeared to plunge to the waist.
“You would be splendid in that gown,” Griselda said, appearing at her shoulder. “Isn’t it wonderful the way Madame has a few gowns made up so that one can actually see them? I personally find looking at a costume far more inspiring than choosing one from an illustration.”
“Do you mean that she had the gown made up solely so that we could see it?” Josie asked.
“Likely she has a regular customer to whom she offers a lower price if they allow their garment to be viewed for a time before delivery,” Griselda said. “I do believe that I shall try on that costume. Unfortunately, it is not appropriate for a debutante.”
“You will?” Josie asked, fascinated. Griselda wore gowns that enhanced her lush figure. But in the years she’d known her, Josie had never seen Griselda put on a gown that was transparently seductive.
Madame Rocque swept into the room like an admiral’s ship leading a small flotilla of clucking attendants. “Ah, my dearest Lady Griselda,” she cried, dropping into a deep curtsy.
“Madame Rocque,” Griselda said, returning the courtesy.
Seeing that, Josie sank into a curtsy worthy of a queen. Madame Rocque’s sharp black eyes darted around her body. “Ah!” she said with a sharp intake of breath.
Josie braced herself. Now Madame Rocque would start talking of seams and corsets.
“Finally, I have a young lady whom I can make look more like a woman and less like an insipid fairy,” Madame Rocque crooned. “Although, she is a very young lady.”
“Her first season,” Griselda said. “And I’m afraid it has not started on a salutary note, Madame. Thus, we turn to you.”
“You should have come to me immediately,” Madame said severely. She clapped her hands and sent several of her attendants running off in all directions.
Then she led Griselda and Josie into a smaller room that had the same sense of being a gentlewoman’s private boudoir. “May I bring you a glass of champagne?” she asked. “Sometimes, to make a change of this nature, some Dutch courage is helpful.”
Josie was wearing one of her gowns from last year, since none of Madame Badeau’s seamed constructions fit without the corset. And she had left the corset in Mayne’s turret. Suddenly she realized that both women were looking inquiringly at her, and Madame Rocque was holding out a glass of something that looked like champagne. “Oh no,” she said hastily. “I couldn’t possibly. I would be most grateful for a cup of tea, Madame, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
Madame nodded to one of the girls who trotted away. Then she began prowling around Josie, around and around, running a line down the center of her back, touching her shoulders, her neck. “Miss Essex,” she said after a moment, “I must see you in your chemise, if you please. No gown.”
Josie was resigned. Madame Badeau had also examined her figure in a chemise only. Whatever Madame Rocquet said, it couldn’t be worse than the clucks and cries of the distressed Madame Badeau on seeing her uncorseted. A moment later she stood before Madame Rocquet, clothed only in a chemise of the finest lawn. Every line of her body was visible, Josie knew, although with practiced ease she avoided glancing into the three-way glass to one side of the room.
Madame Rocquet prowled around and around, not saying a word. Then suddenly she started speaking to Griselda. “Deep colors would be best, of course, but in the first year…no.”
“I thought the same thing,” Griselda said, sipping a glass of champagne while she sat in one of the comfortable chairs to the side. “That crimson gown in the antechamber would be lovely.”
“Too bold, too sophisticated,” Madame Rocquet muttered, touching Josie again on both shoulders. She seemed to be measuring her without a tape, rattling numbers to a girl who stood ready to jot them down. “Now for you, Lady Griselda, that dress would be exquisite. But I have made no fortune selling you sophisticated clothing either. For you, the costume of a chaperone, albeit, since I make them, one of the most exquisitely gowned chaperones in London.”
“I have been a chaperone for the past few years,” Griselda said, “but as it happens, I did think that gown might suit me, Madame.”
Madame looked over and met Griselda’s eyes. A small, knowing smile curled her mouth. “Indeed?” she said, returning to those quick, brief touches by which she was measuring Josie. “I am most happy to hear that. Now this young lady cannot wear crimson, but I think we might choose violet. Violet and periwinkle. No pink, no white.”
“White makes me look like a bleached elephant,” Josie said. Of course, she had bought a number of white gowns from Madame Badeau, but they were for wearing with the corset.
“Nothing I design will make you appear to be a circus animal,” Madame said. “I do not think white for you, because your skin is of a lovely sort, the cream of the dairy, this. We accent it, we do not kill it. Now…” and she fired out a rapid list of instructions to one of the girls. “I have a gown that we might try. When would you like to appear as your new self?”
“The Mucklowe ball,” Josie said before Griselda could open her mouth. “Would that be possible, Madame? It’s the end of this week.”
“I shall manage, I shall manage,” Madame muttered. “I shall create something exquisite.”
“I want to look slender,” Josie said, feeling a wave of bravery.
“Poor Josephine has had a difficult time this season,” Griselda said to Madame.
Madame stopped in her flutter of measurements. “Not—the Scottish Sausage?”
Josie swallowed. It seemed that everyone in the world knew.
“There was a mention of it in a gossip column,” Madame said, “but no description. I promise you that once you appear in one of my creations, no one will ever think of sausages again in your presence. You do not wish to appear slender, Miss Essex. No indeed.”
Josie chewed her lip. This was just what Annabel, and Griselda, and finally, Mayne, had told her.
“You want,” Madame said, pausing impressively, “to appear seductive, not like a dried-up little stick from a tree!”
Griselda was nodding and clapping.
Then Madame’s attendant came in with a gown and she snatched it up. “For you,” she said to Josie, “I would make this up in a deep blue-violet. Just young enough, the color, to pass for debutante, and yet not so insipid.”
Josie stared at the gown. It was made of soft gathered swaths of silk, so slight they looked almost like net. They came across both shoulders and then crossed under the breasts. “You see,” Madame said, whipping the gown around, “in the back this darker color becomes long sashes that fall almost to your feet.”
“I can imagine it in a tawny yellow color,” Griselda said.
“Perhaps,” Madame said. She threw the gown over Josie’s head. “This is only a sample that I made up for my own satisfaction. I prefer to work with cloth rather than on paper, if you understand.”
The gown seemed to fit. It felt sinuously comfortable, l
uxurious and sensual.
“You must look,” Griselda said, smiling at her from the side of the room.
Josie swallowed, turned, and looked in the large glass to the side of the room.
“Yellow is not what I would choose,” Madame was saying. Clearly there was no going against her opinion, even in the smallest details. “As I said before, I—”
But Josie wasn’t listening. The glass showed a young woman whose rounded body breathed sensuality, whose hips and breasts were in perfect proportion—and both looked as if they were made to be fondled.
“They’ll be at your feet,” Griselda observed.
“You were right,” Josie said in a stifled voice. “You were right all along, and I didn’t listen to you.”
“You were infatuated by that corset,” Griselda said rather smugly. “Now, Madame, we need at least four evening gowns, and of course an assortment of morning and promenade gowns. Have you other gowns to show us, or perhaps sketches of those that aren’t made up?”
11
From The Earl of Hellgate, Chapter the Eighth
And so began, Dear Reader, a new period in my misbegotten life. It was the first time that I had entangled with an actress; I shall protect her name by calling her Titania, after the immortal Shakespeare’s creation. She was truly a queen of love; and she expressed herself in prose as well as kisses. One letter that I will always treasure was sent to me after, dare I say it, we spent an entirety of three days and nights without leaving our bed…
Lord Charles Darlington went to Hyde Park driving the little phaeton that his father had given him for his birthday.
“If you’d gone into the Church as I told you to,” his father had said, his jaw working furiously, “the Church would have taken care of you.”
Charles had snorted. “Just think how much fun I would have had, riding in all those funeral processions for free.”
“You’ll be the death of me.” Since that was usually the end of any given conversation with his father, Charles had turned to leave, but his father had one parting shot. “For God’s sake, get yourself a wife and stop infuriating every person who matters.”
Driving up and down the paths in Hyde Park, and around and around the great walk looking for an exquisite little cream-pot of a widow who wouldn’t consider marrying him wasn’t the way to find a wife. But it did give him time to realize just how many young girls first blushed when he glanced at them and then shot panic-stricken looks at their mothers.
It was becoming bitterly clear to him that he’d turned into a toothy bastard when he wasn’t looking. It would have been nice to blame it on bad company. He caught sight of Thurman waving furiously at him from a racing vehicle twice, but both times he cut sharply in the opposite direction. But the truth was that he’d done it himself, out of the bottomless pool of anger and venom he seemed to carry around with him.
And if that wasn’t a precise confirmation of his father’s many summings up of his character, he didn’t know what was. He’d taken all his rage and directed it against young girls whose only fault was to be born to a wool merchant or eat a few more Scottish pasties than the rest.
At least, he thought to himself, self-loathing is a break from making cynical, supposedly witty remarks.
Lady Griselda was nowhere to be found. Obviously, she didn’t mean it when she said she would see him in Hyde Park. In fact, now that he thought about it, it was obvious that Lady Griselda—who was, after all, Miss Essex’s chaperone—had only flirted with him so he would stop calling Miss Essex such unpleasant names.
Why he didn’t see that last night, he didn’t know. But somehow it hurt more than it should have after a ten-minute banter. He drove home in a furious mood and dashed off a note to Lady Griselda Willoughby. He used stationery that was as luscious and expensive as she was.
She used him; he’d use her. He’d threaten her.
I feel my newfound ethics slipping away. Encourage me tomorrow evening.
He paused. If he were truly daring, he would simply fix an appointment at a hotel. But she would never come. Never. Of course she wouldn’t. A lady of her reputation and stature likely had never entered a hotel. Well, the hell with that.
Ten o’clock at Grillon’s Hotel, he wrote, and signed it, Darling.
Then he looked at his portfolio and pulled a one hundred pound note from the payment he’d just received from his publisher. If he needed to, he could always join the Church and learn to go on his knees for a living. He’d rather go on his knees before Griselda, he thought.
There was something about her that turned him into a raging bundle of lust. She was all cheerful, delicate femininity. She smelled like clean living and faint perfume, like women who spent their mornings relaxing and their nights dancing. Who never screamed at their children, nor their spouses.
Thank God, Willoughby, whoever he had been, was long gone. She would never sleep with him if her husband had been alive; he knew that with a bone-deep knowledge. She wasn’t a woman to play false.
But she might…she just might be a woman who would have an affaire. Who would be enticed by a mixture of bribery and desire—for she liked him too; he had seen it in her eyes—and might be enticed into something rash.
He sealed the pounds in an envelope and sent over a servant to Grillon’s with a request for their very best bedchamber for the following night. To the best of his knowledge, there was nothing happening except a soirée given by the Smalepeeces, which couldn’t be anything other than tedious, and Mrs. Bedingfield’s musical evening. Griselda would never go to that, if only because she was chaperoning Miss Essex. No one would go to a musical evening unless they attended in the mad hope that a single gentleman would accidentally find his way there. Lady Griselda was far too experienced in the ways of the ton to consider the possibility.
Darlington was not the only man riding in Hyde Park that day who wished for acquaintances who didn’t appear. Harry Grone had grown old, somehow. These days he liked nothing better than to warm his toes at his fireplace and think about the glory days. But here he was, trundling around the park, gaping at the sparks and dandies.
Because out of the clear blue sky, the glory days were back. They needed him. The Tatler, them as had pensioned him off and said they weren’t doing his sort of journalism any longer. But now, out of the blue, they needed his sort of expertise.
The job came with a nice budget, so Grone had decided to take a carriage into Hyde Park and see what was what. He always called it surveillance in the old days. Now he’d lost his touch, he’d be the first to admit that. He couldn’t put a name to many a young man’s face he saw.
But it was all in the brains. And his brains told him that it wasn’t book-learning that would tell him who Hellgate was. If there were a clue in that book, someone else would have found it. Jessopp, more like. If there was anything known about the ton that Jessopp didn’t know…
No, it was going to take his special brand of journalism.
In the end, he had to ask someone to point out the man he sought. But once Grone found him, he couldn’t stop a grin of pure satisfaction. There was a face as foolish as a turnip. Took after his father, you could see that in a moment, from the puce waistcoat to the high-perch racing carriage that was absolutely improper for the park. An idiot. Just what he hoped for.
Grone rapped on the roof of the hackney and directed the driver to return him to his lodgings. That was enough of a trip for a man of his age. Once home, he got out of the carriage and tossed the driver a coin, biting back a curse as his right knee twinged. Early to bed tonight…because tomorrow he was taking out a bag of gold sovereigns and going to start what he did best.
Sweetening the pot.
12
From The Earl of Hellgate, Chapter the Eighth
My Titania sent me this letter written on blush paper, in a delicate purple ink:
Carry me off into the blue skies of your love, roll me in dark clouds, trample me with your thunderstorms…but love me, love me. r />
Sylvie de la Broderie found that races, racehorses, and racetracks were productive of two things only: boredom and dust. She didn’t like either. Dust she could tolerate under the right circumstances, although she couldn’t bring those circumstances to mind at the moment. A picnic, perhaps. She wasn’t very interested in the out-of-doors, but picnics could be quite agreeable. And to tell the truth, she’d had something of a picnic in mind when she agreed to allow Mayne to accompany her to the races.
But Epsom Downs racetrack was a great distance from a charming linen tablecloth spread under a gracious willow tree, perhaps next to the Seine…Sylvie stifled a sigh. It was cruel to think that such a beautiful life as she anticipated in Paris had been interrupted. Frenchmen were so much more understanding of one’s inclinations than were Englishmen. The English had no imagination. If he had had even a scrap of imagination, her fiancé must have known instantly that the racetrack was no place for her.
Instead, Mayne was briskly pointing out all the benefits of their position. They had seats in a box belonging to his friend, the Duke of Holbrook. Sylvie approved of that; she thought that dukes were good friends to have, and Holbrook had easy ways that spoke of an ancient title. Sylvie was a snob when it came to families: the older the better.
She had that from poor Maman. Once again Sylvie thought how pleased she was that Maman had been carried away by that terrible cold just before Papa made such a drastic decision as to move them all to England. True, Papa had been absolutely right. She and her sister Marguerite might well have suffered the same fate as so many of their dear friends, crowded into the Bastille—but Sylvie wrenched her mind away from that thought. She could not, she literally could not, contemplate what had happened to all the gay, exquisite people her papa had known. Albeit she had not yet debuted when they lived in Paris, but her maman had always discussed the goings-on of society with great freedom, so she felt that she did know them.