Lady Dalrymple was in her front drawing room, gazing into the dusky sky through her telescope, when C.J. came downstairs to model her new ball gown.
“What do you see, Aunt Euphoria?”
The dowager turned around, startled. “Heavens, child! You gave me a fright.” She appraised C.J. in the gauzy white dress. “Aphrodite herself would be jealous; that is what I see. Come, give your aunt a kiss.”
C.J. obeyed, taking care not to trip on the slight train at the back of the fine muslin gown as she tested her delicate new shoes. What a shock she had received when Saunders, while dressing her, had remarked that for her first ball, her young ladyship was certainly “putting on the dog” with her dancing slippers. C.J. was familiar with the expression but thought it was a quaint colloquialism from the Jazz Age. She had nearly gagged when the sour-faced lady’s maid curtly remarked—or so it sounded to C.J.—that the “dog” she referred to was one that had given its skin to make the finest of dance slippers, wondering aloud if the poor victim had been a spaniel or a terrier. Clearly there were some things about her present situation to which C.J. might never become reconciled.
“I meant, what do you see through the telescope?” C.J. asked her “aunt.”
The countess smiled. “The future, I suppose. One imagines that there must be so much out there that we can never know. Have you ever seen such an instrument?” Lady Dalrymple asked, referring to the telescope.
“Never in person,” C.J. answered truthfully.
“This one was given to me by William Herschel, a dear, dear friend of mine . . . and Portly’s, of course. Such a clever man. Brilliant. I think he may be a Jew,” she said, lowering her voice. “A handmade telescope very much like this one was the instrument he used to discover Georgium Sidus from his house right here on New King Street, in 1781.”
C.J. gave her ladyship a look of total incomprehension. “Discovered who?”
“Georgium Sidus is a planet, my dear. There are seven of them . . . maybe fewer . . . I can never remember. Most are named for Roman deities, of course. Venus and Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury . . . then there’s Georgium Sidus, to be sure, and my favorite, although I don’t believe it’s a planet—the moon.”
C.J. wondered which planet Georgium Sidus was. “Roman planets, and an old Roman city,” she said. “I wonder how the earliest astronomers decided to name so many of the planets for Roman gods. Why not name them after the Greek ones? Or the Hebrew prophets? Or the kings of England?”
“Well,” the countess answered, “Sir William did decide to name his discovery, despite its being accidental, after our monarch, who, naturally, was his royal patron. Georgium sidus is the Latin for ‘star of George.’ Heavens! Such a clever question. Portly would have been a great admirer of yours, child. Oh yes, he placed great store in an inquisitive mind, especially in a young woman. In time you will learn that there are those, like Augusta Oliver, who have little or no use for what they cannot immediately see, smell, and taste, although she was not always as you see her now. Her grief—not to mention the scandal that ensued—has embittered her for many years.”
C.J. perched delicately on the footstool, prepared to hear the shameful tale of woe. “But that is another story for another time,” Lady Dalrymple added definitively. “My dearest Portly believed as the Hindus do, in the reincarnation of the soul. ‘The eccentric earl,’ he was called. And I do believe in my heart that his spirit still very much resides with us.” Her eyes were moist with tears.
“I daresay you are right to believe that, Aunt Euphoria,” C.J. added, her own eyes misting over. “Perhaps souls do indeed live forever—they only inhabit different bodies along the way. But even if that might not be the case, I think it is a duty of the living to maintain the memory of the departed so that their spirits do indeed live on in our recollections and our thoughts. In that way do they achieve an immortality.”
Euphoria gave her “niece” a warm hug. “I had never thought to find anyone else who did not think my notions mere folly. You are very like him in many ways.” Suddenly, Lady Dalrymple clutched her bodice.
“What’s the matter, your ladyship?”
“My heart,” she gasped huskily.
“Did I upset you? Goodness—are you in pain?” C.J. endeavored to conceal her genuine alarm. She dashed over to the embroidered bellpull hanging near the huge double doors and gave it an energetic tug, setting off a bell in the servants’ quarters belowstairs.
Lady Dalrymple shook her head. C.J. could not decipher whether it was to be interpreted as a yes or a no.
“Can I loosen your stays?” C.J. regarded the dowager’s evening dress to see where she might be able to give her some breathing room. Although the narrow-skirted Directoire gowns were all the mode, many fashionable women of Lady Dalrymple’s generation dressed in an earlier style, in what was commonly regarded as the Georgian fashion. Lady Dalrymple’s stiffly boned bodice, or “stomacher,” was like an insect’s carapace, armoring its wearer and providing little range of motion or flexibility to her rib cage. No wonder women were always in danger of hyperventilating.
Collins entered the drawing room with a pitcher of water and a crystal goblet, which C.J. asked him to leave on the small table beside the striped divan. She poured a glass of the cool liquid for her “aunt,” then spilled a bit of lavender water onto her lace-edged handkerchief and applied it to Lady Dalrymple’s brow.
The countess attempted to dismiss C.J.’s ministrations. “There, now you’ve gone and spoilt your nice linen square, and you will need it for tonight.”
“Nonsense, Aunt.
