Lady Dalrymple took a dainty sip of water. “It was but a brief pang,” she assured her “niece.” “Dr. Squiffers says I must avoid anxiety whenever possible.”
“I am so dreadfully sorry, Aunt Euphoria. I had no idea that you were afflicted with a delicate medical condition.” C.J. took her ladyship’s hand in her own and gave it a gentle kiss. She couldn’t help admiring the countess’s large emerald ring. She’d never seen a real gem quite that large, and the fire emanating from the green stone gave it an exceptional depth and luster.
“Think no more of it,” the dowager urged, her voice a weak command. She forced a smile. “Now tell me what you are thinking—as long as the state of my health is not the subject of the conversation. I can imagine nothing more tiresome.”
C.J. straightened Lady Dalrymple’s lappeted cap, then leaned in to bestow a kiss upon her forehead. “I suppose,” she began hesitantly, wondering if there would ever be an appropriate time to tell her benefactress the truth about her arrival in Bath. “I confess . . . I am a bit anxious myself about my first ball. I’m dreadfully afraid I shall make a mess of things and cause you no small degree of mortification.” C.J. furrowed her brow.
“That is a very unbecoming expression for a young lady,” chastised the countess. “It leads to wrinkles before their time. Look at my face. I am threescore and two. Augusta is two years my junior, and looks like my stepmother. Why? Because frowns create more wrinkles than smiles and turn a peachy countenance to a prune. If there is one thing an old woman can hope to teach a young lady, it is to recognize happiness and to embrace it freely. Life will always be full of the inevitable sorrow and loss, but I have indeed been fortunate: I have lived to love a man very deeply with every fiber of my being,” she said with a little sigh.
C.J. knelt beside Lady Dalrymple, and the two women held each other. After a couple of minutes passed, C.J. could feel her ladyship’s breathing grow stronger and steadier. She did not look up for fear of causing her embarrassment, but she was sure she heard Lady Dalrymple choke back a sob.
“Come now, child, you mustn’t get mussed up before your very first ball,” the countess chided gently, nudging C.J.’s torso from her ample lap.
Chapter Eleven
Our heroine’s first Assembly Ball, whereat her English country dance experience proves a godsend in that she starts off on the right foot, but with the wrong arm, leading to a highly embarrassing faux pas; and her rosy view of the aristocracy is cruelly shattered.
C.J. FELT AS THOUGH she had stepped inside a pistachio-colored confection when she and Lady Dalrymple entered the grand hall of the Assembly Rooms.
In a modern postcard, the straight-backed walnut chairs that ringed the empty ballroom’s perimeter stood like so many silent sentinels, waiting to be used by the phantom dancers who graced the well-polished wooden floor with quadrilles and polkas, the occasional mazurka, and eventually—though not formally until 1812—the waltz. One was left to imagine how the room might have appeared in its heyday. Now that C.J. was getting an eyewitness account of its glories, she had expected to find a crush of people, owing to their fashionably late arrival; but only five or six couples were dancing a longways set, their small number dwarfed by the majesty of the room itself.
Lady Dalrymple did little to conceal her disappointment. “There is a paucity of revelers because it is so late in the season,” she informed her young protégée, sotto voce. “A pity you did not arrive in Bath sooner.”
Taking in the scene, C.J. noticed several young ladies gowned nearly identically in filmy white muslin, escorted by their doting mothers dressed in deeper tones. The chairs, by their very lack of comfort, were conducive to dancing, and fortunately, several of the tunes were recognizable to her ear. Still, to watch some of the couples executing intricate maneuvers nevertheless generated flutters of anxiety that should the inevitable invitation to make one of a set arise, she would risk exposing herself as an impostor.
The strident voice of Mrs. Fairfax could be heard well above the music, thus Lady Dalrymple had no trouble reconnoitering with her acquaintance in one corner of the room. The parvenue, eager to dispose of her two marriageable daughters before the season’s end—and with time rapidly running out—raised her quizzing glass to one eye and surveyed the eligibles across the room.
“What think you of the way Mr. Essex dances?” she said, scrutinizing a young pup in a leaf-green coat and formfitting white breeches energetically executing a hay in the middle of the floor.
Her good husband found it difficult to maintain his pretense of ignoring her when he felt such an adamant tug on the cuff of his sleeve.
“He bounces too much,” Mr. Fairfax replied laconically.
Mrs. Fairfax returned the quizzing glass to her right eye and squinted. “Upon re-examination, I quite agree with you, my dear Mr. Fairfax. Yes, you are invariably such an excellent judge of character. Too much exuberance on the dance floor undoubtedly connotes a juvenile temperament.”
“And Lord knows, our daughters are silly enough without encouraging their suitors to share their frivolity,” her husband drawled.
Two young ladies approached the older couple with glasses of negus, the sugar-sweetened, mulled, and watered-down wine customarily offered at such gatherings.
“Quite a dear you are, Harriet.” Mrs. Fairfax patted the hand of a very pretty girl, her face framed with golden curls. She took a sip of the negus and handed it to her husband. “Mr. Fairfax, do taste this and tell me whether they have used port or sherry this evening. I can never discern. Lady Dalrymple, I believe you
