“Ah yes. The poor relation,” Mrs. Fairfax announced a bit too loudly and with an entire lack of tact. “Girls, allow me to name you Lady Euphoria Dalrymple’s niece . . . Miss Cassandra Jane Welles.”
The young ladies curtsied daintily and acknowledged the poor relation’s presence in a tandem of soprano voices. “Miss Welles.”
“Miss Fairfax, Miss Susanne. It is a pleasure to meet you.” C.J. wondered if in this light her own gown was as nearly transparent as those of the Miss Fairfaxes. Even at twenty-first-century parties, where young women clearly in the marriage market displayed deep cleavage and long legs, one still didn’t wear diaphanous attire and pretend it was a hallmark of modesty. C.J. surveyed the room once again. Good heavens! A ballroom filled with virgins (surely she was the only one in white who did not qualify), whose garments left nothing to the imagination. She ventured that a gentleman could place a wager on the calculation of a lady’s weight, just by eyeing her in her white muslin.
“Aunt Euphoria, allow me to fetch you some punch,” C.J. offered, hoping to avoid being within earshot when Mrs. Fairfax gossiped behind her fan to her two daughters, tut-tutting over poor Miss Welles’s misfortunes.
She wended her way across the gleaming parquet floor and out into the Tea Room, where enormous silver epergnes dripped with fruit: plump, fresh grapes in three different colors, plums, figs, and fragrant Seville oranges. With two kinds of cold punch, lemonade, and the warm negus in huge urns filled near to overflowing, the table, groaning under its weight, resembled refreshments at a bacchanalia.
The display was just shy of perfection, however; and C.J., not wishing to call attention to the problem, and not having an inkling whom to hail for assistance in any event, thought it would be best to tackle the issue alone. Just as she had steeled her nerves to do the deed, an exceptionally elderly couple, nearly blind and ambulating only by the grace of God and sturdy walking sticks, approached the punch table. The couple probably would have noticed nothing, were they to swallow the offending object, but C.J. could not content herself to stand idly by.
“Stay back!” she warned. The urgency of her tone and the volume of her voice instantly drew a curious crowd. At least she had the presence of mind not to ruin a brand-new, buttery-soft kid glove. While keeping her spectators at bay, C.J. struggled to tug the skin-tight, elbow-length glove down the length of her arm. Having succeeded, she plunged her right arm—all the way up to the elbow joint—into the punch bowl, jumping back so as to avoid splashing herself and ruining her new gown. But the object of her consternation, a common housefly, was not as easily trapped as she had initially thought. Its wings were not beating as though the mite were drowning, so C.J. assumed that the poor bugger had drunk himself to death and she was merely to play the role of undertaker. The shadows in the liquid danced and her target bobbed up and down upon the waves created by the intrusion of her arm as she struggled to capture the cadaver.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Fairfax was furiously semaphoring her husband to locate a chair, so that Lady Dalrymple could make herself comfortable, when a flurry of movement at the entranceway caught her eye. “Harriet, Susanne, stand up straight. Lady Oliver and her nephew have arrived. Make yourselves presentable for the Earl of Darlington.” She seated herself with an exaggerated show of gentility and lowered the quizzing glass to her lap.
But the earl was not advancing toward Mrs. Fairfax and her party. His steps took him in an altogether different direction. “I would dare to kiss your hand in greeting, Miss Welles, but it seems to be . . . occupied at present.”
“Gotcha! Good heavens!” C.J. jumped when she heard the voice behind her. Her arm flew out of the deep punch bowl, and the assembly ducked for cover. “I apologize, your lordship. My very first ball, and I seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, necessarily. The wrong arm, perhaps,” he added, appraising her bare appendage and clutched fist. “What have you got there?”
C.J. inclined her head, indicating that he should come closer. “There was a fly in the punch!” she whispered. “And I thought it best to surreptitiously remove it on my own, rather than call the majordomo, or whomever I must alert in such circumstances. Alas, I ended up with an audience.” She opened her fist and looked curiously at the wet black spot nestled in her palm. “That’s funny. It has no wings.”
“That is because it is not an English fly.”
“What the devil do you find so amusing, your lordship?”
“It is a French fly. A mouche. And in Italian, should you be curious to know, the word for fly is mosca.”
C.J. blanched. What a fool she had just made of herself! “Thank you for the education in romance languages, sir. All that for a mouche?” C.J. said, scarcely able to disguise her mortification.
“Come, Miss Welles. Let us take a turn about the room and see if we can spot the real perpetrator of this heinous hoax. We shall put the first man or woman with a glaring red pockmark to the rack to see if they confess.” Smiling, he glanced down at her bare limb.
“’Twas nothing more than a patch, then.” C.J. shivered and sighed and searched about for a linen towel with which to dry her arm. She would have to wash it before attempting to replace her glove, and without her glove, she would not be permitted on the dance floor. “Please excuse me, sir,” she said, and found a liveried servant,
