Her impromptu toilette completed, C.J. sought out the rest of her party. She tried to ignore the cutting glances of the well-accoutered assemblage but was unable to stop her ears from the insidious buzz circulating around the room apropos of her hoydenish behavior.
“Countrified manners,” sneered a handsome woman in a jeweled headdress, glinting over her peacock-feather fan. “But then what can one expect from a poor relation.”
“I daresay my horses are better schooled,” guffawed a yellow-toothed, odiferous elderly gentleman. He removed his gold-rimmed spectacles to dab a rheumy eye with the edge of his ruffled cuff.
Myriad comments of a similar nature filled C.J.’s ears, and she tried to hold her head high despite the sting she felt from the ton’s assault, but before she reached Lady Dalrymple at the perimeter of the ballroom, there was a collective gasp from all and sundry.
Could her gaffe have been of such epic magnitude?
When C.J. realized that this particular communal intake of breath was not directed at her, and that all of the patrons had turned toward the door, she, too, paused to regard the cause for such commotion.
A young woman, attired from head to toe in lemon yellow, had just made her entrance on the arm of a dapper escort. They had eyes only for each other and feigned obliviousness to the effect they had produced amid the gathering throng.
Just as the couple had located a pair of chairs, and the gentleman had seated his lady and was about to make for the negus table, Mr. King, the Master of Ceremonies, approached them and announced in stentorian tones, “You are not welcome here, your lordship, your ladyship.”
The murmurs began anew.
“She is carrying his child,” remarked a sweet-faced blonde. “And her, barely out of mourning for her father.”
“I hear,” smirked a dandy so coated with cosmetics that he resembled a china doll, “that it was at the earl’s funeral that the deed was done . . . while the guests were partaking of the mourning meal. The funeral meats were cold, but our young Lord Featherstone’s was smoking. Just past the hedgerows, I hear it happened—on the old earl’s own property. He was always so fond of his rose garden.”
“And now it seems that his Rose’s bush has been well pruned,” his older companion snickered.
“Nay, not so much pruned as pricked,” the dandy laughed.
“It seems Featherstone could not wait for the banns,” whispered a haughty matron who pointed a gloved finger at Lady Rose’s ever so slightly rounded belly.
“You are to leave the room at once and are not welcome at future public assemblies,” Mr. King proclaimed, audible to all.
There was no opportunity to protest and no court in which one would be entertained. Lord Featherstone offered his hand to Lady Rose.
The collective reaction of the ton could not have been more powerful had it been choreographed. As the loving couple exited the room, depriving their detractors of the satisfaction of watching them depart at a hasty pace, it seemed that almost every aristocrat, regardless of age or gender, made a great show of turning his or her respective back on the pair. The silence during this exhibition was deafening. Once the illicit lovers had departed the Upper Rooms and were enveloped by the night air, the cats indoors resumed their merriment.
Shocked by this display, C.J. made her way over to her “aunt” and seated herself beside her. Lady Dalrymple read the young woman’s expression and patted her hand sympathetically. “I do not condone the behavior you have just witnessed, nor do I agree with it, but my dear, that is the way of the upper crust. We are expected to set an example for those considered to be in the inferior classes, and when decorum is so flagrantly violated—paraded even—well, you see the degree to which it is tolerated.”
“Is that what it means to be ‘cut’?” C.J. asked.
“It is indeed,” replied the countess. “To endure the censure of one’s peers in such a fashion has quite effectively and publicly rendered Lord Featherstone and Lady Rose societal outcasts. Their presence will not be tolerated at public gatherings such as these, and any hostess who would presume to entertain them in her home or on her estate risks similar censure herself for the very act of defying this unwritten decree.”
“But what if Lord Featherstone were to marry Lady Rose?”
“No doubt he will, my child. Any fool can see that they are very much in love. It doesn’t signify, however. The indiscretion has been committed and no matter what pains are taken to rectify the situation, the act of censure remains the same.”
“How dreadful. And ridiculous. I noticed that Lord Darlington did not turn his back, nor did many of those seated around the perimeter of the room.”
“Percy has always been his own man, and for that reason, I have always doted on him. Now,” the countess explained, gesturing with her fan, “the others you remarked upon are not of the same strata as the ton. They have no call to cut their betters, whatever their behavior. Their circles rarely intersect with ours, except at public assemblies such as these.”
“I cannot imagine wanting to be in the same room as those who would so universally condemn my actions.”
Lady Dalrymple squeezed C.J.’s hand. “Ahhh . . . but a life of ostracism can become a very lonely one. It will be interesting to see whether or not Lord Featherstone and Lady Rose can endure such an existence without inciting rancor between themselves.”
Mrs. Fairfax, who had been struggling to overhear the conversation between C.J. and the countess, admitted defeat and broached a subject of her own. Aiming her closed fan at Lord Darlington, she said, “The earl is one of the most eligible bachelors this season, your ladyship. Perhaps he will suit one of my girls. It will take their minds off of His Majesty’s officers.”
“But, Mama,” Susanne lamented, “he is a widower and over
