There was a ball the next evening, a Tuesday.
Lenox arrived at five thirty, an hour and a half late, and the line of carriages up Clarges Street was impassable. He hopped down at the intersection some ways off, looking natty, he rather thought, in his black jacket and black trousers, low-heeled boots, with white gloves in one hand. It was not completely unpleasant to be in futile love. For one thing, it saved quite a lot of trouble (he had given no thought whatsoever to his dance card for the evening) and for another—well, he would see Elizabeth tonight, and because she was a married woman, it would be perfectly respectable to spend his time speaking with her.
The ball was to be given by Mrs. Huggins’s own Lady Hamilton (of all people!) and had a Russian theme, to which Lenox had acceded by bringing a bag of potatoes. She greeted him at the door with a laugh at this house present and an affectionate kiss on the cheek, in a tarlatan gown, rather frowsty looking in the warm late afternoon—but she had a lemon ice to sip.
After they had chatted he walked to the back garden—the orchestra milling amongst themselves in the ballroom wouldn’t begin to play for another hour—and almost immediately ran into a punch bowl the size of a small bathtub, sitting on a heavy oak table, with a single momentous piece of ice floating in it.
There were small double-handled punch cups, and Lenox accepted one from a servant. The drink was delightfully refreshing; a taste of citrus and spice on its edge, just thin enough to simulate the effect of hydration, and no doubt deadly alcoholic.
It was the kind of ball at which one had to say hello to everyone, or no one—at least, he recognized everyone. He nodded more or less at random. He stood until he had finished his drink, when he heard a voice behind him and turned.
“Mr. Lenox!”
It was Thomas McConnell, the young Scottish doctor. “How do you do?” asked Lenox, shaking his hand.
“It’s like being on board an omnibus.”
Lenox laughed. “Do doctors take omnibuses? All carriages, I should imagine. Or litters, borne by eunuchs.”
“No, I was a very poor student once. Or rather a passable student, who was very poor.”
The small garden behind the house was, indeed, as full of people as the street outside was of carriages; the harassed waiters, moving through with trays, could barely remain civil as they shoved the highest members of the aristocracy in order to pass. This was the zenith—as far as the ball went—of the slightly older crowd, the married ones, the parents and grandparents, since the dancing, it was conceded, the later part of the night, belonged to the youth.
“I realize that I don’t know whether you are married or—attached,” Lenox said to McConnell.
Now the doctor smiled. “Attachment is more common in the unmarried than the married, I sometimes think.”
“Not always.”
“Not always,” McConnell replied with a graceful incline of his head. “But to answer your question—no, I am neither married nor attached. Too much at work. The Hamiltons invited me, I fear, only because they were imposed upon to do so by one or two friends.”
It would have been rude to point out that five hundred people would be at the ball, all told—the driver of the omnibus himself was no doubt here—but Lenox was saved from answering when he saw a friend approaching him.
Her name was Lady Lucia Chatham. “There you are, Charles,” she said. “Give me some more of that punch, wouldn’t you? I’ve never been so bored in my life.”
There were some who reckoned Lucia the most beautiful single woman in London. She was very thin, and wore a pink muslin dress of barely any contour, in the minimal style in fashion at that moment. (The enormous crinoline bustles, whose skirts would have made the party feel twice as crowded, had fallen blessedly out of favor that spring.) Her long blond hair was intricately knotted with lilies, half-falling, half-up. She was rather breathtaking—indeed, McConnell’s breath looked rather taken.
“Lucia, may I introduce you to—”
“You can introduce me to Satan himself after you have refilled my glass of punch, my dear—hand it—yes. Ahh. Infinitely better.”
This was the fashion, too; a certain looseness of manner, particularly among friends. She smiled winsomely at McConnell to cut her rudeness, and he, enchanted, bowed when they were at last introduced.
Lenox thought that perhaps he would let the two of them talk. He was extremely fond of Lucia, who was part of his small circle, but also found her tiring. (Her beauty would have meant more to him on an earth that didn’t hold Elizabeth.) But then someone saw McConnell and grabbed him urgently, and Lenox and Lucia were left alone.
“I think I see a sort of bower there, under the elm tree, Charles,” she said, threading her arm through his. “Shall we go and sit? Can’t we?”
Her arm was a provocation to every Georgian grandmother in the garden, and Lenox resented being used as an accessory to her daringness. On the other hand, it wasn’t completely awful to be the center of attention; and she smelled of divinity, loveliness, youth.
“We’d better refill our punch glasses before we sit.”
She sighed. “I always suspected you of being a genius.”
“So did I.” On a small wrought iron bench together they whispered about their friends. Lucia was entertaining—truly entertaining—and Lenox let himself float on the soft puff of her wit and charm. What a lovely wife she would make for someone, someday. An eventful wife, but a lovely one. She had told him before that she could never move to the country, as Elizabeth proposed to do. Funny: neither could Lenox, yet it was Elizabeth whose spell he was under.
The shadows in the garden started to grow a little longer. They were positioned to rebuff almost everyone (including Lucia’s nominal chaperone). Just when it had seemed as if it couldn’t possibly get more crowded, it did.
“If there is a God, I won’t have to dance with Laurence.”
This was the man the city expected Lucia Chatham to marry. He had no title, but there were probably not ten richer men under thirty in Her Majesty’s isles. It was said you could ride Devon on his land, one end to the other. Probably an exaggeration.
“I doubt there is a God, in that case.”
She smiled at him. “You’re too clever, you know that, Charles.”
“Am I?”
“I want to be told that I shan’t have to dance with him—that you’ll dance with me instead.”
“I’ll dance with you instead.”
“Do you mean it?” She took out her card. One of her thin wrists she laid across his knee, examining it, and he felt a shocking thrill, something very real. “My first and fifth and eighth dances are yours, if you’ll take them from me.”
“I?”
She looked up at him with her large eyes. “Say you will.”
“I would be the luckiest man here, of course,” he said.
She smiled and wrote his name down. His own card, which was blank, she took from his jacket pocket—it was peeking out—and wrote her name upon it. “There. That’s settled.” She leaned back, stretching her arms. “What happens if I am drunker than I expected, Charles?”
“What happens if I’m drunker than I expected?” he replied, laughing.
“Nothing will happen to either of us, is the answer.” They were strangely alone in the little bower, despite the incredible din of the party, and it didn’t feel wrong when she gave him a very quick kiss on the cheek. “See?”
He realized they were both probably very much drunker than they had thought.
“There you two are!”
Charles and Lucia both looked up, startled, no doubt with guilt in their faces. Elizabeth and their friend Hugh stood in front of them. Elizabeth was wearing a blue dress, light brown curls falling around her face. There was that Gioconda smile in her eyes: it was how Lenox had always pictured Jane Austen, deep brown eyes that missed nothing, took it in, saw the humor and the irony in it, and refused to pass judgment.
“Hugh is going to commit suicide. The princess isn’t here.”
“How are you going to do it, Hugh?” asked Lenox.
He sighed. “Probably the river.”
“You can be the third victim!” said Lucia.
Elizabeth caught Lenox’s eye. The princess was not a proper princess—or, she was, but a French one, and therefore a tier beneath their duchesses, because the French were backward in virtually everything. The Princesse de Parme. She was odd looking; also exceptionally alluring, somehow. She was here for the season, and Hugh had fallen hard for her, having finally given up on their friend Eleanor.
Just at that moment, the orchestra struck up inside. Lucia grabbed Charles’s arm. “This is my dance, Charles! Come, let’s go, let’s go.”
“I’m yours, my dear,” said Lenox, offering his arm.
“We’ll be late for the switch—the best bit—hurry, would you, hurry. Hugh, if you’re dancing, come along.”
“Back in a moment,” Lenox said to Hugh and Elizabeth. (Elizabeth wouldn’t dance at all—Hugh’s card he had no doubt kept strictly clear, poetic soul that he was.) “Save a little daylight for us.”
He felt Elizabeth’s eyes on him as he walked half a step behind Lucia, inside to dance. He was certainly much drunker than he had thought.