cut-crystal lustres until the light was nearly enough to hurt Sarah’s eyes. To rest
them, she glanced about herself, careful not to move from her appointed place.
Most of the other ladies present were far younger than Sarah’s own advanced age
of five-and-twenty, and all were so nervous – even though they were, as Sarah was
not, accompanied by at least one hovering female relative – that Sarah felt herself
grow calmer in simple self-defense. There were a number of gentlemen of the Court
also present in the room, and as Sarah looked up, she saw that one of the
spectacularly-uniformed Hussars standing near the window was the Duke of
Wessex.
He was wearing a short blue jacket encrusted with the distinctive silver lace of the
eleventh Hussars, and a bearskin-trimmed pelisse was slung over one shoulder.
Cherry-red trousers were tucked into gleaming gold-laced tasseled Hessians, and his
plumed shako was tucked beneath one arm. The uniform looked unfinished without
the sword that should have hung at his waist – since Wessex could not come armed
into the King’s presence – though he was still wearing the sabretache embroidered
with the regimental honors slung from his belt. In uniform, Wessex cut a dazzling
and martial figure far removed from the languid and chilly harlequin with whom Sarah
was acquainted.
He saw her across the room and seemed to become utterly still, much as a
leopard who had sensed the presence of an unwary hunter. For a moment his black
eyes burned into hers –
Then he glanced away, without so much as the felicity of a common bow in
passing.
Sarah’s eyes flashed dangerously. So he thought to ignore her, did he, and
pretend he didn’t see her, as if she were some cast off, importunate mistress?
The situation would not have been so appallingly irritating had not the last several
weeks given Sarah a very good sense of her own importance – and if not for the
fact that she had sensed some strange bond between herself and Wessex from the
very first. It seemed so much more of a betrayal when all her instincts told her that
they ought to be friends – and they weren’t.
She glanced away, and when she looked back, Wessex had disappeared behind
another pair of gorgeously costumed officers. She had almost made up her mind to
pursue him when a footman bearing a long ivory stave entered through a hidden door
and thumped his shaft upon the marble floor, summoning the attention of all.
„His Royal Majesty, Henry Charles James Arthur Christian, King of England,
Ireland, Scotland, and Wales!“
The king’s image was, of course, to be seen on every coin from golden guineas
to copper ha’pennies and in a number of the pictures that hung in the Royal
Academy as well, but this was the first time that Sarah could remember laying eyes
on the living man. He was not as tall as she had expected, and the bright chestnut
hair that marked the Stuart line had faded and darkened with age, but even without
crown and royal robes, Henry was every inch the king, and Sarah found herself
responding to that aura of kingship with an almost unconscious reverence.
King Henry moved slowly about the circumference of the room, stopping and
greeting each person there. At its simplest, a Royal Drawing-Room was an
opportunity for the people of England to see that their monarch was hale and whole,
something that would stop the rumors of illness and even death that tended to run
rampant in troubled times.
A number of gentlemen of the court followed the King, and Sarah was faindy
irritated to see that Wessex was among them. She had not known that the Duke was
an intimate of the King, and the knowledge vexed her for some perverse reason.
At last the King reached her place in the tableau, and Sarah gracefully sank down
into the Court curtsey she had rehearsed for so many hours. Her hoops made a faint
thump as they struck the marble floor, and then collapsed neatly upon themselves,
folding the white satin and silver lace of her skirts as if it were the sugary
whipped-cream decoration at the top of a ornate dessert. She bowed her neck, and
the egret-feather headdress bowed with her until she could see the tip of the feathers
dangling in front of her nose. Then she looked up, and was astonished to see that the
King was holding out his hand to help her rise.
She had not looked for such a particular mark of favor; placing her gloved hand
into his, she allowed him to help her to her feet.
„And how do you find London, Lady Roxbury?“ King Henry asked, a twinkle in
his eye. Sarah smiled in return. She could not commit the incredible social solecism
of looking away from the King to see where Wessex was; wherever the Duke might
be, she knew that he saw her.
„It is an interesting place, Your Majesty,“ Sarah replied.
„But not so interesting as Mooncoign, eh, Your Ladyship?“ the King said with
dismaying insight. „You must tell me something about it.“
Almost without thought Sarah found herself describing the glories of the Wiltshire
downs to King Henry, who seemed completely enchanted by her depiction, until
abruptly Sarah realized she was rattling on like the veriest greenhead.
„But Your Majesty will not wish to hear about such things,“ Sarah finished
lamely.
„Au contraire; it is utterly delightful – but it only serves to convince me that we
must do more to amuse you here in London – and perhaps you will take pity on
Princess Stephanie when she arrives, and show her about the Town?“
„Of course,“ Sarah replied quickly. The plight of the Danish princess – to be sent
so far from home to seal a treaty, betrothed to a Prince Who didn’t want her to
come at all – had touched Sarah’s soft heart as soon as she had heard of it.
„Then that is settled – and it will be good for the Princess to have the guidance of
a young married lady of unexceptionable connection. You-must on all account send
me an invitation to your wedding breakfast; I shall be delighted to attend.“
„Your Majesty is too kind,“ Sarah said automatically. Only long practice kept her
features immobile as King Henry released her hand and moved on.
Married lady? Automatically she looked around for Wessex, only to find he
wasn’t there at all.
Chapter 10
The Prince of Our Disorder
„My dear, the King was all that we could have hoped for! He engaged you in
conversation for quite ten minutes – your success is assured,“ the Dowager Duchess
of Wessex assured her.
Sarah glanced away from the mirror; Knoyle was putting the finishing touches on
Sarah’s second full-dress toilette of the evening. „Yes,“ Sarah said slowly, „I
suppose that it is.“ But social success somehow seemed more irrelevant than ever.
King Henry had spoken as though her marriage was a certainty, me date set and
settled – and in the face of the King’s expectations, what could she say?
„Poor child,“ the Dowager said. „You already look all in – and you must see in
the dawn, you know, or the gossips will make heaven above knows What of your
absence. But come along – there will be just time for you to swallow a bite of supper
before you must greet your guests.“
* * *
The ball was all that the Dowager had predicted and Sarah had dreaded. All of
London was there, and ready to meet her – with, it seemed, one exception. The
Duke of Wessex was nowhere to be found.
Sarah was dancing with the Earl of Ripon, rather against her wishes. She knew the
Earl only by dinner-table reputation; the Highclères were a Catholic family which had
for generations held a grudge against the Stuart line for turning to me Anglican faith
and forsaking the Old Religion. Though they made their way in Society, the
Highclères could be counted upon to oppose any policy of the King’s – from the
continuance of the Continental war to His Majesty’s liberal dealings with the
American colonies.
But if the Dowager Duchess thought it good to invite Ripon to Sarah’s ball, the
Marchioness of Roxbury could do no less than dance with him. And she did have to
admit that Ripon did not tax her with his politics on what was, after all, a purely
social occasion.
Yet there was something about the Earl that Sarah could not like – not quite a lean
and hungry look, perhaps, but something just as dark –
As if it could be anything to do with me! Sarah told herself brusquely. She was
still seething at Wessex’s absence and knew that she was seeking other targets for
her anger.
The music spun down to its end, and the couples who had made up the set
looked to the sides of the dance floor in unconscious pursuit of their next partners,
but before the dance could reach its natural conclusion, Ripon dragged Sarah to a
halt as he stopped in amazement.
„Geoffrey!“ he muttered.
But the eyes of the jumbled dancers were not upon Ripon’s younger brother, but
his companion, now making his grand entrance into the ballroom as if the
entertainment had been given in his honor.
Jamie, Prince of Wales, had arrived – and he had not come alone.
Slowly, Sarah and Ripon moved to the edge of the dance floor. The Prince of
Wales had not been invited, although of course all the Royal Personages had de
facto invitations to any entertainment they might choose to grace with their presence.
But Prince Jamie’s interests ran with an entirely different crowd than that of the
reclusive Dowager Duchess of Wessex – and tonight’s guest list had been drawn
very much from the Dowager’s set.
Sarah recognized none of the half-dozen male sparks of fashion attendant upon
the Prince, save by reputation, but almost certainly the blond man at whom Ripon
stared so fixedly was Ripon’s ne’er-do-well younger brother Geoffrey. The man on
Jamie’s other side – dark angel to Geoffrey’s golden one – must be the notorious
Lord Drewmore, a man whose exploits were too scandalous for even gentlemen to
talk of. And the woman on his arm, whose bright yellow curls owed far more to Art,
Sarah was certain, than to Nature, was someone she thought she knew….
Caroline Truelove was the young relict of Sir Arthur Truelove, who had
distinguished (as well as extinguished) himself upon the field of honor less than three
years before. His young and beautiful widow had made her way through most of the
available European capitals and all of Sir Arthur’s money in her progress toward
England and the loving bosom of her husband’s family. But that assemblage – Sir
Arthur’s younger brother having inherited both the baronetcy and the guardianship
of Sir Arthur’s two young sons – was inclined to be far less indulgent of Lady
Truelove than her late husband had been. Balked of any attempt to enlarge upon her
widow’s jointure and quietly discouraged from seizing her boys to accompany her
upon her peripatetic round of house-parties, Lady Truelove found her natural
volatility of spirit drew her, like a leaf upon the bosom of the river, into the
whirlpools of fast company and high living in the company of a dangerously raffish
crowd.
In fact, Sarah recalled seeing Lady Truelove at Mooncoign not so very long ago,
though she was quite certain that the Dowager had not invited her tonight. Lady
Truelove was wearing a low-cut gown of Paris green silk adorned with knots of
diamonds at the shoulders and decolletage; in Herriard House’s chaste Palladian
ballroom she looked far less respectable man an opera dancer upon the Covent
Garden stage.
„You had better go and greet your guests,“ Ripon snarled in Sarah’s ear, and she
shot him a murderous look. How dare you speak to me as if this
disaster-in-the-making were my idea!
Music began to play once more as Sarah headed for the Prince’s clique. The
Dowager must have told the bandmaster to begin again, and Sarah was grateful to
the cover of respectability that the music afforded, for as she approached, she could
see that Prince Jamie was rather the worse for drink. His cheeks were flushed and his
eyes glittered brightly and he looked entirely too dangerous for Sarah’s peace of
mind.
„Lady Roxbury!“ the Prince of Wales cried gaily as he saw her. „How splendid
to see you here – and here is His Grace of Wessex! What a demmed fine fellow you
look in all that regimental lace – what a pity to waste such a uniform on a fellow who
might go overseas whenever he chose and doesn’t.“
Sarah risked a quick glance behind her. Wessex was standing behind her in the
same dazzling dress uniform he had been wearing at the Royal Drawing-Room – she
wondered when he had entered, as she had not seen him do so – smiling as though