Page 47 of Not Quite a Lady
She lifted her hands to her lips and rings flashed fire and bracelets pulsed with flame in time with her heartbeat. In her hair diamond clips and pins trembled and sparkled like candles on a river at night.
‘Miss Lily?’ Janet sounded almost scared, as she had ever since Lily had swept in, thrown an old black cloak on the floor and demanded that it, and the gown she was wearing, should beburned.
‘Are you all right, Miss Lily? Have you a fever? Should I call Mrs Herrick?’
‘No. Be quiet please, Janet, you are making my head ache. I am trying to decide what to wear to the Duchess of Oldbury’s ball in two days’ time.’
‘With the new ball gown, Miss Lily?’ The maid’s voice was eager. Of all the gowns Lily had ever bought, this one was the most wonderful in her eyes. ‘Shall I bring it out?’
‘Yes, do that.’ Lily swivelled on her stool to watch as Janet opened a press and reverently lifted out a mass of fabric swathed in white linen sheets. Inside the linen was silver paper, then tissue, and under it all, the gown.
The sheath of white satin was overlaid with gauze, heavy with silver beads and silver embroidery. Floss edged the hem like a cloud of swansdown and the bodice was low-cut to the point of daring and encrusted with crystals.
‘I will try it on.’ Lily stood, welcoming the pounding headache which filled her skull to the point of preventing thought.
The correct undergarments were found, the stockings and the slippers, and finally the weight of the gown slid over her head.
‘Oh, Miss Lily.’ Janet stood back. ‘You look like someone out of a fairy tale, a diamond princess.’
‘Yes,’ Lily agreed, lifting her hands to her aching head. ‘All I need now is my prince.’ And she turned her back on the maid before she could see the tears running down her face like moving diamonds.
‘Send for Madame Hortense, there are changes I wish to have made.’
Four hours after he had arrived at the Bull and Mouth Jack poured another bumper of rum into his glass, sat back against the high back of the settle in the Red Dog and contemplatedgetting very drunk indeed.
The drinking house – one could hardly call it an inn, that had too respectable a sound – was hot, almost bursting at the seams, and full of the most extraordinary mixture of people.
Draymen rubbed shoulders with flash coves, bruisers with top of the trees sportsmen. There were more than a few black faces, seemingly representing a range of occupations from respectable tradesmen to servants, and someone was trying to set up a cock fight in the corner, with a number of top lofty Corinthians already laying bets.
Only the women seemed be of one uniform class. Jack smiled grimly and took a swig of his rum. Three hours ago he had paid off the little ladybird who had propositioned him at the inn – and he was as damnably unsatisfied now as he had been when he had met her.
Lily had as good as emasculated him, there was no other word for it. Not physically, oh no. His body had been more than willing, damn it, and yet, his mind would not let him do it. As soon as they were in the room together he had pulled out coins, turned on his heel and shown her out again.
To take another woman like that would have been to betray Lily.
He could not have done it to save his life and, as a result, he was out of pocket by several guineas he could ill afford, his self-esteem was at rock-bottom and his body was furiously at odds with his brain.
There seemed to be only one answer, to get blind drunk and to hell with all women.
The pot boy at the Bull and Mouth had sent him here, with a knowing grin. ‘Want a bit of the low-life, guv’nor? I can tell you just the place. All the toffs go there when they want to slum it. You’ll enjoy it, see if you don’t.’
Jack snapped his fingers at the serving girl and watchedsardonically as she winked back at him, adjusting her already perilously low bodice even lower before she brought him a fresh bottle. He would foreswear all women, become a monk…
‘Damme, but she’s a tasty little bit, never mind her parentage.’
The drawling voice from the settle that was set back-to-back with his own, jarred on Jack’s nerves. Some bloody aristocrat, out slumming.
He grinned at himself for being critical of others for doing what he was himself, and let his head fall back against the greasy wood.
‘And those pert little titties, and those big green eyes, all topped off with a fortune that would make a man drool, that’s what I call temptation.’
‘I heard Randall’s had her already. He’ll be at the Oldbury ball, night after next, what’s the betting he’ll take her back?’ Another voice, lascivious.
‘Not he. And so what if he has had her? So what? For the money she has, I’d take Lily France if she’d been tupped by the whole of the House of Lords and the Commons after them.
‘And she’s got spirit too, I’ve got the bruised balls to show for it. But she won’t be so fast with her knee next time, little–’
‘Lord Dovercourt, I presume?’
