Golden Rose
Winter was always a dreary time of year in Bath. There were few visitors except those whose poor health had driven them there to drink the waters. And the season usually brought the famous spa its fair share of wind and rain and leaden skies. Spring was on the way by the time February came, but still, it came slowly and was evident only in a few tantalizing glimpses of primroses and snowdrops.
But the Master of Ceremonies, whose task it was to see that every resident and every visitor was suitably entertained despite the season and the weather, made an interesting announcement at the beginning of the month that boosted the spirits of almost everyone, young and old alike.
A masked ball was to be held at the Upper Assembly Rooms on St. Valentine’s Day, February 14. Even that detail was interesting enough, since few people can resist the lure of a costume party and the chance to dress up and don a mask. But there was more.
Each gentleman was encouraged to send a valentine to the lady of his choice with the request that she carry some favor of his to the ball to be reclaimed at the end of the evening. In the true spirit of the festival, the card was to be anonymous.
Ladies were asked to reply to the valentines. In the event that they received more than one, they were asked to choose. Each was to carry only one gentleman’s favor to the ball.
Bath was agog with the news. Most people thought it all a splendid idea, though there were, of course, criticisms. How was a lady to know if her gentleman admirer was respectable? If she had more than one valentine, how was she to know which came from the gentleman she preferred?
But most agreed that the whole mystery surrounding the game added excitement and fun and romance to one of the dullest months of the year.
“What if a poor lady wears a brooch from a gentleman she abhors and discovers the truth only when it is too late?” Lady Copeland asked her brother as they sipped tea together one afternoon in her downstairs salon on the Circus, one of Bath’s most prestigious residential areas.
“It’s a deuced foolish idea,” Lord Westbury said. “There’s scarce a soul here below the age of forty. What do we want with cavorting about a ballroom wearing masks and sending ladies expensive gifts when they don’t even know whom to thank?”
“It is a very romantic idea, of course,” Lady Copeland said with a sigh. “But there should be some way in which the gentlemen can hint at their identity. I can remember the time when I had three valentine cards in one year. To this day I don’t know which one came from Alistair and who sent the others. It was most provoking.” Her brother snorted and suffered a coughing spell for his pains. He thumped his broad chest and turned purple in the face.
“Emily, dear,” Lady Copeland said, turning to her young companion, who was seated quietly behind the tea tray, “another cup for Lord Westbury.” She waited for the worst of the coughing to subside. “Besides, Stanley, there are some younger people in Bath. Our nephew, for example.”
His lordship sipped loudly on his tea. “Roger will think it deuced silly, take my word on it,” he said. “He don’t want to be here to start with, and wouldn’t be if Jasper had not insisted. Roger is determined to be bored. When I called on him this morning at the White Hart, he was still in bed and had the effrontery to growl at me.”
“Then this ball will be just the thing for him,” Lady Copeland said. “What did he do, anyway, that our brother would send him away from London?”
“Nothing serious,” Lord Westbury said after taking another noisy sip of his tea. “He didn’t kill a man or anything like that. Caught between the sheets with a lady, I gather—by her husband.”
Lady Copeland coughed delicately. “Do remember Emily, Stanley,” she said. “Emily, dear, you may take the tray back to the kitchen if you will be so good.” But before the girl could get to her feet, Lady Copeland’s butler was at the door announcing the arrival of the Honorable Mr. Roger Bradshaw. The young man himself followed close behind. Tall and handsomely built, with thick dark hair that fell in a heavy lock over one eyebrow, he looked on the world from a pair of dark gray eyes with ironic humor.
“Aunty!” he said, striding across the room to take both of Lady Copeland’s hands in his own and plant a kiss on her cheek. “What the devil are you doing living quite at the top of the world here? Trying to hobnob with the angels, are you?”
“It was a deuced foolish thing to take lodgings all the way up here, Adeline,” Lord Westbury said. “Having to take a chair instead of a carriage, and being bounced and jounced uphill like a barrel of pork. Why couldn’t you stay in Laura Place like last year, eh? You were quite comfortable there.”
“Uncle Stanley,” Roger said, extending a hand to his uncle. “Did you really call on me this morning, or did I dream it? Mornings are not always my best time, I’m afraid.”
“How are you, Roger dear?” his aunt asked. “Do take a seat. And how did you leave your dear father?”
“Hastily,” Roger said with a grin, seating himself, “and decided to come to Bath to pay a call on my favorite aunt.”
“Your only aunt,” she said matter-of-factly. “Yes, Emily, dear, thank you. I’m sure Roger will appreciate a cup of tea after his climb. I assume you walked, dear?”
Roger took his cup of tea from the hand of his aunt’s companion, looked at her absently, and then returned his eyes for a second look. “Present me, please, Aunty.”
“Miss Richmond,” Lady Copeland said, “my new companion, Roger. Her father is our neighbor, Sir Henry Richmond. They have such a large family that they were able to spare Emily to bear me company. This is my scamp of a nephew, dear,” she added. “Roger Bradshaw, my brother’s son—Viscount Yardley, that is.”
Roger got to his feet and made the girl a bow. She still had not sat down after taking him his tea. She curtsied while his eyes examined her slender form in its neat gray dress and her golden hair, which framed her heart-shaped face with shining smoothness and was confined in a knot at her neck.
“Ma’am?” he said.
“You’ll have to get used to early mornings, Roger,” his uncle was saying. “It won’t do for you to miss the promenade in the Pump Room. It begins at seven o’clock.”
Roger winced. “Barbarous!” he said. “Do I have to? But there is precious little else to do in Bath, is there? Where is that scallywag of a grandson of yours, Aunty? In Bath, is he, or have you packed him off back to school?”
“Dear Jasper,” Lady Copeland said fondly. “He could not possibly survive at school, Roger, especially at this time of year. He is so susceptible to chills. I fear sometimes that he is consumptive.”
Lord Westbury gave a bark of what sounded like derisive laughter, though it soon turned into another coughing bout.
