But now she found herself in London, preparing to enter society with Aunt Marjorie, subjecting herself to long sessions with a mantua maker and lengthy shopping expeditions to purchase shoes and hats and caps and fans and a dizzying array of other frivolities. It was the Season in London and she knew that they would attend fashionable entertainments every day, sometimes more than once a day. She would meet polite society. Soon—just one week after her arrival.
It was madness. It was impossible.
She faced it all with a sort of wild excitement. All of her carefully planned future had been thrown to the winds in exchange for a moment of foolish indiscretion out at the falls. The seemingly inevitable consequences had been defied and denied when she had refused to marry Ashley. And the stifling net that had been about to fall over her head in family plans for the remainder of her life had been avoided at the last moment—she had not been forced to go to Victor’s or Charlotte’s.
She felt incredibly free. She felt as if the whole world, the whole of life was awaiting her. She felt as if she had not lived thus far in her two-and-twenty years. She felt as if she had a great deal of living to do and as if at last she had all the opportunity in the world to do it.
She would not look ahead. Had she done so, she would have known that the Season would come to an end, that she could not live with Lady Sterne for the rest of her life, that eventually she was going to have to be dependent again on her family, and that perhaps she would not be allowed to determine her own very limited fate. She refused to think about it. She had not gone to London with any intention of finding herself a husband, though she knew that Lady Sterne had hopes of her doing so. She would never marry. Partly it was because she could not. She was no longer a virgin, and she knew that virginity was a man’s primary requirement in a bride. But mainly it was because she had no wish to marry. She had given herself once to Ashley. She would never give herself again.
Yet even the fact that she was not in search of a husband was freeing and exhilarating. There was no ulterior motive to her coming to London for the Season. She had come merely to enjoy herself. She had no idea how that was to be accomplished, but she did not much care. She reveled in every moment of the week of preparation.
“I have never known a young lady more patient or more docile through such lengthy fittings, my lady, I declare,” Madame Delacroix, the mantua maker, said to Lady Sterne while Emily watched her lips.
But Emily wanted to be transformed. She wanted to be as fashionable, as beautiful as she could be. She wanted to forget everything else—her deafness, her differentness, her guilt, the mess she had made of her life. She wanted to be a new person. Anormalperson. She wanted to forget the world in which she had always been trapped.
“And I have never known one more beautiful,” Madame Delacroix added.
Doubtless she said the same things to every young lady client of hers, Emily thought, smiling at her image in the glass. But it was impossible not to be warmed by the compliment.
•••
“Letme look at you.” Lady Sterne had stood up when Emily entered her drawing room, and now she clasped her hands to her bosom. “Lud, I thought you lovely, child, on the evening of Harndon’s ball. You are ten times lovelier now. What say you, Theo?”
“Egad,” Lord Quinn said. “If my head does not swell to twice its size tonight with two such lovely ladies to escort, ’twill be a wonder.”
Emily pirouetted slowly. They were to attend Mrs. Cadoux’s ball on Berkeley Square. It seemed madness that her first appearance should be there when she was deaf and would be unable to hear the music or dance—she tried to forget the one occasion when she had been foolhardy enough to try it. But she had readily agreed to attend when Lady Sterne had held the invitation aloft and said she thought it might be the perfect start.
Her gown was blue, the sack dress, fitted tightly at the front and flowing loosely behind, opened down the front and trimmed with elaborately ruched robings. The petticoat, of a slightly darker blue and worn over large hoops, was well covered with flounces and furbelows. Her stomacher was trimmed with fashionable ribbon bows of diminishing size. There was lace at her bosom and elbows. Her hair, dressed rather high in front and elaborately curled at the back, was carefully powdered. A lace confection of a cap had been pinned to the back of it, its lappets fluttering freely to her waist. For the first time she wore cosmetics—rouge and coloring for her eyelashes—and a small black heart-shaped patch on one cheek, a frivolous concession to fashion.
She opened her silver silk fan and plied it gently before her mouth, laughing over the top of it at Aunt Marjorie and Lord Quinn.
“Lud, child,” Lady Sterne said. “Those eyes are deadly weapons.”
“There will not be a gentleman present who will not be slain by them, by my life,” Lord Quinn said. “Ladies?” He offered them each an arm after making them an elegant bow.
In truth, Emily found a scant half hour later, as their carriage inched its way forward for a chance to deposit its occupants before the well-lit doors of the house on Berkeley Square, this was not going to be quite as easy as she had anticipated. Her heart was beating painfully with excitement and fear. How could she meet a whole ballroomful—a whole houseful—of strangers? But it was too late now to turn back.
She looked about with wide eyes when she entered the house on Lord Quinn’s arm and ascended the stairs slowly to the ballroom and the receiving line. And she had thought the ball at Bowden a crowded and splendid affair! This ballroom, she discovered when she was finally inside it, was surely too crowded to allow for dancing. There were people conversing in groups, couples promenading about the edge of the space kept clear for dancing, people—mostly gentlemen—standing and looking. She felt dizzy and frightened. This was more than madness.
And soon there were people converging on her own small group—ladies come to greet Lady Sterne, gentlemen come to wish Lord Quinn a good evening. And gentlemen come with the express purpose of being presented to her. Emily suspected after the first few moments of surprise that it had been arranged thus, that both Lady Sterne and Lord Quinn had been busy ahead of time seeing to it that she would have partners, if not for dancing, then at least for strolling and conversing. Certainly none of the gentlemen who came seemed surprised to find that she could not speak and could hear them only when she could see their lips.
Emily smiled and nodded and shook her head in appropriate places and even laughed. She plied her fan against the heat of the ballroom and smiled over the top of it. And when a young gentleman came and talked with Lord Quinn and was then presented to her and showed surprise at her handicap, she knew that finally she had attracted someone who had not been persuaded ahead of time to take notice of her. She smiled all the more brightly.
Viscount Burdett secured her hand for the first set and directed her toward a sofa that was just being vacated by a couple who intended to dance.
It was the beginning of a strange, delirious sort of evening. The sofa became the place from which she conducted her court, to use the phrase that Lord Quinn used in the carriage on the way home. She did not know quite what the attraction was, but gentlemen sat beside her, stood beside her, hovered in her vicinity. All had secured introductions through either Aunt Marjorie or Lord Quinn.
They talked with one another. Sometimes they talked to her, using such precise lip movements that she laughed at them. They seemed amazed when she nodded or shook her head at appropriate times and they realized that she really had understood. She suspected that they saw her as some sort of amusing curiosity. She did not care.Theywere amusing curiosities. She was amused. She was wildly happy—or wildly enjoying herself at least.
“’Tis hardly to be wondered at that you are a success, child,” Aunt Marjorie said in the carriage, patting her hand. “You were not only beautiful, child—you sparkled, I do declare. And gentlemen can never resist sparkle. All those poor girls who are instructed to look bored lest they be accused of rustic enthusiasm are badly advised.”
“Egad,” Lord Quinn said, “’twould be strange indeed, m’dear, if you did not acquire a large and permanent court. Burdett asked if you and Marj intend to be at home tomorrow afternoon. And a dozen other young bucks listened avidly to the answer.”
Emily laughed.
“Theo,” Aunt Marjorie said, leaning forward to set a hand on his knee, “shall we tell Emily?”
Emily looked across the carriage at him. She was still smiling.
