Page 4 of The Scarlet Ball

“There. Walk to the window and return. Don’t hurry. Don’t slouch.”

I’d had stranger requests. Fine. I walked as she said, as the young ladies do and as their maids do in imitation. Walk like your spine is a sword, walk like you balance a feather on your head, that was what all those fraudster dance instructors say, but they were wrong. You walk like you’re on the way to the gallows, and the only thing left that matters is that you are beautiful as you do it.

When I returned to her, some of her ire had been transformed to something more disturbing, a kind of assessment, and she had me turn and turn again.

“Do you dance?”

“Some, ma’am.”

“Well, there will be no dancing tonight in any case. It’s only a dinner, for all that it’s being held in the lion’s mouth. We’re safe enough there.”

I almost laughed at that. There was no safety to be found in my life, not at the convent school, not in the grand brothels in Paris that had shut their heavily guarded doors to me, certainly not anywhere on Mulberry Street. I thought abruptly that perhaps there wasn’t any to be found here either, no matter how thick the walls or brightly lit the rooms.

Somewhere in the house the clock struck seven. The wind rattled the windows. It could have been midnight outside.

“Ma’am, forgive me, but I should go.”

I started to sidle around her, because whatever game she was playing, I wanted nothing of it. Instead of allowing me to pass, however, she stretched her arm in front of me, so fast I almost ran into it. It stopped me as well as a wall. Ladies of quality could never stand to be touched. Girls lost their places for simply bumping them in the halls, and I pulled back instinctively, the warning bells in my head tolling louder.

I took a firmer grip on my bag, the weight of the rock in it helping me to breathe. I wouldn’t swing it up into her face, I wouldn’t crack her jaw with it, but I could, and there are few things as comforting as what we could do.

“You are silent in the face of pain, and you move well. If you work for the likes of Madame Valois, you certainly know how to follow rules. Tell me, are you hungry as well?”

I wanted to laugh because who wasn’t? Everyone was, even the ones who lived in houses like hers. The taste of cherries rested heavy on my tongue, and I would still eat twice as many if I thought I could get away with it. The correct answer was to demur, to confess to confusion and do whatever it took to make Mrs. Howard turn her eyes elsewhere. I could be too stupid to reckon with, too silly or coarse or greedy, but instead I met her eyes squarely.

Nodded once.

“Good. All right. Perhaps this night may yet be salvaged. Oh, but that girl.”

She crossed to the dressing alcove with a single snap of her fingers to call me to heel. Madame Valois did the same sometimes, but Madame Valois had never produced in me the same feeling of anticipation that Mrs. Howard did now, a curious and thrilling sensation I had not felt once in this country. I suppose it made a certain amount of sense. I hadn’t yet allowed myself to be curious or thrilled in this country.

I followed her over, absently noting that unlike most of the rest of the room, the top of the vanity showed signs of recent occupation, with perfume and creams scattered across its surface as if the owner had just stood away for a moment. There was a large wardrobe for everyday clothes—formal clothing would be stored elsewhere in the house—and a lady’s valet stand where a reticule, coat, and gloves hung, a pair of satin slippers placed below for a night’s outing. It was familiar to me, if luxurious, but then Mrs. Howard went to the trifold standing mirror and uncovered the dress hanging there.

It was a slender thing of pale green velvet, a long skirt cut with such good lines there would be no ripples or swags as it fell like water to the floor. It was plain in front except for a delicate spray of gold beading curving down along the sides, and the satin belt was embroidered with such tiny stitches it looked as if it had been painted. Pure white silk tulle lace without a hint of cream spilled like snow from the full width of the neckline, draping over the shoulders to form the short wide sleeves. It was a fortune in lace alone, all of it tatted and sewn by hand, fine to the point of transparency and so light it would rise and fall with a breath.

My fingers twitched at how much I could get if I only stole a yard or two of that ruffled lace, but it was more than that. I saw that dress, I wanted to steal it, and I wanted to wear it. I hadn’t realized how starved I was for beautiful things.

“There,” Mrs. Howard said with grim satisfaction. “Laid in two years to the day off the steamer from Le Havre, and it will not shame me tonight.”

She paused for a moment, lost in some reverie, and then she straightened, turning to me with another snap of her fingers.

“I need someone to wear that gown tonight. If you can stand, if you can curtsy when you’re told, if you can be elegant and composed and by God silent, I will pay you. Yes?”

“And how much will you pay me, madame?”

Her lip lifted in the most delicate sneer, as if to say What can one expect from a shopgirl? I was more than a shopgirl—I had been a whore, and I knew better than to get in bed or out of it without a price settled.

“Ten dollars,” she said, and when I countered with twenty, she agreed so fast I knew I should have asked for more.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Get your clothes off.”

Two

One thing I had learned over the course of a not uneventful life is that you never know where a night is going to end up. How many times had I heard these same words before? I covered my laugh by hurriedly reaching down to unbutton my coat. The evening was falling into focus for me. I knew this better than I knew my way around feathers and needle, better than I knew English, and my English is perfect.

I was good at taking off my clothes, and in a moment, my jacket, skirt, and blouse were draped over an upholstered chair, hanging down in lank dark folds that I was suddenly glad to be rid of. Shopgirl black showed no marks, but God almighty, it was dull.

“You’re clean enough, and the hair is right. You’ve kept yourself tolerably white in that shop, and gloves will cover up the wreck of your hands,” Mrs. Howard said, critically examining me where I stood in shift, corset, stockings, and shoes. My underthings I’d kept from France, finer than would be suspected from my dress, and she frowned.