Page 76 of The Scarlet Ball

Wealth and luxury had blinded me since entering Howard House. I had worn dresses that cost the world, two or three of them a day depending on the occasion, and I had come to value beauty without relying on my eye. I relied instead upon the price, the gasp of others, the respect of people who saw me.

This dress, without any of that, was incomparably beautiful.

It emerged like wickedness from Pandora’s box, dark and eager to ruin the world. At first I thought it was entirely black, so black it was a hole through thin air. That is what pure black silk velvet can do, drink in the light and give nothing back, except in that endless night there was a glitter of deep red.

Mrs. Howard hung the dress from the hook on the mirror, and now I could see it more plainly. It was severe to the point of simplicity, sleeveless, no ruffles or lace at all. The velvet was sewn so cunningly that the seams disappeared into the rich nap, and further obscuring the touch of human hands were the tiny jewels scattered across the bodice and the upper part of the skirt, faceted so they threw back the light. At the very center of the neckline where it plunged to frame the décolletage was a glinting red stone in an old rose cut, deep as a fatal wound.

“Garnet,” Mrs. Howard said quietly. “They were Iphigenia’s favorite.”

I was barely listening. I stepped closer, looking for some flaw that would render it simply a dress, albeit one for which a team of talented workers had given up a good few months of their lives. I thought I might find a crooked seam, a bead hanging by a thread, a scuff in the matchless velvet, but I couldn’t.

“This never came from Worth’s,” I said.

“No. I would never trust something like the Scarlet Ball to an Englishman.”

“Or an Annamese girl out of France?”

“I am trusting it to Iphigenia Marshall.”

She left me with that, and for the rest of the day, I kept seeing the dress out of the corner of my eye, always aware of it. Its beauty never stopped surprising me, or its presence. More than once, I found myself drifting toward it, but when Mielle came to prepare me for the evening, I was seized with an unexpected dread.

Don’t put that on. The words echoed in my ears, but I didn’t have time for last-minute nerves. I needed to bathe.

A few times, I tried to speak to Mielle, but she had gone silent, and I could read even less than usual in her face. It might have been anger or irritation, it might have been fear for me. I watched her in the mirror as she pulled the corset over my head, adjusting the chemise to rest just so underneath it.

“I’ll make it all up to you, all right? Later.”

In response, she evened the laces and started to pull. It seemed that I fell into a trance as she did it, the slow constriction giving me form and shape that I had lacked before. The thought came, I was nothing before she dressed me. Now, I had become something else.

Yes, I’m Iphigenia Marshall, I thought, and the shock of it was wearing off. That was who I was meant to be, who would come to the Scarlet Ball and call her demon lord. What became of her would be the stuff of the society pages, possibly even the history books. As for Judith Ban—

The dress settled over me like night falling fast. It was heavy enough that I staggered briefly under the weight, but when I straightened, it was armor.

I sat to have my hair arranged and pinned high on my head, the intricate braided coronet that had become something of my signature in recent weeks. We’d washed my hair a few days ago and it separated obediently for Mielle’s quick fingers, letting her crimp the loose locks by my face with the hot iron before pinning them up as well.

No need to attend to the white face any longer, not now that it was my face, and Mielle painted it with brisk efficacy before she leaned down to shoe me in velvet slippers with ebony heels inlaid with gold. She paused there on her knees, and impulsively, I reached down to rest a hand on her shoulder.

“Mielle, I…”

She rose and turned from me, and I did not realize what she was about until she left the room entirely. I would have no more chances to talk with her until it was all over, and I didn’t want to leave without making her understand that I wasn’t abandoning her, so I picked up my skirts and dashed after her.

Taking a deep breath, I emerged into an empty hallway. There was no sign of Mielle. I caught sight of my own form, reflected in the enormous mirror at the end of the hall. Unlike the one at my vanity, this one would never dare be anything but accurate. Once or twice, coming out of my room in the middle of the night in search of food, I saw a ghostly figure in it, her hands pressed flat to the glass as if she could push her way out. Now, though, it was only me, and I couldn’t stop looking at myself.

It was me in the mirror, from the black hair to the white face to my heels chased in gold. I was every wickedness come out from Pandora’s box, I was a thing that would call demons and feed them. I was beautiful, I was rich, and whatever came, I would never be anything else.

“Iphigenia.”

The summons came through the bell-shaped speaking tubes that ran through the house. They rendered your voice soft and sweet, and I turned at Mrs. Howard’s call, letting the weight of my dress and my destiny slow my motions and make them graceful.

“Coming,” I said, and I made my way to the staircase.

There is a method to descending staircases without accident. Of course you must keep your shoulders back and disdain to give up the center to grasp at a banister. When you lift your skirt so you will not tread upon it, you hold it as low as possible, and you keep your foot wholly on the stair, never going so fast you might misjudge and step too far out into the air. Slippery shoes, marble floors, it is a dangerous combination, but the result when you enter a ballroom or a reception, and all eyes are on you—there is nothing like it.

Mrs. Howard waited for me at the foot of the stairs, and I knew I had passed whatever test she had set for me. I was precisely what she wanted, exactly what she needed.

When we stood on level ground, she took one of my hands in hers. Inside her black glove, the fingers of her Delftware hand were cold and hard. She looked me up and down and I saw my triumph mirrored in her smile. Then everything went black.

Seventeen