Potent Pleasures (2 page)

“Julia!” Charlotte said threateningly, smothering a grin. Her friend was so
silly
about men. Just a few weeks ago she had cried heartbrokenly because she would never see Mr. Luskie again.

“He’ll never hold me in his arms again,” she’d wailed, “we’ll never dance together again,” sobbing into her pillow. And even Charlotte was moved, and wondered if she’d been too harsh, constantly pointing out the plumpness of Mr. Luskie’s backside and the growing bald spot on his head.

Julia cast her eyes on the ground. “He’s a man of God,” she finally said, softly.

“What?” said Charlotte, not understanding her.

“He’s … well, he’s a curate!” Julia said.

“A curate? Julia!”

“He has blond curls, Charlotte. He looks like, well, he looks like a painting!” Having confessed the worst, she ignored Charlotte’s frown and listed the curate’s many graces: He was young, and more handsome than anyone including the seller of sweet lavender who sometimes came by the school and who, until now, had been consecrated as the most handsome, even if Mr. Luskie was the most cherished.

“Even
you
will like him, Charlotte. Because he’s full of virtue, and quite thin—you know how you were always saying that poor Mr. Luskie was a bit plump. And he would be a wonderful person to paint.” Julia sat up, and looked speculatively at Charlotte.

“You don’t suppose … You can’t keep painting fruit now we’re out of school, Charlotte! Why don’t you offer to paint Christopher?”

“You’re demented,” Charlotte said fondly. “I will not offer to paint a young man I’ve never even met! Why, my mother would collapse in shock.”

“Well, Charlotte, you do have to start thinking about men instead of paintings now, you know,” Julia said a bit sharply. “You just never seem to show any interest!”

The curate
is
more handsome than the lavender seller, Charlotte thought on Sunday, her heart sinking a bit. Julia stared at him so devotedly that Charlotte had to elbow her twice, so that she would bend her head to pray. Charlotte watched him too, out of the corner of her eyes. He was somberly dressed in a black cassock, blond curls smoothly shining. He didn’t look like a painting; he looked like a statue—a statue of a mischievous faun. There was something too smooth about his curls, and his face looked naughty, she decided. Like her brother Horace’s when he’d been sent down from Oxford.

On the way out of church Charlotte watched the curate wink at Julia and give her a very small, very private smile while the cold spring sunlight shone on his hair. And when the squire and his wife turned to greet two friends, she saw him slip Julia a bit of paper, and her knees went weak.

All the way home, chatting pleasantly with the unknowing Brentortons, Charlotte’s mind was racing. Julia was ruined! If anyone knew that a young man was writing to her, she’d never be able to go to Almack’s. She’d never be approved by the patronesses. She would never find a husband.

When they got back to Brentorton Hall, Charlotte took Julia firmly under the elbow and swept her upstairs to her room. Then she pushed the door shut, leaned on it, and stuck out her hand, without saying a word.

Julia looked at her mutinously. Her eyes measured Charlotte’s taller height against the oak door. Julia was slight and small. She would never be able to push Charlotte’s willowy self from the door. She sighed and plumped down on her bed and pulled the small bit of paper from her bosom with a practiced air that chilled Charlotte to the bone.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Nothing, Charlotte!” She looked up at her fiercely. “See?” She flashed the scrap of paper.

Charlotte snatched it. There were four words, written in peaky letters with blue ink:
Stuart Hall, Saturday, 9 o’clock
.

“Oh, Lord, Julia, you wouldn’t—you aren’t meeting him, are you? Secretly?” Charlotte slid slowly down, crushing her petticoats, until she was sitting against the door. “What is this place, Stuart Hall?”

“It’s nothing bad.” Julia leaned forward eagerly. “It’s not a rendezvous—I would never do anything like that. It’s a masquerade ball that is held every Saturday night, and I just happened to be talking to Christopher about it—”

“Christopher!”

“Well, Reverend Colby, then, but I don’t like his last name. Anyway, it is nothing serious, Charlotte. It’s a masquerade ball that lots of, well, merchants and servants attend, and Christopher—Mr. Colby—says that people of our class never get to see real life, and especially how everyone else lives. He says young girls, society misses, are like houseplants. We never do anything, and then we’re sold to the highest bidder, and he says that it is a perfectly amiable dance, and everyone wears masks the whole time, so no one could see our faces and—”

“
Our! Our
faces!” repeated Charlotte.

Julia leaned forward. “You must come with me, Charlotte. You see, don’t you? If you’re with me everything is quite proper. Mama knows how correct you are, and even if she found out, she wouldn’t be horrendously angry.”

“Yes, she would,” Charlotte replied, picturing Julia’s brisk and forthright mother.

“Don’t you see, Charlotte? We’re just like sheep, being sold to the highest bidder, and—”

“What are you talking about, Julia?” Charlotte asked with exasperation. “What does being a sheep have to do with sneaking off to go to a ball?”

Julia wasn’t sure she remembered. It all made so much sense when Christopher explained it to her, his sweet face downcast as he talked of her sheeplike docility.

“You know,” she said vaguely. “We just have to get married, and we never get to see anything. Oh, Charlotte,” she said, abandoning the messy question of ethics, “it will be fun, don’t you see? There’s nothing improper about going to a party chaperoned by … by a theologian!”

A small thread of rebellion lit in Charlotte. After all, had anyone asked her whether she wanted to come out? Whether she wanted to get married? But of course she
did
want to get married, and the only way to do it was to come out, so that train of thought didn’t lead anywhere.

“I won’t go if you don’t,” said Julia in a small voice. “We’ll just look.”

The corner of Charlotte’s mouth quirked up in a grin and Julia answered her unspoken consent with a squeal.

“You must promise me that you won’t run off to dance with your curate and leave me alone,” Charlotte said sternly.

“Oh, I wouldn’t, Charlotte!” Julia’s eyes were glowing. “We’ll have to go up to the attic and find something to wear. Costumes. I think there are some old dominoes up there.”

Charlotte tried to remain calm but it was no use. Her reasonable, unexcitable temperament had deserted her, leaving a racing pulse and a seductive taste of excitement.

Julia jumped up. “This is the perfect time to go to the attic. Mama and Papa always visit the tenants on Sundays until time for luncheon.”

So the girls crept up the stairs, all the way past the servants’ floor into the huge, echoing attics that lay under the timbers of Squire Brentorton’s manor roof. Blocks of pale sunshine fell across old pine boards, the dusty shapes of covered furniture, trunks of outdated clothing. Charlotte paused for a moment and watched dust specks eddy and dance in the light as Julia briskly trotted across the floor toward the trunks. Within a minute she had found two voluminous black cloaks that would cover their whole bodies. At first it appeared that there were no masks, but then with a little shriek Julia pulled them from the corner of another trunk.

“Hush, Julia!” Charlotte’s heart raced.

“It’s quite all right,” Julia replied, looking up from where she was bundling the dominoes into a clumsy parcel. “No one except one of the servants could possibly hear us.”

“And what if one of the servants did hear a noise and came to investigate?” Charlotte demanded.

“Oh, Charlotte, you’re such an innocent.” Julia laughed. “We would bribe him, of course.”

And, in fact, that very night Julia bribed her maid into airing out the dominoes and by the time she returned them a week later, pressed and sweet-smelling, the excursion had come to seem inevitable. Giggling wildly, Julia powdered Charlotte’s hair with face powder so that it looked vaguely like the old-fashioned hairstyles of twenty years ago.

Julia was delighted. “Look at me! I look just like that portrait of my mother upstairs on the landing! And no one would recognize you, Charlotte,” she said encouragingly. “With your mask on, all I can see is powdered hair and a little bit of your face. Do you think we used too much powder?”

Charlotte looked at herself. Julia had certainly been liberal with the powder.

“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about being asked to dance,” Julia said, giggling. “A gentleman would probably start sneezing if he got too close!”

It should do, Charlotte thought dubiously. They could go see how the other half of the world danced, and then come home. Escaping the house was no problem. The east wing, where Julia’s bedroom was, had stairs in the back for servants, but the servants were in bed in the west wing when the girls stole out at nine o’clock at night.

The curate was waiting around the curve of the drive as Charlotte and Julia rounded the bend. Seeing a dark figure leaning against the carriage door, Charlotte’s footsteps faltered. She felt a wave of passionate conviction that this masquerade was a mistake. But Julia danced forward irresistibly, shouting “Christopher” and generally acting as if surreptitious meetings on dark roads were nothing new to her. Charlotte followed slowly, feeling that she really ought to tell the curate that they had made a mistake and drag Julia home.

Yet to Charlotte’s relief, Mr. Colby was respectful when the two girls reached the carriage. He bowed solemnly when Julia introduced him to Charlotte, and mentioned that he had visited the chapel at Calverstill while at Oxford. Somehow that comment managed to give the whole excursion the air of a school outing. Charlotte felt immeasurably relieved, and at any rate Julia bounded into the carriage before Charlotte had a chance to say anything about returning home. She found herself seated on the dusty seats of a hired hack, sitting forward gingerly so as not to crush the folds of her domino.

Then Mr. Colby pulled a bottle of champagne from a basket with such a flourish that it seemed they must join him. Did people really drink on the way to balls? Charlotte sipped at her wine uncertainly as the carriage gathered speed, lurching along the main road. Julia babbled of dances and balls and servants.

Finally Charlotte pulled herself together. Mr. Colby must think she was dreadfully ill-bred, sitting in total silence. She cleared her throat, a small uncertain noise, but Julia was deep in her normal flow of distracted chatter and there was no space for Charlotte to speak. In fact, Julia paused only to cast fascinated glances at the curate seated across from them, his head politely bent toward Julia.

Finally Charlotte seized an opening and began asking the kind of question she had heard her mother ask the curate: about his flock, so to speak, and how were the poorer people doing?

“This is a fortunate area,” Mr. Colby replied courteously. “Miss Brentorton’s father is more than generous in his support of the parish.”

“My mother says—” Julia broke in and dashed away with the new subject, and so Charlotte relaxed even more and felt that while the excursion was daringly bold, it wasn’t beyond reproach. Someday she might even be able to tell her mother, and laugh about it with her.

Charlotte was able to keep her feeling of calm equanimity when they arrived at Stuart Hall. It was an imposing brick building with long windows casting light across gardens: not so different from any gentleman’s house, she thought. Inside, everyone was in costume, and most people had masks, just as Mr. Colby had said. There were many, many people there, pushing slowly through crowds in the hallway, and she could see, down the steps into the ballroom, couples lined up in close rows on the floor.

They wormed their way into the ballroom, and found a little space over to one side, between a statue of Narcissus and the open doors to the gardens. Mr. Colby pushed off and came back with some rather vile lemonade, and they stood about sipping the drink.

“Do you know,” Julia said, “I think there’s some liquor in this lemonade.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” was all Mr. Colby said. “They simply can’t afford the best lemons here, the way
you
can at home.”

Charlotte and Julia both felt a flash of shame at all the best lemons they’d eaten in their lives, and they drank with renewed fervor.

Mr. Colby turned to Julia: “Shall we dance?” He looked respectfully at Charlotte. “You’ll be perfectly safe here, and Julia and I shall return in a moment. They’re playing a minuet, which was my dear mother’s favorite dance, and I should love to honor her memory….”

He looked so apologetic and sad about his mother (she must be recently deceased) that Charlotte nodded, even though she had made Julia swear that she wouldn’t dance, no matter what happened. And Julia, of course, turned quickly and vanished into the press of people.

He’s not wearing a cassock, Charlotte thought rather stupidly.

And then, vaguely, one doesn’t think of the mother of a curate whisking about the dance floor.

It was rather embarrassing standing alone in the ballroom. Charlotte gazed out over the dancers as if she were looking for someone. Slowly she realized that the party wasn’t, in fact, exactly what she might have expected. Quite a few of the ladies seemed to have taken their masks off, and their costumes were—well, revealing. For example, there was a lady dressed as Marie Antoinette. She was carrying a shepherd’s crook and was wearing a towering wig. But her dress was so bright, and so low, Charlotte thought. Really, if it was any lower, her bosom would pop right out. And look what she was doing with that shepherd’s crook! Charlotte felt pink creeping up her cheeks. The lady’s escort was laughing and laughing, but every instinct told her that no one behaved like that at the balls her mother attended.

But after all, this was why she and Julia had come tonight, wasn’t it? Of course the atmosphere wouldn’t be exactly as it might be in London. Mr. Colby said young ladies were kept like houseplants, and not allowed to see anything, she reminded herself. Well, this must be how ladies and gentlemen actually behaved when they were not at debutante balls.