Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

“I’ve got to have something they can’t help staring at,” Amber told her. “If I have to go in stark naked with my hair on fire.”

Madame Rouvière laughed. “That would be well enough for an entrance—but after a while they would grow tired and begin to look at the ladies with more on. It must be something indiscret—and yet covering enough to make them try to see more. Black would be the colour—black tiffany, perhaps—but there must be something to glitter too—” She went on, talking aloud, sketching out the dress with her hands while Amber listened in rapt attention and with glowing eyes.

Lady Carlton! Poor creature—what chance would she have?

For the next two days Amber did not leave her rooms. From early morning until late at night they were filled with Madame Rouvière and her little sempstresses, all of them chattering French and giggling while scissors snipped, deft fingers stitched and Madame wrung her hands and shrieked hysterically if she discovered a seam taken in a bit too far or a hem-line uneven by so much as a quarter of an inch. Amber stood patiently hour after hour while the dress was fitted, and they literally made it on her. No one was allowed to come in or to see it and to her great delight all this secrecy set up a froth of rumours.

The Duchess was going to come as Venus rising from the sea, dressed in a single sea-shell. She was going to drive a gilt chariot and four full-grown horses up the front stairs and into the drawing-room. Her gown was to be made of real pearls which would fall off, a few at a time, until she had on nothing at all. At least they did not doubt her audacity and their ingenuity gave considerable credit to hers.

Thursday they were still at work.

Amber’s hair was washed and dried and polished with silk before the hair-dresser went to work on it. Pumice-stone removed every trace of fuzz from her arms and legs. She slathered her face and neck a dozen times with French cold-creams and brushed her teeth until her arm ached. She bathed in milk and poured jasmine perfume into the palms of her hands to rub on her legs and arms and body. She spent almost an hour painting her face.

At six o’clock the gown was done and Madame Rouvière proudly held it up at full length for all of them to see. Susanna, who had spent the entire day in the room, jumped and clapped her hands together and ran to kiss the hem. Madame let out such a screech of horror at this sacrilege that Susanna almost fell over backward in alarm.

Amber threw off her dressing-gown and—wearing nothing but black silk stockings held up by diamond-buckled garters and a pair of high-heeled black shoes—she lifted her arms over her head so that they could slide it on. The bodice was a wide-open lace-work of heavy cord sewn with black bugle beads, and it cut down to a deep point. There was a long narrow sheath-like skirt, completely covered with beads, that looked like something black and wet and shiny pouring over her hips and legs and trailing away in back. Sheer black tiffany made great puffed sleeves and an over-skirt which draped up at the sides and floated down over the train like a black mist.

While the others stood staring, babbling, ecstatically “oh-ing,” Amber looked at herself in the mirrored walls with a thrill of triumph. She lifted her ribs and tightened her chest muscles so that her breasts stood out like full pointed globes.

He’ll die when he sees me! she told herself in a delirium of confidence. Corinna could not scare her now.

Madame Rouvière came to adjust her head-dress which was a great arch of black ostrich-feathers sweeping up over her head from a tight little helmet. Someone handed her her gloves and she pulled them on, long black ones clear to her elbows. Against the nakedness of her body, they seemed almost immodest. She carried a black fan and over her shoulders they laid a black velvet cloak, the lining edged in black fox. The stark black against her rich cream-and-honey colouring, something in the expression of her eyes and the curve of her mouth, gave her the look of a diabolical angel—at once pure, beautiful, corrupt and sinister.

Amber turned now from the mirror to face Madame, and their eyes met with the gleaming look of successful conspirators. Madame put her thumb and fingers together and made the gesture of kissing them. She came up to Amber and said with a hiss in her ear: “They’ll never see her at all—that other one!”

Amber gave her a quick grateful hug and a grin. Then she bent to kiss Susanna, who approached her mother very carefully, almost afraid to touch her. And with her heart beating fast, her stomach churning maddeningly, Amber walked out of the room, put her mask to her face and went along a narrow little corridor leading out to where her coach waited. She had not felt so excited at the prospect of a party, so apprehensive and frightened, since the night she had first been presented at Court.

ARLINGTON HOUSE, WHICH had been Goring House before Bennet bought it in 1663, stood next to the old Mulberry Gardens on the west of the Palace. In it the Baron and Baroness gave the most brilliant, the most elaborate, and the most eagerly attended parties in London. Nothing else could be compared to them. The invitations they sent out were a sure barometer of one’s social standing. Nonentities were never asked.

His Lordship was known as the most lavish and thoughtful host of fashionable society. He served superlative food, prepared by a dozen French cooks, and wines from a vast cellar. There was music in every room; gambling-tables were piled with gold; candles burned by the thousand. The house swarmed with earls and dukes and knights, countesses and duchesses and ladies, and to the casual eye everything seemed most decorous. Satin-gowned ladies curtsied and smiled over spread fans, brocade-suited gentlemen bowed from the waist with a flourishing sweep of their hats. Voices were low and conversation apparently polite.

But in fact they were gleefully at work destroying one another’s characters. The men, as they stood watching a pretty woman, boasted that they had laid with her, discussed her physical defects and compared her behaviour in bed. The women yanked reputations apart with equal or greater vigour. Darkened bedrooms all over the house sheltered couples seeking a temporary refuge. In some obscure corner a Maid of Honour was lifting her skirts to let the gallants decide whether her legs were as pretty as another’s, squealing and giggling when they ventured to employ their hands too boldly. One of the fops had sneaked a girl from Madame Bennet’s into the house under the guise of mask and cloak and she was performing for several young men and women somewhere behind locked doors.

Arlington never interfered with his guests but let each amuse himself according to his own tastes.

At seven o’clock, the night being still young and most of the guests sober as well as curious, they were gathered in the main drawing-room and keeping one eye at least on the new arrivals. They were waiting for two women who had not yet come: the Duchess of Ravenspur, and Lady Carlton. Her Ladyship—whom almost no one had seen—was rumoured to be the greatest beauty ever to appear in England, though opinions on this score were already strong and divided. Many of the women, at least, were prepared to decide the moment she arrived that she was by no means as beautiful as had been reported. And the Duchess of Ravenspur, no doubt from fear that her Ladyship would outshine her, was expected to do something spectacular in order to save herself.

“How I pity her Grace,” said one languid young lady. “It runs through the galleries she lives in terror now of losing what she has. Gad, but it must be a bothersome thing to be great.”

Her companion smiled with lips pressed together. “Is that why you never climbed the ladder?—for fear of falling off?”

“I don’t care a fig for Lady Carlton or what she looks like,” commented a thin young fop who kept his hands busy with manipulating a woman’s fan, “but I’ll be her slave if she can put the Duchess’s nose out of joint. That damned woman has grown intolerable since his Majesty gave her a duchy. I used to lace her busk for her when she was only a scurvy player—but now every time we’re presented she makes a show of never having seen me before.”

“It’s her vulgar breeding, Jack. What else can you expect?”

A voice like a trumpet interrupted them. “Her Grace, the Duchess of Ravenspur!”

Every eye in the room swept toward the door—but only the usher stood there alone beside it. They waited for an impatient moment or two and then, with her head held high and a kind of fierce challenging pride on her face, the Duchess came into view and slowly walked through the doorway toward them. A wave of shock and amazement swept along before her. Heads spun, eyes popped and even King Charles turned on his heel where he was talking to Mrs. Wells and stared.

Amber came on imperturbably, though it seemed all her insides were quaking. She heard some of the older women gasp and saw them set their mouths sternly, square their shoulders and fix upon her their hard reproving glares. She heard low whistles from the men, saw their eyebrows go up, their elbows reach out to nudge one another. She saw the young women looking at her with anger and indignation, furious that she had dared to take such an advantage of them.

Suddenly she relaxed, convinced that she was a success. She was hoping that Bruce and Corinna were there somewhere to have seen her triumph.

Then, almost at once, she became aware that Almsbury was just at her side. She looked at him, a faint smile touching the corners of her mouth, but something she saw in his eyes made her expression freeze suddenly. What was it? Disapproval? Pity? Something of both? But that was ridiculous! She looked stunning and she knew it.