Free Lord Tony's Wife by Emmuska Orczy Page B

made her way slowly down the creaking stairs.

Chapter Three - The Assembly Rooms
I
    The sigh of satisfaction was quite unmistakable.
    It could be heard from end to end, from corner to corner of the building. It sounded above the din of the orchestra who had just attacked with vigour the opening bars of a schottische, above the brouhaha of moving dancers and the frou-frou of skirts: it travelled from the small octagon hall, through the central salon to the tea-room, the ball-room and the card-room: it reverberated from the gallery: it distracted the ladies from their gossip and the gentlemen from their cards.
    It was a universal, heartfelt ‘Ah!’ of intense and pleasurable satisfaction.
    Sir Percy Blakeney and his lady had just arrived. It was close on midnight, and the ball had positively languished. What was a ball without the presence of Sir Percy? His Royal Highness too had been expected earlier than this. But it was not thought that he would come at all, despite his promise, if the spoilt pet of Bath society remained unaccountably absent; and the Assembly Rooms had worn an air of woe even in the face of the gaily dressed throng which filled every vast room in its remotest angle.
    But now Sir Percy Blakeney had arrived, just before the clocks had struck midnight, and exactly one minute before His Royal Highness drove up himself from the Royal Apartments. Lady Blakeney was looking more radiant and beautiful than ever before, so every one remarked when a few moments later she appeared in the crowded ball-room on the arm of His Royal Highness and closely followed by my lord Anthony Dewhurst and by Sir Percy himself, who had the young Duchess of Flintshire on his arm.
    ‘What do you mean, you incorrigible rogue,’ her Grace was saying with playful severity to her cavalier, ‘by coming so late to the ball? Another two minutes and you would have arrived after His Royal Highness himself: and how would you have justified such solecism, I would like to know.’
    ‘By swearing that thoughts of your Grace had completely addled my poor brain,’ he retorted gaily, ‘and that in the mental contemplation of such charms I forgot time, place, social duties, everything.’
    ‘Even the homage due to truth,’ she laughed. ‘Cannot you for once in your life be serious, Sir Percy?’
    ‘Impossible, dear lady, whilst your dainty hand rests upon mine arm.’
    II
    It was not often that His Royal Highness graced Bath with his presence, and the occasion was made the excuse for quite exceptional gaiety and brilliancy. The new fashions of this memorable year of 1793 had defied the declaration of war and filtrated through from Paris: London milliners had not been backward in taking the hint, and though most of the more starchy dowagers obstinately adhered to the pre-war fashions–the huge hooped skirts, stiff stomachers, pointed waists, voluminous panniers and monumental head erections–the young and smart matrons were everywhere to be seen in the new gracefully flowing skirts innocent of steel constructions, the high waist line, the pouter pigeon-like draperies over their pretty bosoms.
    Her Grace of Flintshire looked ravishing with her curly fair hair entirely free from powder, and Lady Betty Draitune’s waist seemed to be nestling under her arm-pits. Of course Lady Blakeney wore the very latest thing in striped silks and gossamer-like muslin and lace, and it were hard to enumerate all the pretty dιbutantes and young brides who fluttered about the Assembly Rooms this night.
    And gliding through that motley throng, bright-plumaged like a swarm of butterflies, there were a few figures dressed in somber blacks and greys—the ιmigrιs over from France—men, women, young girls and gilded youth from out that seething cauldron of revolutionary France—who had shaken the dust of that rampant demagogism from off their buckled shoes, taking away with them little else but their lives. Mostly chary of speech, grave in their demeanour,