‘And then the real party may begin,’ says Elinor cheerfully, for she is parched for a glass of something strong, and may not indulge until her duties are done.
Casting one more glance around for the naval officer, Angelica trots back down the stairs and strikes the Chinese gong on the first-floor landing. ‘Refreshments,’ she announces to the great chamber, where some are straightening their garments and blinking about themselves. ‘Downstairs, at your pleasure.’
A long table has been magicked into the vast ground-floor atrium, laid for fifty and spread with pies and tarts, roast fowl and jellies and ices. Mrs Fortescue alone is already seated. Her plate is empty but she has filled her glass generously.
‘Ah,’ says Angelica, taking a seat beside her as the guests drift down in various gradations of nakedness, ‘the ghost at the feast.’
Bel’s eyes move heavily over the scene. ‘What happened to the mermaid man?’ she asks.
‘Gone.’ There is a fortuitous tower of sweetmeats on the table, and Angelica pops one into her mouth. Its sugary crunch gives way to gushing syrup. She takes another and licks her fingers. ‘He did not appreciate the lewdness,’ she adds, her aplomb some way restored.
‘No surprise.’
‘I am sure I do not care.’ Angelica speaks indistinctly, for her tongue is engaged in peeling the slick paste of a marron glacé from the roof of her mouth. ‘I can do better than a stuffy old shopkeeper in a singed wig –’ she swallows – ‘and I mean to, tonight.’
Bel Fortescue is grave even in her gossip. ‘Has someone caught your eye?’ she whispers. ‘Point him out.’
Up go their fans. Thus screened they survey the room. ‘By the piano,’ says Angelica, smiling so that, from a distance, she might appear to be exchanging some pleasantry. ‘The navy man with the dark hair.’
‘Talking to Mr Winstanley?’ says Mrs Fortescue, looking amiably in the other direction. ‘I know that man.’
Angelica is possessed by a little gust of excitement, but Mrs Fortescue straightens out her face and shakes her head infinitesimally. ‘No,’ she says. ‘No money.’
‘Well, that don’t signify. I deserve some fun.’
‘You are greedy and you have no self-control,’ Mrs Fortescue admonishes her. ‘Always snatching at the fattest bun on the plate. Dear, your situation—’
‘Oh, my situation! Always my situation! And I must exercise good judgement, try to make prudent decisions for my future preservation. You sound just like Eliza, do you know that?’ Her eyes are on the sweets again, seeking out a pretty lavender comfit. Her saliva is already running in anticipation: to feel it crumble and melt softly on her tongue. ‘I want some fun, Bel. Do you remember fun? Pleasure – dissipation – I’ll not be this young tomorrow.’ She glances at the officer. ‘What’s his name?’
Bel sighs and raises her solemn eyes to heaven. ‘Rockingham. George Rockingham.’
‘Ah. A good family.’
‘Much good as it does him; he is of a very sickly branch of it. I know his uncle, who is his guardian, and I assure you he is kept on a very straitened allowance, and he has no access to the rest of his fortune until he is twenty-five.’ She leans to whisper in her friend’s ear: ‘He is younger than you.’
‘Better than older,’ snorts Angelica. ‘I have not enjoyed a man of real vigour for far too long.’ Seizing the opportunity of their intimacy in such a crowd, she says, ‘Bel, will you not miss it?’
‘Miss what? Vigour?’
‘No, no. Everything. All of this. You are sacrificing a great deal in getting married, I think.’
Mrs Fortescue continues to watch the room. It is hard to tell from her sad, reflective little face what she might really be feeling: she is soulful even when she is rinsing out her stockings. ‘I am quite done here,’ she says.
‘I see not how,’ says Angelica, but Mrs Fortescue’s words sink to the pit of her stomach like lead. She thinks of the earnest exertions of the little girls, and feels very weary.
‘Do you not? I look at it all and I think –’ she spreads her hands and widens her eyes as if in appeal – ‘what a farce. Such empty mummings as I took part in for ten years, and thought myself free.’
‘You were wrong to make a scene tonight,’ says Angelica.
Mrs Fortescue laughs. ‘Why? How can I smile these things away?’
‘But you ought. Some of us are happy here.’
‘Who? Name me one person.’
‘Oh, ’tis all a glamour to you.’ Angelica knows when to end a conversation. ‘I am as free as I would like to be, and freer than any wife.’
‘Of course you are.’
‘I am! For now I depart to make my own free choice of what man to take my pleasure with, something no wife may do …’
‘… although some have.’
‘Without consequence? I think not. I am free as a bird.’ She rises from her seat and it topples behind her, for her skirt is large and her sobriety compromised.
‘Will there be no consequences for you?’ Bel asks quietly, but her friend is already darting away.
Bright with excitement, Angelica glances once back. ‘See how I go,’ she says.
SIXTEEN
Virtuous people will not know that very particular pleasure two strangers feel when, without touching or speaking, they are agreed that they will end the night together. There is no pursuit, for Angelica and her George. They simply find one another. When Angelica bounces over and takes her seat amongst the group, they exchange salutation with their eyes but have no more to do with one another; she takes her time in clasping the hand of her old friend Lucy Chadwick, one-time lover of three princes of the realm, and honouring a few of the younger navy men with some light flirtation. Rockingham is similarly engaged with young Billingsgate Kitty, who will shortly be led away to her chaste bed, being not ripe enough for her own official debauchery although her time will soon come. He persists in the face of her dutiful muteness with what strikes Angelica as wondrous patience; she detects, she thinks, a glint of humour in his brown eyes but she does not seek to meet them. There will be time for all this yet. The group have just drawn out a die, an item of contraband since Mrs Chappell will have no gambling in her establishment.
‘But surely even she would not object to an innocent game of hi-jinks,’ urges one of the navy men. ‘He who rolls lowest takes a drink,’ and as the die is passed from hand to hand around the circle, and skitters dizzily across the tabletop, while the players hold their breath or shriek with mirth, Angelica and Rockingham are always aware of one another. When she laughs, his mouth opens in a grin without his bidding it, and when he claps his hands at their sport she might be observed to be clasping her own together. Put a die in these people’s fists and of course they will be inclined irresistibly to make bets. They seize up morsels from the half-cleared table:
‘I wager this walnut that Mrs Chadwick casts lowest.’
‘A bunch of cherries on Carter rolling a four.’