A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [14]
True, a girl must live. And even the most beautiful and fair-skinned octoroon could not go long without the wealth of a protector. That was the custom of the country.
And true, the social conventions that bound a white woman so stringently—to coyness and ignorance before marriage, prudishness during, and hem-length sable veils for a year if she had the good fortune not to die in childbed before her spouse—did not apply to the more sensual, and more rational, demimonde.
But it was another matter entirely to appear at a ball in the dazzling height of Paris fashion two months after her lover was in his tomb.
Her gown was white-on-white figured silk, simply and exquisitely cut. Like Dominique’s it swooped low over the ripe splendor of her bosom and like Dominique’s possessed a spreading wealth of sleeve that offset the close fit of the bodice in layer after fairylike layer of starched lace.
But her face was covered to the lips in the tabbied mask of a smiling cat, and the great cloud of her black hair, mixed with lappets of lace, random strands of jewels, swatches of red wigs, blond curls, and the witchlike ashy-white of horsetails—poured down like a storm of chaos over her shoulders and to her tiny waist. Fairy wings of whalebone and stiffened net, glittering with gems of glass and paste, framed body and face, accentuating her every movement in a shining aureole. She seemed set apart, illuminated, not of this world.
A triple strand of pearls circled her neck, huge baroques in settings of very old gold mingled with what looked like raw emeralds, worked high against the creamy flesh. More strands of the barbaric necklace lay on the upthrust breasts, and bracelets of the same design circled her wrists, and others yet starred the primal ocean of her hair.
Fey, brazen, and utterly outrageous, it was not the costume of a woman who mourns the death of her man.
The young man in gray left Clemence Drouet standing, without a word of excuse, and hastened toward that glimmering flame of ice. He was scarcely alone, for men flocked around her, roaring with laughter at her witticisms—“What, you on your way to a duel?” of an armored Ivanhoe, and to a Hercules, “You get that lion skin off that fellow down in the lobby? Why, your majesty! You brought all six of your wives and no headsman? How careless can you be? You may need that headsman!”
In spite of himself, January wanted her.
The young man in gray worked himself through the press toward her, holding out his hands. She saw him, caught and held his gaze, and under the rim of the cat’s whiskers the red lips curved in a welcoming smile.
Timing is everything. And quite deliberately, and with what January could see was rehearsal-perfect timing, just as the boy was drawing in breath to speak, Angelique turned away. “Why, it’s the man who’d trade his kingdom for a horse.” She smiled into the eyes of the dazzled Roman and, taking his hand, allowed him to lead her onto the dance floor.
As they departed, she smiled once more at the boy in gray.
It was as neat and as cruel a piece of flirtation as January had seen in a lifetime of playing at balls, and it left the boy openmouthed, helpless, clenching and unclenching his fists in rage. Leon Froissart, a fussy little Parisian in a blue coat and immaculate stock, bustled over with a young lady and her mother in tow—Agnes must be ready to spit, thought January, seeing that neither Marie-Anne nor Marie-Rose was present in the ballroom at that moment—and performed an introduction, offering the girl’s gloved hand. The boy shoved it from him and raised his fist, Froissart starting back in alarm. For an instant January thought the boy really would strike the master of ceremonies.
Then at the last minute he flung himself away, and vanished into the crowd in the lobby.
Shaking his head, January swung into the Lancers Quadrille.
By the dance’s end, when he was able once more to pay attention to the various little dramas being enacted in the ballroom, Agnes Pellicot had been