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
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.
