But for a couple of maids, the room was empty when she walked into it and she stood for a moment, completely off her guard, shoulders slumped and head buried in her hands. Then all at once she heard steps behind her and Boynton’s voice cried gayly: “How now, your Grace? An attack of the vapours?”
Amber gave her a quick glance of scorn and disgust and bent to smooth up her stockings and tighten the garters. Boynton flung herself onto a couch with a heavy relieved sigh, spreading her legs and stretching them out before her, turning her neck from side to side to relieve the tension.
Giving Amber an arch sidewise glance, she began to strip off her gloves. “Well—what d’ye think of my Lady Carlton?”
Amber shrugged. “She’s well enough, I suppose.”
Boynton laughed loudly at that. “Well enough, indeed. The men all think she’s the prettiest woman here—if not the nakedest!”
“Oh, shut up!” muttered Amber, and turned her back on her to look into one of the mirrors, her hands pressed flat on the table-top. Did she really look so tired, or was it only that her face had gotten a little shiny? She asked one of the maids to bring her some powder.
Just at that moment Lady Carlton appeared in the doorway. Amber saw her in the mirror, her heart came to a sudden stop and then sped on again, almost suffocating her. She took the box of powder and began to dust her nose.
“May I come in?” asked Corinna.
“By all means, your Ladyship!” cried Boynton, shooting Amber a glance of malicious triumph. “We were just saying that since the Duchess of Richmond’s had the small-pox you’re the greatest beauty to come to Court.”
Corinna laughed softly. “Why, thank you. How kind of you to say that.” Her eyes glanced uncertainly at Amber’s back, as though she wished to speak to her but did not quite know how to begin. Actually, she wanted to make some kind of apology for her clumsiness earlier in the evening. London, she realized, was not America, and here no doubt it was quite correct for a lady of the highest rank to appear all but naked at a private party.
“Your Grace,” she ventured at last, “would it seem rude if I told you how much I admire your gown?”
Amber did not even glance at her, but continued busy with the hare’s-foot. “Not if you meant it,” she said tartly.
Corinna looked at her, both puzzled and hurt by the rudeness, wondering what reply she should or could make to that. Already she had been surprised and baffled to discover the savage under-currents that existed in the glossy polite stream of Palace etiquette.
But Boynton spoke up instantly. “But your own gown, Lady Carlton, is the loveliest one here tonight! How
“Thank you, madame. My dressmaker is a Frenchwoman and she sends to Paris for the materials. Why, really,” she added with a little laugh, “we aren’t such savages in America. Everyone seems surprised I don’t wear a leather dress and moccasins.”
Amber picked up her fan and gloves, turned around again and looked Corinna straight in the eye. “As for that, madame, you may find it’s us who are the savages!”
With that she swept out of the room, but not before she had heard Boynton say gleefully, “Pray, my lady, you must excuse her. She’s had a mighty bad shock tonight.” All of them were thinking, Amber knew, that she was jealous because King Charles had been paying her Ladyship such marked attention.
“Oh,” murmured Corinna’s sympathetic voice, “I’m sorry—”
Amber found Bruce at the raffling-table—for he never remained long in a ball-room when the cards were being dealt or the dice were running—and so absorbed in the play that he did not see her until she had been standing across from him for several moments. Self-consciously she had put on her most becoming expression, lower lip softly pouting, brows slightly raised to tilt the corners of her eyes.
The instant he looked at her she knew it and glanced over swiftly, a half-smile on her mouth. But his mouth did not answer and his green eyes looked at her seriously for a moment, then lightened and slid down her body with a kind of lazy insolence. Slowly they returned to her face and one eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly. At that instant she felt like the commonest kind of drab, displaying herself for any man to see and appraise and—worst of all—to reject.
Ready to cry with rage and humiliation she turned swiftly and walked away.
When she blundered into Lord Buckhurst and he suggested that they find some private room she went with him, as much to get away where she could not be seen as for anything else. But she stayed for more than two hours and got a morbid kind of satisfaction from thinking that Bruce would probably know what she was about. She had been lucklessly trying for nine years to arouse his jealousy, but still she was not convinced it would never be possible.
