concoction?” Pickering echoed tremulously.
“You’re dyeing my hair!” Benedict roared the accusation. “Pickering, how could you?”
Pickering clutched the black bottle to his breast protectively. “Now, Sir Benedict,” he said soothingly. “Everyone does it.”
“How long have you been doing this to me?” Benedict demanded furiously.
“I don’t recall the particulars—”
“Damn the particulars! How long?”
Pickering’s memory improved. “It was about the time that Master Cary disobeyed you, and enlisted in the Army as a private, Sir Benedict. You began to go gray at the temples—quite prematurely, of course.”
“Good God!” said Benedict. “I wasn’t even thirty when my brother went to Spain. That was nearly ten years ago! You have been dyeing my hair black for ten years?”
“Master Cary would give anyone gray hairs.”
“You will stop dyeing my hair at once, Pickering,” Benedict commanded, getting up from his chair. “Only fops and old women dye their hair. I am neither, I trust.”
Pickering was apologetic but firm. “It would be most unwise to stop now, Sir Benedict. Your roots are already beginning to show,” he gently explained. “It will be so very noticeable when you bow to the ladies. Not at all the thing when one is looking for a wife. One never gets a second chance to make a first impression, you know.”
“Pickering, I could kill you!”
“You will thank me for this when you are married, Sir Benedict. Ladies always say nay to Mr. Gray. Mr. Gray, go away, they say. Come back, Mr. Black.”
“Oh, shut up!”
Pickering shut up.
Unable to watch the rest of the demoralizing operation, Benedict leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “I’m too old for this,” he muttered. “I should have lived in the Middle Ages. I could have traded a few cows for my neighbor’s daughter.”
“You are not too old for Lady Serena,” Pickering assured him. “Why, she’s thirty, if she’s a day, and clinging to it like a burr. And if that black hair is her own, then I’m the King of France! I’ve seen her maid in the apothecary’s shop.”
“Are you saying that Lady Serena dyes her hair?”
“Not only that, sir, but I have seen her maid buying white lead and belladonna drops.”
“But those are poisons, surely.”
“They are only poisonous if one ingests them, sir,” Pickering said confidently. “Ladies—and some gentlemen—routinely paint their faces with white lead. It’s perfectly safe. As for the belladonna, a few drops in the eye enlarge the pupil, for a more speaking glance.”
Benedict shook his head in amazement. “What else do women do for the sake of beauty? Clean their teeth with bluing?”
“Certainly. And they bleach their skins, too.”
Benedict looked at himself in the mirror. “You haven’t been bleaching me, have you?”
“No, indeed, Sir Benedict,” Pickering assured him. “Fortunately, you are naturally pale, like all true English gentlemen. No one would ever mistake you for a laborer.”
“Heaven forbid,” said Benedict.
The ballroom presided over by Mr. King was one hundred feet in length, supported by Corinthian columns and decorated with neoclassical friezes. Five enormous glass chandeliers hung from gilded compartments in the ceiling, the brilliance of their white candles reflected and magnified by the enormous mirrors at either end of the room.
The right sleeve of his dress coat had been neatly pinned back, and he disdained to wear a glove on his remaining hand, but other than that, he was in correct evening dress. The musicians had already assembled in the gallery when Benedict arrived, but Mr. King had not yet given the signal to begin.
“You will dance with Sir Benedict if he asks you, Millicent,” Lady Dalrymple hissed.
Miss Carteret’s headdress of saffron-colored plumes towered over her mother, and, indeed, over her brother. She had worn her canary yellow satin gown specifically to seduce Lord Ludham. She had no intention of wasting it on the amputee. “Sir Benedict makes one queasy, Mama,” she protested. “That nasty stump! I’ll be sick, I know it.”
“Hush! He will hear you.”
Benedict had excellent hearing, but he gave no sign that he had heard this exchange.
“Here he is, Millie,” cried Lady Dalrymple, seizing him by the arm as he tried to slip past. “She is longing to dance with you, Sir Benedict. My son Frederick you know. Freddie holds the seat for Little Wicking, of course, in Cumberland. Why, you must see one another all the time in Parliament.”
Freddie Carteret, who spent as little time in the House of Commons as possible, and even less than that with his constituents in Cumberland, bowed. Lady Dalrymple’s youngest son was good-looking in a harmless, silly way. He was blind as a mole, but too vain to wear spectacles. He bumped into people constantly, especially buxom young women.
“Ah! The famous Sir Benedict Wayborn, champion of the common man,” he said, baring his yellow teeth in an ironic smile. “I have heard you described as the New Cicero…but you have never yet won an argument over me, sir!”
“Arguing with you would be a complete waste of my time,” Benedict agreed.
These pleasantries had scarcely been exchanged, and, what with this and that, Sir Benedict had not yet been prevailed upon to ask Miss Carteret to dance when Mr. King and Lord Ludham came bustling up to them. “Lady Dalrymple, his lordship has expressed a desire to be acquainted with your amiable daughter. May I present the Earl of Ludham to you?”
Miss Carteret’s moment had come at last, and she made the most of it, throwing her shoulders back and smiling as well as she could without revealing her less than perfect teeth.
Benedict recognized Serena’s cousin as the gentleman in the blue coat from the Pump Room. As before, Lord Ludham seemed to be in search of an elusive someone, and, even as he said everything a gentleman ought to say to the viscountess and her daughter, his blue eyes scanned the crowd eagerly.
“Do you dance, my lord?” Millicent asked him breathlessly, not willing to leave the matter entirely to chance. The question came perilously close to soliciting the gentleman, but it was still within the bounds of propriety—just.
“I do dance, Miss Carteret,” his lordship replied. Miss Carteret’s lips puckered in a smile, but her delight was soon replaced by less agreeable feelings, as his lordship continued, “And, if Miss Vaughn will be attending tonight’s ball, I shall ask her for the honor, for she is the most beautiful creature I ever saw! I understand she is a great friend of yours, Miss Carteret. How fortunate you are in your acquaintance! I intend to ask her for the first dance. I would dance them both with her, but, I understand, that is not at all the thing.”
Lady
