Page 263 of Once an Angel
"I already tried acting like a lady. It made us both miserable."
A triumphant smile wreathed the valet's round face. "Ah, but that's because my master doesn't need a lady. My master needs a woman."
* * *
Justin had gone stone deaf. He masked it behind a polite smile as he wound his way through the guests
in the ballroom. He felt them touch his sleeve, saw them smile in greeting, but only gibberish spilled from their lips. The music of the orchestra seated on the low dais skittered off his ears like rain off oilcloth. Bows sawed madly away at violin strings. Fingers plucked the gleaming strands of the harp. Yet Justin could hear nothing but the terrible silence in his head. Not only had he lost the ability to write music; he had lost the ability to hear it. He wondered how Beethoven in his deafness had kept from going mad.
"Your Grace?" From the footman's patient tone Justin knew he had repeated the words more than once. "Would you care for some champagne?"
"Thank you, Sims." His own voice sounded muffled, as if it came from beneath a roaring sea.
He took a fluted glass from the tray and brought it to his lips. The tart bubbles tickled his nostrils.
He had thought this ball an ill-conceived idea from the start, but his mother had pouted until he relented. At any moment he expected Emily to swing past on one of the chandeliers or ride Pudding through the glass doors. She had been sulking in her room all week, doubtlessly planning some horrific revenge for
his dispassionate treatment of her. What better place to execute it than at the ball given in her honor? Someone bumped him in passing and he jumped, sloshing champagne on his white-gloved hand. He swore softly, cursing his raw nerves.
He drained the glass. If she only knew the terrible cost of his apathy.
He caught a glimpse of his reflection in a looking glass hung between two columns. He could almost see his father's whiskers superimposed over his unsmiling face. Unable to bear the oppressive silence of his head, he had actually gone to the Winthrop Shipping offices yesterday and spent hours in a dusty alcove, poring over meaningless figures.
Amid a flurry of greetings at the door he saw Cecille du Pardieu and her mama enter, arms linked as if fearful some wayward crustacean might come dashing out at them. Apparently, both their fear and their wounded feelings had been bested by curiosity and a deeper fear of missing the social event of the holiday season. The room swirled around Justin, awash in a tapestry of gaiety and celebration. He heard nothing but the muffled thump of his own faltering heart.
He had set off in search of more champagne when a slight figure slipped through the glass doors into the ballroom. There was no fanfare, no sudden stillness or rustle of movement to herald her arrival, but Justin's heart dulled to a whisper and Mendelssohn's On Wings of Song began to beat wildly in his brain.
Emily.
Emily gentled, but not tamed, her milky skin aglow, her dark eyes vibrant with laughter and curiosity. A dress of cream silk trimmed in roses hugged her slender figure. Flounces of lace draped a modest bustle, flowing down to a short train adorned with three simple bows. A circlet of silk roses crowned her hair. Her curls haloed her face as they had on the island, no longer stiff and singed, but soft and loose and perfect for a man to bury his hands in.
Justin drifted toward her like a traveler who has spotted a breath of spring on a frozen tundra.
"More champagne, sir?"
Justin recoiled from the tray thrust in front of him. "Christ, Sims, must you bellow in that manner?"
Curious stares assailed them, and Justin realized he had shouted at the hapless man. Before he could apologize, he became aware of other sounds—the nervous rattle of the footman's tray, the shrill notes
of Cecille's voice, Harold's inane bray of laughter. The women seemed to be clumping around in their dainty slippers like dancing bears. He would almost swear he could hear the tinkle of a hairpin sliding from a dancer's neat chignon and striking the floor.
Justin gripped the footman's sleeve. "Did you hear that?"
"Of course, sir. As you say, sir." Sims gently disengaged himself and fled for the kitchen, obviously fearing his master was in the grip of some new and dreadful brain fever.
Justin's gaze flew to the doors. His mother had taken her place at Emily's side. His eyes moved to the
line of gilt chairs against the wall where Emily sat, folding her gloved hands demurely in her lap. As an unmarried woman she would be expected to remain at her chaperone's side until she was asked to
dance and to be returned there after each twirl about the floor.
As others in the room became aware of their presence, the murmurs and whispers swelled, making Justin's ears tingle with their newly found acuity. A couple danced past him.
"She must be the one, darling," the man said. "Look at the way the duchess is fussing over her."
"Not quite the drooling madwoman the countess described, is she?"
His reply was lost in the maddening rustle of his wife's taffeta petticoats. Justin started forward, determined to reach Emily this time. Just as he did, a bewhiskered young man swept her away, and he was left staring stupidly at her empty chair.
