FIC: Gentlemen of Last Resort (Tim, Tony, Gibbs, Everyone, Victorian)
Chapter VII
There had surely never been a house like Lord and Lady Travington’s, not in all the wide world: the dark floors gleamed smoothly and flawlessly as a lake at nighttime, the rooms were so large that Timothy felt swallowed by them like some hapless Jonah, and everywhere he looked, there was some treat, some unexpected glory-the bouquets of fresh flowers in their painted bone china vases, the refreshment table with its tingling lemonade, chandeliers cut of sparkling crystal, the exhibit of painted-skin and -feather fans Lord Travington had brought back from his travels as gifts for his lady. Timothy gawked at everything, he couldn’t help it.
He whispered to Miss Abigail, “Are all wealthy houses like this?”
“I’ve never been to one quite as grand,” she said, smoothing out her skirt as if his nervousness were infectious, “but a ball is a ball is a ball, and what matters are the people, being in good company. You want to have a good time, and some of these people look awfully stuffy.”
She did not look stuffy at all. Like Anthony, like the Lady David, she looked entirely comfortable and correct in her place, an example of the very best of the quality, perfect from head to toe. Her flowers were lighter than the Lady’s-she was younger, unmarried-but if he came close to her-as he was close to her now-he could just smell them, that sweet and somehow pink scent of the roses-
“They’ll start soon,” she said, having deduced his ignorance of the proceedings. “A quadrille, the first dance is always a quadrille. Lady Travington’s daughter will lead with whatever man here is of highest rank.”
“Oh Lord, it would not ever be me, would it? Surely not. I mean, not me, but Thomas Todd.”
“I should not make too loud a distinction between the two,” she said, her mouth twitching and her eyes shining as if she could not help but laugh at him but were trying most earnestly to be polite. “But no-there is bound to be a large collection of earls and dukes and I don’t know what all, and even if there were not, and they were down to simply gentleman, Anthony would supersede you, and Gibbs him, by age alone.”
“We might have come as dukes and duchesses,” he said. “It is a pity one cannot invent a duchy out of air and wishing for it, or I would have carried you here in the finest coach as Miss Abigail and lifted you out a duchess.” He realized, too late, that he had somehow married them off on the way, for who was he, in this fantasy, but the duke, or the feigned duke, holding onto his lady’s hand, his thumb caressing the petals pinned into her dress? Miss Abigail would be quite within her rights to be offended, even if practicality at the moment meant that she could hardly demand another escort.
Instead, she laughed, which both relieved him and pricked his vanity-was it so humorous a thought, to be married to him, even if it were only in play? Would she have stood without laughter to be linked to Anthony, or to Gibbs?
“A marchioness,” she said. “I believe I would prefer a marchioness, or viscountess, perhaps-they’re far more fun to say, and, as I explained, at a ball, it’s the fun of the thing that matters.”
“And the company,” Timothy said lightly, bowing to her.
She mad a brief curtsey in return. “And the company.”
*
Timothy was able to dance the first dance with Miss Abigail, at least, although the problem with dancing a quadrille was that you were always losing your partner and catching her again from another gentleman, and round and round it went, you taking hands with a number of ladies to whom you had not been introduced-and, in his case, a number of ladies who would have refused any introduction with him, very likely, if they had known his proper name and his proper circumstances-which all began to feel a bit giddy and improper after a bit. Not to mention a dollop of hot wax would every so often fall steaming to the floor-and the heedless dancers-from the candles ensconced in the chandeliers he had earlier so admired. He was beginning to feel that a society ball was a quite dangerous enterprise, and not to be undertaken lightly in the least, but he would have been more than willing to tolerate the danger and the rush and the gain-and-loss of the whole thing if he had been able to keep Miss Abigail as a partner, but she was rapidly engaged for almost the whole of the night as soon as the quadrille had ended. The Honorable Thomas Travington, instantly smitten, had claimed her for three dances, which really was quite at the limit of propriety, though Timothy would not have minded daring the same breech of etiquette.
Although it would not quite have fit with their cover, as Miss Abigail was supposedly in a tiff about him pulling her away from that officer who had been making love to her, and still furthermore, he was in the most technical terms only at the ball to identify a murderer.
The problem was that nearly every man in evening dress-all bars of black and white, shadow and gleam-looked in some way identical, made from exactly the same mold. And he kept having to dance, for it would have been very rude to lurk on the margins staring at the gentlemen, and Anthony had been right-the mothers present seemed to sense his essential good intentions more than they sensed his essential poverty, and they kept pushing their daughters off on him for dances.
Even at supper, he was bracketed by an eligible young lady and a long-mustached baronet who had no interest in him whatsoever, but a great deal of interest in the young lady, with whom he struck up a very amiable conversation across Timothy’s plate. By the end of the meal, Timothy had learned a good deal more about hunting than he had ever wished to know, and was beginning to think that it would be best for everyone, and certainly himself, if he were simply to name the baronet as the killer and the clock-thief, and take great satisfaction in his punishment and eventual death.
That he restrained this impulse said, he thought, something quite significant about his strength of character, so perhaps he deserved all this attention after all.
At last, he found Anthony at the refreshments table during one of the very last dances. Anthony was drinking lemonade and eating-albeit in a more dignified manner than he ate anything at home-biscuits and sandwiches and ices all in great succession.
“You’ll burst your waistcoat buttons,” Timothy said, wearily taking up a glass of wine for himself.
For the moment, the table was deserted but for the two of them, which Anthony confirmed with a brief glance all about, and then he said, “I’m hardly in danger of that. I never took a bite at supper. Talked my head off, sounded like an idiot, I’m very glad you didn’t hear me.”
“I was all down at the other end, between two people who ignored me frightfully.”
“Being ignored is the only way you get anything to eat,” Anthony said. “That, or ignoring others frightfully yourself, which is, I’m sure, why Gibbs is stuffed to the gills.” He savagely stuffed the entirety of the biscuit into his mouth, looking like a starving child taking whatever food he could before he was discovered and immediately removed. Perhaps he had been raised by wolves rather than gentlemen, after all. “Have you found our man yet?”
“I’ve been too spun about.”
“Ignored at dinner and patronized extensively on the dance floor, well, you are having a good evening, aren’t you? I told you the mothers would like you, and encourage their daughters to do the same.”
“Yes, well, they would not like me one whit if they knew who I really was.” He swallowed down the bitterness with the wine.
“If it is any comfort to you, they’ve no idea who anyone really is.” He offered Timothy a biscuit, which, considering how he had devoured all the others with the intensity of an animal let loose to feed, seemed a gift too thoughtful to refuse. “But we must find some peace and quiet for you, although you are so heavily in demand, because I am certainly not getting us into another ball, and so whatever recognition you must make, I would tell you to make it now, and then we can seize the fellow and go merrily to home and bed.”
“I cannot recognize a man just so you can have some sleep.”
“It seems to me that you might try a little harder. Think all of them through, one by one, face by face-have you seen him before? This one, was he the one standing so still on the street-corner when you wound the clock? Did that one send his man over to buy one of your little silver claws, a retractable knife, a top with razor blades put on? The other, his cane has a knot of ebony at the top of it, it’s a lovely thing, have you seen that before?”
“They all look alike.”
“Yes, I know, it’s the clothes-costumes, as I said. It’s why I didn’t need to paint you like an actor to ensure no one would recognize you-our man, whoever he is, would never expect to see you here, looking like this, and his eyes will trick him. But yours must not trick you. Look, think.”
Timothy tried to take all of them in, though with them constantly shifting, and the ladies blowing in between them like flowers in a wind, it was difficult to keep them all in place and move smoothly from one to the other. But soon enough he felt he had covered the whole room, and he shook his head. “None of them. I’ve a good memory for faces, and it’s none of them.”
“Are you certain, McGee?”
“I would have remembered any man so fine standing out where I was,” he said. “It is not a place that ordinarily sees such fine guests. He would have leapt out of the background, glittered like a diamond in the street.”
“Then we have wasted a good deal of time for no purpose. No, no, don’t look so crestfallen, it’s nothing to do with you, I believe you, it makes every kind of sense, I only wish we had thought of it before. There is still hope for the other prong of the plan-Gibbs and I have heard stories of quarrels and feuds, all night men having been confiding in us that they wished dueling were still quite the thing, and so if we sift through all their complaints, we may find the complaint between lords that is at the heart of Mr. Davies’s murder and your stolen clock.”
The music stilled, and Lady Travington began calling out in her fluty voice for the last dance, last partners. Anthony elbowed him closer to the main floor.
“Go on and dance the last with Abby, for I can see she’s been heartbroken by your absence.”
This was most obviously not true at all, but Timothy gave in to the flattery of it and took two more steps on his own towards the glittering crowd and Miss Abigail, sure enough, waiting for him on the margins of it. So much for the younger Travington, then. But Timothy stopped, and turned back.
“Where will you be?”
“Stripping off Mr. John Roberts and putting myself back on, for I sent the driver off for the evening once we arrived, and someone will need to drive us home. I will pay another man for a coat more worn than this one and meet you at the door, inconspicuous as you like. Now go on.”
Timothy went on, catching Miss Abigail’s white-gloved hand in his own, feeling her pulse against his own wrist, and swept her off into a dance. He hated to let her go as the men traded partners, but he loved, always, to see her coming back again. By the end of it, he was a little damp with sweat and breathless with the motion, his feet sore, his heart full, and his whole sense of himself very satisfied-he had done it, gone as a gentleman for the whole evening, and no one had sensed anything about him to give lie to his borrowed clothes and his feigned name.
He fell into step again with Mr. Gibbs, now escorting the Lady David out himself with the excuse to Lady Travington that Anthony-or Mr. John Roberts, in any case-had come over ill near the end and had to leave, such a pity, knew he had been having the most wonderful time. It was the Lady who made these excuses quite charmingly to their hostess, as Mr. Gibbs looked with each passing minute more and more as if he would set fire the ballroom sooner than he would spend any more time inside it, and the younger Honorable Thomas Travington clung to Miss Abigail’s hand until the very last moment, which put Timothy in rather a sympathetic frame of mind for Mr. Gibbs’s plan.
But they had caught the tail end of the procession out, and so had needed to wait and wait for the attention of their hostess, and by the time they had escaped Thomas and the Lady Travington and the four of them came blinkingly out of the light and into the dark, most of the other guests had already left.
And their own cabriolet was nowhere in sight.