Masked Ball at Broxley Manor

heard Lady Merriman’s voice saying, “No, Rodney, you can’t be the devil. I’ve been asked to reserve that costume for a rather special person.”
    “Who could possibly be more special than I, my love?’ the man called Rodney asked in a peeved voice.
    “You’re not a prince, honey.” She patted his cheek.
    I felt the color draining from my face. I saw clearly now. It really was a conspiracy. The devil’s costume was for Prince Otto. He and I had been assigned our costumes so that we were a pair and would recognize each other at the ball. We were supposed to meet and fall in love and all would be well. He might not be too bad, I thought. Some members of our family are quite good looking. But I kept hearing Fig’s voice in my head: “Wasn’t Otto the mad one? Didn’t they have to lock him away?”
    I found an empty bedroom and almost immediately a maid arrived to help me dress. I had to admit that the costume was rather gorgeous and oh so sophisticated: a long black dress, beautifully draped (and a little revealing at the cleavage), with a low back and the sort of wings one sees on angels in Renaissance paintings—only black instead of white. It was topped with a strange, spiky halo that one wore at an angle and long black gloves. It fit as if it had been made for me. When I put on my golden mask I didn’t look at all like Georgiana Rannoch, naïve country girl fresh from the schoolroom. I looked like a svelte woman, like one of those other women who were the Merrimans’ guests.
    That didn’t stop me from feeling so horribly nervous that I wanted to be sick as I went downstairs. Music was spilling out of the ballroom and couples were already dancing to a lively two-step. At the ballroom doorway I stopped short, alarmed. Great spiderwebs were strung from one chandelier to the next. Skeletons and ghosts and hanged men dangled from the ceiling. A strange cauldron bubbled in one corner. Smoke curled across the floor. The whole room was bathed in red light so that the masks on the dancers glowed in an unearthly fashion. It was a strange sight to watch witches and vampires and other creatures dancing and chatting happily and I hesitated at the door, scared to go in.
    When Frankenstein’s monster lumbered up to me and grabbed my hand I had to stifle a scream. But he said in a perfectly ordinary voice, “Don’t worry. I’m your host Lord Merriman and I was instructed by my wife to look out for you. Care for a spin around the dance floor?”
    And so I started to fox-trot with a monster who chatted to me pleasantly about how my season had gone, whether I’d done much shooting yet this year, while I couldn’t take my eyes off the bolt sticking out of his neck. Such a bizarre feeling. At the end of the dance Lord Merriman escorted me to a seat and had a footman bring a jug of punch to my table. New guests arrived in a noisy group and he went off to greet them, leaving me sitting alone. The ball went on and the ballroom filled with couples. Before this I had only been to debutants’ balls, which were severely chaperoned. I had never seen people behaving with such familiarity in public. There were hands on derrieres, couples dancing so closely together that there was no space between them and even couples slinking off together, heading for the stairs, presumably to find a bedroom. And they all seemed to know one another, even though they were masked. I wondered which one was the Prince of Wales and whether he and Mrs. Simpson were dancing together.
    I sat observing from my seat in the shadows, feeling in one way like a wallflower, but in another relieved that I didn’t have to fight off wandering hands or improper suggestions. Then a Paul Jones was suggested and I was dragged from the safety of my chair to join. For those of you who have no idea what a Paul Jones is, it’s only a method of selecting random partners to dance with. The ladies formed an inner circle, the men an outer. The music started and the men circled to the right, ladies to the left, until the music stopped. I found myself opposite a large troll.
    “Jolly party, what?” he said as we stomped off to a quickstep. “The Merrimans certainly know how to go overboard. Of course she’s not British. Doesn’t quite know what’s proper, what?”
    Unfortunately he danced like a troll and trod on my toes about every other step. I was glad when the music summoned us back to our circles again. Off we went until the music stopped and I found