Read Online The Sins of Lady Dacey by Marion Chesney - Free Book Online Page A

the hairdresser to arrange their hair for the evening.
    As they waited nervously in the Green Saloon, each with a magnificent cashmere shawl draped around her shoulders, Pamela tried to remain calm. She was not doing anything wrong, she told herself repeatedly, although the stern and reproving face of her husband was always before her mind's eye.
    Honoria, aware of her friend's heightened color and shining eyes, felt the elder of the two. With a wisdom beyond her years, she dreaded the effect of the attractive Mr. Delaney on such a lady as Pamela, who had never had any fun or laughter in her life. Honoria remembered the chill air of the vicarage and the way the vicar crept softly about, always seeking fault. Her preoccupation made her treat the duke rather coolly, and at first he was piqued and then amused at himself for being so put out by the seeming indifference of a chit of a girl.
    Contrary to the duke's expectation, there were a great number of fashionables there as they took their seats in a box. People openly stared. Honoria had forgotten about that social stare. Some raised lorgnettes and one man even trained a telescope on their box.
    But then the pantomime started and Honoria forgot about everything else. In later years, she was to try to tell her children about the magic of Grimaldi without success. It was not what he said that was so funny: it was what he was. There he stood, looking out at the candlelit audience, with “a thousand odd twitches and unaccountable absurdities oozing at every pore” of his clownish mask. Above his rolling eyes were two ridiculous eyebrows that would “go up and down like a pair of umbrellas or one would ascend, and the other remain to superintend a wink.”
    His voice was another weapon. Future biographers would describe it, variously, as “husky with constant laughing"; “richly thick and chuckling like the utterance of a boy laughing, talking and eating custard at once"; or “a gin voice, heaved from the very bottom of his chest.”
    So with all his heady exuberance of animal spirits and the kind of laugh that made the whole house laugh with him, Grimaldi kept one eye on fantasy and one on reality: he never allowed the audience to forget for long that he knew it was all a game and that they were playing it, too.
    And Honoria and Pamela laughed the grim years away, laughed until they held their sides, laughed until they cried. The duke was at first amused at their innocent enjoyment, for he considered himself too old and sophisticated to be captured by such childish folly, but soon he found himself laughing helplessly.
    By the time the transformation scene arrived with all the cast descending a staircase on the stage to take their bows, the duke and Mr. Delaney had recovered, but their more unsophisticated guests leaned forward, drinking in the glory of the spangled costumes.
    When the deafening applause had died down at last, Pamela turned to Mr. Delaney and said simply, “Thank you.”
    He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. Pamela finally shyly withdrew her hand, but her eyes were warm and glowing.
    “Yes, indeed, thank you,” said Honoria briskly, anxious to get Pamela away. “A most enjoyable evening.”
    Pamela, afraid of her emotions, was silent on the road home and Honoria, worried about Pamela, was silent also. She rallied enough when they reached Hanover Square to thank both the duke and Mr. Delaney again.
    “We must find something else to entertain you,” said the duke. He had only meant it as a piece of empty gallantry, but to his surprise Honoria said, “I am afraid that will not be possible. We have much to do. Come, Pamela.”
    And like a stern matron, Honoria urged Pamela before her and into the house. The door shut behind them with a firm bang.
    The duke was amazed. Never had any girl or woman turned down the chance of seeing him again.
    “We cannot leave it like that,” exclaimed Mr. Delaney.
    “Oh, but I think we must.” The duke propelled