The kindly blue eyes met mine and she put out a long, very slender hand encased in pristine white kid and took mine in a gentle clasp. “You may call me Victoria.”
“Veronica,” I replied, seeing no need for pretense. “Are all the rest of the ladies like yourself?”
She smiled and I saw a tiny bit of lip rouge on one of her teeth, barely visible below the concealment of her mask. “Most. But a masquerade is the chance to become what one isn’t,” she said. “Besides, why should you ladies have all the joy of wearing something pretty?”
“Why indeed? Pardon me for the observation, but you have a little smeared lip rouge on your tooth.”
She sucked her teeth vigorously before baring them at me. “Better?”
“No,” I said. She reached into her bosom—padded, I realized—for a handkerchief, thrusting it into my hands.
“Be a dear and help me,” she instructed with a touch of imperiousness.
I reached forwards with the handkerchief and wiped away the smudge of lip rouge from her tooth. “There, now. Much better.” I showed her the stained handkerchief and she smiled.
“You are an angel,” she said. I made to return the handkerchief but she waved me away, blowing a kiss as she went. I thrust the handkerchief into my pocket.
Having bade farewell to the charming if unorthodox Victoria, I made my way upstairs via another grand staircase. My costume excited only a little attention. A flash of thigh and a low scoop of décolletage were as nothing to this crowd, I reflected. My crown of fox teeth was possibly the most interesting thing about me. I fended off a not unreasonable number of invitations, most issued quite politely, and slipped up the stairs. As Madame Aurore had indicated, a black velvet rope marked the boundary between the public spaces and her own private apartments.
Unfortunately, she had not mentioned the guard. It was the same elderly fellow who had met us at the door earlier, but now I had the chance to look him over properly. He was so greyed and bewhiskered, I might have thought him a wizard out of a fairy story. An enormous nose protruded from the nest of hair upon his face, and above his half mask met two eyebrows of such enormity, they reminded me of a variety of particularly furry moth. He was sitting upon a chair, one stockinged foot in his hand as he massaged. His eyes were bright, sharply alert, and I fancied he rather enjoyed his employment.
He puffed out his shoulders and spoke in a rasping voice. “You’ll not go a step further, madam, and that’s the truth,” he told me.
I fluttered my lashes. “Oh, have I wandered into someplace . . . forbidden?”
He leered a little at my neckline, his chubby cheeks puffing in and out furiously. “There’s precious little forbidden in this house, and that’s no lie,” he informed me. “But you’ll get nowhere with your feminine tricks. I’m immune.”
“Feminine tricks?” I widened my eyes in apparent shock. “I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. Besides, what tricks could I work upon such an experienced fellow as yourself?”
He made a bizarre little noise, halfway between a cough and a giggle. Then he doubled over, hacking deeply and unpleasantly. “You’re a right minx, you are,” he said, waggling his brows at me. He jerked his shoulder towards the closed doors behind him. “What you want with the mistress’s rooms, then?”
“Oh, are these Madame Aurore’s rooms?” I asked, innocent as a vestal virgin. “I was simply looking for a place to attend to lady’s needs.” I primmed my mouth and said nothing more, counting on the usual man’s antipathy to anything related to a woman’s personal requirements.
But he merely waggled his brows again. “Got your monthlies, then? That’s inconvenient in this house. Although ’tis better than the alternative and that’s God’s own truth,” he pronounced.
I gaped at him. For all my travels, for all my experience, it was the first time in the whole of my existence that a man had inquired about my monthly courses. “As it happens,” I said tartly, “I am not, at the moment, experiencing my menses, but thank you very much for your kind inquiry. I merely wanted a place to powder my nose and tighten my garters.”
He puffed his cheeks in and out, apparently thinking. Suddenly, he thrust his large foot in its grubby stocking towards me. “Rub me corns and I’ll let you pass.”
I looked at the noisome stocking. There was a hole in the seam and one malignant toenail was making an appearance. He wriggled the toes at me, and I reeled backwards from the odor.
“I think I shall decline your offer,” I told him politely. “Perhaps a corn plaster from the chemist would help. And a nice soak in some salts with a little rub of castor oil.”
He thrust out his lower lip. “What has the world come to, I ask myself, when a comely lass won’t get her hands proper dirty for the sake of her elders?”
I tipped my head. He was being willfully outrageous. He might be my elder, but I was, by every possible measure of society’s standards, his better, and I wondered if he might be intoxicated. I leant closer, in spite of the smell. There was, beneath the lowering odor of his feet, the slightest whiff of something sharp. Licorice, I decided.
His mouth worked a moment as he removed something he had tucked between cheek and gum. He spat into his palm, lifting it to offer me a half-sucked licorice drop.
“Want a suck, missus?”
“You must know better than to behave that way towards one of Madame Aurore’s guests,” I told him sternly. “Are you an ancient retainer of hers from her former life? Did you know her in Paris?”
His whiskered mouth worked furiously. “Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. Who are you to ask me such questions? Meddlesome jade,” he muttered.
“You are a frightfully rude old man,” I told him.
“And if you really needed the amenities, you would be back down those stairs, looking for the water closet,” he informed me smugly, crossing one leg over the other and flapping that disgusting foot at me.
He was right enough there. I could not keep up the pretense of being a lost guest any longer, and further questions would only ensure that I was remembered, not an eventuality I desired when Madame Aurore discovered her diamond star was missing.
I bared my teeth in a smile. “Very well. I will withdraw. It was quite a diverting experience to make your acquaintance.” I inclined my head and he flapped the foot again, imperious as a lord as he stared down his ridiculous nose at me.
I had just made up my mind to leave when a melodious voice sounded behind me.
“Robert, are you being tiresome to one of my guests?” I turned to see Madame Aurore smiling at us. She pronounced his name in the French fashion, and amusement twitched the corner of her mouth.