The Dance at Last
Electra had not informed her mother of her change in costume, and when she appeared at the bottom of the stairs on the evening of the ball in her Marais gown, her reception was icy. She was ordered to change her clothing. She refused coolly.
“You can flaunt this little independence now, my girl, but when you step into the ballroom you will do as I have told you to do! You will follow the order of your dance card and step out first with Monsieur Y and last with Monsieur X. I will say to you only once more that I hope you conduct yourself more circumspectly than this new fey and willful attitude makes me fear you will conduct yourself. Electra, you must not finish the season without an offer, and both these men are eminently desirable. You risk everything by appearing in a dress so clearly immodest. Every single girl in Paris envies you for the names on that dance card, and if you throw away this chance at security for us both…” Her mother did not finish this sentence but stumbled on, near tears. “I remind you that we are poor, Electra, and you do not have the right to behave like a girl who is anything but what you are.”
Anything but what she was. And what was that? Electra mused. So different were the feelings she had experienced in the last weeks that she could not be sure what she was. Typically when she stepped into a room she attracted the warm approval that a pretty girl will attract. But that night something in her caused every head to swivel in her direction and the gazes she drew could not be accurately described as warm or approving. It was not simply the provocative dress that had accomplished this change. When she passed a mirror she was startled herself at her new carriage, the sweeping energy of her movement. Something had changed, and it left her indifferent to the gossip that she heard flowing around her. Parisian social circles at this level concerned themselves very little with a powerless young woman’s feelings. No one cared if she overheard words about “knowing one’s place” or “draggle-tail dress” so why should she herself care? The women kept their distance; the men did not. Electra kept her shoulders square and her expression amused as she took Monsieur X’s hand, and then Monsieur Y’s, and then any number of eager young men’s hands as they argued for the few empty places on her dance card. But they fell away when Basil Le Cherche stepped to her side. “Mademoiselle?” he murmured, bowing slightly.
“I do not believe you have the next dance, sir,” she said mildly, lifting her dance card toward him just the slightest bit.
“Monsieur W and I have spoken about his place on your dance card and he has generously yielded it to me.” He took her hand and led her to the floor. “You are looking ravishing tonight.”
“You are too forward, sir.”
“Am I?”
“You ask as if you did not know your reputation as a rake.” The words flew out of her mouth before she could withdraw them, and she found that after an instant’s shock at her own indiscretion she did not care what he thought.
“Truly?” He smiled. “How kind of you to take an interest in my reputation. But I tell you, on my own behalf, that I only seduce or am seduced by women who are themselves rakes. They understand what they wager with me,” he said, taking her hand and then drawing her into the dance, moving as close as custom allowed. Perhaps a little closer. “You have been told that I am wealthy? And so you assumed I was the target of these ambitious young women’s plans?”
“You speak carelessly of young women whose choices are very narrow, sir, and whose path calls up judgment on all sides. You know nothing of being a young woman.”
“This is true. However, you may rest assured that these young women regard me as unmarriageable, as I am.”
“Is this because you are a pirate?”
“I am no pirate, my dear, but a privateer. I carry a letter of marque, which gives me permission to act as a ship of war against our enemies. It keeps my men safe from ships whose captains would enjoy pressing them into service.”
“Why are you here?”
“Here at this cotillion instead of at sea?”
She nodded.
“I was born into this world. And it suits me to observe it on occasion. I am regarded as interesting, and that, along with my wealth, is why I am admitted here and anywhere I choose to go. I move in circles here, in Venice, in London … in certain Far Eastern ports.”
She did not say, though she thought, that his beauty also made him welcome at these superficial gatherings where the ability to carry off the latest fashions mattered perhaps more than one’s goodness. Le Cherche seemed to move in the crowded ballroom with complete unselfconsciousness—possessed, distant, fluid, quick. He turned her gracefully, a perfect partner if he had not been a seducer and pirate as well. At the dance’s end she pulled away.