Cat Among the Peacocks
Chapter One
Mrs. Barry was, in temperament and circumstance, as different from her younger brother as a woman could be. To her, life in the country held no appeal, and so when Mr. Barry brought her to live year-round in London, she could not have been more pleased. Mr. Barry himself was a man suited to her in every way, excepting that God had seen fit to grant him a very short duration on this earth and his wife a very long one. By the year 1811, Mrs. Barry was quite expertly a widow with no children and an abundance of independence. She kept a house in town, enjoyed society and gossip, and never picked up a book if she could avoid it. She was a diligent correspondent, though not with her brother, for two people as different as they never had much to say to one another and she never had learnt to approve of his wife.
Mrs. Barry's reasons for disliking Mrs. Bennet were many. Upon being introduced, she had disliked Miss Gardiner for having the temerity to be a Miss Gardiner when a woman of sense would have been the daughter of a gentleman rather than an attorney. As she came to better know Miss Gardiner, this insupportable disgust, based on things Miss Gardiner had no control over at all, was transformed into one far more reasonable, in that it was rooted in her conduct, education and choices.
The choice Mrs. Barry found most unacceptable was that Mrs. Bennet's five daughters were all out at once. Miss Bennet, Mrs. Barry could be heard saying as often as she could manage it, would have surely found a husband years ago if she were not competing for men with sisters half her age. That Miss Lydia had not been half Miss Bennet's age since the latter was 14 years old was a detail beyond the interest of Mrs. Barry.
But such a spirit in Mrs. Barry did explain why, when a friend of hers suggested she bring her nieces to a costume ball, Mrs. Barry extended the invitation to Miss Bennet and Miss Bennet alone.
Upon receiving the notice of her eldest child's being invited to a costume ball in London, Mrs. Bennet threw down the letter with disgust. "She ought to invite Lydia! I shall not be sending Jane! Jane has Mr. Bingley! I had really better send Lydia!"
Such an outburst at the breakfast table confused all the family. Lydia snatched up the letter. She read it quickly and squealed. "Oh, Mama! Do! Do tell Mrs. Barry I shall go, please!"
Kitty reached across the table to tear the letter out of Lydia's hand. "What are you talking about?"
Before Kitty had the chance to read the letter, Lydia cried, "Mrs. Barry has been invited to a costume ball in London! She writes that my mother must send Jane!" Lydia turned to call down the table, "You have a beau, Jane! You do not need to go to a costume ball! I will surely come back from it engaged! You shall see!"
Mrs. Bennet wrote her sister that she would not send Jane for all the world, and should send Lydia instead, for Lydia was the second prettiest and was bound to know success.
Mrs. Barry wrote in return that Lydia had not been invited and that Mrs. Barry was of no mind to be party to Mrs. Bennet's continual insult of her elder daughters, and that if Miss Bennet were engaged, surely her betrothed would understand that a young lady could not be faulted for desiring to have a gay evening, that she was quite insulted that no one had mentioned a word of the engagement to her, and that, if Miss Bennet's young man was absolutely resolved against having her go, then Miss Elizabeth really ought to come.
Mrs. Bennet was forced to confess that her daughter was not engaged, per se, but she had recently made the acquaintance of an eligible young man and they were all hoping for something to come of it.
That being the case, Mrs. Barry demanded that Jane come, and so, it was decided that Jane would go.
Jane Bennet was not afraid of anyone.
Not because she was of a particularly fearsome character, or that she prided herself on courage, but because it had never occurred to her that some other person might wish to do her harm. So, it must be understood that when Jane wrote to her aunt that she was afraid to go to a costume ball without knowing anyone and that she would feel much braver if Elizabeth were to go as well, this was a prevarication on Jane's part.
Jane did not feel any trepidation about going to a ball in her aunt's society. Being rather enamored with Mr. Bingley, however, she also did not care to leave her own society. There was no refusing the invitation—that would be rude—and so Jane had decided to use what power she had as the eldest and most marriageable sister to make the best of the situation.
And for Jane, making the best of the situation meant bringing Elizabeth.
Elizabeth had not lately had the luck with young men that Jane had. Mr. Bingley entranced Jane from the very first moment they met. That same night, Mr. Bingley's friend Mr. Darcy had been rude and demeaning towards Elizabeth. Although she had enjoyed telling the story among her friends to display Mr. Darcy's arrogance and pomposity, her vanity had been wounded by his neglect. He left the neighbourhood almost immediately after, called to London on vague business that Mr. Bingley did not know the full particulars of. He apologised to the neighbourhood profusely, as though believing his friend to be greatly missed.
Mrs. Barry was not truly amenable to Jane's plea, but by consequence of being nearly estranged from her brother's family, she did believe Jane was afraid. Because she wished for Jane to come to the ball and she believed that would happen only if Elizabeth came as well, Mrs. Barry sought permission from her friend to bring two nieces.
"That is not fair!" Lydia cried the morning this final letter was read. "My mother wanted me to go! Why should Lizzy go?"
Mrs. Bennet clucked. "Why that woman, who has no children of her own, thinks she knows the better way to marry five daughters I shall never know!"
"She should invite all of us!" Kitty insisted.
"I am sure she would if it were she that is giving the ball," Jane said. "But this is a ball hosted by a friend of hers and she cannot have the power to invite as many people as she likes."
Elizabeth smiled into her napkin. It was kind of Jane to attempt a reconciliation, but they all knew Mrs. Barry to be unmoved from her ideas about precedence. Where Mrs. Barry had a say, Lydia would not be invited until her older sisters were married!
All of the back and forth about who was to attend the costume ball had resulted in Elizabeth arriving in London unprepared. With admirable speed, Mrs. Barry's maids rifled through their mistress's old and unused things and compiled a costume for Elizabeth. They began with a green gown made of metallic gauze and took it in to fit Elizabeth. Over that, they laid blue machine-made net, torn off a white evening gown. The final product was blue in some light, green in others and almost iridescent. They sewed peacock feathers to the train, and used still more feathers to construct a mask.
Elizabeth arrived at the ball not Miss Elizabeth, but Miss Peacock.
In a ruffled red gown, Jane styled herself a rose. Mrs. Barry's gown was nothing out of the ordinary, but she wore a paper mask in the Venetian style.
When they arrived, a pretty young lady greeted them and exclaimed over their costumes. This was their hostess, the newly married Mrs. Wilkes. Mrs. Barry a particular friend of her mother-in-law. She disappeared into the sea of people in search of the other Mrs. Wilkes.
The younger Mrs. Wilkes said to the Miss Bennets, her voice ringing with laughter, "I am sure you know everyone!" and made no attempt at further introductions.
Arm in arm, Jane and Elizabeth walked a circuit around the ballroom, admiring the variety of costumes. Many were exquisitely crafted, some had been thrown together quickly, like Elizabeth's, and still others in attendance had not worn a full costume, but only a mask. They took great delight in trying to determine what different ladies and gentlemen were supposed to be.
As the first set commenced, Elizabeth was asked to dance by a gentleman wearing a grey coat and an unnerving, long nosed mask. She quite enjoyed the dance and he was an interesting partner, but she puzzled over his costume. With their dance was over, she finally asked, "Sir, before I go, you must tell me what your costume is intended to be, for I have been unable to determine it."
Beneath the mask, he laughed lightly. "I am lately come from India, Miss Peacock. Forgive me for not introducing myself. I am Colonel Elephant."
"Do not apologise, Colonel! Mrs. Wilkes herself has assured me I know everyone here, so you see, there can be no need for introductions!"
Colonel Elephant returned Elizabeth to Mrs. Barry. Jane's partner had done the same, and for the second set, they merely exchanged partners. Jane stood up with Colonel Elephant, and Elizabeth stood up with Mr. Toucan. Mr. Toucan was not quite so interesting as Colonel Elephant, but they laughed over both coming to the costume ball as birds.
For the third set, a young man dressed as a hussar claimed Jane's hand.
"Why, he did not make that costume at all!" Elizabeth cried when they were gone. "That is a real uniform, I am certain of it! Imagine! Coming to a costume ball without a costume!"
"Some of us are only wearing masks," Mrs. Barry said.
"Well, a mask is mask! It hides your identity so far as you wish for your identity to be hidden. It is costume enough. What I cannot abide is someone coming to a costume ball and wearing no costume at all, just their everyday dress and thinking the rest of us shall be fooled!"
A young man in a peculiar state of dress, who had been walking past Elizabeth's group stopped. He wore a black coat and waistcoat, black breeches and white stockings, gloves and slippers. His black mask covered nearly his entire face. The white slippers were too strange for his dress to not be intended as a costume, but Elizabeth could not divine what he meant to be. He stayed just where he was until Jane rejoined the group and the conversation turned to something else.
For the fourth set, Elizabeth returned to the dance, this time with a Mr. Knight. Mr. Knight was a dull-witted companion, who very much appreciated his own sense of humour, which was limited to his brother attending the ball as a horse. As she and Mr. Knight moved down the long line of couples, Elizabeth again noticed the peculiar gentleman. He was not dancing, but walking about the room. Where ever she was, he seemed to be directly in her line of sight. The tails of his coat were pinned together, in an overlapping manner, so he had just one tail in the center.
Elizabeth supposed it might be awkward for a gentleman to walk with his coat pinned so, and tried to remember if he had danced. Yes. He had danced with Mrs. Wilkes in the first set. She frowned. He was not Mr. Wilkes. Mrs. Barry had introduced her properly to Mr. Wilkes when she was seated during the third set. He must be an important man.
When the fifth set came, Colonel Elephant asked her to dance again. He was the most interesting of her partners and Elizabeth was pleased to be so favoured. While they were dancing, she asked, "Which of all these costumes is your favourite?"
"Yours," Colonel Elephant replied.
Elizabeth flushed and said something about how she was really asking and not looking for a compliment.
"It is," he insisted. "It is why I asked you to dance the first set."
"It is just an old gown of my aunt's that her maid sewed feathers to," she said.
"Oh, it is not the gown I like," Colonel Elephant said. "It is that I happen to know a great many men proud as peacocks. The thought of such birds diverts me."
"I pray you do not think me so proud!"
"Do you dislike pride so much then?"
"Oh, I do not mind it in the abstract. Certainly, there are worse sins. But where one person's pride humiliates another, then I do not forgive it."
"Nor would I ask you to."
The dance seperated them for a moment. Whilst Elizabeth joined hands with some others, she noticed the peculiar man was again very near to her. His hair was styled in an unusual manner. That, too, must be part of his costume.
When she and Colonel Elephant were next together, she asked, "Pray, what do you think of that man?"
The Colonel laughed. "He looks like a man who came only because he was told Mrs. Wilkes would take it as a personal insult if he did not."
"Such a strange costume he has!"
"Stranger than mine? Remember, you could not determine my costume earlier."
"I have never seen an elephant, so you must forgive me."
"I thank you for your courtesy. Others would call my costume a poor representation of elephants."
"We have no use for such critical people, do we?"
"Indeed, we do not!"
After her dance with Colonel Elephant had come to its end, Elizabeth was approached by the peculiar man. He came to her where she stood with Mrs. Barry, bowed and said nothing. Elizabeth and the rest of the group curtseyed. The peculiar man still said nothing.
"How are you enjoying the ball?" Elizabeth asked.
He said, "I am not."
"You have not danced since the first set. You may find a ball more to your liking if you danced."
"I was hoping you would make such a suggestion."
"Oh? Is it your usual custom to behave in an odd manner so that unfamiliar ladies might make commonplace observations to you?"
Mrs. Barry's younger friends tittered behind their fans.
"Miss Peacock," he began again, "if you are not otherwise engaged, will you do me the honour of dancing the next with me?"
"I should be delighted, Mr…" Elizabeth looked that strange costume up and down. She really could not tell what he intended to be. "Crow?"
The peculiar man took her hand and led her to their place in the set. Her earlier supposition that he was a gentleman of some renown was supported by his arranging them at the top of the line.
"You have the advantage, I think," Elizabeth said. "I am here as a guest of my aunt and have never met anyone before. You are well-known among this society."
"Who is your aunt?"
"Mrs. Barry. Are you acquainted?"
"Mrs. Wilkes has assured me I know everyone here," the peculiar man said, "though in truth, Mrs. Barry is among those I know by reputation only."
"How strange! Mrs. Wilkes assured me of the very same!"
"Yes, I know."
There was something in his manner of saying it that felt to Elizabeth like he was laughing at her. "I do not mingle much in London society, but I know among a private ball, where all the guests have been invited, a hostess may forgo giving proper introductions to everybody."
He shook his head. "Your friend—the elephant—he told me you said that."
"I had no notion elephants were such untrustworthy creatures!" She laughed. "Why, I asked him about you and he did not admit to knowing you!" Colonel Elephant's assessment of the peculiar man had been quite specific. He must have thought it implied.
"I should not like to incriminate myself through my connection to him," the peculiar man said, "so I shall say nothing more on the topic."
True to his word, he said nothing more about Colonel Elephant, but he said nothing more about anything else, either. "It is up to me to supply the conversation," Elizabeth surmised. "You may regret it. Are you enjoying the ball better now that you are dancing?"
"I am."
"You should ask ladies to dance more often."
"You do not think I ask them often enough?"
"No, I have seen you all night, walking around the room by yourself."
"That may be so," the peculiar man answered, "but to say that I do not ask ladies to dance often enough—that is a term of frequency. Who is to determine what degree of frequency is satisfactory?"
"Well, if it were me," Elizabeth said, "then I should say that if a gentleman dances so infrequently that a young lady may watch him walk through the room all evening, then that is not often enough."
"I dispute that; it is the ideal frequency."
"It is not enough to declare your opinion, now you must defend it."
"I have been watching you all evening," he admitted. It was a matter of fact statement. He was neither embarrassed by it nor trying to charm or flatter her.
"I have heard you make clever remarks to Mrs. Barry and her set. I began to think I should not mind dancing with you myself and every further conversation you have had only reinforced that belief."
"You hold young ladies to very high standards, Mr. Crow."
He said nothing, then, after a moment, startled and said, "I do."
"I ought to be offended on behalf of my sex, but having passed muster, I afraid I do not quite have the ability to do so."
"You should understand—you danced with Mr. Humphrey."
"I do not know who that is."
"The gentleman dressed as a knight."
"Oh!" Elizabeth giggled. "Oh, yes. As a man you have the right of asking—you can avoid asking a tiresome woman at all, if you just know her a bit before you do."
"Precisely."
Suddenly, out of nowhere, he said, "I am a cat."
His odd hair was intended to be ears and the tails of his coat were pinned to be one. His slippers were white because, "You have white paws!"
"Yes. My sister wished to paint the bottom of the slippers pink, but I thought that unnecessary."
"Is your sister here to-night?" Elizabeth looked around the couples. "You must tell me what she is dressed as."
"She is not. She is not yet out."
"Is she terribly jealous? I have younger sisters myself who are not in attendance and two of them assured me before I left home that I should never see them again because they were surely to die from the pain being excluded."
"No, not terribly so. She is shy and does not care to dance, though the costume aspect of this ball did delight her fancy."
"Would she approve of my costume?"
"I think she would—though, I do wonder that you chose to come as a peacock."
Elizabeth laughed. "It was not my choice. Mrs. Barry had the feathers and the gowns already. My coming to the ball was a last minute decision, so I had to make do with what she had available. You do not like it?"
His mask covered a great deal of his face, but the bits of skin she could see turned red. "Indeed—I do. Green suits you. I question it only because peacocks are males."
"Well, I could not devise a very pretty peahen costume, could I! Birds with beautiful plumage are almost always the males, you know."
Mr. White-Pawed Cat could not refute that.
Though she had the upper hand, Elizabeth said, "I feel as though I have been caught. A helpless bird, hunted all evening by a cat."
"I do not think a peacock has much to fear from a cat."
"I am relieved to hear it."
The dance separated them and when the came together again, he said, "You could have been a swan."
"Pardon?"
"Female swans are beautiful."
"I have not the neck for it."
The danced ended. He stilled. "You are staying with Mrs. Barry."
"Yes."
Mr. White-Pawed Cat reached for her hand. She let him take it and they walked toward her aunt. "May I call on you to-morrow?"
"Yes, of course."
She suspected he wished to say more. Perhaps, that she had a lovely neck, or enchanting eyes. Instead, he bowed over her hand and took his leave.
Mr. White-Pawed Cat asked no other ladies to dance for the rest of the evening. Elizabeth danced with everyone that asked, enjoyed dancing with all of her partners. But, no matter where she was in the room, she never had to look far before she was caught in the gaze of Mr. White-Pawed Cat. From across the room, she could not make out his eyes. Behind the mask, she could see little of his face. The intensity of his looks must then be in her imagination. But, it made her shiver.
She longed to ask her aunt everything she knew, but by his own account, Mr. White-Pawed Cat knew Mrs. Barry only by reputation. Elizabeth did not know his name and Mrs. Barry could not recognise a man she did not know.
Elizabeth did not consider herself the sort of woman who lost her head over a young man all at once, but there was something especially fanciful about meeting a gentleman at a costume ball that she was not even supposed to be attending, to have this mysterious man so enamoured with her that he must come see her straight away—though none of her other partners had asked to do the same, and he had not had her name. She had too much sense to be half-in love with him, but she was half-in love with the idea of him.
At the end of the evening, he appeared again, as if by magic, to hand Elizabeth into the carriage. He asked Mrs. Barry if he may call to-morrow and once her permission was granted, returned to the crush of people waiting for their carriages, walking toward Colonel Elephant.
Mrs. Barry leaned back into the carriage squabs and clucked her tongue. "Well! I shall not forbid any young man the Wilkeses approve of from coming to my house, but you ought to wait until Jane is married before you beckon young men to your side, Elizabeth."
The sisters giggled.
Mrs. Barry's butler was not a man known for his humour or flexibility. The ladies had been in the sitting room for some time, pretending that their needlework was of more interest than the imminent arrival of Elizabeth's unknown beau.
The butler entered, handed Mrs. Barry a card and said, with dignity revolted by playacting, "A Mr. Cat to see you, madam."
Mrs. Barry read the card, turned white and fiercely demanded, "Send him in."
The butler sniffed and departed.
Mrs. Barry lunged toward Elizabeth, who could not fight her aunt off for the confusion. She pulled Elizabeth's fichu off and stuffed it behind the sofa cushions. "He is here." Mrs. Barry said in an urgent whisper. She pinched Elizabeth's cheeks. "He is—I had no idea, no notion at all—very powerful family, Elizabeth, you had best show yourself to your advantage."
"Not until Jane is married, surely!"
"Now is not the time, Elizabeth!"
The butler walked loudly on his approach.
The ladies tensed.
The door opened.
The ladies rose.
"Miss Elizabeth!"
"Mr. Darcy!"
I was challenged by Skydreamer to write fluff. Let's see how well I manage it! This is the first of four chapters, beta'd by FeliceB and Pimprenelle.