Royal Passion by Jennifer Blake

Author:Jennifer Blake [Blake, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9780449901014
Publisher: EReads
Published: 1986-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

The townhouse of the Vicomtesse Beausire, located on the avenue d'Eylau in the quieter northwestern section of Paris, was an imposing pile in the darkness. Though of massive size, it was far from daring in style, boasting the same mansard roof, Italianate arched windows, golden limestone, and massive front doorway as a thousand others.

Inside was a grand marble entrance hall with great, verd antique columns reaching up from a chessboard floor of black and white squares toward a groined ceiling painted with a classic allegorical scene in the fashionable colors of the season, green, blue, and apricot. A pair of curving white marble staircases led upward to a gallery that ran around the inside of the great foyer. Directly in front of the point where the two flights of stairs met on the upper level were double doors gleaming with gilt, which were thrown open to receive the throng moving up the marble steps.

The members of the Ruthenia party were relieved of their wraps in the entrance hall by a swarm of servants and ushered up the stairs. The vicomtesse, a widow of unlimited means and impressive family connections, greeted them just inside the large open ballroom. The nodding plumes of an unlikely shade of green mixed with an insipid apricot that made up her headdress quite dwarfed those in Juliana's hair. Her gown of the same colors was so bedecked with ribbons and poufs of net in every hue that her shoulders sagged with the weight. Her face was round and heavily powdered to remove every trace of her natural high color for the necessary wan look, but it shone with good nature and enjoyment of her own role as hostess. She welcomed the prince with effusion and waved them all into the room. The king was expected at any moment, she said, and the party could begin then.

The gathering was indeed in a state of hiatus. Music played, but no one was dancing. Though waiters were stationed around the room, and there were numerous tables laden with trays of refreshments of various kinds set around enormous silver epergnes filled with hothouse flowers, no one was yet partaking of the bounty. The air was heated by great blazing fires at each end of the room. The fragrance of more flowers, placed on stands in alcoves, wafted on the warm air, vying with the perfume of the ladies. The guests, for the most part, stood waiting near the doorway to pay the required obeisance to the royal personages who would be attending. In the meantime they talked in voices of varying degrees of stridency and volume so that the room was filled with a dull roaring.

It was a highly fashionable assembly. The evening coats and trousers of the men in their rich black and gray were excellent foils for the lighter gowns of the ladies in silk and crepe de chine, in damask and brocade, in taffeta and satin broché and mousseline de laine. The colors of the season were much in evidence, along with ecru, pale blue, and the perennial lavender and gray of half-mourning.

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