Circus of Wonders by Elizabeth Macneal

Author:Elizabeth Macneal [Macneal, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Nell

Once Nell has been in London for another month, Jasper begins to offer private audiences at houses in Mayfair and Chelsea. A duke writes to her, begging for a lock of her hair. She is sent lavish gifts – silver necklaces, posies, bottles of perfume, a fine champagne with four crystal glasses shaped from the breasts of Marie Antoinette.

One evening, Jasper asks Toby to drive Stella and Nell to a party in Knightsbridge. It is almost midnight when they leave the pleasure gardens. Toby sits on the box seat, picks at the varnish while she climbs inside. It is only Jasper who watches her, Jasper who touches her wrist for too long when he helps her from the carriage an hour later. He adjusts the smaller feather-and-wire wings that she wears for engagements like this.

The apartment looks identical to those she has visited recently, like an elaborately iced cake. Robin’s-egg walls, white plastering, a parade of tinselled butlers and tiny morsels of food. Crab on toast and parfaits and miniature meringues, whose names she only knows because they are announced to her.

When they walk in, the baron claps his hands, his blubbery lips black with wine. ‘Here are the wonders! Here they are!’

Everything is pink, from the food to the candles and finger bowls. A salmon is exposed on the table, scaled with sliced beetroot. Ladies help themselves to its soft flesh, knives grazing tiny bones.

Nell tightens her grip on Stella’s hand, stumbles forwards. Eyes on her, fingers pointing, gasps.

‘We had the little monster here,’ one of the men says. ‘Tom Thumb. We threatened to bake him inside a pie, even wrestled him down to the scullery.’ He laughs heartily, and his hands rest on Nell’s bare arm, his stubbled cheek pressing against her ear. Stella steps between them.

Over the hours they spend there, titles are dropped like loose hairs – the Duke of Belford, the Duchess of Kinnear, Baroness Rothschild – but they mean nothing to Nell. Stella slips knick-knacks into a little bag and Nell shields her from view. A miniature clock, sugar tongs, a gilded fan, which they’ll sell at a rag-and-bone shop tomorrow. ‘I snatches whatever I sees,’ she whispers, and winks.

A woman sitting on a chaise longue snaps her fingers. ‘Come,’ she says. ‘Or ought I whistle for them? You always have such exquisite lusus naturae at your parties, Coles.’

‘I’d like to strangle her with her own pearls,’ Stella whispers.

The woman clicks again. ‘Someone fetch Alice more wine, she looks quite out of sorts. Coles, Your Grace, your daughter –’

A pale woman sinks back against the cushions.

Stella inhales sharply.

‘It must be the fright of these creatures,’ a gentleman says.

‘There, my sweet Alice, there.’ A woman fans her cheek.

‘Pigs, aren’t they?’ Nell whispers, but Stella pulls her arm free, hurries across the room, almost tripping over a low table.

‘Please excuse me –’

In the hallway, Nell calls after her. ‘Wait!’

Stella takes the stairs two at a time. Nell follows. They never leave each other alone, especially not when the men are this drunk.

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