Mercedes Lackey - Beauty and the Werewolf

THE DOOR OPENED, SPILLING OUT LIGHT AND HEAT and laughter and a snatch of music into the darkened street. It closed again, and Isabella Beauchamps shivered with delighted anticipation.

“Come on!” she urged her twin stepsisters, as they hung back a little. “It sounds like the dancing has just started!”

“I still don’t think—” said Amber.

“It’s so…declasse—” said Pearl.

“Of course it is,” Bella replied, laughing. “That’s why it’s going to be fun! For once, you’re going to come to a dance and enjoy yourselves!” She seized each of them by the hand, and tugged them to the door of the Wool Guildhall.

“But what if someone—” said Amber.

“Recognizes us?” finished Pearl.

“You’re wearing your masks, for one thing,” Bella replied, logically. “And for another, those are last year’s gowns. Would anyone believe you’d wear last year’s gowns?”

“No!” they replied in chorus, and then giggled behind their free hands. “They’ll probably think I’m Jeanette,” said Amber. “And Pearl is Marguerite.”

“Very likely. Now come on!” Providentially, someone opened the door once more, and Bella pulled them through it before they could object again.

Last year’s fashions had included a vogue for “shepherdess gowns,” although these looked like no shepherdess that Bella was familiar with. She had successfully managed to get them to keep the gowns rather than giving them away as they usually did when the fashions changed, arguing that they would make good fancy-dress costumes.

Both gowns had short skirts that showed the girls’ feet in embroidered dancing slippers, trim little ankles in silk stockings and a hint of ruffled pantaloons. There were only three ruffled petticoats and no crinolines. The undergowns were of silk, embroidered with sprigs of flowers—though only in the front, where it showed. The draped overgowns were of silk-satin, trimmed on the hems with silk roses and three layers of ruffled lace. The bodices were tight-fitting, but not so tight that they wouldn’t be able to breathe—unlike several of the girls’ more fashionable outfits—and were made of the same satin, lace and silk roses as the skirt of the overgown. Pearl’s was pink, Amber’s was lilac. When she had first seen the gowns, Bella had thought privately that they looked less like shepherdesses and more like cakes with girls stuck in the middle. But then the vogue for all things bucolic had brought a set of porcelain shepherd and shepherdess figurines into the house, and she realized that this was how people who had never seen a living sheep thought their minders looked—and the fashion copied it.

Once inside she dropped their hands and paused, waiting for the impact of the room to fade. At the far end of the Hall was a raised platform, and the entire platform at the moment was covered in musicians. Not content with hiring just a few, the Guild had hired every decent musician for miles around, and even paid them to rehearse together. There were fiddlers, flute players, a drummer, three harpists, four lutenists, a trumpeter and players of instruments Bella couldn’t even name.

Just now they were playing for a Running Set dance—and both of Bella’s sisters made identical little Os with their mouths and clasped their hands together with delight. They’d never seen anything like this, of course. It wasn’t the sort of dance that their dancing master would teach or approve of.

It was at times like these that Bella really adored her silly little stepsisters. They might be frivolous, they might think far too much about fashion and far too little about virtually everything else, but they had good hearts. Where girls who put on airs would look at this gathering and turn up their noses and sniff with disdain, they looked at people having fun, thought it wonderful and wanted to join.

The musicians were sawing and plucking and blowing for all they were worth, and keeping up an exhausting pace. Those who weren’t dancing were clapping and stamping in time. And as Pearl and Amber were about to discover, anyone could join the dance at any time. Bella grinned as she spotted three stalwart lads separating themselves from the crowd on the sidelines and heading straight for them.

The Wool Guild had far more male members than female, and even with the addition of daughters and other relatives, unattached women were thin on the ground at a gathering like this one. Add as these three unattached women were young, shapely and what showed under their masks was comely enough, she was not at all surprised to see three more young fellows detach from another part of the crowd and head for them, too.

Bella never did see how they sorted themselves out. She had already chosen her partner from the six as they approached, and maneuvered herself so that he was the first to get to her. He was quick; he grinned as he saw her coyly reaching for him and he seized her hand, swinging her into the Set without a single word. She had no fear that her sisters would get into trouble, not here. The matrons of the Guild stood as chaperones to every young woman who entered the Hall tonight, fierce dragons ensuring not only the safety of the girls, but that their boys were not ensnared by a young woman who was “no better than she should be.” This allowed the young to enjoy themselves to the hilt in freedom—limited, but still freedom—and let them revel in the anonymity of their masks.

Bella loved to dance. Especially country dances. The fancy nonsense taught by their dancing master was too mannered and contrived to be fun. You had to think too much about the steps, and the music was as mannered as the dances. The Running Set left her just warmed up, and when another partner presented himself for a Chardash, she was more than ready to step out. She did keep a bit of an eye on her seventeen-year-old stepsisters, but they were having the same innocent fun that she was. They never had the same partner twice, they never spent too long in the company of any one young man and when they finally got winded—much sooner than Bella did, but then they didn’t get nearly the exercise that she did—they repaired to a bench big enough for only two, where they were surrounded by young men eager to bring them cups of punch and flirt harmlessly with them. Pearl’s careful arrangement of curls was beginning to come down, but for once, she was indifferent to the disintegration of her perfection. In fact, the next time Bella came around the floor, she saw that Pearl had pulled out her hairpins and taken a ribbon to make a simple headband with a flower tucked into it. Privately, Bella thought the effect was much more flattering than the overdone hairstyle that she had been sporting.