The Birth of Blue Satan Read Online Free PDF

their waists nipped in as tightly as figures would allow and plump breasts brimming over low square necklines, they had a lesser need for paint.
    Young black pages threaded their ways through the clusters of guests to procure orgeat for their mistresses. Lady Eppington’s pet monkey chattered away in a corner, winning laughter with its antics.
    The pall of stale perfume permeated the air, the different essences long since blended into one familiar, rancid smell. The violins and harpsichord hired for the evening played a continuous round of country tunes and minuets. The youngest of her ladyship’s guests had been dancing for three hours at least, their less-adventurous elders absorbed in gossip or in cards.
    Isabella Mayfield, the season’s toast, had not been obliged to sit out even one common dance, but her cousin, Hester Kean, had more often than not found herself overlooked. Hester was standing in a corner beside her aunt, hoping for a gentleman to lead her out. Since this was Hester’s first London ball, she had dared to hope that she might have her hand solicited for most of the livelier country dances, but in this she had been sorely disappointed. She endeavoured to conceal these feelings, however, aware that a sad expression would do nothing to improve her chances of securing a partner. Still, she could not suppress a sigh at the sight of Isabella with her pretty cheeks flushed and her happy eyes sparkling as she was escorted through the steps of a complex minuet.
    Hester’s aunt, Mrs. Mayfield, must have heard her sigh over the sweet notes of the violins and the tinny plunking of the harpsichord, for she made a sudden pronouncement which, from Mrs. Mayfield, might be taken as an attempt at counsel.
    “You may wish to dance, Hester, but you cannot expect to be favoured by gentlemen when you have no beauty or fortune to recommend you.”
    “I am sure you are correct, Aunt,” Hester replied. Mrs. Mayfield’s words could hardly offend her, for they were true. They did nothing to contradict her own dismal assessment of her prospects. If she could not find a suitable husband soon, she knew what destiny would await her.
    Orphaned but a year ago by the death of Mrs. Mayfield’s brother, the Reverend Mr. Henry Kean, Hester had been offered a home in the clear expectation that she would act as her aunt’s waiting woman. If Hester had not been aware of the precise terms of her deliverance from impending destitution, she had learned them quickly enough upon her arrival at Mayfield Park.
    If Mrs. Mayfield forgot her shawl in her bedchamber, she was sure to call upon Hester to fetch it, when any one of a number of servants might have performed the task. Hester, also, was the person Mrs. Mayfield relied upon to act as her secretary, writing her dictated replies to the scores of invitations she and Isabella received, keeping her accounts, dealing with the household servants, and staving off Mrs. Mayfield’s most importunate creditors. Hester brought certain talents to these tasks, since the Reverend Mr. Kean had employed her in much the same capacity. Even at nineteen Hester possessed just the sort of ingenuity and tact her relatives lacked. Taking into account Mrs. Mayfield’s shrewdness and her perfect awareness of the situation that had reigned in her brother’s household, it was hardly astonishing that she had had the foresight to offer Hester a place in hers.
    Hester did not nourish any exaggerated notions of her own attractions. Thin and a bit on the drab side by her own admission, with light brown hair and a plain, even face unrelieved by any particular distinction save for a pair of intelligent grey eyes and a set of even teeth, she had no beauty to compensate for her lack of dowry. The best she could hope for would be to wed a clergyman whose lot might be improved by the assistance of a thrifty wife. As there was little likelihood of encountering such an uninspiring gentleman in Lord Eppington’s opulent