Her fashion advisors settled on an apricot-shot silk with shimmering highlights. It hugged her body to the hips, then flared into a wide rippling skirt. Three-puff sleeves ended in a drape of ivory lace. A small scrap of the same lace peeked from the depths of the décolletage in front. Mirabel had always liked low-cut gowns, but this one—she peered at herself in the mirror, wondering if she dared.
“Of course you do,” Dorcas said, and the girls murmured agreement and admiration. “You have a beautiful back, and quite sufficient cleavage. Enjoy it while you can.” Mirabel grinned at her image, thinking what her sister would say. No one had mentioned “corset,” either.
The girls put up her hair, sprinkled it with something glittery, then painted her face. Ordinarily Mirabel didn’t use cosmetics, but she liked what she saw in the mirror. A shy redhead offered her dangling emerald earrings, and a luscious brunette contributed an emerald necklace so spectacular that Mirabel knew it must be a fake. At last Dorcas handed her a fluffy shawl, refused her offer of payment for the loan of all this finery (“Don’t be silly, dear; we’re friends.”) and ushered her out the back door.
So, in the gathering gloom, Mirabel Stonefist found herself going to the ball in the most gorgeous outfit she’d ever worn. Although it was a cold evening, and so much exposed flesh should have chilled her, she felt warm through with excitement. She would be careful with her borrowed glamour, she told herself. No jogging elbows, no tripping, no catching the lace on someone’s belt buckle. She’d take everything back the next day, safe and sound.
“Hey—Stonefist!”
She looked up, and there were the sergeants—six of them anyway—in their dress blues.
“Yessir?” Even on Ball Night, she couldn’t avoid calling them “sir,” at least once.
“Did you write the invitations this year?”
“Some of them,” Mirabel said cautiously. “Why?”
“We didn’t get ours,” Sergeant Gorse said. “Didn’t you notice we weren’t on the list?”
“I didn’t do all of them,” Mirabel said. “Everybody helps. Are you sure they didn’t just get lost? What did Primula say?”
“We can’t ask Primula,” Sergeant Gorse said, “because that child at the door won’t let us in without an invitation, and she won’t call Primula to the door. Get this straightened out.”
“Of course,” Mirabel said. She paused. “Are you sure it didn’t have anything to do with the tropical fruit surprise?”
“Yes!” they all said. Mirabel shrugged, and turned away to the door.
“Good evening, Miss Mirabel,” said the child. The flaps of her red felt cap liner almost reached her shoulders; the little bronze cap with its tiny spike glittered in the torchlight. “I’m being really careful about the cards.”
“Good for you,” Mirabel said absently, looking around for Primula. Stalls offering the orphans’ handiwork filled every alcove; guests were expected to buy patchwork pigs, lopsided clay bowls, and other useless items to swell the Orphans’ Fund. Primula—wearing the same stiff black bombazine trimmed in purple bobbles that she’d worn for the past millennium—leaned over the piecework table. Mirabel threaded her way through the crowd, nodding to acquaintances, and heard the last of the lecture.
“—Now remember—you curtsey and say ‘Thank you, kind sir’ or ‘kind missus’ as the case may be, and hand them the purchase first, then the change. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Miss Primula.” The freckled girl in charge of this stall was older than the doorkeeper—old enough to be allowed to handle money. Primula turned away, and caught sight of Mirabel.
“My dear! A new dress after all?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Mirabel let the shawl drop, and Primula blinked.
“Is it that low in back?”
Mirabel twirled, to a chorus of wolf whistles.
“Well,” Primula said. “I must say I’m surprised. I thought you’d be wearing that old green gown forever.”
Mirabel ignored this. “Did you leave the sergeants off the list on purpose?”
“The list?”
“Invitations. Sergeant Gorse didn’t get one. Or Sergeants Covet, Biersley, Dogwood, Ellis, and Slays. They’re all outside—they were sure you’d meant to invite them—but little Sarajane at the door wouldn’t let them in, or call you.”
“But of course they’re invited,” Primula said. “Though I did think that tropical fruit surprise trick wasn’t funny. Now who was it, who should have had their names… ?” She closed her eyes, evidently trying to remember. Mirabel touched her arm.
“Thing is, they’re out there in the cold now. Don’t you want to let them in?”
“Oh. Of course.” She bustled away. Mirabel let the shawl drop again and looked around for people she knew. An eye-patched pirate with a red beard and moustache appeared in front of her, his visible eye twinkling.
“My dear, I am tempted to live up to my costume and carry you away into tropical captivity—you are delectable.”
She didn’t recognize his accent, or his face, but what did that matter? “Sirrah, I fear you admire only my jewels, and not my face—”
“T’would be useless to deny the beauty of your jewels, but you—” His eye raked her up and down, and his hand stroked his moustache. “You are the pearl beyond price, compared to which your emeralds are mere baubles of colored glass.”
Mirabel blinked. With that glib tongue, he ought to be a horse trader, but she knew all the horse traders in town. “I fear, sir, I know you not.”
“I’m Harald Redbeard,” he said.
“I wrote your invitation,” Mirabel said. “I’ve been wondering who you are. Shall we dance?”
“With a will,” he said, and offered his arm.
In the course of the first two dances, Mirabel discovered that Harald suited her perfectly as a dance partner. Tireless, nimble, quick-witted, familiar with all the standard dance patterns and variations… and with unflagging appreciation of her charms, which he described in terms that made her fantasize about the latter half of the ball.
She would happily have danced more with Harald Redbeard, but Nuttin Broadaxe tapped her firmly on the shoulder at the end of the second, and she remembered that she’d promised him a dance last week.
“Excuse me,” she said, giving Harald a last squeeze of the hand and significant glance from under her lashes. He bowed.
Nutty was, after Harald, a letdown. A competent enough dancer, he felt no obligation to flatter someone he already knew beyond, “Gosh, Mirabel, this dress doesn’t have any back at all!” and “Good thing that necklace isn’t real; some thief would have it off you in no time.” Instead, he regaled her with a description of the Queen’s emerald necklace: “a lot like that paste thing you’re wearing, actually, but of course hers is real.” The last thing Mirabel wanted to hear about was the Queen; the Queen didn’t like women soldiers in general, and Mirabel in particular.
Mirabel parted from Nutty at the end of that dance, pleading a need for something to drink, and went in search of Harald. Before she was halfway to the drinks table, Primula had caught her by the arm. “Mirabel, didn’t you have Sergeant Gorse in your list of names?”
It took a moment to think what Primula was talking about, and then she shook her head. “No—I’d have remembered. At least half mine were people I’d never heard of.”
“Oh.” Primula let go and wandered off. Mirabel made her way to the drinks table, handed in her chit for a free drink, and spotted the chancellor, Sophora Segundiflora, chatting with two ministers of state, and a banker. Mirabel edged that way, keeping an eye out for Harald.
“Mirabel… what a lovely gown,” Sophora said. “And necklace, too. So like the Queen’s, did you know that?” Her voice had the slightest edge.