Page 11 of A Venetian Escapade (The Continental Capers of Melody Chesterton #1)

D ear Diary, my dress is sublime. I cannot wait to put it on. I could hardly wait for Rat to return and unpack his outfit to see what he will be wearing. I am glad I did wait; he was grumpy enough once he saw it without the added insult of me taking a secret look at it before him. I think it is a perfect costume in which to accompany my Greek goddess, but Rat did not see it that way. The rich and soft fabric of his tunic with intricate silver and gold embroidery at the edges is divine. Over the tunic, he is to wear a bronze breastplate with matching arm pieces. I have no idea how Signora Bianchi managed to find such things at short notice, but I am sure they will look very regal. A decorative belt is to cinch the tunic, and she even provided sandals to wear that lace up around his calves.

As soon as he saw his costume, he adamantly refused to wear it, saying that he would wear evening kit instead. It was only when Lady Bainbridge, the voice of reason, pointed out that at a masquerade party, he would stand out more for not wearing a costume that, much to my surprise, he gave in. Rat has an absolute fear of standing out in a crowd and I expected his response to be that we would then not attend. What on earth could have caused his immediate capitulation?

Melody could barely contain her excitement for the rest of the day. Luisa had sent a formal invitation in the early afternoon when they were gathered with Lady Bainbridge for tea. The invitation made clear that the party would not begin until ten o’clock that evening. Even by society's standards, that was quite late, and Rat started grumbling almost immediately .

“Take a nap if you need to,” Melody snapped at him. The thick, creamy, gold-embossed invitation was too entrancing to have the moment ruined by her brother’s sulkiness. She silently read the invitation.

Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,

Long continuance, and increasing,

Hourly joys be still upon you!

Juno sings her blessings upon you.

After reading it once more to herself, Melody read it out loud. “Is that not delightful?” she asked rhetorically.

“It is Shakespeare, my dear,” Lady Bainbridge informed her after taking her first sip of tea. “ The Tempest , in fact. Juno, who was a Roman goddess rather than a Greek one, gives this blessing to Ferdinand and Miranda on their marriage at the end of the play.”

Melody had little interest in the theatre and ignored the literary commentary, asking instead, “Is this usual, Lady Bainbridge? The invitation says that we must arrive by gondola. Is there another way to arrive?”

“Indeed. Just as with all palazzi, including this one, it is possible to enter from the streets. The marchesa has a particularly large, though quite wild, garden that abuts the calle. If memory serves me correctly, the Calle San Cristoforo, to be exact.”

“Why would anyone dictate how their guests travel to their party?” Rat asked irritably. So far, there was little about their evening’s plans that he looked forward to. He only hoped that the gathering would prove fruitful in other ways.

“Oh, my dear boy, you have no idea what is in store for you?” Lady Bainbridge chuckled. “From all I have heard, each party that Luisa throws is a performance, stage managed down to the finest detail.”

“Were you not invited?” Melody asked.

Lady Bainbridge smiled, perhaps a little sadly. “Dear Luisa always makes it a point to invite me, but my days of gadding about at such hours are long behind me, I fear.”

As beautiful as Melody’s dress for the party was in its box, it was even more glorious when worn. Melody was not vain, quite the opposite in fact. She was usually quite oblivious to the attention she garnered when she entered a room. However, in this gown, she felt mysterious, sultry and beautiful. This was a dress for a grown woman, not a young girl. Even as she looked at herself in the mirror, Melody had a good idea what Tabby Cat and Wolfie would have said about her attending a soiree in such a gown. For a start, it showed far more décolletage than anything Melody had ever owned, and there was a lightness to the diaphanous overdress that seemed suggestive in some way that Melody could feel rather than articulate.

That the dress was risqué, almost Dionysian was not lost on Mary, who battled with herself internally while she fixed Melody’s hair. She knew that it was impossible to suggest that Melody not attend the party and that, if she attended, this dress was the only option. Would it be possible to make some last-minute adjustments to the neckline at least? Melody wanted her hair to be pinned up quite loosely, with one thick ringlet left hanging over her left shoulder. Mary’s hands worked quickly even as she silently berated herself for not countering her charge’s choice of coiffure, which she was sure would only add to the outfit’s lasciviousness.

Melody had chosen a very simple pearl necklace from which hung an elegant diamond pendant. It had been a gift from Granny but had always seemed a little too ostentatious previously. Now, it perfectly suited the outrageous dress. Pearl hair pins complemented the necklace, and elegant diamond teardrop earrings finished the outfit beautifully.

Whatever Mary had considered saying flew out of her mind as she stood back and looked at the young woman in front of her. How could she deny Melody the chance to enchant Venetian society with her beauty and charm?

When Luisa had sent the invitation, she had included two elegantly wrapped, small boxes. Opening them, Melody had been delighted to find masks for the masquerade. Rat had been less enthused. Now, as the finishing touch to her outfit, Melody put on her pearl-encrusted half mask. Rat’s was bronzed to match his breastplate, and Melody only hoped that he could be persuaded eventually to wear it by the sight of all the other guests wearing theirs.

The evening was warm, and Melody rebuffed Mary’s efforts to have her take a shawl to wear over her shoulders, at least for the gondola ride. Finally, descending the stairs and making her way to the salotto, Melody found Rat standing by the window, looking very stiff and uncomfortable in his robes and breastplate.

As it happened, Melody thought, he looked extremely handsome in his costume. Rat had been a slight boy for his age, mostly caused by malnutrition for most of his early years, and he was not a large man now. However, his slim frame suited his fine features, and his gentle kindness shone in his blue eyes. However, he wasn’t radiating gentle kindness at that precise moment, more like irritable discomfort.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Rat snapped, fiddling with his breastplate.

“You look very regal, dear,” Lady Bainbridge assured him.

“I look ridiculous. I can’t believe that all the other men will be wearing such getups.”

Melody was glad that it was almost time to leave for the marchesa’s palazzo because Rat’s whining was putting a dampener on what otherwise looked to be a wonderful evening.

Twenty minutes later, they were seated in Lady Bainbridge’s gondola, gliding down the Grand Canal. A large, full moon cast a silvery glow over the water as Giovanni steered them towards the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni. The ride was brief, and almost as soon as they went under the Academia Bridge, Melody could see flickering lanterns and hear music. Other gondolas were transporting party guests who were met by a string quartet playing on the palazzo’s terrace. Melody’s breath caught in her throat at the magical scene.

“Oh Rat, look how wonderful it is.”

Wonderful wasn’t quite the word Rat would have used. While marble columns and other decorative features hinted at the grandeur that had been planned for the palazzo, its unfinished, overgrown facade, only one storey high, looked a little sad to him. Even strewn with garlands and replete with lanterns, Rat thought that the palazzo couldn’t escape the impression of dereliction.

Melody saw what Rat did, but her more creative imagination saw the unfinished, overgrown palazzo as breathtakingly romantic, rather than run-down and sad. Servants handed out champagne flutes to guests as they disembarked from their gondolas. The air was thick with the almost overwhelmingly sweet smell of flowers intermingled with incense. People in extravagant costumes milled about the large marble terrace, sipping their champagne as they greeted each other with air kisses and handshakes.

At the centre of this stood a figure that could only be Luisa Casati. Her tall, lithe figure was draped in an extraordinary gown that seemed as much feathers as fabric with a billowing, silk taffeta skirt. Melody wasn’t sure what bird had such long, black and white dappled plumage, and she wondered if the exotic marchesa had ordered her couturier to paint them for her costume. Unlike her guests, Luisa hadn’t put on a mask but had instead made up her face to be one; her skin was painted snow white, and her eyes were covered in a thick, black and dark blue makeup that was painted to appear as if it were dripping down her cheeks. Luisa’s lips were painted a dark, dark purple. She was wearing a dark, curly wig that gave the illusion that snakes were woven into it. More dramatic feathers had been crafted into a tall, dramatic headdress to top off the ensemble.

Melody couldn’t decide if the marchesa looked beautiful or terrifying, perhaps both. As she pondered this thought, she saw something move in Luisa’s hair. Wait, were those actual snakes and not pretend ones ?

As she wondered if she were seeing things, a smooth voice behind her said, “Only Luisa would so completely commit to playing Medusa as actually to wear live snakes.”

Melody started; that seductive voice could only belong to one person. She turned towards Alessandro Foscari. The conte was dressed not dissimilarly to Rat, indeed to most of the men at the party. It seemed that even the more bohemian men of Venice were limited in their imaginations when it came to costume parties. Rather like the masquerade balls in London, it was mostly left to the female guests to push the creative boundaries.

Like Rat, Alessandro wore a tunic with a breastplate, sandals and a mask. However, unlike Rat, whose discomfort in his outfit was evident, somehow, the handsome conte managed to look positively dashing in his costume. The tunic and sandals showed his long, lean, yet well-defined calves off in a manner that kept drawing back Melody’s eye, as much as she tried not to stare. The red, gold-edged cape that he wore was thrown back enough that averting her eyes from his legs merely drew them towards his muscular arms.

Melody was so taken with Alessandro’s outfit, or more to the point, the parts of his body that it revealed, that she still hadn’t responded to his comment.

If Alessandro had noticed her ogling, he was too much of a gentleman to comment. However, he could not prevent a knowing smile, which quickly brought Melody to her senses.

“Conte Foscari,” she stuttered. “I had no idea that you and the marchesa were friends.” Of course, she had only met Luisa three days ago, so this was quite an inane comment to make, Melody immediately realised.

Alessandro took her hand, bowed, then kissed it. “You look quite ravishing, Miss Chesterton; at least I assume that you are Miss Chesterton. I believe that a masquerade becomes you.”

As flustered as Melody was by her reaction to the dashing Alessandro Foscari, she was not so distracted that she was unaware of the very genuine appreciation in the man’s eyes. She would have been even more pleased if she had been able to read his thoughts. When Alessandro had first met Melody Chesterton, he had thought that she was a very pretty, sweetly innocent young woman of the sort that the British upper classes were so adept at turning out. However, in this dress, she seemed anything other than a naive, virginal debutante.

There was something altogether delicious about the young Miss Chesterton in this costume that caused Alessandro to hold her hand for just a moment longer than was socially acceptable as he said in a low, seductive voice, “You must be Aphrodite, the goddess of love.”

Melody’s cheeks warmed over with nervous embarrassment; was she excited by the conte’s outrageous flirting or appalled? She had a good idea what she was supposed to feel. Yet she had trouble summoning the righteous indignation that she believed the situation probably demanded.

Luckily, Melody was saved from having to decide on an appropriately modulated response by Rat’s appearance. He had been just a little behind Melody as she had disembarked from the gondola. Rat had received a glass of champagne and begun to make his way through the crowds, which he had got caught up in, slowing his progress. Like his sister, Rat was captivated by the sights, sounds and aromas that the Marchesa Casati had conjured up to intoxicate her guests and his progress was further slowed by the need to take in everything. Rat’s sense of appreciative awe quickly dissipated as he came through the crowds of guests and saw his sister’s hand being pawed by that oily Foscari fellow.