Page 64 of Henrietta

‘You and Arthur seem to think dark hints will serve to satisfy her curiosity,’ Hetty said acerbically. ‘Well, you can see how well that served!’

Hetty’s matter-of-fact announcement had given Trixie far more pause than any of the means her brothers had so far used to convince her. The idea of Captain Edgewood having a brood of natural-born children was certainly rather less glamorous than the mysterious deeds he had hinted at. ‘Perhaps I shall reform him?’ she suggested, but more doubtfully now. ‘He is in love with me, you see. He was in the middle of telling me so, before that woman so rudely interrupted.’

‘In love with your dowry, more like,’ Timothy said derisively – and in a trice, all of Hetty’s progress seemed to vanish.

‘He is not!’ Trixie fired up.

‘Then why has he not paid us a morning visit? Do you not think that a trifle odd?’

‘What would be the point in that?’ Trixie challenged him. ‘The rigmarole Arthur would put him through, the way you would all treat him – why, it would take you all years to let him even past the door!’

‘Well, it seems to me’, Timothy said robustly, ‘that you ought to consider yourself worth such efforts, Trix!’

It was an uncharacteristically astute point, and one which took the wind out of Trixie’s sails – and, for that matter, Hetty’s. Neither of them, however, had opportunity to respond, for the hackney had drawn to a jolting standstill. Timothy straightened, reaching for the door. ‘Quick – we have only two minutes!’

CHAPTER XIX.

THEY made it by a hair’s breadth.

‘Cutting it fine, Mr Allerton,’ Mr Willis observed good-naturedly when they burst into the atrium. ‘I was about to close the doors.’

With an affected air of nonchalance, Timothy offered one arm to Hetty, the other to Trixie, and they swept into the room together.

Trixie heaved a sigh. Almack’s could not, of course, compete with the vivacity of the Opera House, but then there was something undeniably relieving about not having to fear pursuit by Charles I. Full of relief that everything had concluded satisfactorily, she decided there was no reason she might not still enjoy herself fully and, spotting Miss Corcott in the crowd, soon slipped away.

Hetty, by comparison, was feeling rather worn out. Such an agitating few hours had caused a headache to begin behind her forehead and she wanted more than anything to go to bed. The knowledge that she would not be able to do so for many hours was not particularly cheering, nor was the difficulty of deciding whether to inform Trixie’s mother or elder brother of all that had occurred that evening. She was not confident that Arthur, were he to learn of it, would not do something entirely foolish such as bar Trixie from leaving the house entirely – and Trixie was certainly so entirely foolish as to concoct some kind of escape involving sheets dangling from her window.

Her thoughts almost entirely focused upon this topic, it took her a while to notice that she was being hailed, and the Marquis had to raise his hand into a full-blown wave before the sight properly penetrated.

‘Isabelle is just relaying her doubts regarding a certain Duke,’ he explained in stage whisper when Hetty drew up. ‘He has invited her to visit Witley Manor, but she does not know if she wishes to go. A quandary with which all can empathise, of course.’

Mademoiselle de Nicolet swatted him with her fan. ‘You make me sound so terrible!’

It was not, she assured Hetty, that she was unaware of the honour such an invitation bestowed upon her – and Lady Davenport was of course beside herself at such marked attention.

‘I thought you had a fancy to be a duchess,’ Nicolet said.

Hetty felt that such a private discussion ought really not to be happening in public – there were half a dozen young gentlemen hovering nearby in the hope of pouncing upon Mademoiselle de Nicolet just as soon as she concluded with her brother.

‘It would be very comfortable,’ Mademoiselle de Nicolet said consideringly, ‘and everyone would be so very pleased with me – but I do not think those can be the only reasons to engage myself.’

‘Choose one of the other fellows, then,’ Nicolet suggested. ‘It isn’t as if you have any lack of options – the house is fairly covered in bouquets each morning.’ Then, grimacing, he added: ‘I am beginning to tire of freesias.’

‘As am I,’ Mademoiselle de Nicolet agreed. She sighed, but then – eyeing the gentlemen lingering on the periphery of her conversation – smiled and asked, more loudly: ‘Does this country make bouquets of no other flower?’

This gauntlet was no sooner thrown than taken up. Mr Fakenham, drawing up, promised eagerly that he should bring her the finest bouquet of tulips she had ever seen, Lord Devereux, castigating tulips as the flower of peasants, vowed he would bring her the brightest roses the kingdom might offer, while Mr Collier wondered what boon she would offer to the winning gentleman. Mademoiselle de Nicolet tapped a finger against her chin as she considered this.

‘Power has gone to her head,’ Nicolet told Hetty in an undertone. ‘I sincerely pity whichever fellow she does select for a husband – the hoops she will make him jump through!’

His voice was indulgent rather than disapproving, and while Hetty knew that plenty of persons would find Mademoiselle de Nicolet’s ruthlessness unbecoming, at that moment Hetty felt nothing but envy. What was it that Timothy had said in the carriage? You ought to consider yourself worth such efforts. Mademoiselle de Nicolet certainly did. Hetty, however … As the pain in her head built to a throb, the rather depressing thought occurred to her that when one considered the lengths she had travelled to attract Arthur’s notice, it was she who was jumping through the hoops.

Unaware of this downward turn to her thoughts, the Marquis offered Hetty his hand as the next dance was called. ‘Would you do me the honour?’

Hetty accepted without hesitation. The conversation with Arthur earlier that evening had, in fact, quite fled from her mind, and so it was with some surprise, therefore, that she was confronted with Arthur’s stone-faced expression when the dance concluded, as he insisted that it would be he, not the Marquis, escorting Hetty to the refreshment room.

‘You were meant to be avoiding the fellow,’ he reprimanded her as they walked.

Hetty blinked. ‘Oh, I quite forgot about all that.’