Page 26 of Henrietta

‘It is just a bit of rain!’ Trixie was saying crossly when they reached the carriage. Her face, underneath her sopping bonnet, was as thunderous as the sky. ‘I do not see why they must cancel the whole thing – it might stop at any moment!’

‘Have you lost your senses?’ Hetty asked – but Trixie was suddenly not paying attention. Her gaze had been caught by a gentleman in military uniform passing by on horseback. Trixie raised an arm in greeting, but the fellow was not looking their way.

‘Did he see me?’ Trixie asked Hetty anxiously. ‘How do I look?’

All at once, a great many things became very plain to Hetty. ‘Oh.’

‘I must say, I did not realise such spectacles drew such a varied crowd,’ Arthur said blandly, following Hetty’s gaze. ‘Captain Edgewood – what a singular coincidence!’

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ensuing battle between Arthur and Trixie was no less fierce for it being entirely one-sided. For, no sooner had Arthur understood that the entire balloon outing had been made under false pretences, in pursuit of a man he considered a deplorable rogue, than he had forbidden Trixie from seeking out the fellow’s company ever again. Such high-handed treatment was greeted with outrage from Trixie, whose arguments lasted all the way home and fell – to her indignation – on entirely deaf ears.

‘I do not consent to your forbidding!’ she declared as they entered Berkeley Square.

‘That is not how being forbidden works, Trix,’ Arthur explained. ‘In this instance, I’m afraid I don’t give a fig for your opinion.’

With an almighty toss of her hair, Trixie left for her bedroom, where she was to stay for the remainder of the morning, declining Lady Allerton’s invitation to join her – now the rain had ceased – on some errands, and entirely ignoring Hetty’s enquiry as to whether there was anything she desired from Hatchard’s bookshop, an establishment which enjoyed Hetty’s custom on a near twice-weekly basis.

Observing this latter incivility with a frown, Arthur apologised to Hetty, observing in a low voice: ‘I fear she has been a great deal too indulged.’

Hetty, removing her bonnet, did not answer. She quite concurred that Trixie’s acquaintance with the Captain ought not to be promoted, but privately she felt that Arthur’s prohibition would likely serve only to increase Trixie’s intrigue in the fellow.

By the time the hour for morning visits had come around, however, Trixie had reappeared with her good mood quite restored, and was quite happy to be distracted by the long line of admirers calling upon the house in hope of seeing her. Trixie had not, indeed, been wrong to describe herself as ‘all the rage’: her vivacity would have always seen to that had her face not. Arthur, feeling it would be wise to verify that there were no other unsuitable persons amongst the sundry gentleman dancing attendance upon his sister, seated himself in the drawing room, while Hetty made her excuses to Lady Allerton – confessing to feeling indisposed – and took the opportunity to slip away upstairs.

It was there, in the study, that Arthur found her hours later. It being Wednesday, their attendance that evening was expected – as it was every week during the Season – at Almack’s, but while Trixie had long ago gone upstairs to prepare, Hetty was still wearing her simple cambric morning gown.

‘Unless the lady patronesses have drastically altered their standards, I should think you may need to change your dress,’ he observed.

Hetty raised her head for the first time in several hours. ‘I have not yet decided if I will join you tonight,’ she admitted. ‘I might be ill.’

‘Oh yes? Not infectious, I hope.’

‘Nothing so unladylike,’ she assured him. ‘Perhaps a migraine?’

‘A famous notion,’ he agreed. ‘Even better if you can pronounce it the French way, for further elegance.’

She promised to take the suggestion under consideration. Then, sighing: ‘I will come, of course. I know you wish to continue our exercise.’

‘I do not wish to make you miserable, Hetty. We need not persist if—’

‘I must persist,’ Hetty said obstinately.

‘All this for one gentleman,’ he noted.

‘It is not just for him,’ she said. ‘It is for me, too. I have spent so long as a wallflower. I do not wish to be one any more.’ She let out a gust of breath. ‘Though when I think of Almack’s, I feel far less certain. It requires a great deal of chatter.’

Arthur tapped the table with his knuckle thoughtfully. ‘What if – if I could promise not to leave your side for a moment, would you feel easier then?’

‘You cannot possibly fulfil such a claim.’

‘Would you?’ Arthur pressed.

A refusal was on the tip of Hetty’s tongue, but she was forestalled by a resounding crash from floors below.

‘What on earth …?’ Arthur said with a start.

They hurried down to the ground floor together. There, in the entrance hall, they found a great deal of commotion, as several footmen and two delivery boys were in the midst of heaving a very large mahogany desk in through the doors – overseen by a frowning Dawson and a beaming Lady Allerton.