Page 36 of Henrietta

Trixie was a better student than Hetty, taking to the new steps as a duck to water. ‘Gosh, everyone will think us dashing!’ she said, voice full of self-admiration.

‘If they do not consider you fast!’ Lady Allerton said, but without nearly as much heat. She was feeling more complacent about the whole business now: her children did show themselves to best advantage upon the dance floor, there was no doubt about that.

‘We can dance it next week!’ Trixie said eagerly. ‘I should think Countess Lieven will have it at her ball.’

But Lady Allerton shook her head. ‘You will need far more practice before dancing it creditably in public.’

Before both Hetty and Trixie’s debuts, Lady Allerton had taken each of them to a succession of country balls, where they might practise their steps in relative anonymity.

‘Surely there is somewhere in London where we are not well known,’ Trixie reasoned.

Lady Allerton shook her head. ‘We would have to travel for several days or more.’

‘Odd thing to do,’ Timothy agreed.

‘Or wear disguises!’ Trixie suggested.

‘Odder.’

But Trixie, once she had an idea in her head, was not easily dissuaded.

‘There is a masked ball at the Argyll Rooms tonight,’ she said with shining eyes. ‘We might easily slip in without anyone noticing!’

‘Oddest.’

Arthur’s face was thoughtful. It was not a bad idea, actually. ‘The Argyll Rooms are perfectly respectable.’

‘For private events,’ Lady Allerton said, ‘and subscription balls – but I think for tonight’s soirée one can simply buy a ticket …’ She paused, and then added, with no little degree of horror: ‘On the door.’

‘Not the door …’ Hetty murmured, and Arthur had to work to keep his face straight.

‘I am afraid it is out of the question,’ Lady Allerton said with finality. ‘I will not listen to any further of your persuasions.’

CHAPTER XI.

RICHLY adorned with Corinthian pillars, gilt lamps and luxurious drapery, the grand saloon of the Argyll Rooms was already thronging with persons by the time the Allerton party arrived. It had taken them a little while to prepare themselves, for Hetty had to borrow the requisite mask and domino from Lady Allerton’s wardrobe, and a to-do over Trixie’s dress had delayed them further still. Having in her possession the historical costume of a Tudor queen – purchased for a fancy dress ball but never worn due to her Papa dying the week before – she was most desirous of wearing it, and it took the combined efforts of Lady Allerton, Hetty and Timothy to dissuade her from the impulse.

‘That lady is wearing a costume,’ Trixie pointed out tartly as they took in the magnificence all around them. Then, narrowing her eyes, she wondered: ‘Do you think she might be Lady Nassington?

‘Hush,’ Lady Allerton said, adjusting her shocking pink domino about her as if afraid that it might fly off to reveal her identity at any moment. ‘Recollect we don’t wish to be known.’

Trixie did not appear to be listening. As they took a turn about the edges of the room, she was peering at all the persons about them from under her loo mask. ‘It does not seem to be as louche as I had expected,’ she whispered to Hetty, sounding rather disappointed. ‘But perhaps that happens later.’

As Arthur had said, the Argyll Rooms were perfectly respectable and, despite the public nature of tonight’s events, the attendees all hailed from very proper families – even if they were not strictly tonnish. Hetty did not think Trixie likely to glimpse, tonight, the kind of bacchanalian revelry one might find at a less exclusive venue. Nonetheless, even here, persons were not immune to the carnivalesque power of the masquerade, for the atmosphere was in some indefinable way looser than Hetty was used to.

Timothy’s mind seemed to be travelling along the same path. ‘I think we ought to dance now,’ he pronounced darkly. Though his mother had eventually relented before the united front of Trixie and Arthur, he alone remained stoutly convinced this was an improper family activity. ‘Then leave before everything out there gets too … jolly.’

Hetty had been prepared to endure rather than enjoy the evening, but found, to her surprise, that she instinctively liked this less rigid ambiance – a feeling that, shockingly, only increased once they took to the dance floor. There, all remaining qualms were quashed, even Timothy’s. Country dances cannot fail to have that affect, it being very difficult to look down one’s nose while hopping on one foot. They leapt, circled and clapped through a country dance and a quadrille before the waltz began.

‘Finally,’ Arthur said. ‘I was beginning to think the evening might be for naught.’

But Hetty would not have thought that. It was a curious thing to be where no one knew you, with no expectation of knowing anyone, in turn. The entire point of the Season was knowing and being known, seeing and being seen, and without that as a possibility … it was more freeing than Hetty could ever have predicted. If she embarrassed herself beyond belief tonight, no one would know it, and that thought alone was enough to have her smiling – though she still blushed as Arthur took her hand in his and pulled her closer, into the waltz hold.

‘Very good,’ he approved as they began to rotate. ‘If your European fellow asks you to dance, you will be able to do so without worrying.’

‘I do not think that a risk,’ she said. ‘He always puts me so much at ease.’

Arthur gave an approving nod. ‘He sounds kind.’