Page 51 of Henrietta

‘Please do not.’

He looked very entertained. ‘You would not enjoy it?’

‘I would sincerely detest it.’

‘Oh.’ He seemed momentarily discomposed, before rallying. ‘Well then, rampant flirtation will have to suffice.’

‘Does it need to be rampant?’ Hetty wondered. ‘Perhaps it could be gentle – subtle even?’

He did not appear to be attending to this. ‘It is agreed then? We will help each other.’

Hetty hesitated. The resemblance between her life and some Shakespearean comedy was growing rather alarming – all one needed was the introduction of a set of twins and the chaos would be complete. However … she had already tangled herself so far in this mess that extrication was impossible – should she not make use of it? Was it truly any worse than what she was already doing?

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘We shall help each other.’

As Mademoiselle de Nicolet, twenty paces ahead, admired the foliage of some plant, Nicolet let out a whoop. ‘Once I start courting you, you will soon be a sensation, and then this Allerton will stand up and see!’ He spread a hand out in front of him, as if to gesture to the magnificent future that lay ahead, with such panache that Hetty could not help but laugh.

It was not the last time she was to do so that morning – laugh, that is. She found, to her pleasure, that she was able to speak to Nicolet quite as easily as she could the Morgans – more easily, even, for Nicolet was so entirely within her confidence. Perhaps because they had encountered each other under such strange circumstances, a precipitous intimacy had sprung up, overcoming her usual awkwardness. As they circled around the gardens, she found herself chattering away quite happily.

‘I am almost jealous of our fictional selves,’ he said when he set her back down at Berkeley Square, ‘capering around Vienna together. We would have had a fine time.’

She hushed him hurriedly. ‘Mind our surroundings,’ she implored him, looking pointedly to his footman. ‘And, I beg you, try to recollect that we first met in Rome. You cannot blame it on the language again.’

‘But the English language is so very difficult!’ he objected, deepening his accent such that it could have carpeted the entirety of Berkeley Square.

‘Don’t you think the accent is rather offensive?’ she remonstrated.

‘Ah, but can one offend one’s own people?’ he wondered.

‘I’m not sure about “one”,’ she said, ‘but you have certainly managed it.’

He let out a shout of laughter loud enough that Arthur, inside his study, heard it. He approached the window, gazing down to the pavement. Nicolet, looking up, raised a hand in a jaunty wave that caused Arthur to feel a flash of irritation.

He was not, he decided, at all sure about this fellow. Not in the least.

CHAPTER XV.

JUST as Lady Allerton predicted, the Nicolets were soon taking the ton by storm, though this did not offer universal pleasure. That evening at Lady Castlereagh’s ball, both Timothy and Trixie observed the flock of gentlemen encircling Mademoiselle de Nicolet, their jostling offering an amusing contrast to the heavenly music filling their ears. Lady Castlereagh had distinguished her assembly by securing none other than the great Madame Catalani to sing for them betwixt the sets of dances and no angel could have sounded more lovely.

Music, however, was the furthest thought from Timothy’s mind as he complained in an undertone: ‘Corky has the waltz. Corky! And I? Only the cotillion!’

‘Rotten luck!’ Major Morgan sympathised in a low voice.

‘After I spent a whole afternoon with her at the botanical gardens!’

‘Was it such a sacrifice?’ Mrs Morgan enquired, wresting her eyes from the small platform upon which Madame Catalani stood.

‘I should think it was! The way she was going on about flowers to the poor fellow running the place! Even worse, on the way home, she was asking all these questions she had forgotten while there, as if I should have the faintest—’

‘What kind of questions?’ Mr Hargan interjected.

‘I don’t know, some such about why they have ceased using bark, and goodness knows what that is, but it sounds shockingly bad ton. And,’ he concluded with the greatest grievance of the day, ‘I got pollen on my waistcoat, which is devilishly difficult to get out, y’know.’

The performance finished to such great applause that Madame Catalani unbent enough to sing an encore.

‘You might tell Mademoiselle de Nicolet’, Mr Hargan put in as Catalani’s voice began to soar once more, ‘that they have commenced using sand as more equable means of communicating warmth to the plants.’

Timothy turned to look at him, astonished. ‘Might I?’