Page 8 of Henrietta

On reflection, perhaps it would be good for Lady Allerton to worry a little. ‘At such a time as this? No, I do not.’

He might not know how much, exactly, such an event would cost – Arthur had been raised never to consider the price of anything – but even he, accustomed to such blissful ignorance, knew that throwing a tonnish ball at such an hour was foolhardy in the grandest of senses.

When he conveyed this, however, Lady Allerton did not appear in the least concerned. ‘Oh, Thimbleby will sort it all. He has it entirely under control.’

Thimbleby made a strange sort of groaning noise, very much in the tone of one who did not, in fact, have ‘it’ entirely under control.

‘We have to think of Trixie in all this! This will be her first family occasion, too.’ Lady Allerton defended herself. ‘Of course, last year ought to have been her first Season – we could not bring her out of course, not in mourning – and it did not feel right to have a proper coming-out ball with all this Napoleon business.’ Now that peace had been secured, Lady Allerton had resumed using Napoleon’s name, though she could not help but add, in a dark aside: ‘Horrid little man.’

‘Had I been made aware of our difficulties, I should have recommended you delay Trixie’s coming out, until such a time as we had solved—’ Arthur broke off. It was too late, after all: voicing such protestations now was a waste of breath.

‘There is no need to fret,’ Lady Allerton reassured him. ‘We shall come about! For there is one crucial circumstance you are forgetting: Hetty!’

Arthur stared at her with knitted brows. ‘In what way does this concern Hetty?’ A dreadful thought flashed into his mind. ‘Her fortune has surely not been used to—’

He broke off, wiser thoughts prevailing. Hetty’s father might have made the Allertons her guardians, but that did not give them unfettered access to her funds.

‘Arthur!’ Her ladyship was indignant. ‘I wonder at your supposing that I would even entertain such a notion!’

‘Do explain it to me, then: in what way is Hetty implicated in this affair?’

‘Well …’ Lady Allerton paused delicately. ‘Of course, a mother must allow one’s children to find their own way in this world, their own loves.’

Arthur waited. He had a horrible feeling he knew what Lady Allerton was hinting at.

‘But I suppose, since you yourself professed your intention to marry,’ she said airily – quite forgetting, it seemed, that it had been she who had professed this, not Arthur – ‘I might as well confess I had always harboured a quiet dream that you and Hetty might make a famous match.’

Arthur could no longer contain himself. ‘Good God.’

Mr Thimbleby gave a little cough. ‘By your leave, my lord …’

‘Yes, thank you, Thimbleby. If you could call again … at the end of the week, perhaps? And I will …’ Arthur trailed off, unsure of how to conclude the sentence. For what was he going to do at the end of the week?

‘Advise me on your course of action?’ Thimbleby suggested hopefully.

The idea of Arthur being able to achieve such a thing seemed, in that moment, beyond the realms of possibility – but he gave a crisp nod nonetheless. ‘Exactly so!’

Thimbleby did not run for the door, but it was a near thing, fervently hoping that the new Lord Allerton might be able to succeed where he had failed.

‘Mama, you cannot, I hope, have been counting on my marriage to Hetty to save us from this mess.’

‘You have always been such friends!’

‘She is very dear to me, of course—’

‘I suspect that is indeed why her father began sending her to us …’

‘So that she might one day marry an impoverished viscount?’ Arthur was incredulous. ‘Mama, Hetty arrived here as our ward and with eighty thousand pounds to her name – how do you suppose that would look?’

The thought of what people would say, even to know such a match was being considered – that the Allertons had welcomed the heiress into their home, as a girl, just to hold her in waiting for their son? It made him feel rather ill.

‘You object to the match because she is wealthy?’ Lady Allerton said reproachfully. ‘I must say, I think it dreadfully prejudiced of you, Arthur. One ought not hold the circumstances of a person’s birth against them.’

Arthur had forgotten how it was, speaking to his mother. One might find conversing with an eel less absurd. Perceiving her advantage, Lady Allerton pressed on: ‘I know she was very young when you went away, but truly, she is much changed now. She has been such a help to me, since your father – Well, I do not think we would have managed without her. You do not find her displeasing?’

‘No, I—’ Arthur broke off before he conceded his mother this ground. For he did not find Hetty displeasing. Indeed, there had been a moment in the entrance hall where Arthur had found himself surprised by quite how much Hetty had altered since he had been away.

Lady Allerton drew herself up indignantly. ‘Is it her freckles? For while I know they are not in the latest mode, I for one believe they suit her very well!’