Page 12 of Henrietta

It was thus with some fatigue that he made his way to the breakfast table, where he found his brother and sister – but no Hetty.

‘Gone to an appointment with the modiste,’ Timothy explained, when he inquired after her absence. ‘Has it in her head to update her wardrobe.’

‘Oh.’ Arthur was rather irked, however unfair he knew this to be. It was not as if he had told Hetty that he wished to ride out with her that morning – only that, since it had been their regular habit when he was last in London, he had quite assumed she would have waited for him.

‘Fancies herself in love with a Belgian fellow, and wants to impress him,’ Timothy expounded.

Arthur’s attention was instantly diverted. ‘Hetty? A Belgian?’

‘Could be a Dutchman,’ Timothy added fairly. ‘Or a German. Not sure yet, but certainly European.’

‘Timothy!’ Trixie admonished him. ‘It’s a secret.’

‘Sorry – forgot!’

‘Who?’ Arthur demanded. This was the first he was hearing of it. Hetty had certainly never mentioned an attachment in her letters, he would have remembered that – but why should she choose to confide in Timothy, rather than him?

Timothy shrugged. ‘Someone from her youth.’

‘Timothy!’

‘Blast – forgot again.’

Trixie fixed her brother with a withering glare that subsided, after a moment, into a more contemplative expression – something which, to those who knew her, ought inspire far more wariness. ‘We must help Hetty catch this fellow,’ she decided.

Arthur reached for a bread roll. ‘What makes you feel she needs your aid?’

Trixie hesitated before she answered. As sharp as she might be with her brothers, she was far more conscious of hurting Hetty’s feelings. ‘You will understand, once you have seen her … out and about,’ she said at last. Then, after considering the matter for a moment, she added: ‘Perhaps if he thought she was ill, or dead, he might come flying to her side in a panic, realising he has loved her all along.’

‘Literature suggests that to be a plan fraught with difficulty,’ Arthur noted with a smile.

‘Literature has no place at breakfast,’ Timothy pronounced darkly.

‘We won’t get anywhere by doing nothing,’ Trixie castigated them both. ‘You must bestir yourselves!’

Timothy was rather offended. ‘I have bestirred myself! Helped her with her dresses, didn’t I?’ He subsided rather grumpily into his coffee – truly, was a gentleman not permitted to breakfast in peace any more? – but, after a moment spent considering his elder brother, emerged once more: ‘I do not mind telling you, Arthur, that perhaps you ought to follow Hetty’s suit. I do not at all like the cut of that coat.’

Arthur thanked him for his kind attention.

‘Not kindness,’ Timothy assured him. ‘Does me no credit if my brother’s looking a ragamuffin.’

‘Could you not be a little more understanding?’ Trixie sprang to Arthur’s defence. ‘He has just returned from war, recollect.’

‘Well, if all our fellows were dressed so poorly, it’s no wonder the Frenchies fled,’ Timothy said indignantly. ‘Dashed frightening!’

Arthur struggled between a desire to box Timothy’s ears and to laugh. In the end, Trixie’s own peal of mirth was too infectious to resist, and so it was to this picture of idyllic familial bliss that Lady Allerton swept into the room, arrayed magnificently in a clinging gown of Pomona-green silk. She beamed at the sight, but her arrival – serving to remind Arthur of their less than blissful conversation the day before – had his amusement slipping away, though he maintained a cheery demeanour until the rest of the family departed for their day of excursions.

He spent the rest of the morning reacquainting himself with the household, a process that caused him to feel both calmer and more concerned than he had at the wake of the day. Calmer, for no member of staff appeared to be aware of their financial straits – being paid on time and in full – but concerned by how often Hetty’s name had been quoted in reference to the running of the household. The new cook, Dawson had told him, was excellent: Miss Clithero had recommended her employment; his lordship’s funeral was beautiful, Mrs Strout, the housekeeper, had assured him: Miss Hetty had done such a lovely job in organising it; Kitteridge, the head groomsman, was going to wash the carriage today, for Miss Clithero had suggested it was high time for a spring clean. Hetty had been kept busy, plainly.

He tried, however, to put this worry aside as he scaled the stairs to his father’s study: one problem at a time. Yet he could not help but feel, as he regarded the sea of papers about him, that this was less of a problem and more of a hell. The figures seemed to swim before his eyes, becoming more incomprehensible – not less – as he tried to decipher them. He had never had much of a head for numbers, but still, even the greatest mathematician of the age would, he suspected, struggle to follow the workings of the late Lord Allerton, while Thimbleby’s correspondence provided no great elucidation, for he assumed a great deal of knowledge that Arthur currently lacked.

The most Arthur could do, after several hours of increasing frustration, was gather into one pile all the tradesmen’s bills he could identify from the chaos, a task which might have afforded him some satisfaction had the pile not been so intimidatingly enormous by the end.

With very little to show for his efforts that day, aside from a visit to the tailor that he could scarcely afford, it was an Arthur worn a little thinner who followed the signs of merriment towards the drawing room that evening. He paused for a moment upon the threshold to admire the charming scene within: the fire crackling in the hearth – despite the advancing months, the evenings still held a chill in the air – and candles flickering in the sconces cast rather a golden light over the room. The family were all arrayed in their finery, for they were bound for the theatre after dinner: Lady Allerton resplendent in a gown of fawn figured silk; Timothy in an exquisitely simple black coat and pantaloons that had nonetheless taken almost an hour to perfect; Trixie in fetching jonquil crape, her spangled scarf cast aside to concentrate wholly upon the game of lottery tickets laid out upon the table. So absorbed were she and Timothy in this endeavour – which they would, outside the walls of Berkeley Square, publicly castigate as child’s play – that Arthur had no compunction in pulling his mother a little aside and telling her, in a low voice: ‘I intend to post down to Belcourt tomorrow. There is so much unclear, in Papa’s records … I am hopeful Mr Holland might be able to shed some light over what has occurred.’

Lady Allerton laid a hand upon his arm. ‘Oh darling, I hope you have not permitted Thimbleby to blue-devil you? Recollect how it is with financial fellows: I do believe they try to frighten us so that we continue to employ them – the fiends!’

His mother’s attitude might have been comical had it not been so very concerning. ‘Nonetheless, I must go.’