Page 13 of Henrietta

Lady Allerton bit her lip. ‘But your attendance is already expected at Almack’s, tomorrow – and I have promised your presence at Lady Davenport and Mrs Bagnall’s assemblies! It would be frightfully rude for you to cry off.’

Arthur frowned at her. ‘You should have asked me before doing so, Mama.’

‘Don’t be cross,’ she appealed. ‘Indeed, I think it will be good for you to enjoy some levity – you don’t wish to become the prim and prosy sort that is forever talking about finances, do you?’

Regarding his parent with a fascinated eye, Arthur asked: ‘Mama, you do understand why I wish to go to Belcourt, don’t you? Surely you comprehend the severity of our situation?’

‘Good gracious, Arthur, of course I do!’ Arthur sent a prayer of thanks for the heavens, for he had begun to think her denial a sort of madness. ‘I declare I can scarcely recall when I was last able to pay a bill – and the tiresome thing is that there are now so many of them in my desk that I can’t open it!’

Arthur rescinded his prayer of thanks. ‘How have you contrived to continue living in this style?’

‘Oh, well, my love, upon credit! Everyone has been most obliging – and the ill-mannered ones that weren’t, well, Hetty and I sorted that out. So you see, I am not the villain that Thimbleby would paint me as!’

Arthur stilled. ‘You have confided in Hetty about our … difficulties?’

‘Oh, no,’ her ladyship assured him. ‘I should never be so indiscreet – only this fellow from Billingsgate was becoming so nasty that I could not wait any longer. I landed upon the notion of selling some of my jewels, you see – I have so many that half of them are collecting dust, which seems silly. Hetty, wonderful creature, sorted the whole thing in a trice – Thimbleby was no help at all, of course, for all his bleating – and my diamonds went for a very pretty penny.’

‘The family diamonds?’

Reading judgement in the question, Lady Allerton fired up at once. ‘If you mean to say that they belong to you, I know it! But, pray, what use would you have for them? You can hardly wear them – and even if you could,’ she went on reflectively, ‘you truly would be better off wearing sapphires, Arthur, for blue has always suited you best!’

Ignoring this recommendation, Arthur continued doggedly on: ‘Are you not wearing the family diamonds now?’

‘Oh!’ A mischievous twinkle sprang to Lady Allerton’s eye. ‘That was Hetty’s initiative. Would you believe these are a copy?’

Arthur, taking in the clasp of glittering jewels about his mother’s neck, would not, indeed, believe it. Connoisseurship of precious stones was not one of his competencies, but he knew Hetty. Trixie might have the reputation as the hoodwinker in the family, and rightly so, but Hetty’s machinations had always been of the neater variety. As he gazed at the glittering, authentic ‘copy’ around Lady Allerton’s neck, Arthur felt that he had a pretty accurate idea of what trick she had managed to achieve here – and it would have been admirable if it were not so damnably mortifying.

Lady Allerton gave him another pat upon the arm, as if she had just given him some reassurance rather than further cause for worry, before wondering aloud: ‘But where is Hetty? It is nearing eight o’clock.’

It had not been Hetty’s intent to make a grand entrance. The first of her new gowns had arrived at Berkeley Square that very afternoon – a piece of efficiency that pleased and dismayed Hetty in equal measure, for now she had to muster the courage to actually wear the thing, which was far harder here than it had seemed in the cosy safety of the modiste’s, and she spent an age prevaricating in front of the looking glass. Finally, in concession to the demands of the clock – and her increasingly impatient dresser – Hetty left her chambers, fervently hoping that the Allertons would be too wrapped up in Arthur’s arrival to make a comment upon it.

‘Hetty!’ Lady Allerton exclamation was almost a shriek as Hetty slipped into the drawing room. ‘What an exquisite new gown.’

‘You did not get that from Mrs Butterworth,’ Trixie said enviously.

Timothy, meanwhile, raised a quizzing glass. ‘Yes, very good,’ he murmured.

Hetty, arrayed in the new gown of sea green, with her curls brushed until they shone rich chestnut, felt herself blush furiously. ‘Thank you,’ she muttered, fighting an urge to fidget at her hems, feeling horribly exposed. Why on earth had she thought it acceptable to agree to such a low bodice?

‘You look marvellous,’ Lady Allerton enthused, ‘Does she not, Arthur?’

Arthur still reeling from Lady Allerton’s confidences, discovered that he could not yet look at Hetty. Affecting deafness, he turned his attention, instead, to Timothy, and the quizzing glass that was evaluating the trimming of Hetty’s gown.

‘When did you begin carrying such a thing?’

‘Would you like one?’ Timothy turned one grotesquely magnified eye in Arthur’s direction.

‘Certainly not. One might as well lug around a telescope.’

Timothy shook his head firmly. ‘Oughtn’t do that, Arthur, dashed eccentric! Get a quizzing glass, much more the thing.’

Hetty could not help but let out a soft laugh, and Arthur turned instinctively towards her, the impulse to share her amusement so deep within him, that he did so without conscious thought – only, as soon as he caught her eye, the smile fell from his face.

‘Arthur,’ Lady Allerton cut in insistently, ‘don’t you think Hetty looks marvellous?’

Hetty – who had previously only held the warmest of feelings for Lady Allerton – could quite happily have throttled her.

‘Yes, certainly.’ Arthur forced a smile. ‘Let us go down to dinner, shall we?’