Page 86 of Henrietta

‘It’s Lady Allerton and the Grandduchess, Lady Allerton and the Grandduchess – and … yes! She has her again!’

As the horses on the field sped away from the starting line, Timothy and Trixie let out cheers – Trixie, laughing, turned to share her amusement with Arthur. Yet he was suddenly not attending. Following the direction of his gaze, she found Hetty, who was standing with the Morgans. She was looking, Trixie felt, rather lovely that day, and so plainly trying to temper her excitement in the race to an acceptable level that Trixie’s amusement was renewed. Only Arthur did not seem to share this amusement. Indeed, he did not look as if he found the sight pleasing at all.

‘Has he always looked at Hetty in such a way?’ she asked Timothy later, back at Berkeley Square. ‘All … sidelong glances and the like.’

‘I do not have time for such fustian!’ Timothy – an uninterested confidant – told her severely. ‘I have to accompany Mother to Gunter’s to finalise the order for the ball – she’s made a great many foolish additions that I need to resolve.’

In the absence of a willing conspirator, Trixie decided she might have more luck posing her question directly to the source.

‘I don’t steal glances at Arthur!’ Hetty insisted, jerking her gaze up from issue of La Belle Assemblée that she had been studying in the small saloon at the back of the house.

There was such a tone of defensiveness in her voice that Trixie frowned. ‘I was speaking of Arthur’s glances,’ she explained, ‘not yours.’

‘Glances? When did he – what sort of glances?’

In her eagerness, Hetty could not hide her interest. Noting this, Trixie took the fragments of evidence she had been gathering for these weeks past, and began to arrange them in a whole new configuration.

‘Do you love him?’ she demanded.

Flushing hotly, Hetty was about to deny this accusation, before realising – just in time – the foolishness of such a tactic.

‘Of course I do,’ she said instead. ‘I love you all dearly, as I hope you know.’

‘The way you speak to him’ – Trixie began ticking the evidence off on her fingers – ‘the way you look at him, the way you are not jealous over the Marquis as you should be if your feelings were engaged …’

‘Trixie—’

‘The way you wrote to him, over and over, while he was away!’

‘Pray, what has that to say to anything?’ Hetty tried. ‘To me, he is like – ah – an elder brother I never had.’

That settled it. ‘Hetty, what a hum! He is my brother, and I never wrote to him above twice in my life!’

CHAPTER XXVII.

THAT evening, the presence of the Allertons had been requested at the grand fête hosted by White’s Club. All invited were hopeful of a magnificent display of British hospitality, and this expectation was not disappointed. The company began to assemble at nine – the gentlemen in full dress coats, naval and military uniforms, the ladies in their most formal gowns and feathers – entering the vast ballroom of Burlington House to find it decorated entirely in white muslin.

The whole of the fashionable world had been invited, and the royal party arrived last, of course: in the centre, there had been arranged a chair for the Prince Regent, to which he was conducted upon his arrival with all the usual etiquette by the Dukes of Richmond, Beaufort and Grafton. On the right and left were six other state chairs, covered with crimson velvet, for the use of his foreign guests, amongst whom was the Tsar himself, and the Grandduchess, appearing in such a blaze of diamonds as to dazzle the eye.

Indeed, everything was arranged on such dazzling lines that Lady Allerton would have been cast into despair had not she decided, as she explained to Mrs Corcott, that ‘our ball will be a more intimate affair, of course – just good friends, enjoying some simplicity after all this grandeur’.

‘Oh, you always know just how to manage things!’ Mrs Corcott praised her. ‘How clever you are!’

Arthur tried to catch Hetty’s eye, but found her occupied. Indeed, she seemed to be receiving more than the usual degree of notice, from Ladies Sefton and Cowper in particular – though since both of these ladies’ families were riddled with cousins and nephews they were keen to attach to fortune, this ought not to have been very mysterious to Arthur. As it was, watching Hetty exchange pleasantries with no sign of a blush upon her face, he was struck, suddenly, by how very different she seemed lately.

The company began to dance at half past twelve o’clock, starting with waltzes by the Tsar and the Countess of Jersey, and most of the foreign princes, none of whom apparently intended to stand on much ceremony that evening. Arthur approached Hetty and extended a hand toward her.

‘Will you do me the honour?’

It was on the tip of her tongue to accept, when Hetty recollected herself. ‘Certainly – only not until after supper, I’m afraid.’

‘We have only just arrived,’ he objected.

‘Well – Nicolet asked me to promise him a waltz, and then last night, when I could not dance with Mr Craven or Mr Grafton, I offered them each the quadrille, and then Mr Hargan—’

Trixie, coming up behind them and hearing the tail end of this comment, exclaimed, ‘Oh, Arthur, you will have to be quicker than that now. Hetty has become all the rage!’

Hetty shook her head, sending a chiding look towards Trixie, but as she was whisked away to join the first set, it occurred to Arthur that Trixie might have had had a point.