Henrietta (7 page)

Lady Belding bit back the angry remark that rose to her lips. The Reckfords were socially powerful and she must be careful to do nothing to thwart her daughter’s ambitions.

Alice Belding narrowed her pretty eyes. If the Beau and his sister meant to bring the dreary Henrietta into fashion, they were probably doing it out of sheer kindness. After all, Henrietta was positively
old.
But perhaps she had better establish her friendship with Henrietta if it meant that she could thereby see more of the Reckfords. Accordingly, she tripped forward and hugged the surprised Henrietta with great warmth.

“Why, mama, you are too severe on my dear friend! It is not as if Henrietta has had our social advantages,” cried Alice, admiring her reflection in the looking glass over Henrietta’s shoulder. “Henrietta shall stay in London and I will not let any of you say her nay!”

Henrietta started to mutter ungratefully that she was not in need of a champion but the Beau gave Alice a warm smile of appreciation. He must have been mistaken in her. She was a thoughtful and kind girl after all… and extremely beautiful.

Catching his admiring look at Alice, Henrietta felt all the warmth and light go out of her day. Then Lord Reckford bowed his handsome head over her hand. “I should be honored if you would drive with me in the park tomorrow afternoon, Miss Sandford.” The sun shone out again behind Henrietta’s clouds and she raised her head to accept when Alice rushed forward. “Why, we would be delighted! Would not we, my dear.”

The Beau looked down at Henrietta’s face and wondered why he had ever considered it expressionless.

One minute she had looked radiant and the next as if the world had come to an end. “My apologies to you Miss Belding,” said Lord Reckford, “but there is only room in my curricle for one passenger.”

“Oh, I am sure Henrietta will not mind us going without her,” said Alice blithely, bringing her long eyelashes into play.

Lord Reckford rapidly revised his recent favorable opinion of Alice. Why, the girl was as pushing and forward as a Cit.

“You misunderstood me, Miss Belding,” he said with a steely note creeping into his voice. “The invitation was issued to Miss Sandford.”

Alice flushed and her eyes began to glitter dangerously. Lady Belding realized that her daughter was about to throw one of her well-known temper tantrums and they hurriedly made their goodbyes.

“Until tomorrow then,” said the Beau, bending to kiss Henrietta’s hand. He raised his head and tawny eyes met hazel for a long moment. A thin tenuous thread of emotion seemed to momentarily join the pair. Then with another bow to Miss Scattersworth, the Beau was gone, leaving Henrietta to place the hand he had kissed against her cheek.

Miss Mattie looked at her anxiously. “Do not be overcome with passion, my dear. Passion is a very dangerous animal.”

Henrietta gave her infectious giggle. “Really, Mattie, what will you say next? What a morning! Now, no one else can
possibly
call.”

Suddenly the door was flung open and brother Henry bustled into the room in great haste followed by his curate, Mr. John Symes. Henry’s elaborate garb made the drab clericals of Mr. Symes look positively poverty-stricken. He swept past the astonished Henrietta and ran about the room, picking up
objets d’art
one after the other and carrying them to the light.

Mr. Symes, an elderly white haired man with a stoop which betokened years of servitude, gave his vicar an embarrassed look and went to sit down beside Miss Mattie.

“What on earth are you
doing
, Henry,” asked Henrietta at last.

“I am looking at all this waste of money on trivia… all this sheer extravagance,” spluttered Henry.

“All this ‘sheer extravagance’ as you call it, is part of the estate left me by Mrs. Tankerton,” said Henrietta, eyeing the silver buttons on her brother’s coat with disdain.

He gave her a look of relieved surprise. Thoroughly annoyed, Henrietta went on, “But do remember, dear brother, it is
my
fortune and I shall dissipate it in any way I please.”

“Of course, my dear, of course,” said Henry soothingly. “But I am sure, for all your wealth, you will not forget the poor of your old parish. They are always in sore need of money.”

Henrietta shrewdly decided that Henry’s tailor was in sore need of money but wisely held her tongue. Instead she turned to Mr. Symes. “Since you have more to do with the poor of the parish than my brother, Mr. Symes, I shall give you a draft on my bank and you may use the money as you think fit.”

Henry gave an almost audible moan. Once his curate had his hands on the money then he, Henry, would most assuredly never see a penny of it. Mr. Symes cheerfully did far more than his share of work but helping the poor was his one great enthusiasm. “If I take any of it, he would probably report me to the Bishop,” thought Henry, giving his meek curate a venomous look.

“Of course, dear brother, I am quite prepared to keep you in funds. I realize you have certain pressing bills,” said his sister.

Henry stared at her in amazement and gratitude. “Well, now, I call that very generous of you, Henrietta. Very generous indeed!”

“In return,” she went on as if he had not spoken. “I expect you to leave me to enjoy my Season. I think your friends, the Beldings, will be formidable enough opposition as it is.”

“Of course, of course,” said Henry placing a chaste kiss on her cheek. “In fact I shall visit you often in order to escort you on occasion. I am said to be a very pretty dancer,” he added complacently.

His sister thanked him in a faint voice and patiently waited for him to take his leave. But to her surprise, her brother sat down and began to regale her with tales of various parish events. To her even greater surprise, these were often very witty. She felt more in charity with him than she had ever felt before and after a pleasant half an hour, it was with a certain reluctance that she watched him leave.

She turned to Miss Mattie to discuss the astonishing visit but found that her friend was sitting bolt upright on the sofa with a rapt expression on her face. “Do attend to me Mattie. Was not Henry in surprising good form?”

Miss Mattie came slowly back from some faraway country of the mind and focused on Henrietta. “He is a saint. I can see him riding to some Crusade on his charger. I shall wait and weep of course, but how proud I shall be.”

Henrietta patiently took her friend’s hand in her own. “What has come over you, Mattie? Henry was surprising cordial but he is always too much of this world of society to
ever
be considered a saint.”

“I was talking of Mr. Symes,” sighed Miss Mattie. “Did you notice his noble forehead? Did you note the tinge of passion in his voice when he was conveying to me Mrs. Church’s recipe for tansey-pudding?”

“I am afraid I was not attending. Why, Mattie! You are in love with the curate!”

Miss Mattie nodded and trailed from the room with her hand to her brow. Then she swept round on the threshold with a gesture worthy of Mrs. Siddons and declaimed, “I shall carry my secret to the grave and should they cut open my heart, engraved on it will be…. ‘John Symes.’”

After she had gone, Henrietta sat down at a pretty escritoire, sharpened her quill and prepared to go over the household accounts. She could only hope that Miss Mattie’s passion for the curate would modify her style of dress.

Mattie’s behavior had been embarrassing and infuriating. Henrietta bit her lip in vexation. She really
must
tell Mattie not to behave so. But… but Mattie would cry and would really be crushed. “I will just have to make the best of things,” sighed Henrietta.

But Henrietta wished heartily with a certain guilt that she did not “have to make this best of things…”

By evening, Henrietta felt exhausted with the emotional strain of waiting for the next day to arrive and bring Lord Reckford. She had also spent a frenetic afternoon searching for the exact bonnet to charm the Beau. At last she had settled on a dashing shako—if it rained—and a charming chip straw—if the sun shone. Her neck quite ached from watching the sky, trying to foretell tomorrow’s weather. She had considered everything but the wind. By the time her maid undressed her for bed, an unseasonal gale was reminding fashionable London of wilder, more unsheltered country. It shrieked through the canyons of the old buildings in the City and then raced in a hurly-burly, vulgar fashion up the reaches of the Strand to shriek and moan and form violent whirlwinds in the elegant squares and tree-lined streets of the West End.

Henrietta climbed into bed, blew out her candle and then tossed and turned sleeplessly as she listened to the tumult outside. Somewhere in the house a loose shutter banged and the whole building heaved and shook like a ship riding out a stormy sea. Suddenly, the wind dropped abruptly and in the ensuing silence, a disembodied whisper sounded in the room. “You are going mad, Henrietta. Mad! Mad! Ma…a…a…d!”

She sat bolt upright in bed and lit her candle with shaking fingers. The gale sprang up again and the candle flame danced and flickered sending sinister shadows running round the walls. But though she sat as still as a mouse, straining her ears against the noise of the storm, there was no reoccurence of the mysterious voice.

T
HE NEXT DAY DAWNED
bright and sunny and, as Henrietta prepared for her excursion to the park, she decided that she must have imagined the episode of the mysterious voice.

Miss Mattie fluttered after her, almost as nervous as Henrietta herself. “My dear,” she exclaimed, clasping her hands together, “now that I am aware of the tender passions, I know how you must feel. The palpitating bosom, the trembling legs, the…”

Her effusions were mercifully interrupted by Hobbard who handed Henrietta a parcel. “This is for you, Miss Sandford,” he said. “A messenger has just delivered it.”

Henrietta opened the wrappings and found a square wooden box of Turkish Delight with a neat white card lying on top of the sweetmeats. It said simply, “Sweets to the sweet. Yr. devoted admirer.”

“It must be from Lord Reckford,” breathed Miss Mattie. “You must try one.”

Henrietta hesitated, her hand hovering over the box. “I am sure his lordship would send a more original message, Mattie, and he would certainly put his name to it.”

But she adored sweets and the succulent squares with their powdering of sugar were the most tempting things she had ever seen. “Well, just one,” she said, popping a large piece in her mouth and then swallowing it hurriedly as Lord Reckford was announced.

With a rising sense of excitement and anticipation, she had not felt since she was a child, Henrietta was handed up by Lord Reckford into his curricle. His team was fresh and restive and he gave them all his attention, guiding them down the street at a brisk trot, driving them well up to their bits. As they turned into Hyde Park, he finally addressed his companion. “What a dreadful storm we had last night. I was awakened by a terrible crash about three in the morning. One of the chimneys had crashed down through the attics. Mercifully, no one was hurt.”

Receiving no reply from his fair companion, he reined in his teams of greys and turned to look down at her. She sat very still, very quiet, her face bidden by the brim of her hat. “Miss Sandford! Miss Sandford? Is anything amiss?” No reply. He removed his gloves of York tan and reaching out his long fingers, took Henrietta’s chin in his hand and turned her face towards him.

Henrietta was far away on another plain, a dream country where the grass was made of green glass and the sunlight snaked through the trees in rivers of molten gold and she felt sure, if she sat very still, small beautiful wild creatures of ivory and silver would slowly appear.

Lord Reckford dropped her chin. Her eyes were unfocussed and the pupils like pinpoints. He swore under his breath and took a hurried look round. They were on the broad southern avenue that paralleled Rotten Row. Rotten Row—an English contraction of the French,
Route en Roi
—was an unsurfaced road of loose sand and gravel which would be jammed to capacity during the fashionable hour.

He had deliberately arrived a quarter of an hour early so that all the arriving fashionable throng could see him with Henrietta. He knew his worth as a leader of fashion to the last inch. Henrietta would be the envy of all the debutantes and a subject for speculation among the gentlemen. Now he was anxious to escape before anyone could catch so much as a glimpse of his companion. In the distance, he could see the heavy old family coach of the Beldings, its recently revarnished panels shining in the sun, come lumbering towards the Row.

He flicked his leader deftly with his whip and in less than ten minutes was carrying his companion into her house in Brook Street.

Miss Mattie shooed him into a small saloon where he laid Henrietta on a day bed. “I see it all,” cried Miss Mattie tragically.

“You do!” exclaimed Lord Reckford in surprise. “I would not have thought that Miss Sandford was in the habit of…” But he was interrupted by the forceful Mattie.

“Yes, yes,” she cried. “Your horses bolted with you. Henrietta tried to assist you. People screamed. The carriage swayed dangerously. A low branch stunned her. She collapsed in your arms. Oh, how terrible! Oh, how romantic!”

“The branches of the trees in Hyde Park are pruned so that they do not…” Lord Reckford began acidly and then stopped. “Really, Miss Scattersworth. You are getting me carried away by your nonsense.” He glared at poor Miss Mattie who blushed and hung her head.

Lord Reckford was a notable whip and could drive to an inch. And now this damned female, instead of helping him, was babbling away about his horses bolting with him.

“I am sorry to deliver myself of such a mundane explanation, Miss Scattersworth, but Miss Sandford is suffering from having taken an amount of some drug, probably opium.”

Miss Mattie looked at him in horror and came down to earth with a bang. “What can I do?” she asked in a reassuringly practical voice. “Shall I send for the physician?”

He shook his head. “Miss Sandford is now in a heavy sleep from which she will emerge in an hour or two completely unharmed. Is she in the habit of taking drugs?”