Chapter 1 #2
They set Nancy and her bag down at the coaching inn that would convey her to her sister’s. Henrietta slipped a few guineas of her own into his lordship’s purse, and Lady Bess added to the weight. They accepted Nancy’s tearful thanks and waved her off with good wishes.
Henrietta’s sense of victory wobbled as James turned the carriage toward Lady Bess’s townhome. That line was in stone, and there was no crossing back.
“I wonder what his lordship will do when Nancy doesn’t return?”
Lady Bess stroked her muff. “I know him, and I know his circumstances. He can’t touch Bessington, and if he wants to accuse me of anything, I’ll make the full story known. That he asked me to relieve him of an unwanted child he’d forced upon a helpless girl in his employ.”
Henrietta swallowed the taste of triumph turning sour. “Once I’m presented, I’ll likely be recognized on these little escapades.”
“We can find other uses for your talents, like leading debates.” Lady Bess’s keen eye turned soft. “This is a grand step for you, Hetty.”
Henrietta tried to laugh. “A great leap from the daughter of a tradesman to the daughter of a knight, and a fair way to fall.”
“Apollonia would be so proud of you, dear.”
Henrietta sniffed away the sting of tears.
Meetings and debates of the Minerva Society were open to all, but only a few comprised the elite inner circle, the Daughters of Minerva.
Her mother had been a votary, and if Henrietta became one too, she would prove herself Apollonia Wardley’s daughter at last.
“You’ll sponsor me, then?”
James drew to a halt before stately Bessington House, in St. James’s Square, and Lady Bess gathered her skirts as a footman emerged to help her alight from the carriage.
“You’re well-liked, Hetty, and the others will approve of your helping me this morning.
But remember, your Aunt Althea and Pell Mell have influence in places I don’t. They move in different circles.”
Henrietta nodded, swallowing hard. In the Minerva Society, she’d found a company of equals, a fit for her energies and convictions the likes of which she hadn’t known since school at Miss Gregoire’s.
She dreaded being thrust into higher circles, but if a presentation at court could promote the causes dear to her heart—
“Very well,” Henrietta said. “I’ll go through with it.”
Lady Bess squeezed Henrietta’s gloved hand. “Courage, m’dear. A levee at St. James hasn’t been the death of a British citizen in any number of years.”
“Then why does it feel as if I’m St. Perpetua being thrown to the lions?” Henrietta muttered. Lady Bess laughed and waved her away as James urged the horses to walk on, carrying Henrietta back to Hines House to prepare for her afternoon on the rack.
Henrietta, having no head for fashion, didn’t suspect her court gown was not quite the thing until she perceived her brother’s expression as she approached the blue parlor, her broad and ancient skirts sweeping the floor like a soupy wave.
“Good Gad, Hetty! Everyone’s going to be looking at you. Who put you in that awful rig?”
“Great-aunt Davinia sent her old court wardrobe for my use.” Regarding the half-closed doorway of the parlor, Henrietta threw her elaborate train over one arm, clamped a hand to her towering headdress, crushed the panniers at her sides with her elbows, and launched herself through the doorframe.
Once in the room, her train fell, her hoops exploded, and she twirled and weaved like a trained bear to keep her padded, powdered wig from toppling off her head.
“Aunt Althea said I would do. You don’t agree?”
Sir Charleton Wardley-Hines snorted and lashed his leg with his decorative sword.
Henrietta’s elder by two years, he had come to London after university to be entered on the Official Roll as the 8th Baronet Wardley and had thereafter taken up with riotous circles.
He made no secret of the burden he felt at being called upon to pause in his dissolutions to launch his unfashionable sister upon society.
“Aunt Althea don’t want you to shine down Marsi,” he grumbled. “I hope she hasn’t given you notions about this Season. Best not put too fine a point upon it, old girl—you ain’t likely to take.”
Henrietta paused before a small gilded mirror and poked at the ostrich feather drooping over one eye.
Once, her goals had simply been to set her stepmother’s household running smoothly and settle her brother down with a wife, then withdraw to her estate of Birch Vale to acquire her mills and experiment with reforms. Then her sister Fanny died, her father was granted a knighthood, and it was decided the family would remove to London for Jasper’s investiture and to put her stepmother, Clarinda, back in spirits.
“I don’t expect to take, Charley. Too old, for one thing.” At five-and-twenty, she was well past the age for a society debut. “And for another—well.” She pointed to her face. “The family resemblance works in your favor rather than mine.”
On Henrietta, the bold Wardley nose was too big, the mouth too broad, the square jaw decidedly unfeminine, and the high, spare cheekbones too severe. Her eyes were flat gray, almost colorless, her hair a dusty, unremarkable red brown.
But she had a keen mind, many interests, and a voice that carried well in crowded lecture halls and debating rooms. Add to that, she had nice, strong, square teeth. Henrietta bared them at herself in the mirror.
“I think Hetty looks quite regal.”
Miss Marsibel Pomeroy flowed into the room, a vision of silk and lace. Henrietta beamed at her. One of the benefits of London was finding her shy, mousy cousin had bloomed into an interesting, if rather reserved, young lady.
“You needn’t be nervous,” Marsi assured her. “’Tis a long, tedious wait, then over in a moment, and the Queen won’t speak a word to you.”
“Unless my costume comes apart, or I faint.” Henrietta prodded the stiff panel lined with lurid green ribbons pinned to the front of her robe. “Anyone who claims women are the frailer sex has never spent a day in a stomacher.”
Charley rolled his eyes. “Let me guess. Another favorite complaint of the Minerva Society is the style of female dress.”
“I have been granted the honor of leading the next debate, and I may select the topic,” Henrietta said with pride. “The papers say the great ladies of Paris have taken to garbing themselves like peasants in the republican cause. Imagine the liberty of movement!”
“Henrietta Wardley-Hines.” Lady Althea Pomeroy sailed through the parlor door. “You will refrain from spouting Jacobin sentiments at the Queen’s levee.” She twirled a finger in the air. “Turn about.”
“Olympe de Gouges wrote in her Declaration that female citizens of a new French republic should hold the same rights as men.” Henrietta kicked at her heavy mass of skirts, submitting to her aunt’s inspection.
“French sentiments, suitable for French subjects. I guessed that Clarinda would not trouble herself about your jewels, so I brought something for you.” Aunt Althea held up an enormous collar of emeralds and diamonds.
Henrietta caught her breath as the cold, heavy necklace settled around her throat. “Another gift from Aunt Davinia? I would rather see it given to the Minerva Society’s collection drive for the settlement in Sierra Leone. This collar could support any number of freed people in a new life.”
“Henrietta Eglantine Wardley-Hines.” Althea pressed a finger to the small frown that Henrietta often seemed to provoke.
“It may have amused Aunt Davinia to send you to that eccentric girl’s school, but you are in London now, where society is not as forgiving.
People still say my sister Apollonia threw herself away on a mill owner, and that was three decades ago. ”
Charley slapped his leg with his sword again, and Henrietta smoothed away a scowl.
Jasper Hines may have been born in a northern crofter’s cottage, but by the time he came to court the eldest Wardley daughter, he could offer her five mills, a shipping business that brought his raw cotton in and ferried the finished cloth out, and a gracious estate in the Rossendale Fells in return for her hand and her ancient name, which he adopted.
“And your father may have reached even higher for his second marriage,” Aunt Althea went on, guiding Henrietta to the mirror above the mantel so she might poke the drooping ostrich feathers back into Henrietta’s wig. “But everyone knows he offered the Earl of Warrefield a fortune for Clarinda.”
Henrietta choked beneath the necklace, the gown, these judgments she so loathed.
Aunt Althea’s society didn’t care that the Wardley-Hines empire, which included canals, shipping interests, and textile mills, employed the inhabitants of five parishes and endowed almshouses, orphanages, and schools across two counties.
They were involved in trade, and trade was demeaning.
“I suppose people will say that my father bought his knighthood as well,” Henreitta said.
For the Wardley-Hines income had also furnished a large loan to the Crown to support a militia protecting British interests in Mysore, and the conclusion of hostilities in March resulted in honors all around, including the Order of Knight Bachelor for Jasper Wardley-Hines.
“I cannot help what people say, Henrietta,” Aunt Althea said. “I can only beg you to remember, for your brother’s sake and mine, that the Wardley name still carries some dignity.”
As Henrietta moved away from the mirror, the catastrophic sound of rending fabric filled the room. She slapped both hands to her mouth, holding back a giggle at her aunt’s horrified expression.
“I fear that portends the state of my dignity, Aunt Althea!” Henrietta intoned, striking a theatrical pose which did not amuse her aunt in the least.