Chapter 1 #3
Marsibel, the peacemaker, rushed to her rescue, untangling Henrietta’s skirts from the firedogs and fetching Lady Clarinda’s sewing basket from the table. Henrietta spoke around the pins in her mouth as she repaired her hem.
“Miss Wollstonecraft writes in her Vindication that it is a disservice to teach young women only to concern themselves with appearance rather than equip them with practical skills. I wonder if that would be a fruitful topic for debate?”
“Miss Wollstonecraft would be a great deal more amiable if she would dispense with her endless complaints about women.” Aunt Althea frowned at the white ribbon around Henrietta’s sleeve. “Still, Hetty? It has been a year.”
“Not quite. Lady Mama is wearing one too.” Henrietta blinked back tears.
Charley scoffed. “Can’t see why you’re still mourning Fanny when Clarinda’s adding to her nursery again. I suppose Jasper wants a boy this time?”
“Mama, do you suppose I—?” Marsibel indicated her own sleeve.
“No, my dear. The child was not your full cousin, only Henrietta’s half-sister. Now, where is Sir Pelton? It is time we set out.”
Sir Pelton Pomeroy strode into the parlor with his ceremonial sword swinging at his side, the badge of his order gleaming upon his chest, and his wig curled, powdered, and padded almost as high as the ladies’.
Once a hot-headed MP from Devon known as Pell Mell, Sir Pelton had risen to a respected and crucial post in Prime Minister Pitt’s cabinet, and no matter what the young dandies might think of him, he would wear his wig into his grave.
Sir Pelton bowed to his wife and daughter, then turned to his niece. “My dear Hetty. You look—”
“Like a dodo, or an emu,” Henrietta confirmed. “A big, fluffy, flightless bird.” She swept up her train and grimaced as she glimpsed an exposed pin.
“I think there’s a portrait of your Aunt Davinia wearing that dress in one of the royal palaces,” Sir Pelton said. “In fact, Her Majesty may recognize it.”
“All to the good if she does,” Henrietta said. “Then no one will inquire why the daughter of a man who made his fortune in cotton mills is wearing miles and miles of silk.”
They filed out the door and commenced the complicated task of fitting three sets of hooped skirts and headdresses and the gentlemen’s swords into the Pomeroy town coach, and Henrietta wondered briefly where Nancy was. Well on her way, or safely at her sister’s already?
Henrietta envied her. Nancy was also embarking on a new stage of her life, but one of freedom and self-governance.
The coachman cracked his whip over the set of six matched bays, and Henrietta’s stomach jolted with nervousness as the coach rolled forward.
She feared her new stage of life would mean fewer freedoms, not more.
Sir Pelton folded his hands over his middle and stretched out his legs. “Well, Hetty, what have you been up to this week?”
Henrietta’s fingertips went cold with panic. Had her uncle heard of her exploits that morning?
“Making a cake of herself, as usual,” Charley said. “Peddling pamphlets about the book rooms and tea shops, begging people for money.”
“For good cause,” Henrietta said. “One of the girls from the Benevolence Hospital opened her dress shop this week, and she’s taken several girls on as apprentices.
Tomorrow the St. Marylebone Ladies Auxiliary visits the parish workhouse.
” She sent her brother a lightly scolding look.
“And tonight, Charley is escorting Marsi and me to Lord Ellesmere’s to see his latest acquisitions. ”
“I advise you to tread lightly on the subject of your debate, puss,” Sir Pelton said. “With the London Corresponding Society and Charles James Fox firing tempers with their radical talk, Pitt’s on the hunt for any whiff of sedition. Marsi, my pet, when did you develop an interest in Greek marbles?”
“Lord Pinochle suggested he will attend this evening,” Aunt Althea said.
“Surely we can do better than Pinochle for our Marsi,” Sir Pelton said. “Hetty, you rely on Charley alone to keep the fortune hunters and rakehells away?”
“I am hardly a prize, with a small estate and no mill of my own yet,” Henrietta said. “Even if Birch Vale does produce the best butter in the county.”
“Nevertheless, there are some to be wary of,” Sir Pelton said. “No flattering and fawning from a royal duke, for instance. They’re cads, every last one.”
“Married men of any rank,” her brother joined in.
Henrietta rolled her eyes. “Do go on moralizing to me, Charley.”
“Mr. Havering is often admired in the gossip columns,” Marsibel said.
Her father frowned. “Heir to a viscount, but a jilt. Be polite but distant.”
“Lord Alfred Highcastle?” Marsibel tried.
Charley shook his head. “Cool, very cool to him. Under the hatches, I’ve heard, which is why he went abroad.”
Marsibel’s eyes sparkled. “Lord Daring?”
Althea yelped as if stuck with a pin. “Wherever did you hear that name?”
“Oh, everybody’s talking about him,” said Henrietta. “And in the most scandalized tones, too. Though no one will say exactly what he has done.”
“Something that ensures no proper hostess will receive him,” her aunt said. “Marsibel, should he approach you—though I daresay he will not show his face in polite company—you are to cut him, do you hear me?”
“Mama!” Marsibel paled. Such rudeness flew in the face of everything she had been taught about being a young lady, pleasing, quiescent, demure.
Sir Pelton shook his head. “So much promise, that young man, but he’s proved a scoundrel in the end. Pity. His father, Langford, is an excellent man to have in Lords. Can always be counted on to see sense.”
“Charley,” Henrietta whispered. “What is Lord Daring’s crime?”
“He ruins young women,” Charley retorted, ignoring his aunt’s glare. “It’s a sport to him. Any girl he talks to—anyone he looks at—unmarriageable on the spot. Yet they won’t keep away! It’s as if the man made a pact with the devil.”
“But his latest peccadillo is despoiling the Duke of Highcastle’s daughter,” Sir Pelton said. “The girl refuses to marry him, not even to give her child a name. Highcastle has her mewed up in the townhouse and intends to send her abroad.”
Henrietta sat back, eyes wide. The beau monde considered many shocking behaviors routine, including adultery. This Lord Daring must be truly wicked. “What will happen to the babe?”
“None of your concern. I warn you, stay away from him, Hetty,” Charley said. “Daring ruins everything he touches. It’s high time someone ruined him.”
Henrietta thought again of Nancy, how her eyes had widened at the thought of determining her own future. Duke’s daughter or chambermaid, they were alike when it came to the ease with which a powerful man could destroy them.
It was an intolerable injustice. Mary Wollstonecraft had the right of it: being taught nothing but to be decorative and please others, who could blame a girl for being easily led into vice?
But Lady Bess was right too. Being a knight’s daughter would give Henrietta a different kind of power, power that might do real good.
The coach reached the end of the long line of carriages waiting before St. James, and the others disembarked to join Sir Jasper and Lady Clarinda in one of the withdrawing rooms. Althea paused in the coach, her face set in lines of worry.
“Henrietta.” Her mouth held an uncharacteristic tremor. “What your mother would have given to see you presented.”
Henrietta blinked away the sudden sting of tears. “I hope to be a credit to her when I am accepted into the Minerva Society.”
Her aunt’s mouth hardened into a line. “Do not be the fool that my sister was, child. She gave up a great deal to marry your father. I have done what I can to make up the lack in your training, which Clarinda has sadly neglected, but I cannot think it is enough. I only hope you will do nothing to sink our name.”
She exited in a swish of ruffled silk, leaving Henrietta shaken.
She felt eight years old again, motherless and washed up on Aunt Davinia’s doorstep in Bath, sent away by a father lost in grief.
Why should it be a shame if her mother had loved her father and enjoyed every moment of their time together?
But the Pomeroys moved in a world defined by wealth and status and display.
It was the world Clarinda inhabited, the world that Charley and now her father had entered, the world her half-sisters were born to.
Henrietta would lose them if she went her own way. And if she proved an embarrassment, or worse, if her escapades with Lady Bess were discovered, they might choose to send her away again. She would not be able to bear that.
But if it would please those she loved to see her bow before the Queen in an outrageous costume with an entire bird balanced upon her head, why, she would do it, and paste a smile on her face the entire time.