Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
She’d survived her presentation, barely. Now, if she were to cultivate connections that could be of use once she was admitted into the Minerva Society, Henrietta must survive the gauntlet of social events that came after.
The family villa at Salford was grand, their spacious estate in the Rossendale Fells even grander, but Henrietta was still awed by the opulence of London’s buildings and parks and the magnificent neoclassical facades springing up along the north and west boundaries of town.
As they bumped among the line of carriages thronging Cavendish Square, Henrietta felt like the country mouse of the fable, the one overwhelmed by the bustling city so unlike her plain, quiet home.
Inside the cavernous entrance hall of Ellesmere House, while they waited in line for the butler to announce them, Henrietta held her wig and tipped back her head to examine the ceiling.
Frescoed Olympian gods cavorted without shame, many of them in nude splendor.
Zeus sported the wide shoulders and solid arms she had detected on her rescuer earlier that day.
Aristocrats were impressed by personal attractiveness and fashionable display, Henrietta reminded herself.
Character or respectability mattered little, and approval could be swiftly withdrawn.
One could be the queen of her circle one day and disgraced and exiled the next, like the Duchess of Devonshire.
Henrietta did not want to be the Duchess of Devonshire.
“I wonder if anyone has asked Lady Ellesmere to help support the settlement in Sierra Leone?” she remarked to Charley. “I shall have to ask where she stands on the subject of abolition.”
“God’s teeth, Hetty, can you leave off your peddling for one night?” Charley muttered. “The evening bodes to be a crashing bore already.”
Henrietta shifted under the weight of panniers, several petticoats, and an open robe thick with embroidery. In furnishing the wardrobe that had made her the beau monde’s darling forty years ago, Aunt Davinia had saved Henrietta hours at the mantua-maker, but these costumes weighed a stone or more.
“Poor Charley. I suppose you would rather be with your opera dancer.”
“Hetty! You ain’t to know of such things. Now, stay close to Althea and try not to be a goose. Ellesmere must have a card room somewhere.” The moment they were announced, Charley peeled off, his duty as escort discharged.
“I am hopeless at these conversational evenings,” Marsibel said. “The talk will be of war, or art, or philosophy, or politics.” Marsibel took politics at home with all her meals plus tea.
“But so are discussions in the debate societies, and tea rooms, and in Elizabeth Montagu’s salons,” Henrietta offered. These were the places she spent what time was not devoted to looking after her family. “The insurrections in the West Indies. What the National Assembly is up to in France.”
While Marsibel was being reared in papered rooms, learning music and drawing and dancing, Henrietta had been at Miss Gregoire’s Academy for Girls, studying classical languages, natural philosophy, and the sciences. Debate was her métier.
Marsibel heaved a sigh. “How I wish there were dancing.”
“Henrietta, have a care whom you speak to.” Aunt Althea adjusted her gloves and surveyed the glittering crowd like a general plotting a campaign. “The Ellesmeres are mushrooms who will receive just about anyone.”
“The Daughters of Minerva, I hope. Lady Bess said she would be here.”
Aunt Althea pinched her lips together. The Countess of Bessington was one of the leading Whig hostesses and a fixture of Mrs. Montagu’s salons, known as the Blue Stocking circle. Aunt Althea tended to collect staunch Tories around her table, though Sir Pelton belonged to both clubs.
“It will perhaps serve you best to remain silent,” her aunt said with a pointed look, “and follow Marsibel’s lead.”
Henrietta took the hint. She was here as companion to Marsibel, even if she meant to use the time to identify patrons she could approach for support of the Minerva Society and her various petitions.
Obediently she followed her aunt and Marsibel through the gaily garbed press of people, speaking when spoken to, murmuring niceties about the weather.
She was not looking out for any particular person, she told herself, not when town entertainments included several different events every night.
But there he was, standing near a plaster pillar bearing a bust of Mars.
Compared to his companion, a dark-haired man in black, he was the epitome of elegance.
His dark plum tailcoat was embroidered with roses, gold lace fell from his neck and cuffs, and the dazzling embroidery continued on his matching waistcoat and bronze breeches.
He’d exchanged the ruby-buckled shoes for a copper set dusted with diamonds. Every inch of him gleamed.
She would expect a man that mesmerizing to draw everyone into his orbit, but a peculiar space held around him.
As Henrietta watched, the Duchess of Argyll steered her lovely daughter in a wide berth, and the Duchess of Buccleuch dragged her daughter in the opposite direction.
When the Countess of Clarendon turned to find him lounging behind her, as graceful and careless as a cat, she yelped and spilled her punch in the effort to shove her daughter, Barbara, behind a potted fern.
This must be the cut direct, the keenest weapon that Polite Society had to punish one of their own.
And what had her gallant rescuer done? Probably nothing more than violate some obscure point of etiquette, like wear a morning coat in the evening or decline to get his head shot off in a foolish duel.
“Aunt Althea, who is—?”
Henrietta stopped as a short, bilious-looking gentleman sidled up to them.
“Lord Pinochle!” Aunt Althea fluttered her fan. “I hoped you would find us in this sad crush. Marsibel longs to see some of Lord Ellesmere’s objets d’art. I don’t suppose you would give her a tour?”
Henrietta froze. Pinochle was his lordship from that morning. The man whose unwanted advances had left Nancy swollen with child and who had arranged with Lady Bess to see, as he thought, to ridding her of it.
“I am sure he is on the to-avoid list,” Henrietta hissed to Marsibel.
“Mama says to encourage him.” Marsibel edged closer to Henrietta for support. “Milord, have you met my cousin, Miss Henrietta Wardley-Hines?”
Henrietta stood rooted to the spot as Pinochle regarded her with a smirk. She knew her garish robe of burnt umber made her resemble an ambulatory pumpkin, a far cry from the plain riding habit of that morning, but the game would be up if he recognized her face.
Pinochle, however, didn’t glance at her face. His eyes returned to the costly string of pearls wreathing Marsibel’s neck. “I would be delighted to escort your lovely daughter, Lady Pomeroy.” His stiff bow suggested he was wearing a corset beneath his evening coat.
“I am perishingly fond of classical things,” Henrietta announced, sliding an arm about Marsibel’s waist.
“You shall only be in the way, Henrietta,” Aunt Althea said.
“Nonsense! I am agog to see what treasures Lord Ellesmere has ransacked from the Italian peninsula. Lead the way, Lord Pinochle,” Henrietta cried, planting herself like a shield between him and Marsi.
If he made the slightest feint at her cousin—if he so much as glanced at her bosom again—she would kick him in his padded calves, peer or not.
The long, narrow gallery of Ellesmere House occupied the first floor of an entire wing of the house.
Doors on one side opened to a series of spacious, symmetrical rooms, while the set of windows that lined the opposite wall overlooked a set of gardens landscaped to geometrical perfection.
Lord Ellesmere’s collection was fast-growing and undiscriminating, Henrietta observed.
She stuck like a burr to Marsibel as Pinochle lectured his way down the hall.
“And this one is Psyche fleeing Cupid,” Pinochle intoned before one excellent piece. “The story goes that, she being the most beautiful woman alive, the god of love desired her for his wife.”
Marsibel’s cheeks grew pink as she gazed at the bared, sculpted chest of the pursuing male.
“But when Psyche broke her promise not to try to see him during the night, Cupid left her,” Henrietta said. “I think this must be Daphne fleeing Apollo. Look at her feet. She is already turning into the laurel.”
“Foliage,” Pinochle said. “I am sure it is a Psyche.” He cleared his throat and moved to the next statue. “This is the acquisition Lord Ellesmere invited us to see. A copy of the Diana of Gabii recently discovered in Rome.”
The women gathered around him with a collective aah.
Diana was a bold beauty, slender and strong, one shapely foot stepping forward in confidence.
A soft smile curved her lips, but she held her head at a proud angle, cool-headed, self-possessed.
She was a woman who took pleasure in her strength and freedom, who would acknowledge an equal but never a master, secure in her sound mind, her worth and abilities.
A goddess, Henrietta thought, who met the world without flinching.
All the same time, it was easier to meet the world when one had such a perfectly symmetrical face.
“How old is the Diana of Gabii?” Henrietta asked. “The detail is exquisite, even if she is a copy.”
Pinochle shrugged. “First or second century, perhaps.”
“Fourth century BC,” said a new voice. “The Diana of Gabii is by Praxiteles, who is also responsible for the Aphrodite of Knidos.”
He was here. With his sculpted features and lean height, he looked of a piece with the statuary around them. Delight curled through Henrietta’s belly. They needed deliverance from Pinochle, and again, her rescuer had appeared.
“Is the Psyche by the same artist?” Henrietta asked him.