Chapter 26 #2
Darien bowed and moved them smoothly back into the dance, bringing his emotions under control. “Now,” he said, and she felt the low scratch of his voice in her chest, “do you still believe that foolishness of Miss Wollstonecraft’s that men and women should not base their marriage on passion?”
Henrietta felt she moved over clouds. She belonged here with this man, beside him, in his arms. He was the thing she’d been missing.
“Pooh,” she said. “Let Miss Wollstonecraft set the terms for her own marriage, and we shall set the terms for ours. I want love, and passion, and respect, and amiability. And your engineering services. And conversation. And art, and travel, and—”
“And fidelity,” he said. “And a house full of children. And a wife who will always remain her sensible self, and pull her own weight, rather than depending on me for everything, including her pin money.”
“Oh, I see,” she said with a grin. “Using my own philosophy against me.”
He gave her a look of amusement, delight, and, yes, love.
He was not a man given to declarations, and yet he had made one for her, beautifully.
He would demonstrate his devotion to her daily, in ways large and small.
In the steady hand at her back shielding her against the disparagement of others.
In the sacrifices to make her happy, like acknowledging a bastard child, taking in her wards and his, allowing his wife to run her mills and poke about his building projects and traipse their lands in muddy boots, baby on her hip. That was how he would show his love.
“Miss Wardley-Hines.” Forsythia Pennyroyal approached later as Henrietta stood with Lady Bess at the side of the room. “May I offer felicitations on your upcoming marriage.”
“Thank you,” said Henrietta. “I hope you and your family are well?”
“Yes, thank you.” She avoided looking at Darien, whose face had gone carefully blank. “Lady Bessington says if I wish to join the Minerva Society, I require the sponsorship of a votary.”
Henrietta’s stomach tightened. Foolish to despair of the one thing she did not have when she had been given so much, and forgiven much.
“I am sure someone will be willing to stand your sponsor, Miss Pennyroyal. The votaries are the most elect, most elite of the Society, the women who have done the most to enhance its mission and dignify its name. They—”
“I will put your name forward at the next conclave,” Lady Bess said, “and your aunt will second. I expect the vote will be unanimous, Hetty, dear.”
“Oh, Bess,” Henrietta whispered, putting her hands to her mouth.
“Ha!” Bess crowed. “Daring proposes to you in a ballroom, but I wring tears when I tell you that you will be a Daughter of Minerva. Do you know, another young girl asked me how to join the Society after she saw you at your debate. A Miss Spickey, I believe.”
“Constance?” Henrietta grinned. “But that is wonderful! She truly needs us.”
Lady Bess turned to Darien with a smile. “She will make it fashionable for young women to join the Minerva Society. And I suspect she will set the fashion in other ways as well.”
“I am beginning to think,” Darien said, “that the benefits of this union accrue mostly to me.” She leaned in for his kiss.
“Get you a special license already!” Aunt Davinia barked, pounding her cane on the floor. “Happens I know the Archbishop of Canterbury. Could get you one in a trice.”
Lord Darien Bales and Miss Henrietta Wardley-Hines did not, after all, marry by special license.
In fact, considering the scandalous reputation of both parties, the broadsides found little to lampoon about their rather conventional wedding.
The banns were published for the required three weeks in the parish of Marylebone, and they wed, of all places, in the chapel of the parish workhouse which, though new, was not particularly grand.
Henrietta, who had eyes only for her groom, was informed later that the ceremony was crowded with titled families, high-ranking cabinet members, the widow and orphans of a famous war hero, and the celebrated Mr. Ouladah Equiano and his bride.
Prime Minister Pitt declined his invitation with regrets. His presence was not missed.
The wedding breakfast, which seated three hundred, was held at Hines House and presided over by Davinia Wardley, common-law wife to the late Duke of Cumberland.
The gossip columns reported that a prodigious amount of champagne was consumed.
They reported also that the bride insisted the vibrant blue-violet color of her gown was made to match the color of the bridegroom’s eyes.
Yet the lady reporter who penned the column could confirm that Lord Darien’s eyes were in fact the striking shade of lapis lazuli, like an illuminated manuscript of medieval times.
Comments were stirred by the cut and style of the bride’s gown, draped like a classical chiton.
Sliver sandals laced over her feet, Roman-style, and the high sash added a military flair.
A silver leaf woven into her unpowdered coiffure gave, from the back and side, the look of a helmet.
The reporter had it on good authority that the costume was a tribute to Minerva, and the same matching silver leaf could be seen in the hair of an entire table of dignified female guests.
One of them, the writer noted, was an elegant, soft-spoken schoolmistress who had come from Bath and went by the name of Miss Gregoire, and who spent some time in private conversation with the groom’s ward, Miss Horatia Bales.
The bride’s stepmother made no attempt to hide her enceinte shape and, it was said by some, rather looked as if she were flaunting it.
The bride’s father wore the cross of his order pinned to his coat, but this ornament was no more conspicuous than any of the other insignia decorating the varied guests.
After an endless round of toasts initiated by the Marquess of Langford, who was garrulous and clearly overproud of a son who really had not done much to recommend him, the gossip columns reported that the wedded couple departed to the bride’s estate with the unromantic intention of installing a new drainage system for her fields.
Firm promises were made about returning for the wedding of the bride’s cousin to the groom’s cousin, and the mother of the next bride was heard to say, in an aside to a friend, that Miss Pomeroy’s ceremony should be done with a little more style and, Lady Pomeroy hoped, at least as many important guests.
At the close of Parliament a few weeks later, the new Lady Darien Bales found herself sitting in the spectator’s gallery of the chamber of the King’s Bench, screened from the rest of Westminster’s great hall while the court resolved a short but sad suit.
Mr. Rathbone Bales and his wife, Perdita, were absent, but Miss Horatia Bales clung quietly to Henrietta’s hand.
Lord Darien, heir presumptive, sat at a table as witness.
The end of it was that Lord Lucien Bales was declared dead in absentia and Lord Darien Bales recognized as heir apparent to the Marquess of Langford and legal guardian to his niece, though he declined the courtesy title Earl of Aldthorpe.
The matter entered into the Official Rolls, the suit concluded and the family exited, the new heir somber about his elevation and his lady clutching her handkerchief.
In her new role as hostess, Henrietta organized the family dinner at Langford House that evening, which included the Pomeroys and the Wardley-Hines.
The first piece of business, after a toast was drunk to the absent Lord Lucien, wherever he might be, was to settle the living of St. Alcelda on Mr. Rutherford Bales.
The second was to send word to Bellamy Hall that Mr. Rathbone Bales and his wife should prepare to return to the life and lodging of a solicitor’s family, a remove from which several unpleasant scenes were expected to ensue.
The newlyweds departed from Portsmouth the next morning on a wedding trip to the Austrian Netherlands.
Despite the fact that France had recently declared war on Austria, Henrietta chose Flanders as their honeymoon destination.
With them went the groom’s father, who had not been abroad in an age; Miss Bales, for whom it was thought travel would be very educational; and Miss Celestina, whose parents did not wish to be parted from her.
The Marquess of Langford strolled the gently rolling deck and considered the odd company in which he found himself.
Near the mast sat his new daughter’s cocky groom, throwing the bones and telling Banbury stories to the sailors, who laughed uproariously as each tale grew wilder than the last. At the stern clustered the women, the baby’s wet nurse and the two maids scooped from some place called the Benevolence Hospital.
He’d heard Hetty had sent others from the same place to her estate.
It must be some sort of placement agency.
A pretty picture they made: the fair nurse who was rocking a drowsy Celestina, the dark-haired one who was singing in a voice fit for the stage, and the redhead teaching dance steps to Horatia, who laughed as he hadn’t heard her laugh in years.
Strolling the deck in the opposite direction was the woman who had brought all this into his life, leaning on the arm of her husband as they cooed in lover’s language to one another. Every so often, a sweet nothing drifted to the marquess’s ear.
“—invented an automated loom using punch cards that weaves patterns directly onto the silk, called jacquard—”
“—improved on Newcomen’s engine, but it requires a great deal of coal to create the steam.”
“—Hopton Wood Stone for the inside. He said the Duchess of Devonshire has it all over Chatsworth—”
The marquess smiled. This was the best sort of lover’s talk, the kind to rivet his son to his wife’s side. No sensible man would risk the love and loyalty of such an intelligent, warm-hearted woman as Henrietta, and his youngest and wildest boy, it seemed, had finally come to his senses.
They reminded him of another pair of lovers who had once crossed the English Channel, a raven-haired southern princess who recited Italian poetry to her young British lord until his heart had swelled and burst out of his chest. God, he missed Pip.
He missed all of them—Horace, Lucien, Lucretius, even Nell.
The ache was enormous. And yet he was happy.
Henrietta fell silent, watching the English coast fade into the gray sea. Darien rested his chin on her head.
“Do you wish you were a countess?” he asked.
“No.” She squeezed his hand. “You will keep Bellamy in trust for Horatia, and Lucien still bears the title. And we will continue to pray for his safe return.”
“You are like no other woman on Earth, Henrietta Bales.”
She laughed. “I am often told that. Though I do wonder if a countess would have better luck securing subscriptions for her charitable homes and signatures for her petitions. Ah, well, Bess will see to it.”
“Is there a place for the husbands, do you think? The”—he searched for a word—“Gentlemen of Minerva. The Hounds of Actaeon.”
He pressed a kiss to her ear when she laughed again. “Neither sounds flattering. Perhaps you can form a society of your own.”
“For the reformation of rakes.” She stilled, and he noticed. “Still you do not believe me?”
Henrietta pressed a small kiss to his neck, that firm, strong, splendid stretch of skin. She had ample evidence of her husband’s devotion; their conjugal relations were most satisfactory. “I will concede the point in two score years, when I may say you have never looked at another woman.”
He chuckled, and she felt the flutter in her chest. “Minx.” He nuzzled her hair, then fell quiet. “You’ve never said why you chose me. I know very well it wasn’t because I kissed you at the museum.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Apollo.”
“You adore me for my physique? I should have known.”
She shook her head, glancing up at him. “Lord Ellesmere’s.
I turned, and there you were. Looking—” So wary, so guarded, with such desperate appeal in his eyes.
As if she, and she alone, held out the hope that could save him.
“I’d been told to have nothing to do with you, because of your reputation.
And then you handed me that ostrich feather, and I knew I had to take you in. ”
His lips moved through her hair, his arms tight about her. “I hear Queen Charlotte has banned ostrich feathers from her drawing rooms. Too many of them tickling her nose.”
“I cannot blame her. I have banished all avian elements from my wardrobe. No more birds.”
“We shall name our firstborn Apollo Horatius Wardley Bales,” he said.
“I like Lucretia Frances. Or Apollonia.”
“We shall keep producing children until we run out of names. My scandalous bluestocking.”
“Lord Daring,” she said affectionately. “My rake.”
“Reformed rake, my Lady Daring,” he reminded her, and she turned her face up for his kiss.