Chapter 3
Three
Mrs. Catherine Lovelock sat in the carriage across from her daughters. After some delay, which actually had more to do with getting Harry to eat than with getting her dressed, they were on their way to Lady Huxley’s ball.
Gazing at them now, Catherine could see it had been a mistake to dress the two girls in the same color.
Seven years apart in age, they were so dissimilar.
Harriet, so tall, so thin, so sallow as to have almost a green cast to her skin, hunched, lost in thought, rhythmically tapping her head against the side of the carriage and her fingers on her lap.
And Arabella, just sixteen, newly out, fashioned so much in Catherine’s own mold.
Blonde and petite and pink and rounded where she should be.
Arabella was Catherine’s only daughter by blood.
Harry and her older sister Mary had been Edward’s daughters by his first wife, who had succumbed to consumption.
Like many men in London, the banker Edward Lovelock had fallen in love with Catherine’s portrayal of Ophelia in the bard’s Hamlet at the Theatre-Royal, Drury Lane.
Only after her retirement from the stage and their wedding had he learned the woman who played the mad would-be-bride of the Danish prince with such abandon was actually a firm and sensible manager.
And then he had worshiped his Katie until the day he had died.
She had taken his household in hand, swept Mary and Harriet under her wing, and given him what she felt every man wanted—a house of peace.
Harry had been the thorniest of twigs in Catherine’s soft little nest. But, in time, she felt she had helped smooth Harry out.
She had taught Harry to look people in the eyes and to smile and to sit with a minimum of fidgeting.
Catherine herself had learned to quiet Harry’s inexplicable rages, which seemed to arise from nowhere.
She had supported Edward’s indulgence of Harriet’s love for numbers and books.
When he had built the large, new house in Mayfair, she had looked the plans over, rested her hand on the little bump that was becoming Arabella, and pointed out there was plenty of space to give six-year-old Harry the room she had asked for, away from the nursery.
Catherine had persuaded and paid many bookish young men from Cambridge to spend a few hours with the adolescent Harry as she herself sat in a drawing room with them, not understanding one syllable of what passed.
Most of the young men had walked away from the house shaking their heads, but the last one—the one she suspected of dangerous radicalism—had taken Catherine aside and told her to stop wasting her money.
“She outstrips us all,” he said grimly. “She should teach at Cambridge. But she never will.”
Harriet’s older sister Mary had been quite a bit easier.
In fact, Mary was enchanting in every way.
A graceful dancer, a beautiful face and figure, impeccable manners, great skill at the pianoforte with a dulcet voice to match.
It was for Mary’s sake that Catherine had first used the Lovelock fortune to gain invitations to the balls of the ton’s Season four years ago.
There had been many lords very interested in meeting the extremely wealthy and lovely Mary Lovelock, and within six weeks of the start of her first Season, Mary became the Viscountess Tregaron and now lived happily in a castle with her husband in Wales.
Mary had given Catherine the false hope that Harry might one day turn into a butterfly. Not that Harry was a grub, that was a disloyal comparison, but she had become even more peculiar since her father’s death. Her habits and speech more erratic. Her sleep and her presence at meals nonexistent.
Arabella grabbed Harry’s gloved hand with hers and squeezed it. Harry looked down at their conjoined hands and seemed to recognize the signal to still her fingers and stop thumping her head against the carriage wall.
“I’m so excited, Mama.” Arabella leaned forwards and touched Catherine’s knee. “My first Lady Huxley ball in my first Season. I can’t believe we will be with all the lords and ladies.” She turned to her sister. “Do you think there will be many people there?”
“Yes, it will be crowded just like last year. And, afterwards, I will be able to give you the number in attendance within a very small margin of error.”
“This is your fourth Season, isn’t it? Since Papa was not well,” and here Arabella faltered for a moment, “I mean to say, you started later than I did. And Mary got married her first Season, didn’t she? But she started even later. Do you think you will get married this Season?”
Harry snorted. “There is neither a man stupid enough nor clever enough to marry me.”
Catherine frowned, but Arabella pealed with laughter. “Oh, Harry, you don’t want to be alone all your life, do you? Just you and what’s-his-name. That French mathematician. Fermat!”
Harry leaned back again but managed to refrain from resuming her head thumping.
Her fourth Season. That meant she had already wasted months of her life with balls.
In her head, a number inscribed itself. Two thousand and fifty-nine hours.
That’s how long she had spent in dressing for and riding to and sitting at balls and then, blessedly, riding home and undressing and ridding herself of her unnecessary corset.
And then the time spent in calls. Well, she hadn’t had many of those herself as really only the most desperate types sought her out and then quickly turned tail.
But she had been forced to sit through Mary’s calls.
She remembered one afternoon when she had very nearly screamed at the Viscount Tregaron, “Just ask her, she’ll say yes!
” Catherine had looked at Harry just then and must have sensed the impending explosion because she had suddenly asked Harry to go look in on Arabella’s lessons.
“How many more Seasons do I have, Mama Katie?” Harry’s voice cut across Arabella’s chatter in the carriage.
Catherine seemed startled.
“Well, you’ll have Seasons until you get married, you know that.”
“You didn’t have Seasons.”
Catherine looked down at her own gloved hands. Harry bit her lip. She had said something wrong as usual. She had forgotten her stepmother didn’t like to be reminded too often of her own girlhood.
But Catherine looked up quickly again and laughed lightly. “No, I had seasons on the stage, which suited me a great deal more. Especially when I got to play Viola in Twelfth Night and wear a sword and swagger about in breeches.”
Harry couldn’t imagine her feminine stepmother in breeches, but everyone, including her father, had always said she had been quite brilliant and an extraordinary mimic.
Catherine herself had acknowledged she was gifted when she spoke to a nine-year-old Harry after a disastrous call on Harry’s great-aunt.
Great-Aunt Lucy Lovelock had declared Harry was odd and perverse and should be locked away in an asylum.
To this day, Harry still didn’t know what she had done to prompt Great-Aunt Lucy’s vitriol, but Catherine sat with Harry afterwards and held her hands.
“This is from Shakespeare, Harry. All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.”
“Was that one of your speeches, Mama Katie?”
“No, it’s a man’s role, but I mean to show you that you can be an actress, too, like me.”
Harry shook her head. “I would be too frightened.”
“No, not on stage, but in drawing rooms and dining rooms and in shops. You have your own room, do you not?”
Harry clutched the key she kept on a chain round her neck and nodded.
Catherine went on, “You have your room, and that is the place where you play no role. And in your father’s heart and in my heart, you never need play a role. But in the rest of the world—oh, Harry, it would make your life so much easier if you would act. Could you learn?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Harry, you’re so clever. You can learn anything.” Catherine raised her eyebrows. “And you would have a very talented actress for a teacher.”
“Who?”
Laughter erupted from Catherine, and she took out a handkerchief to dab at her eyes and then wiped Harry’s tear-stained face for good measure. “Me, dear Harry, me.”
Yes, Harry had learned to act well enough so that there had been no more talk of asylums. But now she knitted her brow in frustration as the carriage slowed outside Lady Huxley's house.
Two thousand and sixty hours wasted. When any minute someone else could be on the brink of proving Fermat’s conjecture after one hundred eighty-one years of failed proofs.
When someone else could be about to win the prize offered by the Académie des Sciences in Paris for proving the conjecture.
Now that was a prize worth going after. Not some fool of a husband she would never please anyway.
She was going to have to put a stop to this time-wasting, brain-shriveling, corset-requiring lost cause.
But how?
Perhaps she could write a letter and ask advice from her mentor Dean George Haddington of Cambridge University.
No, she couldn’t do that. She could consult him on any matter of difficulties with number theory, but she could not ask for help with the problem of wasting time on husband-hunting.
He didn’t know she was female, let alone a twenty-three-year-old heiress compelled to make the rounds of the Season’s balls, on display for the marriage mart.
No, Harry could not tell Dean Haddington she was a woman.
Not until she finished her proof of Fermat’s conjecture.
And then only because she would have to.
Her sex would be evident when she went to claim her prize and deliver the prize lecture at the Académie des Sciences.
But she would be crowned in glory, and the mathematical elite would be forced to accept her, wouldn’t they?
Including Dean Haddington, the only person on the planet right now who had any inkling of what was in her mind.
The only person who understood her. Of course, the dean might be angry to discover the young man he had corresponded with so generously was actually a girl.
He might abandon her. But it would be worth sacrificing their friendship in the end if she could prove the conjecture. Wouldn’t it?
But she was never going to prove it if she had to keep idling away her time. Unfortunately, her stepmother was an immovable object. Could she, Harry, summon the will to become an unstoppable force?