Chapter 1 #3
“Come now, sit beside me – closer, if you please. Not at that ridiculous distance, Henrietta. How am I to confer my wisdom if you insist upon lounging like a milkmaid? Invitations are arriving by the hour, and the entire ton is waking from its winter slumber with the singular aim of ensnaring a titled son-in-law. We must be strategic. One can only remain charming for so long before it begins to look like effort, and there is nothing so fatal to a lady’s allure as visible striving.
” She clasped her hands with sudden intensity.
“Your entire future hangs by a thread, Henrietta – a thread – and I simply cannot be expected to manage it alone, not with my nerves in such a state. The doctor has expressly forbidden too much excitement, and I am already surviving on nothing but barley water and lavender salts.” She paused to sigh again.
“Now then, I have already marked two most eligible gentlemen. How do you feel about viscounts with gout but excellent prospects? Lord Farringdon does limp, it is true, but so do half the cavalry, and he possesses three sound estates, no meddling mother, and a preference for quiet women. Quite ideal, would you not agree? And then there is Mr Linley, an exceedingly promising young man. Barely thirty, recently come into a considerable inheritance, and certain, they say, to secure a seat in Parliament before the year is out! His connections are impeccable, his future assured, and while he is perhaps a trifle too enamoured of his own reflection, one must not be greedy. One can hardly expect both fortune and humility in the same man – that would be unnatural.”
Hetty – who had suffered through Lord Farringdon’s lecture on drainage and canal reform at last year’s garden party (a subject he had delivered with apocalyptic fervour and no regard for conversational escape), and who once observed Mr Linley attempting to catch his own eye in a soup spoon – gave a serene smile.
She supposed she might yet join a convent in Spain or perhaps feign a weak constitution and retire to Bath, where she could sigh beside a window, take the waters, and be left entirely alone.
Either fate seemed preferable to one spent nodding encouragingly whilst a husband extolled the merits of wheat tariffs or his own jawline.
“I suppose I shall have to flip a coin, Mama.”
Lady Tolliver beamed. “There now, how sensible you are. To think, when you were first presented, I feared you might prove difficult. But look at you now – so composed and obliging, my dear! I have every confidence that this shall be a Season full of possibilities.”
“Indeed,” Hetty said sweetly, folding her hands. “Endless possibilities.”
She rose with impeccable grace, kissed her mother’s cheek and crossed the parlour in thoughtful silence. Yet as she passed the sideboard, she paused just long enough to flip over the silver coin resting there, though not for the decision her mother might’ve hoped.
Heads, Hetty thought with a wicked smile. Scandal it is.
She let the coin dance once more across her palm, then set it back atop the sideboard with a brisk little tap.
This Season, at least, would not be squandered upon lectures of drainage, canals, or wheat tariffs; such prospects were dreary enough to drive a womanto desperatemeasures.
Far preferable, Hetty decided, to embrace the destiny her mother most dreaded: that of a wealthy thornback.
As the daughter of an earl and the sister of his heir, she would never want for a roof, nor pin money, nor even the occasional new gown.
True, she must submit to a lifetime of dependence upon her brother’s purse and patience, but as brothers went, he was tolerable enough, and Hetty was quite clever enough to steer her pea-brained elder sibling as one might a docile horse.
And what were the pitying glances of matrons or the mutterings of dowagers weighed against the delicious liberty of doing precisely as she pleased?
To decline a proposal out of hand, to order the carriage for a whim, to read novels till dawn without a husband demanding the candle be snuffed – such privileges were surely worth a thousand whispered “poor things.” Still, why stop at whispers?
Scandal, after all, lent a woman far more notoriety than spinsterhood ever could.
Hetty had no intention of passing her life as a wallflower; she meant to be viewed with equal parts dismay and envy.
She would never be a dreary spinster consigned to her needlework, but a lady of delightful eccentricity – one whose whims were reported in the scandal sheets and whose company was sought precisely because it promised mischief.
Yes, Society might condemn her, but it would never be permitted to forget her.
The only difficulty was that scandals, by their very nature, required accomplices.
A lady might boldly declare she scorned matrimony, but unless there was some gentleman upon whom to fix the world’s suspicion, the story quickly lost its savour.
If she were to be remembered, she must be observed in the company of precisely the right sort of gentleman – one reckless enough to indulge her whims, but not so foolish as to mistake them for sincerity; one amused by her schemes yet intrigued enough to follow where she led.
Hetty’s smiled deepened, for she knew precisely whose assistance she must secure.