Chapter 5 #2
Georgie – immaculately arrayed in sprigged muslin with puffed sleeves and a pink sash tied just so at the waist and slippers dyed to match – stood guard near the drawing room doors.
In one hand she held a clipboard procured from their father’s study, and in the other, a quill.
Though explicitly forbidden by Lady Tolliver from engaging with callers on account of her youth and a regrettable tendency to interrogate gentlemen about their reading habits, Georgie had nevertheless appointed herself Mistress of the Ledger.
With an expression of cool disapproval, she recorded the name of each gentleman, the time of his arrival, the quality and type of his floral tribute, and in the margins, her personal commentary on the state of his boots, cravat, and conversational value.
Those who perspired excessively were struck through altogether.
The system, she claimed, was foolproof .
“It is a matter of ratios,” she had explained earlier, when Nell asked what determined a man’s placement.
“A viscount bearing tulips shall rank above a solicitor with roses, naturally – but may still fall below a baron if said tulips are yellow. And let it be noted that any gentleman, be he duke or marquess, who arrives bearing carnations will find his social score plummeting accordingly.”
“Because carnations are too cheerful?” asked Nell.
“No. Because they reek of desperation. They are the calling card of a man who was turned away by the florist and forced to make do.”
And thus, Georgie worked her way through the morning’s procession of hopefuls. “Mr Linley is placed foremost. He brought peonies… well-shaped, evenly arranged, pleasingly subdued in colour. A rare achievement, given the season.”
“He has no title,” Lady Tolliver reminded her, wafting her fan before her face in a manner that suggested she was not entirely displeased.
“No, but he does have excellent taste,” said Georgie.
“Mr Elcombe is next. He sent lilies. They were adequate. A trifle uninspired, but not offensive.” She glanced once more at her list, making a notation in the margin.
“Lord Mayfield, who was initially intended to follow Mr Linley, has now been placed third.”
“Mayfield?” Lady Tolliver repeated with a sniff. “But his family boasts two baronetcies and a brewery.”
“Indeed, Mama,” said Georgie, “but he brought gladiolus.”
Lady Tolliver gave a small shudder. “How vulgar. ”
“Precisely,” said Georgie. “I am debating whether to consign him to the very bottom – just above the poor soul who sent a posy of lavender tied up in twine and had the audacity to omit his card.”
Lady Tolliver gave an approving nod. “Your eye for social positioning is a gift, my darling.”
“It’s not a gift, Mama. It is simply arithmetic. The taller the bouquet, the more desperate the suitor. And the poorer the taste, the shorter the match.”
Another knock echoed through the house.
Mari did not look up from her book. “If it’s one more gentleman bearing flowers and bad verse, I shall climb into the fireplace and set up permanent residence.”
The footman returned with another bouquet, so exquisitely composed it seemed the sender had read a treatise on Georgie’s floral hierarchy and passed with distinction.
She plucked the calling card from the salver and cleared her throat, before announcing with the solemnity of a royal birth, “Lord Langley.”
At this, Hetty’s head snapped up.
“And – good heavens,” Georgie continued. “He’s brought ivory peonies. With blush ranunculi! And sprigs of myrtle… not a carnation in sight.” She adjusted a small brass paperclip. “Well, we’ve found our frontrunner.”
A moment later, the drawing room doors opened and in strolled Theo, every inch the picture of careless aristocratic splendour.
His coat was of midnight blue superfine, the shoulders crisp, the waist perfectly nipped to flatter his frame, which was taller and broader than Hetty recalled.
His waistcoat, pale dove-grey with a subtle embroidered pattern, offered just enough contrast to be fashionable without tipping into foppery.
Hetty, despite herself, felt the corners of her mouth tighten. She was not attracted to him – emphatically not – but she was, regrettably, in possession of two functional eyes, and the sight before her was objectively well-arranged.
“Ladies,” he began, bowing with a smile so effortless it might well have been rehearsed, “you are all looking most radiant this morning.”
The footman made to present the bouquet, but Theo forestalled him with a casual gesture and reached for the flowers himself. “Thank you, Barnes. I should like the honour of delivering these myself.”
Lady Tolliver gave a gasp of delight and fluttered her fan with rather more vigour than the morning’s warmth could reasonably excuse.
“Girls! We shall take our tea at the farthest table and afford your sister a moment of discreet discourse with our guest. It would be most improper to hover. Perhaps the earl harbours a question for your dear sister.”
With varying degrees of reluctance and poorly concealed curiosity, the Tolliver sisters rose and drifted obediently towards the tea table. Georgie cast one last approving glance at the bouquet as she passed.
Theo crossed the room with dramatic steps and presented the bouquet to Hetty with a grand flourish.
“For you, Miss Tolliver. I understand that peonies are not only the height of fashion, but also indecently extravagant, and rumoured to herald either fortune, scandal or sudden engagement. I could conceive of no bloom more fitting for the Season’s most notorious diamond. ”
Hetty accepted the bouquet with a tight smile, though her fingers were dangerously close to snapping one of the stems in two. “What, in Heaven’s name, are you doing here?” she hissed. “Have you entirely taken leave of your senses?”
“No fond greeting? I had fancied myself your gallant deliverer, come to rescue you from an endless parade of rose-bearing dimwits.” He cast a glance towards the tea table, where Georgie was now quietly ranking a new posy of violets.
“Besides, we must confer. You are the subject of half the ton ’s whispers already, though, I wager, not in quite the manner you intended.
It seemed wise to ensure the next act of your downfall is managed with a touch more finesse. ”
Hetty gave him a look that could have curdled milk.
“Must you speak so audibly? Mama is positively trembling to restrain herself from ordering a special licence this very moment. One more mention of ‘fortune’ or ‘engagement’ and she will have you fitted for wedding gloves before I have taken my tea!”
“Ah. Then I ought to wait until we’re a touch farther from the lemon biscuits before I broach the subject of your imminent ruination?
” With a sigh entirely devoid of shame, he lowered himself upon the settee beside her, stretching one long leg before him and crossing the other across his knee.
From the inner pocket of his coat, he produced yet another scandal sheet.
“I have brought you a keepsake,” he announced, unfolding the paper as though revealing contraband. He smoothed the page and tapped the centre column. “Right here –
“Miss H.T., resplendent in a daring muslin of Grecian cut, was observed to take unfortunate aim with her wine glass, thereby baptising the Honourable Lord Crimplethorpe in a generous measure of claret – this following, it is alleged, a difference of opinion exchanged near the punch bowl.”
Theo raised an eyebrow. “A difference of opinion?”
Hetty released a sigh, setting her teacup down as though determined not to fling it against the nearest wall. “He made some thoroughly odious remark concerning the supposed indecency of female wit, and I felt his waistcoat deserved to suffer for it.”
Theo gave a low chuckle. “Well, his waistcoat may have expired, but alas, your reputation appears to have only improved. The Gazette reports you were ‘a vision of sparkling defiance, the very picture of fashionable nerve.’ I’ve heard that claret might soon replace pearl grey as the shade of the Season. ”
Hetty sighed. “This is not proceeding according to plan.”
“No,” Theo agreed cheerfully, “but one must concede, it is proving rather entertaining.” He reached once more into the inner pocket of his coat and withdrew a second folded newspaper, offering it to her with a wink.
“For inspiration… a charming precedent from last Season. Lady Elmsworth’s niece, discovered behind a folding screen with the third son of a baronet.
The particulars remain murky, though a cushion was reportedly involved.
Naturally, they were married within the fortnight. ”
Hetty gave him a sharp look over the rim of her teacup. “I have no intention of marrying you, Theo. ”
“Good heavens, nor I you. I should make a dreadful husband. I snore during sermons, detest shared puddings, and cannot abide dogs in the drawing room.”
“I am quite serious.”
“As am I,” he returned, spreading his hands. “You desire a scandal. I merely offer one in the traditional form. A time-honoured method.”
“The objective is disgrace, not matrimony,” Hetty hissed, affecting a smile at her mother across the room. “The entire scheme is meant to prevent such an outcome, not propel me towards it with roses in my hair and a vicar at my elbow.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, waving a hand. “I am well aware. But surely there exists a narrow ledge between social ruin and a forced engagement. A sweet spot, if you will. Enough impropriety to render you inconveniently notorious, but not quite sufficient to provoke a duel.”
“And what, precisely, do you suggest?”
He leant in, lowering his voice to that infuriatingly intimate register he used whenever he wished to be difficult. “A kiss. In the wrong place, at precisely the right moment. If such a thing were to be witnessed, or even merely suspected, the consequences are generally quite dependable.”
“There will be no kissing, Theo.”
“Naturally,” he said gravely, though the corner of his mouth twitched. “Perish the thought.”
Hetty folded her hands with primly in her lap, though her spine was rather too straight and her jaw far too tight to be mistaken for ease.
“We shall orchestrate something suitably modest,” she said.
“A brief moment in the conservatory or a conveniently torn hem. Perhaps a door flung open at an inopportune instant. Nothing more.”
“As you command, Miss Tolliver. I am yours to scandalise.”
She rose, smoothing the folds of her gown. “Excellent. Then we are agreed.”
“No kissing,” he repeated solemnly. “Understood. Unless, of course, circumstances demand it.”
“If circumstances demand it,” Hetty said crisply, “I shall be compelled to strike you with my fan, and with considerable force.”
“Then I shall pray you bring one adorned with feathers. If I am to be ruined, Miss Tolliver, let it at least be done with style.”
She gave him a look that could have wilted a rosebush, but he only bowed low, entirely unbothered. “Until the next ball, Miss Tolliver.”
—
?—
Hetty escaped that afternoon to the mews, under the flimsy pretence of wishing to inquire whether her mare had been properly exercised. In truth, she wanted air unsweetened by hothouse lilies or suitors’ cologne, and, above all, relief from her mother’s fan snapping like a musket at her elbow.
It was not, by any stretch, a proper place for her to be.
The mews smelt of hay and horseflesh, the cobbles strewn with straw and less mentionable matter besides.
Grooms darted to and fro, pausing only long enough to stare at the young lady of quality perched upon an upturned pail, skirts tucked precariously out of harm’s way, her ungloved hand idly stroking her mare’s nose.
If Mama ever discovered her eldest daughter had been consorting with grooms and manure, she would shriek herself into a decline.
Hetty must confess she found the impropriety delicious. Here, no one lectured her on posture, nor composed sonnets to her. Here she might laugh aloud at the absurdity of her situation.
The Diamond of the Season. The phrase alone was enough to make her snort, to the visible alarm of her horse.
She – Henrietta Tolliver – hailed as Mayfair’s glittering prize?
Providence, it seemed, had a taste for farce.
One danced four times with an earl, worea scandalously low-cut gown, and poured wine down a gentleman’s front, only to awake the next morning positively drowned in bouquets and ghastly verse.
She pressed her forehead to her mare’s neck. “Well, my dear, it seems I must try harder.”
It was plain enough what must be done. If Society insisted upon imagining her enamoured of Lord Langley merely because she monopolised his company, then she would give them more – far more, provided it stopped short of Theo’s most outrageous suggestion of a kiss, which was too ghastly even to entertain.
Heaven help her, she would sooner embrace a groom in the mews than let Theo’s mouth anywhere near her own.
Her new scheme required only the simplest of trysts: Theo must dance with her, and upon the conclusion of their set, escort her by some sly contrivance into an antechamber.
A library was best, but any small withdrawing-room would do, provided it boasted both curtains and witnesses prone to ill-timed entrances.
Theo would place one hand boldly at her waist, while she tilted her head just so, as though whispering some wicked promise.
At that instant, the curtain would be flung wide, and Society’s chorus would duly perform its lines:
“Merciful heavens! Lord Langley’s hand!”
“Miss Tolliver, in the draperies!”
“Oh, the impropriety – fetch my vinaigrette at once!”
The tableau would be unanswerable and the consequences foregone.
She would be bundled off to the country in disgrace, her chances next Season shrivelled like hothouse roses left unwatered.
Mama would rage, of course. To be struck from the sacred lists of Almack’s – what greater calamity could there be?
Yet Society always forgave, provided the fortune was sound and the title respectable.
Georgie would marry brilliantly and redeem the Tolliver name.
Mama would claim the victory as her own, Papa would yawn behind his newspaper, and Hetty herself would be – at last – free.
All that remained was for Theo to play his part.