CHAPTER I #3
Arthur started. So, too, for that matter, did Hetty.
Marry? Arthur? She had assumed it would be years before he turned his attention to the matter – there were, after all, so many fewer time constraints on gentlemen than on ladies, and Arthur had always professed his disinclination to be leg-shackled at too young an age.
Fortunately, Arthur seemed to share these sentiments. His eyes finding the grandfather clock in the corner of the room, he laughed: ‘Mother – it has been only minutes! Do you intend to marry me off so soon?’
‘Well, one has to start thinking of these things!’ Lady Allerton reasoned. ‘She might be difficult to find, your viscountess. After all, the role is not an easy one.’
‘Oh yes?’ Arthur shot Hetty another sidelong grin that she returned rather weakly. ‘Will she need to have – ah – many accomplishments?’
Lady Allerton, taking a moment consider her own attributes with some satisfaction, preened. ‘She will need to deport herself with decorum, of course, and be principled, with a well-informed mind that—’
‘She sounds like a dashed flat,’ said Timothy.
‘Not, perhaps, a bluestocking …’ Lady Allerton conceded.
‘No, indeed,’ agreed Trixie fervently.
‘Such a lofty sort wouldn’t suit you, anyhow, Arthur,’ Timothy decided.
‘Yes, we all know the sort of lady you like,’ Trixie agreed with an archness that Arthur immediately informed her was entirely unbecoming.
She was not wrong, however. Arthur’s flirts had always been the same sort of ladies: diamonds of the first water with a ready wit and a great deal of vivacity.
Hetty had always envied these paragons, imagining how it would feel to be one of them, with the gentle wistfulness of one who knows it to be an impossibility.
Only now, imagining such a lady moving into Berkeley Square, the surge of jealousy Hetty felt was not gentle in the least.
‘I don’t think you will settle upon anyone short of a nonpareil,’ Trixie now declared, not in the least cowed by Arthur’s reprimand.
‘Shouldn’t wish for a nonpareil in the family,’ Timothy cautioned. ‘Tricky creatures.’
‘Perhaps, when you have finished discussing the matter amongst yourselves, you will inform me of your decision,’ Arthur suggested. ‘In the meantime, Mama, shall we join Thimbleby?’
‘I wish you would rest …’
Arthur untangled himself from his siblings with some difficulty, and rose. ‘I should like to speak with him. I own, I should have written to him earlier, but a bullet through one’s leg does rather push such considerations from the mind.’
Lady Allerton’s hands fluttered, as if she should rather like to push him back into his seat.
‘Perhaps you might try to be more careful.’ Timothy – whose thoughts had plainly travelled in a similar direction – sounded rather aggrieved. ‘Devilishly inconvenient for me to be made a viscount at such short notice.’
‘The next time I get shot, I shall endeavour to notify you ahead of time,’ Arthur assured him. ‘Would a week’s warning suit?’
Timothy tilted his head. ‘Fortnight would be better,’ he decided. ‘Thing is – it’s an entirely different wardrobe.’
Arthur laughed, sent a reprimanding cuff his way, and escorted his mother from the room. Hetty watched him go, feeling rather sick.
‘I wonder whom Mama intends for him,’ Trixie mused. ‘Miss Hadley? Miss Stanton?’
Timothy wrinkled his nose. ‘Miss Stanton wears a great deal of yellow.’
‘That is not a reason not to marry her.’
‘Is it not?’
Hetty did not join in the discussion. Foolishly, she had not considered the possibility of Arthur’s marriage: so worried had she been that he would not return at all, she had hardly considered what would happen when he did.
The idea was entirely flooring and yet, she could not deny, entirely likely.
For as frivolous and as fluttery as she might be, Lady Allerton’s instincts were rarely wrong: Arthur had returned to assume his duties, after all, and marriage was certainly one of them.
Beside her, Trixie heaved out a great, satisfied sigh.
‘I own, I was a little worried he might be very altered upon his return – but I see now I need not have been. It feels already as if he’s never been away. ’
‘Nothing changed at all,’ Timothy confirmed.
‘Nothing,’ Hetty said faintly.
In truth she did not know if she agreed. In some ways, Trixie was entirely correct. Hetty was, for example, every bit as in love with Arthur Allerton as she had been at twenty years old. But in others …
Hetty recollected the glance he had given her downstairs – as if, for a moment, she had been someone else entirely.
For a moment, she had felt like someone else entirely, too, and very far from the young lady who had been left, staring after Arthur at that farewell ball two years before.
She was no longer the sort of person who would stand placidly upon the sidelines, waiting for Arthur to notice her, while never truly expecting he would.
One Season, to become the lady she had always, deep down, wished to be … Perhaps it was not so impossible.
‘Timothy,’ Hetty whispered when Trixie was making her way out of the room. ‘I have changed my mind. I do want to cut a dash, after all.’