CHAPTER VI
THE play finished to great applause and left the audience full of liveliness.
Hetty, however, could not share in the general animation.
The performance had been more than long enough for her mind to stray compulsively back to her awkwardness during the interval.
Plainly, a change of dress was not going to bring about the transformation she desired.
If anything, she thought with some agitation as she adjusted the skirt, it had made matters worse, somehow.
‘Cease fussing,’ Timothy reprimanded her in a low voice.
The crush of persons had separated Arthur and Lady Allerton from the rest of the party, leaving Timothy with the task of safely escorting Hetty and Trixie to the carriage.
‘There is nothing less dashing than fussing. You do not see me doing so, even after all I endured this evening.’
‘My gown feels wrong.’ Hetty tugged at the fabric again. ‘Does it look wrong?’
Somewhat reluctantly, Timothy looked her over. ‘Perhaps it is the way you stand.’
Hetty straightened, alarmed. ‘There is something wrong with the way I stand?’
Hetty had not, as was common for young ladies of her class, been schooled in the principles of perfect posture by a series of exacting governesses.
Miss Herne, hired by Hetty’s father a month after her mother’s passing, had been sacked a day into her employment, just as soon as Professor Clithero – who preferred total quietude for his work – had discovered her penchant for a morning sing-song.
Following this, he had never sought another governess, in the fear that a musical proclivity would prove characteristic of the profession.
But whatever ramifications this decision had had upon Hetty – and there were certainly many – she had not thought it had affected her posture.
‘Something off about it,’ Timothy diagnosed. ‘Or perhaps it is your walk.’
‘What do you mean?’
Timothy sighed as one prevailed upon far beyond what was acceptable. ‘I do not know … Trixie?’
Trixie, who was a little ahead of them, peering into the crowd in search, Hetty suspected, of this Captain Edgewood, turned back to consider Hetty.
‘It is not your walk itself,’ she identified. ‘Nor your posture. It’s something happening in …’ She made a vague gesture across her body.
‘My soul?’ Hetty interpolated.
‘That’s it!’ Timothy said, with all the relief one feels to be finally understood. ‘You must improve the posture of your soul.’
‘Exactly!’ Trixie agreed.
‘Oh good,’ Hetty said. ‘That sounds easy enough, at least.’
She did, however, understand the implication.
It was confidence of which Trixie and Timothy spoke: as essential to a young lady’s wardrobe as her underclothes and far more difficult to attain.
The Allertons were some of the most assured persons Hetty had ever met and, as far as Hetty knew, they had been born knowing how to strike up a conversation – as Trixie was doing just now, extending a friendly overture to a young lady entering the stairway from one of the upper circle boxes, as if it were the simplest, easiest thing in the world.
‘But it must be possible to learn,’ she said, rather helplessly.
Professor Clithero had insisted this often, to his own students and Hetty herself, once he had taken over her education.
While his curriculum – literature rather than music, history in place of embroidery, linguistics over etiquette – might have been unusual, not once had Hetty been given reason to suppose this refrain to be untrue.
It was always possible to learn, if one had the correct materials, the correct tutor – only how, without a governess to aid her, was Hetty to do so?
‘I wonder how courtesans learn such things,’ she wondered out loud, more to herself than to Timothy. ‘Or even those lovely opera dancers we saw tonight – I understand they are often the mistresses of gentlemen, as well—’
‘Shouldn’t talk about such things, Hetty!’ Timothy interrupted, looking cautiously about them. ‘Besides, what on earth do dancers have to say to anything?’
‘Well, they presumably learn their craft, as any other industry.’
‘I’m sure I wouldn’t know,’ Timothy insisted.
‘Oh, please don’t be so prim, Timothy,’ Hetty begged. ‘Someone must teach them how to converse, to entertain, the art of self-possession.’
Timothy might not be the swiftest of intellectuals, but he had a ready instinct for self-preservation. ‘Not suggesting I perform this service for you, I hope?’
It was not a bad idea, truly. ‘Well …’
He glared at her. ‘Not the sort of thing one asks a fellow, Hetty. Not the thing.’
‘You were so helpful with my clothes!’
‘Fashion! Not flirting. Egad, Hetty, I am not that sort of gentlemen.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
Ensconced in their conversation, Hetty had not noticed Arthur squeezing his way through the crowd to reach them. It was the only time in Hetty’s recollection that she could remember ever not being pleased to see him.
‘Nothing!’ she yelped, trying to silence Timothy with a glare.
‘Arthur’s the better man to ask,’ Timothy said, not silenced in the least.
‘Ask about what?’
‘Nothing,’ Hetty insisted.
‘Silly chit has some notion of learning to flirt,’ Timothy said. ‘All this for some glorified Frenchman, Hetty! It is a nonsense – and frankly—’
‘There is the carriage.’ Arthur – perceiving Hetty’s rising distress – cut across Timothy. ‘Timothy, you escort Mama and Trixie; Hetty and I shall follow in a hackney.’
Whatever gratefulness Hetty felt for Arthur’s intercession was temporary, however, for though his approach might be more cautious than his brother’s, he evidently had no intention of allowing the subject to drop.
‘Did you enjoy yourself this evening?’ he wondered once they had settled into the hackney and drawn off.
‘Oh, yes, certainly.’
‘You seemed somewhat distressed,’ he noted, ‘receiving our visitors into the box.’
‘Did I?’ Hetty occupied herself with peering out of the window. ‘It is a shame, Arthur, that you did not see the Illuminations, for they were quite magnificent – it felt as if the whole city were lit up in celebration, though Wellington’s house was the most—’
‘I wish you would confide in me,’ Arthur put in quietly. Hetty ceased her gabbling at once. ‘You can trust me,’ he told her.
Backed thoroughly into a corner, Hetty opted for an offensive strike. ‘As you trust me?’
Arthur was startled. ‘Certainly.’
‘Something ails you,’ she pressed him, ‘and I do not believe it is only the matter of the diamonds. Ever since you returned – no, that is not correct, for all was well, at first.’ She had not given it much thought at the time, too taken up with her own plans and stratagems, but now she considered the matter: ‘It was only after Thimbleby’s visit that some disquiet began to weigh upon you.
’ She furrowed her brows, regarding him. ‘Is your mama in a very bad scrape?’
Arthur hesitated. He had resolved to keep this secret entirely to himself. It was nothing to do with Hetty; it was not her burden to shoulder. He was on the point of refusing to speak of the matter, when she spoke again: ‘Arthur.’
These two syllables were the entire sum of her persuasion, and yet it was more effective than any histrionics could have been.
Arthur found he no longer had the resolve to withhold the truth from her.
‘I recollect there is some brandy in my father’s study,’ he said as they reached Berkeley Square. ‘We can speak more there.’
This suspicion was proved true enough, though once they had reached this location, Arthur was reminded that brandy was not an appropriate drink to offer Hetty and called instead for some ratafia to be brought up.
If Dawson thought there was anything strange in such a nightcap, in such a room, he gave no indication of it in his expression, and Arthur did not think he would have much cared either way.
After the difficulties of speaking with his mother, Hetty’s rapt attention was a welcome balm to the worries burning in his mind, and as he concluded his tale of what, exactly, had occurred during their meeting with Thimbleby, Hetty tried to hide her horror.
‘That must have been a terrible shock,’ she observed.
‘A surprise, certainly,’ Arthur said lightly.
‘Though’ – he made himself give a chuckle he did not feel – ‘I wish you might have heard some of the things Mama was saying – truly the greatest absurdities. When she uttered the words “higgledy piggledy” I thought Thimbleby would swallow his own tongue.’
Hetty smiled. ‘I can just imagine it.’ Then, after a pause, she added: ‘I am very sorry.’
She would have liked to express her sympathy in full, but Arthur cut across her.
‘One must forge on, which I shall do, as soon as I have a better grasp of it all.’ He looked at the tower of papers, which still stood, malignant and incomprehensible.
‘Though Papa’s cursed reports might as well be Ancient Greek for all the sense they make to me. ’
Hetty looked towards the desk, too. From here, seated in one of the distressed chairs before the fire, she could just make out the familiar lines of a chart of accounts. Her fingers immediately began to itch.
‘I hope you do not mind keeping such a secret,’ Arthur went on.
‘You may trust me,’ Hetty assured him, trying not to seem too pleased by this confidence. ‘Only – you do not intend to tell Timothy or Trixie?’
Arthur shook his head. Timothy and Trixie were, to his mind, still children. ‘It is not their concern.’
‘Do you not think—’
Arthur waved this away. ‘My mind is made up on the matter.’
Hetty subsided, unconvinced. Then, after a pause, she said quietly: ‘I should be happy to – to give you whatever money you need.’
Arthur shook his head. ‘I could not use you in such a way.’
‘A loan, then?’
Arthur held up a hand to forestall her. ‘It would not be right. You have already done too much.’