CHAPTER XI
RICHLY adorned with Corinthian pillars, gilt lamps and luxurious drapery, the grand saloon of the Argyll Rooms was already thronging with persons by the time the Allerton party arrived.
It had taken them a little while to prepare themselves, for Hetty had to borrow the requisite mask and domino from Lady Allerton’s wardrobe, and a to-do over Trixie’s dress had delayed them further still.
Having in her possession the historical costume of a Tudor queen – purchased for a fancy dress ball but never worn due to her Papa dying the week before – she was most desirous of wearing it, and it took the combined efforts of Lady Allerton, Hetty and Timothy to dissuade her from the impulse.
‘That lady is wearing a costume,’ Trixie pointed out tartly as they took in the magnificence all around them. Then, narrowing her eyes, she wondered: ‘Do you think she might be Lady Nassington?
‘Hush,’ Lady Allerton said, adjusting her shocking pink domino about her as if afraid that it might fly off to reveal her identity at any moment. ‘Recollect we don’t wish to be known.’
Trixie did not appear to be listening. As they took a turn about the edges of the room, she was peering at all the persons about them from under her loo mask.
‘It does not seem to be as louche as I had expected,’ she whispered to Hetty, sounding rather disappointed. ‘But perhaps that happens later.’
As Arthur had said, the Argyll Rooms were perfectly respectable and, despite the public nature of tonight’s events, the attendees all hailed from very proper families – even if they were not strictly tonnish.
Hetty did not think Trixie likely to glimpse, tonight, the kind of bacchanalian revelry one might find at a less exclusive venue.
Nonetheless, even here, persons were not immune to the carnivalesque power of the masquerade, for the atmosphere was in some indefinable way looser than Hetty was used to.
Timothy’s mind seemed to be travelling along the same path.
‘I think we ought to dance now,’ he pronounced darkly.
Though his mother had eventually relented before the united front of Trixie and Arthur, he alone remained stoutly convinced this was an improper family activity.
‘Then leave before everything out there gets too … jolly.’
Hetty had been prepared to endure rather than enjoy the evening, but found, to her surprise, that she instinctively liked this less rigid ambiance – a feeling that, shockingly, only increased once they took to the dance floor.
There, all remaining qualms were quashed, even Timothy’s.
Country dances cannot fail to have that affect, it being very difficult to look down one’s nose while hopping on one foot.
They leapt, circled and clapped through a country dance and a quadrille before the waltz began.
‘Finally,’ Arthur said. ‘I was beginning to think the evening might be for naught.’
But Hetty would not have thought that. It was a curious thing to be where no one knew you, with no expectation of knowing anyone, in turn.
The entire point of the Season was knowing and being known, seeing and being seen, and without that as a possibility …
it was more freeing than Hetty could ever have predicted.
If she embarrassed herself beyond belief tonight, no one would know it, and that thought alone was enough to have her smiling – though she still blushed as Arthur took her hand in his and pulled her closer, into the waltz hold.
‘Very good,’ he approved as they began to rotate. ‘If your European fellow asks you to dance, you will be able to do so without worrying.’
‘I do not think that a risk,’ she said. ‘He always puts me so much at ease.’
Arthur gave an approving nod. ‘He sounds kind.’
‘He is.’ Hetty blushed furiously.
‘What else?’ Arthur prompted. Now that he had finally got Hetty to speak on the matter, he did not wish her to stop. ‘Tell me of him. I must learn of his character,’ he said. ‘How else can I be certain of his deserving you?’
Hetty was aware of an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh.
Wiser minds would advise her to refuse Arthur’s request, to evade the subject as she had been doing all week – but perhaps it was the enlivening effect of the country dance, which had made her blood rush through her veins, or the mask, provoking her sense of mischief, but she did not.
‘We can keep it simple,’ Arthur encouraged. ‘Are you of a similar age?’
As long as she did not lie … what could be the harm? ‘Roughly,’ she said warily. ‘He is – a few years older.’
‘You know him well?’
‘Quite well. We first met in, ah, in …’ For a moment, Hetty was hard pressed to remember a single country or city she had visited, before managing, finally: ‘Rome!’
Arthur frowned. ‘Not Vienna? I had assumed – so many Belgian nobles fled there to escape the French.’
This, Hetty decided, would make far more sense.
‘We first met, briefly, in Rome,’ she corrected hastily. ‘But, yes, Vienna is where we grew to know each other more fully, his family – as you say – having, ah, fled there after the annexation.’
Her palms were moistening with nerves.
‘You have not seen him since then?’
‘No.’ Hetty felt that to have conducted any clandestine meetings while living with the Allertons would be too unlikely, even for her fictional self. ‘But,’ she added hastily, for she did not wish Arthur to think she had been pining from afar with no encouragement, ‘we have written, too.’
‘A very good sign,’ Arthur approved. ‘A gentleman does not spend the effort of writing to a young lady unless his affections are strong.’
‘You think so?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Well, that is bolstering,’ she said, her thoughts on the hundred-high stack of letters she had received from Arthur over the years.
‘How did you come to be acquainted?’ he said. ‘Your father knows the family?’
She nodded. ‘And we lived … close to one another.’
Very close.
‘Hmm, interesting.’ He grinned down at her. ‘I wonder if I might be able to guess his identity.’
‘You may try,’ Hetty said, safe in the knowledge that there must be a hundred persons who fit such a description.
The music drew to a halt. She curtseyed, and he bowed. Across the room, Lady Allerton – recognisable to them, at least, by the shocking pink of her domino – clapped enthusiastically.
‘Another?’ Arthur said, and Hetty was tempted but—
‘Ask your mother, first,’ she requested. ‘I dare say this is the first dance floor I have seen her absent from in many years.’
Lady Allerton made a jesting show of considering Arthur’s offer before she permitted him to sweep her on to the dance floor.
‘I think I shall explore the other rooms,’ Trixie announced. ‘If I find refreshments, shall I bring back lemonade?’
‘I shall accompany you,’ Timothy said – with such an edge of obstinacy in his voice that Trixie did not argue, however certain she felt that her elder brother was likely to take all the fun out of exploring.
She did, however, as they made their way through to the saloon and neared the refreshment table, let out a soft exclamation of surprise.
‘What is it?’
‘I think that was Mr Brummell,’ Trixie whispered.
‘Unlikely,’ Timothy said dismissively – though peering over his shoulder in the direction of the gentleman Trixie had indicated.
‘You are here,’ Trixie reasoned. ‘Would it be so strange for another gentleman of fashion to have had the same idea? Perhaps he enjoys the anonymity as well.’
Her words were chosen carefully. Quite forgetting that he had been against this scheme from the first, Timothy became assailed with pleasant visions of a friendship struck up under disguise, bonding over mutual appreciation of the masquerade.
‘Perhaps we ought to take another look,’ he suggested casually, but Trixie waved him on – promising she would wait faithfully in the queue for lemonade until his return.
Naturally, she did not even wait until he was out of sight to make a bid for freedom.
Turning in the other direction, she made her way through to the spacious chamber devoted to cards, hung about with scarlet drapery, and to the small apartment adjoining this, decorated all in blue and ornamented with a great deal of fancy, but containing none of the revelry for which Trixie had been hoping.
The disappointment of this caused her to let out a great sigh, attracting the attention of a gentleman at the nearest card table who, after looking at her rather closely, smiled.
Trixie smiled back – a reciprocity he plainly took as encouragement, for he rose and walked slowly towards her.
At the balls Trixie usually frequented, gentlemen did not approach a young lady without an introduction, so this was rather thrilling – though his first words had Trixie a little perplexed.
‘Are you following me?’
Trixie bridled. ‘No. How could I do so, when I do not know you?’
‘Do you not?’
She looked closely at him. Those parts of his face she could make out, around his mask and in the dim light, did feel familiar – her heart began to beat rather more quickly.
‘Perhaps I do,’ she said with admirable calmness. ‘But surely that is not why a person comes to a masquerade?’
‘As you do frequently, I gather?’ His lip curled, amused. He was laughing at her, and she did not know if she liked it or not. ‘Unlikely behaviour from a staid Allerton.’
‘Then you plainly do not know me very well, Captain,’ she said haughtily – a line she was very pleased with. Truly, she was handling this very well, given the lack of notice.
‘A set of circumstances I deplore,’ he agreed. ‘If only I had the means of altering them.’
‘I should think that within your power,’ she said. ‘You might have asked me to dance, or paid me a morning visit.’
‘Might I?’ he said. ‘I feel quite certain that your excellent brother would bar me from the house – I have a shocking reputation, you know.’
She nodded. ‘I am aware. He called you an adventurer.’
Captain Edgewood showed a flash of teeth. ‘And are you shocked?’