CHAPTER XI #2
‘In truth …’ Trixie found herself rather bored of haughtiness. ‘In truth, I am envious,’ she mused. ‘I should love to be a gamester, and to travel, and to have adventures myself. Indeed, I wish you would pay us a morning visit so I might ask all about being a vagabond.’
But the Captain shook his head. ‘I am not the sort to make morning calls,’ he said, and she felt like a fool for suggesting it. ‘Do you take walks?’
The truthful answer was no. ‘Some days,’ Trixie said vaguely.
Captain Edgewood gave a bland sort of smile. ‘So do I – some days.’
They waited, looking at one another.
‘Some days at – four o’clock,’ Trixie conceded begrudgingly.
‘What a coincidence.’
This felt like the appropriate moment for her to make a devastatingly witty goodbye before sweeping off, so Trixie raised her chin, prepared her skirts for sweeping and opened her mouth, when—
‘You ought to have your eyesight checked!’ Timothy berated her hotly. ‘For that fellow wasn’t Mr Brummell – and this isn’t the lemonade queue.’
With the tiniest of bows, Edgewood took the opportunity to slip past them and into the next room. Trixie apologised to Timothy without the smallest ounce of sincerity.
‘Let us go back to Hetty at once,’ Timothy said. ‘Goodness knows what might have happened.’
‘Oh, she is a few feet away from Mama,’ Trixie said, peering after Edgewood. ‘She’s hardly going to be doing anything out of the ordinary.’
Hetty, however, was to surprise them – and herself. For no sooner had she seated herself, primly, on one of the benches that lined the walls, ready to watch Arthur and Lady Allerton dance, than she, too, was approached without introduction.
‘You do not waltz?’
It had taken Hetty a little while to realise she was being addressed. The gentleman had to repeat the question before she turned her head up to regard him.
‘Oh – no,’ she said. ‘Well, yes, I do in general – but, not – not directly in this instance—’
Hetty cut herself off. She supposed, in some senses, jabbering on in such a way was an improvement upon stupefied silence – but only marginally.
‘Well, I cannot allow that,’ the gentleman said. ‘Would you permit me the honour?’
He extended a palm, and bizarrely – though she knew she ought not, though this had specifically been one of Lady Allerton’s rules on setting out – Hetty found herself accepting.
It took only a few steps for her common sense to return, but by that point they were already upon the dance floor and the stranger’s arm was going about her and Hetty could only hope that Lady Allerton did not spot her for what would she think …
The music began. Hetty concentrated on her steps, staring so fixedly at the ground that the gentleman began to wonder if there was something amiss with his shoes.
‘I did wonder if they are a bit too dashing,’ he worried. ‘The buckles, you know.’
There was enough of Timothy in his voice to break Hetty out of her paroxysms of mortification.
‘They are very fine,’ Hetty assured the stranger. ‘In fact …’
But she faltered. Having looked up into the gentleman’s eyes, she recalled he was not Timothy – but, fortunately, the movement of the dance prevented her pause from seeming unusual.
‘In fact?’ the stranger prompted her, when next they returned to one another
‘In fact, I was … admiring their shininess. They are almost a mirror.’
‘I see!’ he said. ‘I thought you afflicted by shyness but now I see it is an excess of vanity: you were admiring your own reflection!’
Hetty laughed. Across the room, Arthur turned his head at the sound. He ought not to have heard it – not over the riot of noise all about him – but somehow he had.
‘Arthur!’ Lady Allerton said sharply, following his gaze. ‘Hetty is dancing with a stranger.’
‘I see her,’ Arthur said.
‘Does he look as if he is bothering her?’
‘No, no,’ Arthur said. ‘They are – laughing.’
‘Well, we must stop it at once!’ Lady Allerton said. The faintest trace of her French accent revealed itself, as it only did in moments of true agitation. ‘It is not at all proper.’
‘What do you suggest I do?’ he said. ‘I can hardly drag her from the dance floor.’
Arthur became suddenly aware that he was not leading the dance any more. Though their hold had not changed, he had the feeling of being held in an iron clasp, as Lady Allerton inexorably spun them towards Hetty.
‘How are you doing that?’ he wondered, distracted.
Lady Allerton’s fluttering limbs had iron at their centre, it seemed, and her eyes had suddenly become very fixed.
Plainly, she was a fiercer chaperone than Arthur had ever suspected, and he began to wonder what, exactly, would happen when they reached Hetty.
Would Lady Allerton plant the fellow a facer?
The music stopped before Lady Allerton could seize the encroaching stranger by the scruff of the neck and cast him bodily away from her ward, and they reached the pair just as the man was making a very commendable bow. ‘May I escort you back to the rest of your party?’
‘No need!’ Lady Allerton sang out. ‘We are here – how do you do? Yes, well, in fact it is time we were off, lovely to make your acquaintance, do enjoy the rest of your evening!’
In a trice, she was bearing Hetty off in the direction of the doors.
‘Time for us to go now! Where are Trixie and Timothy?’
‘They went to get refreshment,’ Hetty said, and if ordinarily she would have been able to tell at once that Lady Allerton was irate, right then she did not spare it a thought. She was too elated.
‘Oh goodness, I shall fetch them – No, Arthur, you fetch a cab, I shall find you out there—’
‘I did it! Arthur,’ Hetty said, gripping his arm, ‘I spoke to a stranger, properly. I asked him questions! I was even – well, I was not strictly amusing, but it was an amusing conversation.’
Arthur laughed. ‘I saw you.’
Hetty felt a hundred feet tall. The euphoria was strange, oddly all-encompassing for an interaction that had been so fleeting, so inconsequential – and, in truth, hardly anything to do with her.
For she had only been following the fellow’s lead.
But it felt huge, to her. ‘I want to come every evening! Somehow, with a mask … it is as if I can be someone else entirely.’
She spoke with jubilation, but her words had the smile slipping from Arthur’s lips. ‘You don’t need to be anyone else.’
She laughed. ‘Of course I do.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Yourself is enough, I promise.’
Hetty looked away, unable to hold his gaze. It was half painful to hear him say such a thing, for it was so very close to what she wished most in the world to hear from him. She knew better than to think he meant it in the way she wished – not yet, anyway.
‘And if this fellow – your Belgian – is the person you believe him to be,’ he said stoutly, ‘then he will see it too.’
‘It is not so easy as that,’ she said, regarding her feet. ‘If you only knew the ladies he ordinarily pursues. Such great beauties.’
Arthur shrugged. ‘You are beautiful, too.’
He said it without the smallest edge of romance, or even much emotion, but rather the matter-of-fact firmness with which one speaks undeniable truth. It made it better somehow and if Hetty had not been sure before, she was now: this was quite the best night of her life.