CHAPTER XIII
IT was as if Hetty were suddenly trying to move through thick, thick stew.
Each step towards the Marquis felt as if it were taking several hours, and yet, horrifyingly, her mind was moving with even greater sluggishness.
She ought not, she noted vaguely, allow Arthur to approach this fellow, this near-stranger.
Certainly, that would lead to humiliation so great as to cause her immediate death, and yet extrication would require a level of intelligent thought that in this moment seemed entirely impossible.
Perhaps she could faint? Or she might curl up in a ball upon the floor and refuse to move … it was more tempting, certainly, but—
There was no more time. They had crossed the ballroom, they were standing in front of the two gentlemen who turned toward them: Davenport smiling in welcome and Nicolet regarding them with an expression of pleasant neutrality.
This whole charade was going to unravel very quickly. Her death would be swift, at least.
‘Allerton! Miss Clithero! May I present to you—’
‘It is you!’ The Marquis Henri de Nicolet made a great show of doing a double take.
Hetty said nothing. She could not, of course, having so recently turned to stone.
Noticing this, Arthur spared a moment to consider that he might well have erred by forcing this encounter.
Had Hetty not said this fellow was the one gentleman with whom she had no trouble conversing?
One would certainly not think it, to look at her … Why had she not greeted him?
Davenport was looking between them curiously. ‘I see you have already been introduced!’
The Marquis winked at her. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘Their acquaintance is of a long standing,’ Arthur explained to Davenport, when it appeared Hetty would still not speak.
The Marquis’s smile faded, to be replaced by a rather quizzical expression. Arthur felt his confidence falter.
‘You are the Marquis de Nicolet?’ he checked, wondering for one awful moment if he had misidentified him, led Hetty blindly up to the wrong person.
‘I’ve always thought so,’ the Marquis replied. ‘It’s what people call me, at any rate.’
‘It seems safe to assume, then!’ Arthur said rather tartly. He did not quite understand why this fellow was being so difficult: he should be beside himself at such a reunion.
‘Forgive me, I am being rather slow,’ Davenport asked. ‘When did you make each other’s acquaintance?’
Nicolet opened his mouth to answer – and suddenly Hetty found she could not bear it.
‘In – in our childhood,’ she heard herself say, as if from a long distance. ‘We are childhood friends.’
‘Childhood friends,’ Nicolet echoed blankly. Hetty stared him full in the face, eyes so beseeching, so imploring, that a smile began to quiver at the corners of his mouth. ‘Childhood friends,’ he repeated more emphatically.
Davenport clapped him upon the shoulder. ‘You did not tell me that, cousin!’
‘No,’ Nicolet acknowledged. ‘I did not.’
He had, until this moment, been enjoying a pleasant but unremarkable evening, and was by no means displeased to have such a diversion thrust upon him. One was not often in conversation with a lunatic, and he was inclined to make the most of it.
‘You did not expect to find me here tonight,’ Hetty put in.
The Marquis confessed this was true. ‘Why did you not inform me?’ he reproached her, and Hetty found herself apologising.
‘It has been such a busy month, I have not had time to write – all my correspondence has fallen behind.’
The Marquis sighed. ‘And yet I thought I constituted more than mere correspondence.’
‘Come now, Nicolet.’ Colonel Davenport felt moved to defend Miss Clithero. ‘The demands of the Season, you know.’
‘Miss Clithero was delighted to hear of your arrival on British soil,’ Arthur put in.
The Marquis appeared mollified. ‘I was delighted to come, to reunite with my childhood friend after – how long has it been?’
‘I …’ Hetty searched her mind frantically. If they had met, fictionally, in Rome, that would make it …
‘Too long!’ the Marquis declared.
The fear of where this conversation might lead made Hetty brave. As Nicolet opened his mouth, she leapt in before he could. ‘I am so sorry, we must have interrupted your conversation. Pray, what were you speaking of before our arrival?’
Colonel Davenport regarded the Marquis mischievously. ‘Oh, well, between friends, we were just discussing how Nicolet ought best to ingratiate himself with the Grandduchess.’
Arthur’s heart sank for Hetty. ‘You are to join the hordes dangling after her?’
The Marquis inclined his head.
‘Already he leads the betting at White’s,’ Colonel Davenport boasted. ‘I personally believe the first volley is everything – but we must have the lady’s view! Miss Clithero?’
‘Oh well, I—’
‘I think they are setting up for the waltz,’ Arthur noted, not wishing Hetty to be made to do such a thing. ‘Perhaps—’
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Hetty to join him upon the floor – perhaps a retreat, at this moment, might be a wise tactic.
‘They are!’ The Marquis extended a hand to Hetty. ‘Perhaps, if your hand is not spoken for, you might permit me the honour?’
Hetty accepted – anything to be free of so thorny a conversation – and Arthur was left staring after them, hand still hovering out in aborted invitation.
‘Charming fellow, isn’t he?’ Colonel Davenport said with a grin. ‘He’ll give you a run for your money, Allerton.’
Arthur gave a noncommittal hum. For reasons he could not quite explain, he did not particularly care for this notion.
‘If you’ll excuse me, Davenport …’
He turned away, for watching Hetty and the Marquis dance did not feel right – he did not, after all, wish her to feel self-conscious under such observation. Yes, that was it.
‘I cannot apologise enough,’ Hetty was meanwhile whispering. ‘Nor thank you sufficiently.’
‘Not at all,’ Nicolet said graciously. ‘I perceive our acquaintance is not – in fact – of a longstanding nature?’
‘Not even a little,’ she said miserably. ‘It’s all just the most terrible tangle. I should never have asked Timothy to help me with the new gowns, had I known! Naturally, Trixie suspected immediately that it was for someone. I should have foreseen that!’
‘It is just like her,’ Nicolet agreed.
‘I might have told her the truth, of course, but could I trust she would remain silent?’
Nicolet tilted his head. ‘Difficult to say. She is certainly not as trustworthy as Timothy – of that we can be certain.’
‘And the worst thing would be for Arthur to have found out the truth in such a way …’
‘Of course. We must, at all costs, keep the truth from Arthur.’
Finally realising the garbled nature of her speech, Hetty fell silent, blushing.
‘Don’t cease now,’ the Marquis begged. ‘If I am to have a role in your drama, I must know the whole.’
He slid an arm around her waist as they took their positions. ‘Do enlighten me,’ he pressed her. ‘I promise I shan’t tell a soul.’
Hetty choked out a mortified laugh, shaking her head as the violins struck up the first note – but somehow, without quite knowing why, she found herself pouring the whole sorry tale into his ears, only omitting those details which were not hers to share – the Allertons’ financial difficulties – and Nicolet listened, rapt and entertained.
So fixated were they both on the narrative that Hetty hardly paid a jot of attention to her feet as they rotated round the floor, nor she did not notice the curious glances they were garnering from those lingering upon the sidelines.
The Marquis de Nicolet, titled, landed and wealthy, was considered quite a fabulous catch, and here he was, dancing with – was that Miss Clithero?
‘I see,’ Nicolet said when she had concluded. ‘You love me, then?’
Hetty turned beet red. ‘Only in a fictional sense.’
‘Such a blow, so early in the evening,’ Nicolet murmured. ‘But I shall rally, fret not! I perceive my part is, indeed, the antagonist? The love rival, yes?’
‘You cannot mean to – to go along with such a scheme?’ Hetty was incredulous. ‘It is ludicrous.’
‘Good sense would encourage me to decline,’ he agreed. ‘But whimsy … whimsy would have me accept. It might not be my purpose in coming to London, but I like to make myself amiable. What would you require from me?
Hetty shook her head. ‘There is no need. I shall confess everything – I ought never to have involved you, not even for a moment!’
‘But of course you had to! And, truly, there could be no better person for it.’
The dance drew to a close. Nicolet let out an exclamation of annoyance. ‘Oh, but we have so much more to discuss.’
Behind him, the footman was announcing new guests at the top of the stairs. Over the hubbub, Hetty could not hear the name or title, but by the excitement upon the air, and the stature of the lady who entered, this could only be the Grandduchess of Oldenburg.
‘Let us dance again,’ Nicolet said insistently, unheeding of this.
‘We mustn’t,’ she said wretchedly. ‘Everyone will think us courting – and then I will have ruined your chances with the Grandduchess, on top of everything else. Nothing could be more unhelpful to that aim. I shall go now to Arthur and explain – tell him—’
But the Marquis would not release her hand. ‘No. No, don’t do that. I am wondering something. I am – indeed – on the cusp of a great revelation.’
He stood stock still, as a hunting dog when it has caught a scent. The ballroom began to fill up with new dancers.
‘Mightn’t you hop off the cusp?’ she suggested tentatively. ‘It is just that we need to clear the floor.’
Shaking himself to attention, he obeyed the pressure of her hand. ‘Do not, I implore, abandon your scheme just yet,’ he urged her. ‘I think – yes I do think this might be the very thing for us both.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We have not time, now. I shall deliver you back to your chaperone; indeed, I am most desirous of meeting the charming Lady Allerton, whom I feel I know already.’
Until she fully understood his intentions, Hetty was not sure that was a good idea. ‘I don’t see her …’
‘Hetty, darling!’
Alas, Lady Allerton had taken this choice away from her. The news that her protégée had taken to the floor with the Marquis had spread sufficiently quickly across the room so as to bring her to the scene, and she greeted Nicolet with open arms and an instant charm offensive.
‘Welcome, my lord, to England!’
Without a beat of hesitation, the Marquis returned fire. ‘But I will not believe you to be Lady Allerton! It is impossible, you are but a child!’
Lady Allerton gave an appreciative chuckle. ‘Oh, pish posh!’
They sparred back and forth for a few moments, both so plainly enjoying themselves that Hetty spared a thought to wonder what Arthur would think if she lost her fictional lover to his mother.
The arrival of Trixie, whom the Marquis pronounced as seeming like Lady Allerton’s sister, eased matters somewhat.
Trixie looked from the Marquis to Hetty with dawning comprehension and mouthed: The Belgian?
Hetty avoided her eyes. Trixie took this as assent. ‘Will you call upon us, my lord?’ she requested, with sweet impetuosity. ‘We should like that above all things.’
‘I should be delighted! Only give me your direction and I shall be there!’
A tiny frown appeared betwixt Trixie’s brows. ‘But surely you know it, already?’ Had not Hetty said that they had exchanged letters?
‘Yes, of course I do – what a fool I am!’ Nicolet agreed swiftly. ‘Only – my deplorable memory, it is … number seventeen?’
‘Almost!’ Lady Allerton trilled. ‘It is number eight Berkeley Square.’
‘Don’t go to number seventeen,’ Trixie advised. ‘They are awful.’
‘Trixie! But yes – number eight, my lord. I have already requested Lady Davenport bring your delightful sister to visit us: Mademoiselle Isabelle is such a charming girl! Your aunt can be very proud of the pair of you!’
The Marquis thanked her, promised he would visit at his earliest convenience, bowed, winked at Hetty, and made his farewell.
Hetty watched his departure with some misgiving.
The correct thing to do, of course, would be to take this experience as fair warning that deceit and lies would always emerge, eventually – and confess now, to Arthur, everything.
Except … she did not think Nicolet likely to expose her deception, not while it seemed to be amusing him so. Was a full confession necessary?
‘Is he your Belgian paramour?’ Trixie tugged on Hetty’s arm eagerly. ‘I knew it! Was he the same as you remembered?’
Hetty wavered. There could be no reassuring herself, from now on, that she was merely going along with a fiction of Trixie’s making.
The Belgian paramour was a real person now, and anything she uttered from this moment onward was a choice.
‘Yes,’ she said, wondering if she would live to regret this. ‘Yes, he was just the same as always.’
She only hoped she would not live to regret this.