CHAPTER XXI
HETTY could have found a reason to absent herself from the day’s events, but she did not.
Her golden summer had ended in storm, yes, certainly, but somehow the thought of concocting an excuse to sequester herself away seemed a bitter form of refuge.
Far better to cram her mind full with the demands of the calendar – and this, fortunately, was just what was available.
‘These are the most important days of the Season,’ Lady Allerton informed Trixie and Hetty with all the restrained urgency of a field marshal.
‘We have only a short while remaining until our ball, and our guest list still contains no royals – I need not tell you, after the assemblies we have attended recently, what a blow this is. I shall not admit defeat, however, though it will be no easy task, especially now we have lost Arthur.’
‘Only briefly,’ Trixie pointed out.
‘Goodness knows, I understand the importance of duty,’ Lady Allerton continued, with no sign of having heard this, ‘but really, ruralising at such a time as this! I cannot think what prompted this disloyalty.’
Hetty, however, was glad to have some respite from his presence. Breathing was certainly easier, now she did not have to contend with his presence – and as she climbed down from the carriage, and followed Lady Allerton into the theatre, she found her heart to be quite steady, too.
Tonight’s entertainment was the opera, led by the famed Grassini, and the crowds were all abuzz ahead of the performance – though as little as anyone would admit, the more eagerly anticipated spectacle was the royal party.
Lady Allerton, when they settled into their seats, felt entirely vindicated in having refused to permit Arthur to get rid of their box, for it offered a quite unparalleled view of the royal one.
There was the Prince Regent, with the Tsar on the one hand, and the King of Prussia upon the other, with a handful of other foreign notables grouped behind them.
‘Prince Metternich from the Austrian Empire,’ Lady Allerton murmured softly as her eyes glided over the box. ‘Prince Hardenberg, the chancellor – though the gentleman currently peering over the side I do not recognise …’
‘But I do,’ Hetty realised with some surprise. ‘That is Alexander von Humboldt.’
Lady Allerton turned to regard Hetty with some surprise. ‘Who?’
Hetty examined the face of the whiskered gentleman. ‘A colleague of my father. He has dined at our house several times.’
‘Wonderful,’ Lady Allerton breathed. ‘Oh, Hetty – would you mind awfully …’
‘It is no trouble,’ Hetty said. ‘In fact, he is looking this way.’
To both her own and Lady Allerton’s surprise, as Humboldt’s gaze travelled in their direction, she raised her hand in greeting.
‘Hetty! One does not wave at the Royal box!’
Hetty dropped her arm. ‘Oh – I did not mean—’
But before she could feel more than a sting of regret, she saw recognition dawn upon Humboldt’s face, and he smiled, raising his hand in return. Prince Hardenberg, next to him, followed Humboldt’s gaze, and then turned to make curious enquiry of his friend.
‘Oh,’ Lady Allerton breathed. ‘Oh, how wonderful – I do hope he visits us at the first interval.’
This hope was to be realised – but before it was, scandal occurred, in the form of the sudden arrival of the Princess of Wales.
Excluded from participation in any of the peace celebrations, the timing of her entrance could only have been a form of revenge, for as the first notes of ‘God Save the King’ began, she swept into the box directly opposite her husband, dressed all in black velvet, causing a great stir and a storm of applause that quite upstaged the Regent.
It was an incident delicious enough to provide the entire ton with gossip-fodder for many days to come, and the Allertons something to discuss when Humboldt arrived at their box, bringing with him none other than Prince Hardenberg of Prussia.
It was a prospect that, had Hetty been alone, would have made her expire on the spot, but Lady Allerton was made of sterner stuff, and the full sun of her splendid charm shone upon the Prince.
Hetty, meanwhile, was able to fade back into the background with Humboldt, inquiring quietly after his travels, his current research, and promising to introduce him to Lady Sefton’s scholarly brother, Mr Craven, whose conversation he would find interesting.
‘I fancy he rather admired you, Trixie,’ Lady Allerton exclaimed, once the gentlemen had departed – though, to Hetty’s eye, it had been Lady Allerton and not her young daughter to whom the Prince had been most partial.
‘How splendid,’ Trixie said dully.
Lady Allerton regarded her in some surprise. ‘I should have thought you would be pleased, to be admired by a prince!’
‘He’s not a prince by blood,’ Trixie objected moodily – Prince Hardenberg’s title had been afforded him very recently, in recognition of his part in the war – ‘and besides, he’s old!
I should be far more pleased to be admired by a young one.
’ Then she added, in a bitter mutter: ‘Though ten to one they would turn out to be a worm, just like the rest – prince or no.’
In contrast to her mother’s triumph, Trixie felt she had had a very poor evening.
She had spent the better part of the opera trying to catch the eye of Captain Edgewood in one of the boxes below and, having finally secured her aim, slipped out to meet him in the second interval under the pretext of paying a visit to Miss Corcott.
‘I own, I was not certain of seeing you again, given your veritable flight from my presence at the masquerade …’ he had greeted her.
His tone was teasing rather than reprimanding, and yet still Trixie felt obliged to defend herself: ‘My note explained everything! That woman Mrs Ridley …’
He curled his mouth into an ironic sort of smile that concealed genuine frustration at Mrs Ridley’s interruption of so crucial a moment.
‘Ah yes, she believes me to be a poor match for you.’
‘Everyone does.’
Edgewood did not seem to her very worried by this. ‘I own, I find myself more interested in what you think, Miss Allerton.’
Trixie deliberated for a moment. Though she would never admit it to her brother, she had been a great deal struck by the points he had raised in the carriage on the way to Almack’s – and though she did not intend to demand the Captain prove his affections for her with something so placid as a morning visit, she did still intend to verify his intentions by other, more underhanded, means.
‘I think you a better man than they can see,’ she told the Captain boldly.
He smiled. ‘You flatter me. Alas, I cannot—’
‘For if you were a fortune hunter, you would be chasing titled heiresses, after all,’ she went on, ‘not persons such as I.’
This was the means she had decided upon, a test of such simple elegance that she fancied King Solomon himself would have approved.
‘It is not like you to be self-deprecating,’ he said, rather amused. ‘Come, Miss Allerton, you do your charms a disservice.’
‘But it is true.’ Trixie sighed. ‘I am entirely without dowry, recollect – my brother’s fortune being so sadly reduced – and so does your courtship not prove you are a better man than they think you?’
She watched his expression under her eyelashes, waiting to see how this pronouncement – which, though she believed it to be a deceit, touched perilously close to the truth – would land.
There was a pause, while Captain Edgewood cursed himself for ever believing a word that had come out of Mrs Ridley’s mouth – but he spared only a moment for this activity, for he owned quick thinking, if not the tiniest shred of shame, among his greatest skills.
‘Courtship?’ he said. ‘My dear Miss Allerton … I am so terribly embarrassed! Have I given you the impression …? I thought it was plain that we were enjoying a mere flirtation.’
It was a speech calculated to make her feel small, and it succeeded – though not in the way, perhaps, that he had intended.
Where, a moment before, Trixie had felt godlike in her manipulations, she flushed now with mortification.
She had been wrong; Arthur and Timothy had been right: Edgewood was a miserable little snirp.
How she held on to her temper, and did not shriek recriminations at him right there in the theatre, Trixie did not know – but, surprising herself with herself with the control with which she bid him goodnight, she returned, rigid and furious, to the box.
‘Only fancy the Princess doing such a thing,’ Lady Allerton said now, returning to the earlier topic. ‘One has to admire her mettle, but truly, I do not understand the purpose of such public carryings-on.’
‘I do,’ Trixie said. ‘When one has been wronged one cannot simply let them win.’
Lady Allerton, rather alarmed by the emotion in her daughter’s voice, pressed her for elaboration, but Trixie only shook her head and, once they had returned home, took herself off to bed without a word.
‘I think perhaps she is tired,’ Lady Allerton said. ‘It is understandable – but still, I do not think it is the thing to call people worms.’
‘I shall speak to her,’ Hetty promised.
‘Dearest girl,’ Lady Allerton said affectionately. ‘It gives me such joy to see you spreading your wings – I did not know you had it in you!’
Neither did Hetty, though she was not certain she would herself characterise it as ‘spreading her wings’.
Perhaps it was more that, having faced such a rejection, nothing else could quite hold the same fear.
So much so that, the next day, she found herself revisiting Madame Picard, the modiste, to reiterate that she would buy the dashing gown of blue satin that had so daunted her before; and when, that evening, the Marquis once more offered to introduce her to his many foreign acquaintances, she was brave enough to accept.
‘Truly?’
‘Yes,’ Hetty decided. Not knowing how long this bravery would last, she would try to make some use of it first – for Lady Allerton’s sake, if nothing else, for that lady was still bemoaning the lack of illustrious attendees to her ball.
Whatever European acquaintance Hetty might be able to make would, she knew, be very much appreciated.
‘Only let us stay where I can still keep an eye upon Trixie, too.’
Despite Hetty’s best efforts, Trixie had not confided in her as to the source of her listlessness the night before.
In contrast, tonight she appeared to be possessed by a restless energy that worried Hetty just as much.
They were in Lady Jersey’s garden, sipping champagne ahead of the vast firework display that was to follow.
The Tsar and his sister – from whom the Marquis was keeping a careful distance – were in attendance, a fact that had caused a great deal of excitement if not much surprise (for Lady Jersey was said to be his flirt), and Trixie kept teasing her mama that she might easily secure one of these royals for her ball if only she would faint into their arms.
Plainly, it behoved Hetty to keep an eye on her, and as the Marquis bore her off to meet a pack of his associates, Hetty periodically spotted Trixie in the crowd, in the moments when it would not be ill mannered to allow her attention to stray.
It was a feat she thought she managed gracefully enough – or certainly with more elegance than would have been possible weeks before – as the young men of the Marquis’s acquaintance were all broadly far too anxious to show off, to her and to each other, to ask much of her.
‘You should have had your heart broken years ago,’ Nicolet advised her. ‘It has done wonders for you. But – and one hates even to ask – may I still depend on you to break mine, leaving me utterly unable to trust any woman again?’
Hetty reached out to clink her glass against his. ‘Always.’
‘I think we are in for a treat this evening,’ Mrs Morgan said, easing her way through the press of persons to reach their side.
‘I hope we’re up to snuff,’ the Major agreed. ‘One wants to show the foreign Johnnies what we’re made of.’
Nicolet sniffed. ‘Foreign Jeans, please.’
The fireworks were magnificent, and received with many oohs and aahs from the assembled crowd, lasting almost ten minutes.
As they concluded, Hetty turned to try to catch sign of Trixie in the crowd – only now she could not seem to spot her …
until, in the peace left by the final burst of the last giant Catherine Wheel, a fresh commotion had them all turning.
‘Oh, goodness!’
‘She has fainted!’
Hetty turned to see Trixie, prostrate upon the floor only a few feet away. She blanched. ‘Trixie!’
Hurrying over, the Marquis by her side, she joined the cluster of gentlemen all about Trixie – her heart just about to cease beating entirely. Only then, before she had suffered more than a few moments of panic, Trixie’s eyes blinked open.
‘Oh dear.’ She sighed. ‘I am so embarrassed.’
‘You mustn’t be,’ the young gentleman to her left assured her.
It was then that Hetty noticed Trixie was surrounded by princes.
She narrowed her eyes as Trixie accepted the assisting arm of Prince Wilhelm of Orange, who solicitously helped Trixie to the nearest chaise longue, where she – looking remarkably hearty – reclined for the remainder of the evening.
Upon their departure, the Prince anxiously requested of Lady Allerton whether he might be permitted to call upon them very soon.
‘There, Mama,’ Trixie said as the carriage drew off. ‘You have two possible royals, now – you will certainly be able to press Prince Wilhelm into attendance, he feels so guilty.’
‘Trixie!’ Lady Allerton gasped. ‘You cannot mean to tell me – I cannot expect to – to prey on that poor boy.’
In fairness to Trixie, she had tried to achieve the thing in as elegant a fashion as possible, signalling her faintness with such clarity that, she complained with some disgust, it ought to have been clear to anyone that she was about to swoon.
Unfortunately, the young Prince Wilhelm, engrossed in the firework display, was not one of them.
‘A dunce for the ages,’ Trixie said with some disgust, examining her arms. ‘This one will go purple!’
‘It serves you right,’ Hetty said.
‘Certainly,’ Lady Allerton concurred, though she could not quite hide her pleasure. ‘We shall have to cover them when he visits.’
The rest of Trixie’s scheme had unfolded exactly according to plan, with Prince Wilhelm’s sympathy roused even more firmly, given his failure.
‘See, Mama,’ she said. ‘We can manage perfectly well without men – we do not need Arthur!’
‘Yes,’ Hetty agreed after a pause. ‘Perhaps we do not.’