CHAPTER XXIV
THE Allerton party went their separate ways that evening.
Arthur had abandoned his duties and made for his club, while Hetty – whose energy had disappeared with his exit – soon left Trixie and Lady Allerton to dance the night away.
Berkeley Square was dark and quiet when she arrived, and for the first time in many days, she was glad of it.
She felt, suddenly, as if she could weep.
She and Arthur had hardly ever fought before, and now it seemed as if every moment they shared was fraught with some kind of horrible tension.
So sunk into thought was Hetty that when she came across Timothy, sitting upon the stairs in the dark, she had the fright of her life.
‘Timothy!’ She pressed a hand to her wildly beating heart. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Oh, hello, Hetty.’ Timothy’s voice was dull. ‘Awfully sorry. Just on the way to bed and thought I’d – thought I’d sit here for a bit.’
‘Why are you here, and not at your lodgings?’ she said.
‘I … don’t know, really,’ Timothy said vacantly.
Hetty squinted, trying to see his face in the dark. Was it just the light, or did he look paler than normal?
‘Are you drunk?’
‘No,’ he said heavily. ‘Well – used to be, earlier. Not any more. More’s the pity.’
‘You look rather peaky.’
‘It’s the waistcoat,’ he said. ‘Never should have bought it. Washes me out – knew that at the start, but, well. Everyone’s allowed to make mistakes, aren’t they?
He gave a funny sort of laugh.
‘Timothy?’
‘Oh, Hetty.’ He looked very young suddenly. ‘I’ve made such a mull of things.’
It had not been Timothy’s intention to unburden himself – he had thought he would manfully maintain his silence until the end. Once Hetty had them both seated in the parlour, however, and had sworn herself to secrecy under the soft light of the taper, he found the whole story spilling out.
‘Now we have to duel,’ Timothy told Hetty.
‘Oh, Timothy.’ Hetty tried not to laugh. ‘All this over some flowers?’
Timothy set his jaw. ‘Over honour,’ he corrected. ‘Over a man’s word.’
Perceiving the stubbornness upon his face, Hetty did not argue this point any further. ‘But you’re obviously not going to go through with it, are you?
‘I must,’ he said. ‘A man of honour cannot refuse such a challenge. We meet at dawn on Monday morning.’
Hetty blinked. ‘Not tomorrow?’
‘Promised Mother I’d escort her to church,’ Timothy reasoned. ‘Can’t miss that. And Corky had an appointment with Jackson the boxer – not strictly correct, on the Lord’s day, but he was very lucky to secure it, and I am not such a cad as to cause him to forgo such a treat!’
‘No,’ Hetty agreed gravely. ‘Kind of you, in fact. And who is your – ah – second?’
Timothy brightened. ‘Hargan,’ he said. ‘Managed to pip Corky to the post on that one!’
Hetty mastered herself with great effort. ‘Timothy,’ she said. ‘You can’t duel a man over flowers. You must see it’s ridiculous – people do not do such things any more.’
Duelling was the relic of a bygone age, the practice of men in wigs and ruffled cuffs.
‘It’s not at all the thing,’ she added, but these words – usually all that was needed for Timothy to be persuaded out of anything at all – did not do the trick.
This was to prove the exception, however.
‘I know,’ Timothy said heavily. ‘But to cry off – more not the thing.’
On certain topics there was a limit to how much Hetty was able to understand the masculine mind.
‘Arthur will know how to manage this,’ she murmured to herself.
Thank goodness they had a day’s grace before Timothy embarked on this ludicrous plan – as much as she would rather avoid Arthur’s company, she would raise the topic with him in the morning.
‘No!’ Timothy objected. ‘No. I ought not even have told you!’
Hetty reached out to press Timothy upon the arm. ‘Arthur will be able to help.’
‘I shall not go running to my brother for help; he already thinks I’m a buffoon,’ Timothy said emphatically. ‘And you cannot ask him either! You promised me you would not tell a soul.’
A promise Hetty was now regretting. She did not think the situation so comical any more: if this could not be averted, there might be a dreadful scandal.
Or, worse, Timothy or Corky might be seriously hurt.
But all her attempts to argue with Timothy were for naught and after a few more minutes Timothy began to tire of them.
The confession having taken some of the edge off his depression, he became rather indignant that Hetty seemed set on ruining what was perhaps his final night of good sleep – and, with great dignity, declared his intention of retiring to his old bedroom.
Hetty followed him upstairs, but remained awake for a very long while: long enough to hear Trixie and Lady Allerton arrive home and then, hours later, the unsteady steps of Arthur upon the stairs.
When she did fall into slumber, she was plagued with dreams: visions of Timothy taking a shot on a bleak Hampstead Heath, but instead of Corky on the other side of the field, it was Arthur.
Though she did not think she had slept for more than a handful of minutes, Hetty did not find herself the least bit fatigued the following morning.
Indeed, she rose invigorated with a complete and utter refusal to allow this to happen.
She simply would not permit it, and if Timothy would not allow her to speak to Arthur, then she would have to do something about it herself.
Dressing with haste, she first made a final attempt at reasoning with Timothy.
‘Go and speak to Corky,’ she urged him in a low voice. ‘You might resolve this so easily between you, and there would be no need for any unpleasantness – pay him a visit, I beg you.’
Timothy regarded her in outrage. ‘Do you want me to appear a lily-livered lout?’ he demanded.
Hetty admitted that this would be a tiresome reputation to bear.
‘Well,’ Timothy said, in a concluding sort of way, before they were obliged to drop the topic entirely by the arrival of the rest of the family.
Hetty did not participate in the conversation over the breakfast table: Trixie demanding to know the reason Timothy did not return to his own lodgings; Lady Allerton reeling off all the persons she had spoken to the night before; Arthur begging them to lower their voices, with a hand to his head.
All this passed over Hetty as she absent-mindedly buttered her roll.
She decided, by the time they had concluded, that there would be no harm in meeting with Corky herself – this would not, she felt, break her vow of secrecy, given that Corky already knew about the duel – and so, just before they left for church, she dashed off a note to this effect.
If Timothy could not refuse the challenge, then perhaps Corky might be convinced to withdraw it, and she spent all of the sermon rehearsing what she would say.
She was not seated beside Timothy in the church, though whenever she glanced his way he was listening to the vicar’s soliloquy with such a thoughtful frown to his expression that she wondered, with a pang, if he was considering his own mortality seriously for the first time.
This, however, was quickly proved to not be the case.
‘Dashed loose screw, God,’ Timothy said rather indignantly as they filed out into the sunshine. ‘Causing this Job fellow such nuisances.’
‘Hush,’ Lady Allerton bade him. ‘God is not a loose screw!’
‘That’s blasphemy,’ Trixie informed him piously.
‘Dashed embarrassing is what it is!’ Timothy said severely.
Arthur looked over his shoulder to share the joke with Hetty – before recollecting, a moment later, that they were not on the best of terms. Hetty was not attending, anyhow, her eyes trained fixedly on the ground – and Arthur, not knowing the deeper thoughts that were plaguing her, assumed it was in an effort to avoid his eye.
Arthur opened his mouth to speak – and then closed it again. For once, Hetty was not paying him the least attention. She wished to hasten back to Berkeley Square, to see if there was a return note from Corky.
‘There is Lambert!’ she said, lifting up her hand to flag him down.
‘Hetty, there is no need to brandish your arm in such a way,’ Lady Allerton scolded – and Hetty, most uncharacteristically, ignored her.
By the time they arrived back home, it was nearing midday, but there was no return missive.
Corky had either not received her billet, or was ignoring it – and since Hetty could hardly make a morning call by herself, on a Sunday, this left her at rather a loss.
She took a seat beside the window, staring out on to the street.
What ought she to do? If only the rules governing ladies were not so very strict.
It was not as if she could call upon a gentleman’s private apartments, for such conduct would be thought outrageous by any person of breeding. And yet …
It was in this pose that Arthur found her. He approached tentatively. ‘May I join you?’
‘Certainly,’ Hetty said, without taking her eyes away from the window. Arthur came over to stand beside her, following her gaze to where a group of children were playing a game of steeplechase in the square’s garden. ‘Such fun,’ he commented.
Hetty gave a murmur of agreement which – she hoped – would discourage further conversation. She had to think.
‘Hetty,’ he said. ‘Regarding what I said after the banquet—’
‘It is quite all right,’ Hetty overrode him impatiently – there was no time for this.
For some reason, this irritated Arthur. ‘I was not going to apologise.’
Now, she did look up. ‘You were not going to apologise? You were so unreasonable!’
‘You will admit the provocation was great.’
‘I will admit no such – Oh, I cannot bear—’
She struggled for a moment, tongue-tied.