CHAPTER XXVI
‘WE are ruined?’ Trixie wailed, later that day.
‘Egad,’ Timothy said, rather stunned.
‘Keep your voice down,’ Arthur hissed, walking over to shut the drawing-room door.
‘Egad,’ Timothy said again. ‘Egad.’
‘I wish you would stop saying that!’ Trixie said irritably. ‘It’s doing no one any good.’
Arthur refrained from directing a recriminatory frown towards Hetty. His decision to follow her advice was one he was already regretting.
‘We are not ruined,’ Arthur said, trying for calm. ‘We were in a bad way, but I have regained control of the situation. Our creditors are paid off, and the sale of the deer park is going to allow Belcourt to survive.’
‘The deer park!’ Trixie was appalled. ‘Oh, no, Arthur you didn’t – what if they tear the whole thing up to – to build some awful wool factory?’
‘I do not think rural Kent is a desirable location for any sort of factory, Trix.’
Trixie looked wholly unconvinced. ‘Do you know that for certain?’
‘Wish you’d told me this earlier,’ Timothy put in. ‘I wouldn’t have ordered that new waistcoat. That would have saved us a few shillings.’
Arthur thanked him for this great, if hypothetical, sacrifice. ‘Perhaps I ought to have told you sooner,’ he admitted.
Hetty could not help but let out a murmur of assent to this.
Hearing it, Arthur went to shoot her a playful glare, but almost as soon as their eyes met, his skittered away again.
Hetty felt her smile slip from her face.
It had seemed, for a moment, as if the duel would restore their friendship, but it had not: their anger towards each other might have eased somewhat, but there still existed a great deal of constraint betwixt them.
Indeed, in some ways this had worsened, at least on Arthur’s side, for now he seemed to struggle even to look at her.
‘Where we can, without shame, do so, we must still practise economy,’ he was now telling his siblings, who both nodded their heads obediently.
‘Perhaps I ought to move out of Duke Street, and return home,’ Timothy suggested.
Arthur briefly considered the tumult of having Trixie and Timothy once again under the same roof, and shuddered. Still, the offer was rather touching, and it would be a significant saving. ‘A fine idea.’
Trixie did not seem to agree. ‘That’s hardly going to help!
I think the easiest thing would be for one of us to marry someone with a fortune at once.
Arthur, perhaps it would be better if you did – things get awfully complicated with dowries and whatnot.
’ She paused for a moment, considering, before asking: ‘Have you considered marrying Hetty?’
Arthur could have quite happily throttled her. Hetty turned flame red.
‘It seems to me that would be a solution,’ Trixie went on. ‘Though I know it would be a shame about the Marquis.’
‘Trixie!’
But Trixie was not finished. ‘If you cannot bear the thought of Arthur,’ she reasoned, ‘then you could have Timothy instead.’
‘No she couldn’t!’ Timothy was outraged. ‘Not that I ain’t fond of you, Hetty, but that’s coming it a bit too strong!’
Trixie ignored him. ‘Then we could be together, always,’ she said, taking Hetty’s hand and squeezing it.
‘That – that would be nice,’ Hetty agreed rather croakily.
She could not have looked at Arthur, in that moment, for all the money in the world.
‘But no – dear Trixie, I’d liefer not be married for my fortune.
’ She rose to her feet a little jerkily, saying, ‘I have some errands to run,’ and quietly left the room.
Arthur rounded on Trixie just as soon as the door had closed behind her. ‘You must never suggest such a thing again!’
‘I was only trying to help! It seems to me it would be a neat solution to our—’
‘Hetty is not a solution,’ Arthur snapped. ‘To even countenance using her in such a way would be absolutely reprehensible, Trixie.’
So fierce was his voice that Trixie actually held up her hands in supplication. ‘I will not raise the subject again!’
‘Perhaps I could join some kind of profession!’ Timothy, who had not been attending, declared to the room, and the idea of Timothy in a profession was so novel that Arthur’s mind was temporarily diverted.
‘Do you … have something in mind?’
‘Don’t know that there are all that many options.’ Timothy considered the matter. ‘It’s lawyers and vicars mostly, isn’t it, for the gentry – aside from the military, which I think would be stepping on your toes, rather. Lawyers seemed to involve a great deal more schooling – not my strong suit.’
Arthur wished Hetty were still here to witness this. He could picture exactly how her lips would press together, in the way that meant she wanted to laugh but could not bear to hurt someone’s feelings.
Timothy took in a bracing breath. ‘Can’t say I think much of the Church, but I’d give it a good crack.’
Preserving his calm with a great deal of self-control, Arthur asked: ‘I thought you thought God to be a – what was the phrase – dashed loose screw?’
‘And don’t think I wouldn’t discuss that in my sermons!’ Timothy said with some spirit, which proved too much for Trixie – she let out a peal of laughter. Timothy regarded her in some disgust. ‘I don’t see what is so amusing.’
‘Perhaps she cannot imagine you in a vicar’s garb,’ Arthur theorised.
‘Not colours that suit me,’ Timothy conceded. ‘Well … I shall still give up my lodgings, I think. I know you said it might not help, but it would not feel right to spend money such a way. Besides, fond of you all,’ he added rather stiffly. ‘Wouldn’t mind being about the place more.’
Arthur reached out to clasp him upon the shoulder. ‘Nor would I.’
‘If you have everything so in hand,’ Trixie interrupted them in her loftiest voice. ‘I am not sure it was prudent in you to have ordered so many doves for the ball.’
‘What?’ Arthur said, hand falling away from Timothy’s shoulder.
‘I saw them arriving, just now,’ she said. ‘In the courtyard. Mama said they cost upwards of thirty guineas.’
‘How much?’ He made for the door at once. Trixie watched him go rather contemplatively.
‘Do you think there was something … odd, about all that?’ she asked to her brother.
‘Certainly,’ Timothy said. ‘Wildlife at a ball? Mama’s lost her senses. I shall have to intervene.’
Arthur would never have guessed that Timothy – inventor of the Allerton Flop – would become such a champion for economy, but over the next few days, he was to succeed where Arthur had failed.
‘Themes are not elegant,’ he told Lady Allerton severely. ‘I am heartily sick of them – you’d do far better to hold a simple assembly at this time.’
It was a point that struck Lady Allerton – who had opted for an avian theme – so much that she cancelled the doves, the menagerie of peacocks, and even the order of a great feathered cloak.
It was pleasing, and galling, in equal measure. ‘This is what I have been saying to her for weeks!’ Arthur protested. ‘An ordinary ball will serve—’
‘It will not be an ordinary ball, Arthur,’ Timothy told him severely. ‘It will be an Allerton ball.’
They were at the races, in the company of half of the ton, who had made the journey down to Ascot in the wake of the allied sovereigns who were being hosted in the Royal Enclosure by the Prince Regent himself.
He was watching, with every apparent sign of enjoyment, as the most celebrated horses of the kingdom competed on the green turf below.
Those who had lain bets endeavoured to maintain some decorum – there would not be, in such illustrious company, any of the shouts that could frequently be heard on such occasions.
‘No fire-masters, or birds, or expensive plants,’ Arthur carried on, rather dreamily. ‘I had scarce thought to hope for such forbearance.’
‘Though her obsession with the guest list has only increased,’ Trixie warned. ‘Don’t look now, but she has cornered the Grandduchess at last.’
‘Oh Lord. Well – I suppose it is now or never,’ Arthur said, for the ball was the following night. ‘How is it looking?’
‘Her Grace is nodding,’ Trixie reported, eyes over Arthur’s shoulder. ‘Smiling – ah, no!’
‘What?’
Trixie sighed. ‘She’s turning away. It looks as if she’s heading for the refreshment table.’
Arthur grimaced. ‘A fob-off.’ For such an illustrious person did not fetch her own drinks unless she needed an excuse. ‘Mama will be so disappointed.’
‘Yes, she looks a little defeated – but wait.’ Trixie stilled, cocking her head. ‘She’s thinking,’ Trixie murmured. ‘She’s thinking and – yes, she’s back in pursuit.’
‘No!’
‘She’s swift,’ Timothy put in now. ‘Faster than the Grandduchess.’
Arthur’s face was alight with amusement. ‘Is she gaining?’
‘She’s gaining,’ Trixie said. ‘She’s gaining.’
‘The Grandduchess has been waylaid by Lady Sefton – with luck on Mama’s side, yes, and a shortcut around the string quartet …’
‘Go on,’ Arthur urged.
‘It’s Lady Allerton and the Grandduchess, Lady Allerton and the Grandduchess – and … yes! She has her again!’
As the horses on the field sped away from the starting line, Timothy and Trixie let out cheers – Trixie, laughing, turned to share her amusement with Arthur.
Yet he was suddenly not attending. Following the direction of his gaze, she found Hetty, who was standing with the Morgans.
She was looking, Trixie felt, rather lovely that day, and so plainly trying to temper her excitement in the race to an acceptable level that Trixie’s amusement was renewed.
Only Arthur did not seem to share this amusement.
Indeed, he did not look as if he found the sight pleasing at all.
‘Has he always looked at Hetty in such a way?’ she asked Timothy later, back at Berkeley Square. ‘All … sidelong glances and the like.’
‘I do not have time for such fustian!’ Timothy – an uninterested confidant – told her severely. ‘I have to accompany Mother to Gunter’s to finalise the order for the ball – she’s made a great many foolish additions that I need to resolve.’
In the absence of a willing conspirator, Trixie decided she might have more luck posing her question directly to the source.
‘I don’t steal glances at Arthur!’ Hetty insisted, jerking her gaze up from issue of La Belle Assemblée that she had been studying in the small saloon at the back of the house.
There was such a tone of defensiveness in her voice that Trixie frowned. ‘I was speaking of Arthur’s glances,’ she explained, ‘not yours.’
‘Glances? When did he – what sort of glances?’
In her eagerness, Hetty could not hide her interest. Noting this, Trixie took the fragments of evidence she had been gathering for these weeks past, and began to arrange them in a whole new configuration.
‘Do you love him?’ she demanded.
Flushing hotly, Hetty was about to deny this accusation, before realising – just in time – the foolishness of such a tactic.
‘Of course I do,’ she said instead. ‘I love you all dearly, as I hope you know.’
‘The way you speak to him’ – Trixie began ticking the evidence off on her fingers – ‘the way you look at him, the way you are not jealous over the Marquis as you should be if your feelings were engaged …’
‘Trixie—’
‘The way you wrote to him, over and over, while he was away!’
‘Pray, what has that to say to anything?’ Hetty tried. ‘To me, he is like – ah – an elder brother I never had.’
That settled it. ‘Hetty, what a hum! He is my brother, and I never wrote to him above twice in my life!’