CHAPTER XXVIII
AFTER the celebrations of the night before, and his disordered sleep, Arthur would have preferred a more leisurely start to the day, but he was awoken abruptly by the sound of almost a dozen tradesmen’s carts arriving outside.
It was the day of the grand ball, and the house was already in tumult.
Descending rather blearily downstairs, he found the footmen busy moving furniture and polishing the chandeliers, maids walking past bearing armfuls of crockery, while innumerable supplementary errand boys brought in case after case of refreshments ordered from Gunter’s to hand to their overtaxed cook – all of it overseen by Lady Allerton and Timothy, who was currently using his quizzing glass to inspect the crystal ware.
‘Good Lord,’ Arthur said, rather dazed.
‘Quite the sight, isn’t it?’ agreed Hetty, appearing next to him. She was wearing a severely cut habit of black cloth, with a curling feather that kept falling into her eyes. He had an absurd desire to push it out of her eyes for her, and pressed his hands firmly to his sides.
‘I am meeting Mrs Morgan in Hyde Park. Would you care to join us?’ she said. ‘I’ll wait for you, if you need time.’
‘Will you?’ he said, rather hoarsely. Then he continued, hurriedly, ‘No, I – I mustn’t. I cannot, in fact, for I have a great deal of work to do.’
He backed away, and found refuge – as so many do – in work.
There were letters to attend to, numbers, bills – he felt he understood, now, why his father had preferred to do all his own bookkeeping.
There was something rather soothing about tallying everything up, and double- and triple-checking his sums – as if he were bringing the world into some semblance of order.
After that, he read his latest correspondence from Mr Holland, confirming the repairs which would go ahead next month, and a letter from Thimbleby, reporting that his enquiry to the buyer of the deer park as to the likelihood of building a factory upon the land – Trixie’s suggestion, however ridiculous, had stayed with him – had been answered by the assurance that the buyer faithfully promised that ‘no such industry, woollen or otherwise, would be taking place there’.
The specificity amused Arthur and mollified his nerves somewhat. Perhaps this wasn’t too good to be true – perhaps some things were just good, he reminded himself.
Several hours later, the Allertons were readying themselves in the drawing room, poised to meet their first guests.
Police officers and link-boys were manning the road, Pandean pipes would play during the supper, an excellent band had been engaged for the dancing, extra ice ordered for the champagne, and while the townhouse was certainly without a theme, it had – Lady Allerton thought – never looked more elegant.
The same, she thought, could rather be said for her family.
Trixie was loveliness itself in white satin and silver-net drapery; Timothy, naturally, was rather beautiful to behold: not a thread out of place upon his person; and though Arthur had no pretensions to dandyism, he looked very well indeed – Timothy deigned even to compliment him on the arrangement of his cravat.
Lady Allerton herself was wearing a robe of sapphire satin lavishly trimmed with broad lace, and was in quite her best looks.
When Hetty joined them, Lady Allerton’s joy was complete.
Timothy had not erred, so many weeks earlier, when he had identified the round robe of pale-blue satin as absolutely the thing for her.
The box had arrived from Madame Picard just this morning.
It was a confection of sky blue and, as she descended the stairs, Lady Allerton clapped her hands, and declared she looked quite beautiful. ‘Doesn’t she, Arthur?’
Finding that he could not look Hetty in the eye, Arthur fixed his gaze upon her eyebrows. ‘Certainly.’
By the hour of ten o’clock, it was plain the ball was to be a great success.
For not only was the flower of the ton in attendance, but also lending lustre to the evening were two of the Royal Dukes, two European Princes (Prince Wilhelm, in whose arms Trixie had attempted to faint, and Prince Hardenberg) and – the feather in Lady Allerton’s cap – the Grandduchess herself, who even seemed to be enjoying herself.
The only flaw in the evening was the warmth.
Although the long windows stood open, scarcely a breath of wind stirred the curtains which masked them, and the heat from the hundreds of wax candles burning in the wall-sconces and in the huge crystal chandelier which hung from the ceiling was causing a fair few of the gentleman’s starched shirt-points to wilt.
When next Arthur spotted Hetty, she was looking rather flushed, fanning herself vigorously and wishing it would not be thought terribly vulgar to remove one’s gloves.
Arthur hesitated. He had intended to continue keeping his distance but, in that moment, he could not resist making his way to her side.
‘Warm?’ he asked her.
‘Very.’
‘Shall we slip out into the air for a moment? No one will notice.’
The ballroom did not enjoy a terrace but each of the twelve long windows was built with a short ledge fenced in with low iron railings, and it was to one of these that Arthur led Hetty, picking up two glasses of champagne upon the way.
Slipping behind the curtains, they stepped into the shallow embrasure without anyone noticing them.
There was no breeze, but the fresh air was certainly a relief after the closeness of the ballroom, and Hetty, closing her eyes, raised her head up to enjoy the coolness upon her heated cheeks.
Arthur shifted rather uneasily. The curtains were thick enough to block a great deal of the noise from inside the ballroom, and in the quiet, it was easy to imagine they were entirely alone.
‘The last time I attended a ball here,’ he began, ‘it was the night before I left – do you remember?’
Hetty opened her eyes and turned towards him, smiling. ‘Certainly I do. We were all absolutely miserable.’
‘Were we?’ Arthur said. ‘I remember that Papa became very merry, and Trixie kept trying to sneak downstairs, and Mama must have danced with half of the gentleman here, but beyond that …’
‘We danced, you and I,’ Hetty confided. ‘I had to try very hard not to step upon your toes, but I think I managed it.’
‘You have my thanks,’ he said gravely. ‘What did we talk about? I can hardly recall.’
Hetty smiled rather wryly. She had no such difficulty recollecting every word that had been spoken in that conversation, as well as every word that had not.
‘It was a beautiful night then, too,’ was what she said instead. ‘Your mama still likes to boast that three proposals occurred that evening – I wonder how many we shall have tonight.’
‘Is that your wish?’ The words slipped out before Arthur could prevent them.
Hetty laughed. ‘No. Besides anything, I should have to request you release me first.’
Arthur frowned. ‘What do you mean? As you have reminded me several times recently, you are not my ward any longer.’
‘I have never been your ward,’ she reminded him. ‘Besides, I did not mean that – do you not remember?’
There was only confusion upon his face.
‘You asked me to marry you, when we were children,’ she explained.
A vague memory resurfaced in Arthur’s mind. ‘In the treehouse?’
‘The very same.’
‘How did I put it? Was it a romantic proposal?’
‘I think you said: “I’d as soon marry you as anyone else,”’ Hetty recalled.
Arthur winced.
‘My eloquence has improved greatly,’ he said. ‘It’s not how I should phrase it now, of course.’
‘Oh?’ she said. ‘Do you really think you could do it any better?’
The words had escaped her before she had had a chance to consider how bold they were.
They lay in the air between them, resting on a tension that was suddenly thick.
Not a month before, she would have stammered and blushed and been mortified to have said such a thing out loud.
Now, though her heart was beating very quickly, she let it lie.
Arthur raised his eyebrows.
‘I would already be doing a very fine job,’ he said. ‘I have stolen you away from the ball, into the’ – he looked up at the sky, thickly obscured by clouds – ‘moonlight.’
‘A full moon, is it?’ she said, trying for levity, but not quite managing it.
He nodded seriously. ‘The fullest. All that would be left would be to tell you – tell you how much you mean to me, which … would be very difficult, I’ll admit. When I try—’ He broke off, laughing a little. ‘Perhaps I was being too hard on my younger self.’
Hetty could not have spoken if she wanted to. Was she … imagining things, or had the space between them suddenly grown smaller? Was he … leaning towards her?
A crash from inside had them both jumping half out of their skins – and Hetty taking a few steps backward. What on earth had she been thinking?
‘Sounds like champagne flutes!’ she said in a too-loud voice. ‘Oh no!’
‘Better that than the champagne,’ Arthur said, shaking his head. ‘Though now, at least, I could feel confident of bearing the cost. The sale of the deer park was finalised today.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Good.’
‘I have been assured, too, that our buyer intends to build no factory – how did he put it?’
He tried to remember the exact words, knowing Hetty would find them amusing.
‘Woollen or otherwise,’ she filled in, smiling.
There was a pause. ‘How … do you know that is what he said?’ he said slowly.
Hetty froze, as an animal does when it knows it is being hunted. ‘You told me,’ she said, as lightly as she was able.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We haven’t spoken since then. Which means you have spoken to Thimbleby, separate to myself, or …’ Somewhere within he had already reached the conclusion, however reluctant he was to admit it. ‘Hetty,’ he said. ‘You didn’t.’
To her credit, she did not try to pretend not to know what he was talking about. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I never meant for you to find out.’
Arthur felt a rush of nausea. To think he had been so proud of himself, thinking he had solved everything for them – but he hadn’t, had he? Hetty had. It had always been Hetty.
‘I have never been so mortified in my life,’ he said.
‘I just wanted to help,’ she said. ‘What is the point of wealth if you cannot help those whom you—’ She stopped.
Arthur, shaking his head, did not seem to hear her last words. ‘It was not your place to make these kinds of decisions.’
‘Why can you not accept my help? Why can it not be my place?’
‘Because this is not your family!’
The words burst out of him without his consent, and he had to watch them land upon Hetty as if they were bullets. Hetty stumbled backwards and fled back inside the ballroom.
She slipped through the crowds with her head down, making for the stairs. She needed to be alone before she began to cry.
But halfway up the room, this wish was denied her. ‘Miss Hetty!’
Hetty gathered her skirts in her fists and kept moving.
‘Miss Clithero!’
‘Can it wait, Sally?’ Hetty said to Trixie’s maid.
But Sally could not wait. ‘Miss Clithero – it is Miss Trixie. She’s gone.’