Henrietta Read online

  Henrietta often wondered where her brother had found the money to carry out the expensive improvements, from the rich rugs on the polished floors to the removal of the ivy which had formally clung to the mellow brickwork of the Queen Ann house.

  “We live on the grand scale but in miniature,” Henry would say to visitors, with a deprecatory wave of his plump hands.

  Henrietta sat down at the pianoforte in the drawingroom to play some sonatas to calm her jangled nerves. She was so intent on the music that she did not hear a visitor being announced and it was only when a discreet cough from the housekeeper penetrated her thoughts that she gave a start and turned round.

  There stood Beau Reckford, impeccable in morningdress from his blue swallowtail coat of Bath Superfine to his glossy hessians, giving her a courtly bow. Henrietta was wearing her oldest dress of grey Kerseymere wool and she blushed painfully as she got to her feet. “I am sure my brother will be down d-directly,” she stammered.

  The Beau nodded and stood for a minute, wondering if she were ever going to ask him to sit down. Custom dictated that he should make calls on all the ladies he had danced with the night before and he had hoped that the visit to Henrietta would at least prove to be an amusing interlude. But the girl seemed to be painfully awkward and shy.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?” he asked in his pleasant, husky voice.

  “Please…please do…sit, I mean,” said poor Henrietta, looking at him as if he had risen from the pit.

  “I think we are going to have a heavy fall of snow. Do not you?” said Lord Reckford, stretching his long legs out in front of him.

  “What! Oh, yes…snow. Yes…lots…I suppose,” replied Henrietta faintly, knowing that she sounded hen-witted but unable to gain any sort of composure.

  “Well, that disposes of the weather,” said his lordship. “Now we shall discuss your brother’s health. He did not have an apoplexy, I trust?”

  Henrietta suddenly smiled and sat down. “No, of course not. He was much improved when he reached the fresh air. Fresh air is very beneficial to his complaint.”

  The tawny eyes surveyed her with a mocking look. “It’s the first time I’ve heard of fresh air curing anyone suffering from Lady Belding’s wrath.”

  A delighted smile lit up Henrietta’s face. “How on earth did you…” she began.

  “I noticed the little by-play,” he drawled. “Alice goes to her mother and whispers fiercely, Lady Belding goes to your brother and whispers fiercely, and your brother is suddenly smitten with some strange disease. If you will forgive me for speaking so freely, I assure you I did not enjoy the ball after you left.”

  Henrietta’s large eyes shone with a gleam of mischief. “Thank you for the pretty compliment, my lord. The sudden loss of your company quite devastated me, myself, I must admit.”

  The Beau, who had expected her to simper, looked at her in some surprise. He was not used to having his gallantries neatly returned, especially by country misses.

  He leaned forward and said with mock intensity, “I am glad my feelings are reciprocated, Miss Sandford. May I kiss your hand?” He dropped a light kiss on her wrist and glanced up at her from under his lashes. Now how would Miss Sandford of the vicarage cope with that!

  Henrietta’s heart had given a painful lurch but not by one flicker would she betray to this heartbreaker the strength of her feeling for him. She held her wrist to her cheek and looked at him soulfully. “I may never wash this poor hand again,” she said on a fluttering sigh.

  Something remarkably like a giggle escaped from her elegant companion. “Why, you are the veriest minx,” he remarked rising to his feet and crossing to the pianoforte. “You were playing very beautifully when I came in,” he said flicking through the music. “What have we here…do you know this one…‘Early One Morning?’” Without waiting for her reply, he started to sing in a loud baritone and was soon joined by Henrietta’s clear soprano.

  “How could you use a poor maiden so,” they were carolling happily, when they were interrupted by an enraged voice from the doorway. “What is going on here?” It was Henry puffing and goggling like a turkeycock. Both singers stopped and stared at him, Henrietta in consternation and the Beau in surprise.

  “I repeat, what is going on here?” demanded Henry, strutting into the room. Lord Reckford raised his quizzing glass and glared awfully at the irate vicar. “I think you should explain your manner,” he drawled. “I am not accustomed to provincial drawingrooms.”

  Henry flushed in confusion. He did not want to offend Lady Belding but, on the other hand, he did not wish to annoy such a notable man of fashion as Lord Reckford. “I was taken by surprise, my lord,” he explained hurriedly. “My little sister has led a very sheltered life and perhaps I am over-protective. You were coming to the end of your call no doubt.”

  To his horror, Lord Reckford ignored this patent hint and sat down on the piano stool next to Henrietta and began turning over the music.

  The vicar sat on the edge of the sofa and surveyed the pair in dismay. Why they had their heads nearly together as they discussed various composers. With relief, he rose to meet a new pair of arrivals. Lady Belding and her daughter sailed in and halted in frozen dismay at the sight of Henrietta and her companion. Alice and her mother had spent a frustrating morning chasing from house to house after the Beau. They had run through all his dancing partners of the night before and had finally thought of Henrietta. Lord Reckford had made his first duty call on Alice but he had stayed only for a few minutes to say that he would be departing for London that day. So the redoubtable Lady Belding had decided to hunt him down to acquaint him further with the charms of her daughter.

  They were further frustrated when the infuriating lord rose immediately to his feet, made a magnificent leg, and departed. Alice and her mother ran to the window and watched him drive away through the now heavily falling snow. To Henrietta, it was as if the last little bit of light had left the room.

  She looked at the company and three pairs of baleful eyes stared back at her.

  Before Lady Belding could speak, Henry hurriedly outlined his plan of sending his sister out to earn her living as a paid companion “in order to teach her the virtues of Christian humility.”

  Immediately Lady Belding was all smiles. She knew the very lady, a Mrs. Grammiweather who lived in the next county. Mrs. Grammiweather, it appeared, was ailing and had run through a selection of paid companions in the past two years.

  Alice had recovered all her radiance. “It will serve very well, Henrietta,” she said taking that girl’s hand in a warm clasp. “And you will not be out of touch for I shall write to you from London when I have my Season and tell you all about the balls and routs and parties.”

  Henrietta made a last bid for independence. “I would rather you didn’t,” she said. “Since I shall no longer be able to take part in social occasions except as a kind of servant, I would rather forget that such a world exists.”

  And to united shouts of ‘impertinent’ and ‘ungrateful,’ she hurried from the room to indulge in yet another hearty cry. She hardly knew whether she was weeping over her future as a companion to a sick old lady or whether it was because she would never see Lord Reckford again.

  Downstairs Lady Belding was rising to take her leave. “You have done very well, Mr. Sandford, very well indeed. I shall not forget. Perhaps I was a trifle abrupt last night but Alice has set her heart on marrying Lord Reckford and since she is the only child I have, I mean to see that she gets what she wants. Pray ring for our carriage.”

  By mid-afternoon, the snow had ceased, leaving the town of Nethercote sparkling like a Christmas card.

  Henrietta watched the housekeeper, Mrs. Ballis, hurrying off with her shopping basket, and crept down to the kitchen on stockinged feet to raid the larder for food to take to her friend, Miss Mattie. Then silently pulling on her pattens and shoes, she slipped quietly out by way of the area steps and took a deep breath of cold clear air. If onl
y she had enough money just to keep on walking and never return.

  The heroines in the novels she and Miss Mattie read would not be so poor spirited. They would become governesses and marry their employer’s handsome son or dress up as boys and become smugglers, but never, thought Henrietta savagely, would they sit and accept their fate with a meek ‘Yes, Henry.’ Well, their spirits had not been broken as hers had been and they did not live in the harsh world of reality. “If only I were a man!” muttered Henrietta through clenched teeth. Then she remembered the Beau and was heartily glad she was not.

  She suddenly thought of Mrs. Tankerton. Surely she had been a fool to throw away the chance of a fortune! Then she mentally shrugged. The old woman had simply been playing a game of power. She would probably live to a hundred, threatening and blackmailing her friends and relatives and changing her win and her mind every few days. Henry had still not even admitted to her existence.

  Miss Mattie was twittering with excitement at the prospect of hearing some delightful gossip about the ball. But her sympathetic eyes filled with their ready tears when Henrietta outlined her fate.

  “But why should your brother suddenly decide on such a cruel idea,” cried Miss Mattie.

  Henrietta told her about Lord Reckford. Miss Mattie’s eyes flashed with optimism. “There you are! He did fall in love with you. Now your worries are over. He will ride post-haste and ventre à terre to this Mrs. Grammiweather and demand that his affianced wife be released from bondage and Mrs. Grammiweather will say…”

  “Don’t make such a cake of yourself, my lord,” finished Henrietta dismally. “It’s no good, Mattie. I can’t play that sort of game any more.”

  “It’s not a game,” said Mattie intensely. “You must hope. Something will happen to you…oh…tomorrow, which will make your sun shine again!” As if in contradiction to her optimism, a gust of wind sobbed and cried in the chimney and escaped in the room where it set the flames of the tallow candles dancing.

  “I must go, Mattie, before I get snowed in. Look…it’s started falling again.” Both women looked out of the tiny window. A link boy trudged along the street and in the light of his lantern they could see the snow falling thick and fast.

  By the time Henrietta reached home, the snow was well above her ankles, she was late for dinner, and was forced to listen to a long and spiteful lecture from her brother about punctuality being the first duty of a good servant and, since she was shortly to enter that class, she should bear it in mind.

  Despising herself, Henrietta said, “Yes. Henry dear,” and wondered to herself how her brother envisaged his Maker. Probably as some superior member of the aristocracy, she thought bitterly, who placed his angels carefully on clouds at a height according to their social station.

  “Lady Belding has written to Mrs. Grammiweather this very day,” said Henry, dabbing at his rosebud mouth with his napkin. “You must call on her tomorrow and thank her most humbly for her efforts. Why! What a peculiar look you have on your face!”

  He did not know that in her mind his sister had removed the chafing dish and was holding his head face down over the flames of the spirit lamp.

  “It is merely a touch of indigestion,” explained Henrietta.

  “You eat too much,” remarked her brother. Henrietta opened her month to point out that it was an obvious family failing since they were both overweight but tactfully held her tongue. She wondered if her brother ate too much for the same reasons as herself—waiting for the heavy weight of food to tranquilise her mind—but looking at his pompous face she doubted it.

  She kept her replies to polite monosyllables until the vicar rang the claret bell and signalled to her with a wave of his plump beringed hand that she had his permission to retire.

  The next morning Henrietta descended to the breakfast parlor early in the hope of avoiding her brother but he was already there, leafing through the morning post which had managed to arrive despite the heavy snow.

  Suddenly with a quickening heartbeat, Henrietta noticed him picking up a heavy letter addressed to herself. Without even looking at her, he opened it with a paper knife and started to read. Henry read all her letters.

  “Bless my soul!” gasped the vicar, rattling the pages of the letter. “Why, bless my soul.”

  “What is it, Henry dear?” asked Henrietta watching her brother’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbing up and down over the edge of his tight cravat. “If I painted little red eyes on it,” mused Henrietta, “it would look just like a puppet in a Punch and Judy show.”

  “Bless my soul!” gasped the vicar for the third time.

  “What is it Henry?” asked Henrietta and thinking, “if he doesn’t tell me soon, I shall pour his tankard of small beer slowly onto his head.”

  Her brother at last surveyed her in amazement. “Henrietta! Did I ever tell you of our Great Aunt Hester Tankerton?”

  “No,” lied Henrietta with forced calm. “You have always told me that we have no living relatives.”

  “Well, this is from her solicitors and I can hardly believe my eyes. The old lady who was prodigious rich has passed away… and left you her entire fortune.

  You! I can’t believe it. Why, I could have sworn she did not know of your existence. In fact, I took pains to….” He broke off in some confusion and unwillingly put the letter into his sister’s hands.

  It stated simply that Miss Henrietta Sandford was the sole inheritor of Mrs. Emily Tankerton’s fortune and the lawyer would be pleased to call on her during the month to explain the terms of the will. Failing that, if Miss Sandford would present herself at his chambers in Cheapside, London, the whole affair could be transacted quickly and to their mutual satisfaction. It was signed ‘Yr. obliged and faithful humble servant, James Twiddle.’

  Henry Sandford was getting over his first shock. He surveyed his sister with her placid round features under her neat cap and suddenly smiled. “Well, well, it is not so bad after all,” he said, rubbing his hands. The money is in the family after all, heh! I must apprise everyone of our good fortune.” He dropped a kiss on top of his sister’s cap. She winced in surprise and turned to watch him hurrying from the room.

  Henrietta sat for a long time staring at the letter until the hawk-like features of Lord Reckford seemed to swim in front of the paper. A slow smile gradually spread over her face.

  Half an hour later, several of the townspeople were shocked to see the respectable Miss Henrietta Sandford entering the portals of the town pawnbroker without even a veil to cover her face. Others later caught a glimpse of her looking out of the window of a smart rented carriage and pair which took the London road at breakneck speed despite the deep snow.

  Chapter Four

  THE LAMPS HAD BEEN lit for several hours in the vicarage drawingroom and still there was no sign of Miss Henrietta Sandford.

  Henry paced up and down, occasionally rushing to the window at the sound of an approaching carriage. Three women sat and watched him—Lady Belding, her daughter, Alice and Miss Mattie Scattersworth. The latter had been sent for in the hope that she might know the whereabouts of her young friend.

  “You say Henrietta is now a very wealthy woman?” queried Lady Belding, breaking the funereal silence.

  “Very rich indeed,” answered Henry. “But of course her money is mine, so to speak.”

  “But according to the terms of the will—or what you gathered from the letter—the fortune has been left absolutely and completely to Henrietta?”

  “Indeed, yes,” said Henry. “But Henrietta will leave the managing of it to me. What do women know of money? Dear, dear, what could have become of her?”

  “Perhaps,” began Miss Mattie with an apologetic cough, “she has been waylaid by highwaymen. Or perhaps,” she added more hopefully, “by a very handsome highwayman who is really the younger son of a lord who is a kind of Robin Hood and who will fall in love with her and…”

  “Nonsense,” said Lady Belding roundly and Alice looked at Miss Mattie and slowly tap
ped her forehead. Miss Mattie blushed and relapsed into silence.

  The wind howled in the chimney and the snow whispered against the window panes as if trying to get in and impart the whereabouts of Henrietta.

  “Oh, do let’s go, mother,” pouted Alice, getting to her feet Lady Belding held up her hand and in the ensuing silence, they could hear the muffled clop of horses hooves. They all rushed to the window and there was Henrietta descending from a rented carriage drawn by two tired and steaming horses.

  In a few minutes, she burst into the drawingroom, her face flushed with the cold and then stopped short at the sight of her waiting audience. All began to speak at once.

  “How dare you.” (Henry)

  “Positively gothic behavior.” (Lady Belding)

  “Dear Henrietta, your nose is quite red with cold!” (Alice Belding)

  “Did a handsome highwayman accost you…?” (Miss Mattie)

  Henrietta sank down on to a chair and grinned unrepently at them all. “I posted up to town to see the lawyer…”

  “How unladylike!” screamed Lady Belding.

  “And he told me the extent of my fortune. I will not bore you with the amount since you, my lady, have always told me it is exceeding vulgar to discuss money. But I am mistress of a very fine house in Brook Street.”

  Henry went to stand over her, his fat white face a mask of rage. “Did you say you owned this property? No! We own it. And you will oblige me by ceasing to trouble your head about affairs of property. That is a man’s business.”

  Henrietta surveyed him from top to toe, her face a mask. Then she took a deep breath. “My dear brother, you have pointed out to me for as long as I can remember that I am a sore burden on you. I am about to remove that burden. I leave on the morrow to take up residence in my house in Brook Street to prepare for the Season.”

  “You have gone raving mad,” screamed Lady Belding, before Henry could speak. “It is unheard of…a spinster of your years living alone.”