Henrietta Read online

  “Oh, I shall not be living alone,” replied Henrietta sweetly. “I am sure Miss Mattie will be happy to chaperone me.”

  Miss Mattie Scattersworth gasped and clutched her hands in front of her scrawny bosom. “Too honored…delighted. Oh, Henrietta, am I to have a Season too?”

  “Of course,” said Henrietta, smiling at her.

  Lady Belding was beside herself with rage. She had shared Henry’s favorite pastime of bullying his sister and now felt as if one of her hounds had suddenly bitten her in the ankle.

  She stamped her foot in rage. “A touch of the riding crop is what you need to bring you to your senses. You! A Season! I tell you my girl, I happen to be acquainted with the patronesses of Almack’s and by the time I am through, you will not be allowed to cross the portals of any respectable drawingroom in London.”

  “Really, mother, you are too harsh,” whispered Alice. “I fear Henrietta forgets her age and thinks she is once again a debutante. Her head has been turned by the attentions of a certain Beau.”

  Henrietta heard the whisper and flushed as red as fire. She got to her feet. “Come, Mattie,” said Henrietta, turning her back on her tormenters, “and help me to pack my trunks.”

  “I forbid this,” roared Henry. “You are not right in your mind. I forbid you to leave this house.”

  Goaded beyond reason, Henrietta turned back and faced them. “Do what you will. I tell you for the first and last time. I shall have my Season in London and I shall marry Lord Reckford. So there! Come Mattie,” and she swept from the room in the middle of a stunned silence.

  Upstairs in the privacy of her bedroom, she stared triumphantly at Miss Mattie. “Well, we make our escape tonight. Henry will only think to bar the doors in the morning.”

  Miss Mattie was pink with pleasure. “Oh, dear, Henrietta, do you think it will take us long to pack your belongings?”

  “Not in the slightest. I am only taking one bandbox,” said Henrietta. “We are going to buy lots of lovely new clothes and be all the crack. Come let’s move quickly. I shall stay with you for the night and we shall quit Nethercote first thing in the morning.”

  The packing was accomplished quickly and both women sat in silence waiting for the sound of Henry retiring for the night. At last, they heard him mount the stairs. He stopped outside Henrietta’s door and rattled the knob furiously but she had placed a chair under the handle. After what seemed like ages, he went away. They waited another half hour and then Henrietta whispered that it was time to leave. Holding their heavy pattens in their hands, the two women crept downstairs, feeling their way in the dark. “We had best leave by the kitchen entrance,” whispered Henrietta. Stealthily, they moved through the kitchen and quietly edged the heavy door open onto the area, up the snow-covered stairs to the street—and freedom.

  The heavy snow tugged at their long skirts and froze their feet but neither noticed the discomfort on the road to Miss Mattie’s modest lodgings.

  Once inside, Miss Mattie began to ration her small stock of coals, dropping them carefully one by one on top of the sticks on the fireplace.

  “Drop them all on,” said Henrietta cheerfully.

  Mattie looked at her in horror and Henrietta gave her infectious giggle. “We’re rich now, Mattie. Have a great, big beautiful blaze for once in your life.”

  Miss Mattie clapped her hands in delight and began gaily throwing on all her small stock of wood and coal until the flames roared up the chimney. Then she went to a small cupboard and produced six whole new candles and began to light them one by one, banishing the black shadows and miserable poverty of the small room with a blaze of light.

  Then she scurried back to the cupboard and proudly produced a bottle which she held up triumphantly. “French brandy!” exclaimed Henrietta.

  “A gentleman gave it to me one Christmas many years ago,” said Miss Mattie. “I saved it for a very special occasion and this is it!” She produced glasses and poured two huge measures with the carefree generosity of someone unaccustomed to hard liquor.

  Both sat toasting their wet feet at the roaring fire, sipping their brandy and dreaming their dreams.

  Henrietta looked across at her elderly friend and guiltily wished there was some—well—some less eccentric female she could ask to chaperone her. But there was no one else. And how could she possibly run away and enjoy her new found wealth and leave poor Mattie behind? Miss Scattersworth was more starved for adventure than she was for food. Lady Belding had often commented acidly that London society was simply crawling with elderly quizzes and eccentrics.

  Her mind moved on to a more pressing worry. “What on earth made me say I was going to marry Lord Reckford,” she wailed. “Lady Belding will make sure he hears of it!”

  “Never mind,” said Miss Mattie soothingly. “Perhaps it will just put the idea of marriage into Lord Reckford’s head. And, in any case, everyone will just think she is being spiteful as usual.

  “Now let us talk of more cheerful things. We must re-decorate the house in Brook Street. We shall have the drawingroom downstairs in, say, the Egyptian mode. I hear it is all the crack….”

  Chapter Five

  SEVERAL MONTHS HAD PASSED since Henrietta’s flight. London had been thin of company but, with the beginning of the Season close at hand, the fashionable ten thousand had mostly all taken up residence in the metropolis.

  The Georgian house in Brook Street had been redecorated from cellar to attic. The grim cedar parlor had been turned into a charming morning room in varying shades of rose and cream with a work table, a writing desk and comfortable chairs. Miss Scattersworth had had her way with the drawingroom which was in the Egyptian style with a great number of sphynxes heads glaring from the carved feet of the chairs and from the ends of a remarkably uncomfortable backless sofa. She had then planned to turn an adjoining saloon into an Etruscan room but Henrietta had put her foot down and had had it decorated in blue and white with Wedgewood ornaments and Chinese rugs.

  The cornices and mouldings of the square entrance hall were picked out in gold and white with white Brussels lace curtains at the windows overlooking the street. A charming Louis Quatorze table was strategically placed near the door bearing a large silver tray to receive the cards of the visitors who never came to call.

  As far as the fashionable world was concerned, Miss Henrietta Sandford did not exist. This sad state of affairs could have gone on indefinitely but fortunately for Henrietta, Lord Reckford’s closest friend was that renowned gossip and man-about-Town, Mr. Jeremy Holmes.

  Mr. Holmes burst in upon his lordship unceremoniously one morning as Lord Reckford was preparing to depart for his club.

  “Thought you had made all the conquests there was to make,” he announced cheerfully. “Now it seems as if the vicar’s sister from some godforsaken place is after you with the leg-shackles.”

  The Beau put an unintentional crease in his cravat, swore, ripped it off and took up another. He waved Jeremy to silence until he was satisfied with the results and then turned to survey his friend.

  Mr. Holmes had draped his elegant form over a chair showing a pair of canary yellow Inexpressibles to their best advantage. Although he was the same age as the Beau, his cherubic countenance and mop of golden curls made him appear much younger.

  Like the Beau, he had long been the despair of every matchmaking mama and had been castigated as a hardened flirt.

  Lord Reckford looked at the breeches and at his friend’s silk waistcoat which was embellished with broad orange stripes and shuddered. “If you get any noisier in your dress, Jeremy, they’ll be taking you for a Macaroni.”

  “What’s up with it!” exclaimed Mr. Holmes peevishly. “Met Brummell himself on m’way here and asked him for his opinion and he closed his eyes and said ‘It berefts me of the power of speech.’ So there. Stop changing the subject. Who’s this Friday-faced female Lady Belding’s telling everyone is going to marry you?”

  “I know a great number of Friday-faced females bu
t, for the moment I cannot understand who it is you mean. Wait a bit! Vicar’s sister. Does she come from a place called Nethercote?”

  “That’s it!” said Mr. Holmes.

  “Well, for your information, she is not bad looking at all and since she is not likely to be in town for the Season, I fail to see how she can go about talking to me let alone marrying me.”

  “Ah, but she came into a fortune,” explained Mr. Holmes. “And she’s all set up right and tight in Brook Street. But you’re right in a way. You ain’t going to get a chance to meet her. Lady Belding’s put about that she’s strange in the head and that no respectable hostess should give her house room.”

  His lordship’s thin brows snapped together. “And since when has my Lady Belding been such a social arbiter?”

  Mr. Holmes leaned forward earnestly. “Well, she ain’t exactly but the girl has no social connections. No one’s heard of her before. So everyone just goes by what Lady Belding says.”

  Lord Reckford shrugged himself into his coat. “I can’t say that I approve of Lady Belding—or her daughter for that matter.”

  “What!” Mr. Holmes nearly screamed. “Alice Belding is an angel. What’s up with you? I’ve never seen such a beautiful face.”

  His lordship smiled. “I must be getting old. I think I shall go and call on my sister.”

  Thought you was going to your club?”

  “No, I have decided that the company of my sister Ann is just what I need at the moment.”

  Lord Reckford settled his curly-brimmed beaver on his head and telling his friend that he would see him later, he ordered his curricle and drove off at a smart pace, engrossed in thought. Lady Belding, he decided, needed to be taught a lesson. And so did Miss Henrietta. Then, he would kill two birds with one stone. He would flirt with Henrietta to infuriate Lady Belding and it would teach Henrietta a lesson when he dropped her. Anyway, by the time he dropped her, he would make sure she was firmly entrenched in the London scene.

  Lord Reckford’s sister, Ann, had married a retired Colonel, Sir Geoffrey Courtney, on her thirty-second birthday. As the Colonel was in his late fifties, friends and relatives moaned over the disparity of the ages. But the marriage, now two years old, seemed to work perfectly. Theirs was a harmonious household and Lord Reckford vowed to begin making his visits more frequent.

  Ann was small and plump with her brother’s hawklike features and tawny eyes. After the welcomes were over and Ann had rung for the tea tray, her brother leaned his arm negligently along the mantlepiece and began, “I have come to talk to you about a certain young lady.”

  His sister brightened. “You are to be married at last. Will I like her?”

  He shook his head. “Last winter when I was staying near Nethercote, I attended a ball at the Beldings. There was a young lady there, the vicar’s sister, who seemed to be unmercifully bullied by her brother and Lady Belding alike. Now it seems she has come into a fortune and plans to make a late debut on the London social scene—she is in her middle twenties—with, according to Lady Belding, the object of marrying me.”

  “How dreadful!” said Lady Courtney. “What an encroaching female.”

  “I am not so sure,” said her brother thoughtfully. “Lady Belding is a spiteful, malicious woman. If Miss Henrietta indeed plans to marry me, then I shall flirt with her and give her a subsequent set down. But first to punish Lady Belding, I mean to bring Miss Henrietta Sandford into society.”

  A worried frown creased Lady Courtney’s face. “Are you not being a little too high-handed? You seem so sure that it is in your power to make this girl fall in love with you. You have never been in love so you are not aware of the amount of pain you may be inflicting on her.”

  “I doubt very much if she is in love with me any more than any of the debutantes who languish each Season so prettily after my title and my fortune,” said Lord Reckford with his long mouth set in an unpleasant sneer. “I want you to call on her,” he added abruptly.

  Lady Courtney stared at him in surprise. “You are too arrogant by half. Why should I call on a presumptuous nobody from some vicarage?”

  “Now, who is being arrogant!” laughed Lord Reckford. “Come now, sis, I hardly ever ask you to do anything for me. I do need your help.”

  She gave him a rueful smile. “I never could resist helping my little brother. I’ll call. But just this once!”

  Unaware that their social life was about to begin, Henrietta and Miss Mattie sat in the morningroom and looked dismally at each other.

  “I don’t think anyone is going to call… ever,” said Miss Scattersworth sadly.

  Miss Scattersworth was a vision in pink sprigged muslin with her grey hair cut in a smart Brutus crop. It was perhaps an embarrassingly youthful ensemble but since no one but herself seemed likely to see it, Henrietta had refrained from comment or criticism. She herself was looking very pretty in all the glory of a yellow silk morning gown with tiny puffed sleeves, its simple lines ending in three deep flounces.

  “I would so love to go to a ball or party,” sighed Henrietta. “We have seen enough of the unfashionable sights from the Tower to the wild animals at Exeter ’Change. What do you say, Mattie? Shall we count ourselves defeated?”

  Miss Mattie’s eyes filled with tears like a disappointed child. “I did so hope to meet the man of my dreams,” she sobbed.

  Henrietta looked at her in consternation. “You, Mattie!”

  “Yes, me!” said Miss Mattie, tearfully and defiantly. “I do not feel old, you know, and I thought that there might be some elderly gentleman who would…well…feel the same as I.”

  “Oh, Mattie, I’m sure there is,” said Henrietta soothingly.

  She broke off in confusion as the butler announced, “Lady Courtney.”

  Both women jumped to their feet and had only a second to exchange surprised glances as Lady Courtney came into the room. Henrietta’s heart missed a beat as she saw Lord Reckford’s features set oddly on the small, plump figure of Lady Courtney.

  Lady Courtney quickly took in the details of Henrietta’s appearance and liked what she saw. The girl was no beauty but she looked a gentlewoman. “I believe you have met my brother, Lord Reckford. He told me you were in town for the Season and begged me to call. He will be calling himself on the morrow but I heard such good reports of you, I was anxious to make your acquaintance.”

  Henrietta would normally have been too shy to say more than “yes” or “no” but pity for Miss Mattie made her bold. She sat down beside her visitor and began to eagerly ply her with questions about the London Season.

  “We shall be meeting at the opening ball at Almack’s, no doubt,” said Ann Courtney eventually.

  Henrietta flushed. “I must confess that I have been too timid to apply for vouchers for fear of a rebuff.”

  Lady Courtney decided that Henrietta had been much maligned. She was obviously a pleasant girl with an open friendly manner.

  “I think I can secure the necessary vouchers for you,” said Lady Courtney, after a little hesitation. “I am acquainted with several of the patronesses.”

  “But Lady Belding has put it about that…” Henrietta began to stammer.

  Lady Courtney held up her hand. “My social power is infinitely greater than Lady Belding’s,” she said imperiously. Henrietta thanked her warmly and Lady Courtney rose to her feet thinking that her brother could do worse than marry such a charming, guileless girl. Unfortunately, before she reached the door of the morningroom, Miss Mattie woke from her happy dream.

  “Oh, Henrietta,” she cried. “It’s just like a novel. He has rescued you from social ruin. You will be lifted up into his strong arms and carried to the altar.”

  Henrietta winced and blushed furiously. The warmth fled from Lady Courtney’s face and she made a chilly adieux.

  Ann Courtney went straight to her brother’s house. “Well, I have done my duty. At first she seemed a pleasant, likeable girl and then, just after I had promised to get her vouchers for Al
mack’s, that peculiar female she lives with blurted out something about you bearing Henrietta off in your strong arms to the altar.”

  “In that case, I’d better forget about the whole thing,” said her brother.

  Ann Courtney sat bolt upright. “Oh, no you don’t. You shall call tomorrow as I promised. It would be shabby indeed to raise the girl’s hopes and then dash them. Besides—I have been thinking. Perhaps all this business of her wanting to marry you is sheer fantasy on the part of that elderly companion of hers.”

  “Well, well,” said her brother reluctantly. “We have set the wheels in motion and may as well go along with it. I shall see for myself.”

  For Henrietta, the day of surprises was not over. No sooner had Lady Courtney left and she had turned to remonstrate with Miss Mattie than another visitor arrived. “Mr. Edmund Ralston,” the butler announced. Both ladies turned round as the most exquisite young man they had ever seen was ushered into the room. His slender figure was encased in a tight-waisted coat worn over skin-tight pantaloons and the whole embellished with a cravat which must at least have been a foot high. His golden curls were combed into a riot of fashionable disorder and topped a thin, white, painted face. His light green eyes had extremely thick curling lashes which gave his face a look of vicious femininity.

  Mr. Ralston made a magnificent flourishing bow and stood leaning on his tall cane and surveying Henrietta with interest.

  “So you are the young lady who took my fortune away from me.” He glided forward with a slow dancing step and to her extreme embarrassment, pirouetted round her.

  “Not at all bad,” he murmured half to himself. “You could have been infinitely worse. I am decided. We shall be married.”

  Henrietta nervously stretched her hand towards the bell rope. “Come now,” said Mr. Ralston, neatly depositing his elegant being into a small hard-backed chair, “you would not dismiss your own flesh and blood.”

  Finding her voice at last, Henrietta demanded, “You must immediately introduce yourself, sir, and explain your business.”