“Charley,” Henrietta cried, “you promised us the Ellesmere marbles. Youpromised!”
Darien drifted down St. James Street to the line of hacks waiting for hire. It was good to have his evening plans determined upon. He, too, would be seeing Lord Ellesmere’s new acquisitions this evening.
Despite Perry’s suggestion, he would not sink the Bales name by wooing the daughter of a tradesman. However, standing beside Henrietta Wardley-Hines was one of the most powerful men in the prime minister’s cabinet, a man who could influence the court of the King’s Bench or rally the House of Lords. Sir Pelton Pomeroy could single-handedly defeat an action to declare dead a ranking marquess’s long-lost son and heir.
His father had promised Darien the Season to reform himself, but when that effort failed, as it was destined to do, it would behoove Darien to count Sir Pelton among his allies. Indeed, he might know of a recourse Darien hadn’t thought of yet.
Besides, ostrich feathers were dear and must mean something even to the daughters of rich merchants who owned half of Cheshire. He ought to return Henrietta’s just to see whether her eyes, before they filled with tears, really were the same deep green shade as the emeralds at her throat.
His damsel’s undisguised vulnerability had pierced him to the heart. And nothing had pierced the thick fog surrounding the heart of Lord Darien Bales in a very, very long time.
CHAPTER FIVE
She’d survived her presentation, barely. Now, if she were to cultivate connections that could be of use once she was admitted into the Minerva Society, Henrietta must survive the gauntlet of social events that came after.
The family villa at Salford was grand, their spacious estate in the Rossendale Fells even grander, but Henrietta was still awed by the opulence of London’s buildings and parks and the magnificent neoclassical façades springing up along the north and west boundaries of town. As they bumped among the line of carriages thronging Cavendish Square, Henrietta felt like the country mouse of the fable, the one overwhelmed by the bustling city so unlike her plain, quiet home.
Inside the cavernous entrance hall of Ellesmere House, while they waited in line for the butler to announce them, Henrietta held her wig and tipped back her head to examine the ceiling. Frescoed Olympian gods cavorted without shame, many of them in nude splendor. Zeus sported the wide shoulders and solid arms she had detected on her rescuer earlier that day.
Aristocrats were impressed by personal attractiveness and fashionable display, Henrietta reminded herself. Character or respectability mattered little, and approval could be swiftlywithdrawn. One could be the queen of her circle one day and disgraced and exiled the next, like the Duchess of Devonshire.
Henrietta did not want to be the Duchess of Devonshire.
“I wonder if anyone has asked Lady Ellesmere to help support the settlement in Sierra Leone?” she remarked to Charley. “I shall have to ask where she stands on the subject of abolition.”
“God’s teeth, Hetty, can you leave off your peddling for one night?” Charley muttered. “The evening bodes to be a crashing bore already.”
Henrietta shifted under the weight of panniers, several petticoats, and an open robe thick with embroidery. In furnishing the wardrobe that had made her the beau monde’s darling forty years ago, Aunt Davinia had saved Henrietta hours at the mantua-maker, but these costumes weighed a stone or more.
“Poor Charley. I suppose you would rather be with your opera dancer.”
“Hetty! You ain’t to know of such things. Now, stay close to Althea and try not to be a goose. Ellesmere must have a card room somewhere.” The moment they were announced, Charley peeled off, his duty as escort discharged.
“I am hopeless at these conversational evenings,” Marsibel said. “The talk will be of war, or art, or philosophy, or politics.” Marsibel took politics at home with all her meals plus tea.
“But so are discussions in the debate societies, and tea rooms, and in Elizabeth Montagu’s salons,” Henrietta offered. These were the places she spent what time was not devoted to looking after her family. “The insurrections in the West Indies. What the National Assembly is up to in France.”
While Marsibel was being reared in papered rooms, learning music and drawing and dancing, Henrietta had been at MissGregoire’s Academy for Girls, studying classical languages, natural philosophy, and the sciences. Debate was her métier.
Marsibel heaved a sigh. “How I wish there were dancing.”
“Henrietta, have a care whom you speak to.” Aunt Althea adjusted her gloves and surveyed the glittering crowd like a general plotting a campaign. “The Ellesmeres are mushrooms who will receive just about anyone.”
“The Daughters of Minerva, I hope. Lady Bess said she would be here.”
Aunt Althea pinched her lips together. The Countess of Bessington was one of the leading Whig hostesses and a fixture of Mrs. Montagu’s salons, known as the Blue Stocking circle. Aunt Althea tended to collect staunch Tories around her table, though Sir Pelton belonged to both clubs.
“It will perhaps serve you best to remain silent,” her aunt said with a pointed look, “and follow Marsibel’s lead.”
Henrietta took the hint. She was here as companion to Marsibel, even if she meant to use the time to identify patrons she could approach for support of the Minerva Society and her various petitions. Obediently she followed her aunt and Marsibel through the gaily garbed press of people, speaking when spoken to, murmuring niceties about the weather. She was not looking out for any particular person, she told herself, not when town entertainments included several different events every night.
But there he was, standing near a plaster pillar bearing a bust of Mars. Compared to his companion, a dark-haired man in black, he was the epitome of elegance. His dark plum tailcoat was embroidered with roses, gold lace fell from his neck and cuffs, and the dazzling embroidery continued on his matching waistcoat and bronze breeches. He’d exchanged the ruby-buckled shoes for a copper set dusted with diamonds. Every inch of him gleamed.
She would expect a man that mesmerizing to draw everyone into his orbit, but a peculiar space held around him. As Henrietta watched, the Duchess of Argyll steered her lovely daughter in a wide berth, and the Duchess of Buccleuch dragged her daughter in the opposite direction. When the Countess of Clarendon turned to find him lounging behind her, as graceful and careless as a cat, she yelped and spilled her punch in the effort to shove her daughter, Barbara, behind a potted fern.
This must be the cut direct, the keenest weapon that Polite Society had to punish one of their own. And what had her gallant rescuer done? Probably nothing more than violate some obscure point of etiquette, like wear a morning coat in the evening or decline to get his head shot off in a foolish duel.
“Aunt Althea, who is?—?”
