“I advise you to tread lightly on the subject of your debate, puss,” Sir Pelton said. “With the London Corresponding Society and Charles James Fox firing tempers with their radical talk, Pitt’s on the hunt for any whiff of sedition. Marsi, my pet, when did you develop an interest in Greek marbles?”
“Lord Pinochle suggested he will attend this evening,” Aunt Althea said.
“Surely we can do better than Pinochle for our Marsi,” Sir Pelton said. “Hetty, you rely on Charley alone to keep the fortune hunters and rakehells away?”
“I am hardly a prize, with a small estate and no mill of my own yet,” Henrietta said. “Even if Birch Vale does produce the best butter in the county.”
“Nevertheless, there are some to be wary of,” Sir Pelton said. “No flattering and fawning from a royal duke, for instance. They’re cads, every last one.”
“Married men of any rank,” her brother joined in.
Henrietta rolled her eyes. “Do go on moralizing to me, Charley.”
“Mr. Havering is often admired in the gossip columns,” Marsibel said.
Her father frowned. “Heir to a viscount, but a jilt. Be polite but distant.”
“Lord Alfred Highcastle?” Marsibel tried.
Charley shook his head. “Cool, very cool to him. Under the hatches, I’ve heard, which is why he went abroad.”
Marsibel’s eyes sparkled. “Lord Daring?”
Althea yelped as if stuck with a pin. “Wherever did you hear that name?”
“Oh, everybody’s talking about him,” said Henrietta. “And in the most scandalized tones, too. Though no one will say exactly what he has done.”
“Something that ensures no proper hostess will receive him,” her aunt said. “Marsibel, should he approach you—though I daresay he will not show his face in polite company—you are to cut him, do you hear me?”
“Mama!” Marsibel paled. Such rudeness flew in the face of everything she had been taught about being a young lady, pleasing, quiescent, demure.
Sir Pelton shook his head. “So much promise, that young man, but he’s proved a scoundrel in the end. Pity. His father, Langford, is an excellent man to have in Lords. Can always be counted on to see sense.”
“Charley,” Henrietta whispered. “What is Lord Daring’s crime?”
“He ruins young women,” Charley retorted, ignoring his aunt’s glare. “It’s a sport to him. Any girl he talks to—anyone helooksat—unmarriageable on the spot. Yet they won’t keep away! It’s as if the man made a pact with the devil.”
“But his latest peccadillo is despoiling the Duke of Highcastle’s daughter,” Sir Pelton said. “The girl refuses to marry him, not even to give her child a name. Highcastle has her mewed up in the townhouse and intends to send her abroad.”
Henrietta sat back, eyes wide. The beau monde considered many shocking behaviors routine, including adultery. This Lord Daring must be truly wicked. “What will happen to the babe?”
“None of your concern. I warn you, stay away from him, Hetty,” Charley said. “Daring ruins everything he touches. It’s high time someone ruinedhim.”
Henrietta thought again of Nancy, how her eyes had widened at the thought of determining her own future. Duke’s daughter or chambermaid, they were alike when it came to the ease with which a powerful man could destroy them.
It was an intolerable injustice. Mary Wollstonecraft had the right of it: being taught nothing but to be decorative and please others, who could blame a girl for being easily led into vice? But Lady Bess was right too. Being a knight’s daughter would give Henrietta a different kind of power, power that might do real good.
The coach reached the end of the long line of carriages waiting before St. James, and the others disembarked to join Sir Jasper and Lady Clarinda in one of the withdrawing rooms. Althea paused in the coach, her face set in lines of worry.
“Henrietta.” Her mouth held an uncharacteristic tremor. “What your mother would have given to see you presented.”
Henrietta blinked away the sudden sting of tears. “I hope to be a credit to her when I am accepted into the Minerva Society.”
Her aunt’s mouth hardened into a line. “Do not be the fool that my sister was, child. She gave up a great deal to marry your father. I have done what I can to make up the lack in your training, which Clarinda has sadly neglected, but I cannot think it is enough. I only hope you will do nothing to sink our name.”
She exited in a swish of ruffled silk, leaving Henrietta shaken.
She felt eight years old again, motherless and washed up on Aunt Davinia’s doorstep in Bath, sent away by a father lost in grief. Why should it be a shame if her mother had loved her father and enjoyed every moment of their time together? But the Pomeroys moved in a world defined by wealth and status and display. It was the world Clarinda inhabited, the world that Charley and now her father had entered, the world her half-sisters were born to.
