Duprix clapped her hands together. “Finally! How clever M’seiur Daring is.”
Henrietta moved to the glass, and the dress swam gracefully with her. “I look exactly like the fashion plate.”
“The corsagerequires something.” Duprix advanced with two half-moon pads and tucked them into the bodice of the gown. Henrietta, for the first time in her life, had a bosom.
Duprix smiled. “I think M’sieur Daring will like the effect,n’est ce pas?”
“You look divine.” Clarinda touched her fingers to her lips. “The colors suit you perfectly. Hetty, dear, I wish I had said something long before this.”
“She looks like Covent Garden wares,” Aunt Althea yelped.
Henrietta stared at the transformation. Beneath the beautiful gown, she was her plain old self, but she felt alive with new possibilities.
Darien had flattered and paid court to her because he wanted access to her uncle. She knew that now. But the woman in her glass wasn’t a silly Miss Hop-Higher, taken in by blandishments. She looked like a woman of means and influence.
She looked like a woman who might be welcomed if not into Polite Society, then at least by the Daughters of Minerva.
“I predict our Hetty will be a smashing success,” Clarinda sang as she led the women downstairs, where they meant to dine before the ball.
“I do not wish to be a success,” Henrietta protested. “I wish for my debate to be well-attended, and for Hodge to sell me his mill, and for?—”
“No business tonight, Hetty.” Marsibel entwined their arms as they went into the parlor where Sir Pelton and Sir Jasper were waiting. “Tonight, you will be light and gay and dance with every young man who asks you. Not even Miss Wollstonecraft can think it a crime to be young and merry.”
Henrietta’s confidenceebbed as they waited in a long line of carriages before the rows of stately homes that lined Grosvenor Square. It ebbed further as they entered a vast marbled foyer that reminded her of the Ellesmere home and waited at the top of an enormous staircase to be announced.
Jasper, with patient resignation, shifted on his heeled shoes while Clarinda, her hair powdered gray and dotted with small bows in the fashion of Marie Antoinette, waited with a seraphic smile on her face. She had chosen an open robe with a pinned bodice and crossed sash designed to flaunt, in the most fetching manner, that she was in the family way.
Henrietta clung to Charley, who blew loud sighs and tapped the tip of his walking stick on the parquet floor.
At last, the footman announced their names, and the whispers rose around them like the rustlings of her expensive silk dress as Charley dragged her gracelessly down the stairs.
“Yellow!”
“Very French?—”
“Her hair?—”
“Did you hear Lord Daring?—?”
“With abluestocking? No!”
Oh,whyhad she ever consented to a Season? This wasn’t her place. There would be some new and damning cartoon tomorrow, ridiculing her dress or her manner or her reform efforts, making it all the more difficult to rally support for her causes. She ought to have stayed home reading to her sisters and working on her debate. Though the ballroom was already crowded, despite the high ceiling with its frescoes of frolicking Olympians, Henrietta felt every eye directed toward her.
“Don’t leave me,” she muttered to Charley through a clenched smile. Even she could feel the disgrace of being a wallflower at her first and possibly only ball.
“You’ve got Clarinda, and Marsi’s right behind us,” Charley said. “I’ll be in the card room when you’re ready to leave. I hope theyhavea card room. Try not to be too much of a goose.”
Henrietta looked around for reinforcements as her brother melted away. Clarinda maneuvered her husband to a group of society matrons and began introductions, ignoring their displeasure at making the acquaintance of a mill owner. So the wall of resistance extended to Jasper, too, her hard-working father who never turned away a soul in need. Henrietta, gnashing her teeth as she waited for Marsi, startled when she heard a deep, familiar voice at her elbow.
“Shall we join the first dance? The lines will be forming soon.”
A shiver of pure delight ran down her back, oblivious to all her attempts to stifle it.
“Darien! You’re not shot yet.”
“And won’t be, if I have my way. I nearly sent a note telling you to wear the yellow and violet,but I trusted your maid to know her work.” His eyes moved with approval over her décolletage, and a wash of heat followed the shiver. She wished she had not left her stole in the cloakroom.
“I thought you detested these functions,” she said.
