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The flush in Henrietta’s cheeks began to ebb. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘N-not going to offer for me?’
He came towards her, and took her hands, giving them a reassuring squeeze. ‘Of course I am not! How could you think I would do so, you foolish Henry? You have been made to believe that you were in some way promised to me, haven’t you? Some absurd talk of what your father desired – of what you owed to my family. Well, you owe us nothing, my dearest cousin! It is rather we who owe you a great debt. You have been our – most beloved sister – ever since you came to live with us. I am ashamed that it should ever have been suggested to you that it is your duty to marry me: it is no such thing! You are free to marry whom you please.’
This did not, at the moment, appear likely to the heiress. She disengaged her hands. ‘Am – am I?’
‘Indeed you are!’ With an attempt at lightness, he added: ‘Unless you choose someone quite ineligible! I warn you, I should do what I could to prevent that, Henry!’
She managed to smile. ‘I should be obliged to elope, then, should I not? I – I am glad you have been so frank with me. Now we can be comfortable again!’
‘My poor girl!’ he said quickly. ‘If only you had told me what was in the wind –! There was never a hint in any of your letters. I would have set your mind at rest months ago! No: you could not, of course!’
She turned away, and began to tidy the litter on the table. She said, in a voice that did not sound to her ears quite like her own: ‘I own, I had as lief not be married for my fortune!’ He returned no answer; after a pause, she added: ‘Are your affairs in very bad case, Alan?’
‘Not so bad that I shall not be able, with time and good management, to set them to rights, I hope,’ he replied. ‘I could wish that my mother had not chosen, at this moment, to entertain upon so lavish a scale. I suppose nothing can be done about this party for the Russian woman, but for the rest – the Whites’ Ball, Trix’s presentation –’
‘Good God, do not tell my aunt she must postpone that!’ exclaimed Henrietta. ‘If she is obliged to wait another year, Trix will very likely run off with a handsome Ensign!’ She saw the startled look on his face, and added: ‘You don’t yet know her, Alan!’
‘My dear Henry, at seventeen she can hardly be thinking of marriage, surely!’
‘The last man she fell in love with was young Stillington,’ said Henrietta thoughtfully. ‘To be sure, he was better than that actor she saw in Cheltenham, but still quite ineligible of course. Fortunately, her mind was diverted by the plans for her first season.’
‘It is time Trix was broke to bridle!’ said his lordship roundly. He then favoured his cousin with a few animadversions upon the conduct of his lively young sister, and left her to her reflections.
These were not for many moments concerned with the almost inevitable clash between brother and sister. They led Henrietta to the mirror, and caused her to stare long at her own image.
It should have comforted her. Dark ringlets framed a charming countenance in which two speaking eyes of blue became gradually filled wit
h tears that obscured her vision of a short, straight nose, a provocative upper lip, and an elusive dimple. These attributes had apparently failed to captivate the Viscount. The heiress uttered a strangled sob, and dabbed resolutely at her eyes, realizing that she would shortly be obliged to confront Miss Allerton, agog to know whether the date of her wedding had been fixed.
Nor was she mistaken. In a very few minutes, Trix peeped into the room, and, finding her cousin alone, at once demanded to be told what Alan had said to her.
Henrietta replied in the most cheerful of accents: ‘I am so much relieved! He does not wish to marry me at all!’
Trix, shocked by these tidings, could only stare at her.
‘You may imagine how happy he has made me!’ continued Henrietta glibly. ‘Had he desired it, I must have thought it my duty to marry him, but he has set my mind at rest on this head, and now I can be easy again!’
‘But you have loved him for years!’ Trix blurted out.
‘Indeed I have!’ said Henrietta cordially. ‘I am sure I always shall!’
‘Hetty! When you have been writing to him for ever!’
‘Pray, what has that to say to anything? To me, he is the elder brother I never had.’
‘Hetty, what a hum! He is my brother, and I never wrote to him above twice in my life!’
Before Henrietta could reply suitably to this, they were joined by a willowy young gentleman in whom only the very stupid could have failed to recognize a Pink of the Ton. From the tip of his pomaded head to the soles of his dazzling Hessians, the Honourable Timothy Allerton was beautiful to behold. He was generally supposed to care for nothing but the fashion of his neckcloth, but he showed unmistakable signs of caring for the news which his sister broke to him. ‘Not going to offer for Hetty?’ he repeated, aghast. ‘Well, upon my soul! Well, what I mean is, might think what’s due to the rest of us! Mind, I don’t say I’m surprised he don’t like it above half, but the thing is he’s the head of the family, and he dashed well ought to do it! What’s more,’ he said, his amiable countenance darkening, ‘if he thinks he can make me offer for her he’ll find he’s devilish mistaken! It ain’t that I don’t like you, Hetty,’ he added kindly, ‘because I do, but that’s coming it a trifle too strong!’
3
IF THE VISCOUNT had harboured doubts of his mother’s veracity, these were speedily dispelled. His cousin, far from having been kept in seclusion, seemed to him to be acquainted with all the eligible bachelors upon the town, and with far too many of those whom he did not hesitate to stigmatize as gazetted fortune-hunters. She dispensed her favours impartially amongst these gentlemen, whirled about town under the chaperonage of various not wholly disinterested matrons, and in general conducted herself with such frivolity that her perturbed aunt said that she had never known her to be in such a flow of spirits. She raised hopes in a dozen breasts, but the only suitor for whom she betrayed the smallest partiality was Sir Matthew Kirkham; and it was absurd to suppose (as Lady Allerton assured Alan) that a girl with as much good sense as Hetty would for an instant entertain the pretensions of a penniless roué, past his first youth, and with at least two unsavoury scandals attached to his name.
Alan could place no such dependence on his cousin’s good sense. It was rarely that he took a dislike to anyone, but he took a quite violent dislike to Sir Matthew, and warned Henrietta to give the fellow no encouragement: an exercise of cousinly privilege which had no other effect than to cause her to wear Sir Matthew’s flowers at the Opera House that very evening.
He was brought to realize that however obnoxious Kirkham might appear in the eyes of his fellow-men he possessed considerable charm for the ladies: Trix told him so. Trix listened with interest to his trenchantly expressed opinion of Sir Matthew, and then disgusted him by talking of the fellow’s polished manners, and of the distinguishing attentions he had for so long bestowed upon Hetty.
Sir Matthew was not one of the two hundred guests invited to have the honour of being presented to the Tsar’s sister. This lady had arrived in England some time before the various Kings, Princes, Generals, and Diplomats who were coming to take part in the grand Peace celebrations, and was putting up at the Pulteney Hotel. She was neither beautiful nor particularly amiable, but she was being much courted, and had already created a mild sensation by being rude to the Prince Regent, and by parading the town in enormous coal-scuttle bonnets, which instantly became the rage. Trix, giggling over the story of her having abruptly left the party at Carlton House just as soon as the expensive orchestra provided for her entertainment had struck up, because (she said) music made her want to vomit, prophesied that her departure from Lady Allerton’s ball would be equally speedy; but Lady Allerton, well-acquainted with the Grandduchess, said, No: she only behaved like that when she wished to be disagreeable.
