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Her aunt relaxed. ‘Well, it does not appear to have done you any harm, which is the main thing. Indeed, the interest he has shown, coupled with Lady Dalrymple’s
visit to my drawing room, has had a most positive effect, to judge from all the invitations that have been arriving of late. So long as you do nothing, from now on, to cause any more speculation in that quarter, I am sure we will be able to see you happily settled before the Season is over. Now that my Mildred’s future is secure, I shall have more time to devote to you.’ Mr Crimmer had plucked up the courage to ask Mildred and, to his astonishment, she had accepted. ‘It would be such a coup,’ she said with a smile, ‘to be able to fire off the pair of you!’
Henrietta returned her a thin smile, but was spared the necessity of making a sensible reply as their coach finally reached the head of the queue and they went through all the business of bundling skirts, reticules and shoe bags in one hand to leave the other free to take that of a footman as they alighted.
He would not be there yet. After the first few nights, she had learned not to expect him until it was almost time for supper. During which period he would monopolise her, scandalising her hosts and her aunt in about equal measure, then disappear into the night, leaving her, well, wrung out.
She fixed a polite smile on her face as they went through the ritual of greeting their hosts, changing from their outerwear, and making their way through the crowded corridors to the ballroom. Tonight she would not, she promised herself, look towards the door until the first two sets of country dances were finished.
At least she never lacked for dance partners these days. Though she could not recall the names of the young men who sought her hand from one event to the next.
It was a shame, really, because she was sure that some of the younger sons of good birth clustering around her were genuinely interested in her. Or rather, in her portion, which she had a sneaking suspicion Lady Dalrymple
might have advertised.
In Lord Deben’s eyes her fortune would not seem all that great. But for a young man obliged to make his own way in the world, it would be enough to make the difference between struggling to survive and moderate comfort.
* * *
Yet when he arrived, much later, it was as though she’d just been marking time through the earlier part of the evening. When he beckoned to her and indicated the pair of chairs he had secured on the edge of the supper room, she was halfway across the room before it occurred to her that she ought to have shown a little more restraint. Instead, to her disgust, she had just run to him like a spaniel trained to come to heel.
‘You appear a little vexed tonight,’ he said, handing her into her chair.
‘Not vexed,’ she denied hastily. ‘Merely baffled.’
‘Ah?’
‘Yes,’ she said, rapidly grasping at a topic she felt she could safely pursue with him tonight, for it would never do to tell him that he occupied far too much of her thoughts. That she chose her gowns with his approval in mind. That the evening had felt dull and flat until the moment he’d arrived.
‘I had the most remarkable conversation with Lady Jesborough earlier during which she introduced me to her three unmarried daughters and said she hoped we would all become firm friends.’
‘Why should it baffle you? I told you I would make you the toast of the ton,’ he said, handing her a glass of champagne which he’d managed to procure from a passing waiter.
Although waiters did not pass by him. They were always very attentive.
‘Yes,’ she replied, furling her fan and placing it in her lap while she sipped at her drink. ‘You did. But I did not think it would happen so soon. I thought it would take weeks. Yet every day more and more quite startling invitations arrive, and tonight, people came flocking round me the moment I walked through the door, just as though I was somebody interesting.’
‘You are somebody interesting. Have I not told you how fascinating I find our conversations?’
‘Oh, you, yes. I know you find me amusing. But that is only because I never mind what I say to you. When Lady Jesborough just complimented me on my gown, I only managed to stutter a few incoherent sentences about my aunt’s modiste and how much better she is than the dressmaker in Much Wakering. I must have sounded like a perfect ninny. And yet she patted me on the cheek, and said I would do very well.’
