Henrietta (3 page)

When they arrived at Belding Court, Henrietta pasted a fixed social smile on her face and prepared to sit out the evening as she had done many times before. Alice Belding was wearing a slim white high-waisted dress which set off her blonde beauty to perfection. She was as fair as Henrietta but there the similarity ended. Where Henrietta was plump, Alice was slender, where Henrietta’s face was round and placid, Alice’s sparkled with animation, all wide blue eyes and dimples.

“You are looking very fine, Henrietta,” remarked Alice. “Although perhaps your hairstyle is a little bit too young for you. Turbans are quite suitable for a girl of your age, you know. I shall call on you tomorrow and we shall have a comfortable coze and I will tell you all about my admirers. I am sure it will be just like having them yourself. We are such dear friends.” She smiled brilliantly at the vicar who complimented her fulsomely on her appearance and then drew his infuriating sister aside.

“Why didn’t you reply when she said you were ‘such dear friends,’” he hissed, holding her above the elbow in a painful grip. “Such condecension!”

“Sorry, Henry,” said Henrietta quietly, smiling warmly at Alice Belding while her inner voice said caustically, “I wish, just once, that some man would see her for what she is…an empty-headed, cruel, vicious little.…”

“Look!” exclaimed the vicar. “Beau Reckford has arrived.”

Henrietta looked across the room with interest. Her first emotion was one of surprise. Surely no one could consider the Beau handsome. His harsh aquiline features and light tawny eyes gave him a look of a bird of prey. He was very tall, well over six feet and impeccably dressed in black evening coat and knee breeches. His snowy cravat was tied in the Waterfall and he wore his black hair unpowdered. Then he smiled down at his hostess and his whole face was transformed. No woman could resist that smile, thought Henrietta, feeling a painful lurch inside her. Lady Belding was positively fluttering, the end of her high patrician nose turning absolutely pink with delight Alice was radiant She fluttered her long eyelashes demurely behind her fan. Feeling suddenly old and chubby, Henrietta trailed off miserably to take her usual place with the chaperones.

Lord Reckford led Alice out for the first dance and Henrietta stared down at her slippers and tried not to look. This is ridiculous, she chided herself. One just does not fall in love at first sight. “Oh, yes one does,” snarled her inner voice, “and you’ve just done it.”

She tried to concentrate on the conversation of the two elderly chaperones next to her. “I hear they are going to waltz this evening,” said one to the other. “I can’t help feeling that the waltz is… well…
fast.
Now, in our day, the minuet was all the rage. That really was dancing. One needed to have so much poise and grace. And we wore a special little lappet in our headdress to show that we could perform the minuet or was it to show that we meant to perform the minuet Oh, dear! I do forget things these days.” “It’s our age,” replied her companion. “But I do remember how much I loved watching the minuet performed. Now a gentleman had to have a very good leg for that! Legs are terribly important in a gentleman. They must be muscular but not
too
thick. And the ankle must be well-turned.”

Henrietta’s sense of the ridiculous was fairly tickled and her face lit up in a smile. Then to her confusion, she noticed Lord Reckford studying her from the other side of the floor and she began looking at her slippers again.

“Who is that pretty girl over there?” said Beau Reckford to Lady Belding. She and her daughter, Alice, looked across the floor in a bewildered way. “Over there,” repeated his lordship, waving his quizzing glass in the direction of Henrietta.

Lady Belding looked at him in pure amazement. “You can’t possibly mean Henrietta Sandford—the girl in the pink gown.”

“Yes,” said Lord Reckford, “I mean the girl in the pink gown.” Three pairs of eyes surveyed Henrietta who was now scowling horribly and staring at the floor. Beau Reckford would have left matters as they were because when he had first noticed Henrietta as she smiled at the conversation of the chaperones with her large hazel eyes twinkling, he had thought her an attractive girl. Now she simply seemed plain and plump. But Alice Belding was outraged.

“You are funning, of course! Henrietta pretty! She is a pleasant girl, I allow, but she is all of six-and-twenty and has no beaux.”

“Indeed! She is younger than I,” commented Lord Reckford. He considered Alice pretty but spiteful. He would dance with the girl in the pink gown after all. He turned to Lady Belding, “Please present me, madame.”

Henrietta looked up and blushed as she saw her hostess standing in front of her with Lord Reckford. With an icy glare, Lady Belding made the introductions and after the couple had murmured to each other that they were enjoying the dance, took hold of the gentleman’s arm to lead him back to her daughter. With horror, she heard his lordship asking Henrietta to stand up with him for the waltz. There was nothing she could do but return to her furious daughter. Alice had told the whole of Nethercote that she would dance the waltz with Beau Reckford and there went that dumpy little Henrietta, floating round in his lordship’s arms. He was laughing! What was Henrietta saying? Alice accepted a partner for the waltz with bad grace and nearly injured her neck by craning over her partner’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of the maddening couple.

Henrietta had never been happier in her life. After her initial shyness, she had found herself chatting quite easily with her formidable partner. For his part, the Beau gave the dazzled Henrietta the full benefit of his considerable charm.

“Where did you learn to waltz?” he asked.

She gave an infectious giggle. “I studied the steps by sitting watching the dancers at my last ball and then practised them with my old friend, Miss Scattersworth. She will be so pleased that I found a gentleman to waltz with!”

“I am sure many gentlemen would wish to waltz with such a charming partner,” he said gallantly.

“Very nicely put,” said Henrietta admiringly. “The next time I sit with the chaperones and wallflowers, I shall treasure your words.”

He looked down into the hazel eyes with a startled expression in his own. “If we go on like this,” he said lightly, “we shall make honesty positively fashionable. What an unusual girl you are!”

“Oh, I do so hope honesty never becomes the
crack
,” said his partner following a neatly executed turn with an expertise she would previously have thought impossible. “Cannot you imagine, my lord, what a flutter
that
would cause? ‘I am compelled to dance with you Miss X because my mama is interested in your fortune. But I would infinitely prefer to be dancing with the beautiful Miss Y.’”

His eyes held a mocking look. “Ah, but you see, Miss Sandford, honesty holds no pitfalls for me. I dance with exactly whom I please.”

“Gentlemen are indeed fortunate,” replied Henrietta. “Now ladies really have to accept
anyone
and with very good grace too. Of course, we have our little excuses. We can plead the headache or the vapors. But I am sure that has never happened to you.”

“No,” he said cynically. “Since we are both being so honest, I would hasten to point out that the ladies’ compliance is because of my fortune rather than my face or figure. Sometimes I feel like a great bag of sovereigns balanced on two legs.”

“Now that I would not mind in the least,” said Henrietta. “I adore dancing and should not care in the least for my partner’s motives provided I could dance all night!”

The waltz came to an end and Lord Reckford suddenly made up his mind. He would take Henrietta into supper. Little chits like Alice Belding were ten a penny, despite her looks, but this girl was really something different.

But Henry Sandford was waiting to accost them, his face crimson with fury and embarrassment He had just had his marching orders from Lady Belding in no uncertain terms.

“My dear vicar,” she had fluted, never taking her eyes from Henrietta or her partner for a minute, “I note that your sister is not in looks. In fact, she is decidedly peaked. You must take her home.”

“But Henrietta is never ill,” protested Henry.

Lady Belding gave him the full benefit of an icy glare. “I said take her home,” she said between her teeth. “You are not usually so obtuse regarding my wishes.”

Accordingly, Henry grasped his sister’s arm as Lord Reckford was in the middle of his invitation to supper.

“We must go home immediately,” said Henry. “I am not well.”

“You certainly look extremely red,” said Lord Reckford dryly. “Do you really need your sister’s help?”

“Yes,” snapped Henry. “I am afraid I might faint.”

“In that case,” said his lordship, “I shall escort you myself. You obviously need a man’s strong arm. You will want your sister to stay and enjoy the ball.”

“Yes…no…that is…,” Henry broke off and gave his sister a venomous look. Henrietta found she was receiving the same look from both Lady Belding and her daughter. Her face resumed its customary mask.

“Thank you, my lord, but your services will not be necessary. I understand exactly how to minister to my brother’s complaint.”

Had there been a trace of irony in her voice? But the hazel eyes were politely devoid of expression. “As you wish,” said his lordship, giving the pair a formal bow. He strode off to the other side of the room and took the whole of Henrietta’s heart with him.

Henrietta was to remember that terrible ride home with brother Henry to the end of her days. She had been presumptuous, said Henry. She knew how much his friendship with the Beldings meant to him and had deliberately gone out of her way to destroy it. If this was all the thanks be was to receive for years, of room and board and loving kindness, then she could go out and earn her own bread. She was not qualified for much except the post of paid companion. Yes, yes, that was it. He would consult Lady Belding on the morrow. And having successfully disposed of Henrietta’s future, he entered the house and took himself off to bed in a more tranquil frame of mind.

His sister cried herself to sleep. The future looked grim indeed. Paid companions led a life of genteel drudgery and although it would be much the same existence as she now had, mere would be no more chance of dancing the waltz with handsome rakes like Lord Reckford.

T
HE MORNING DAWNED AS
gray and leaden as her spirits. There was a fine sprinkling of snow on the ground and the clouds above the square Norman tower of St. Anne’s beside the vicarage, were swollen and black with the threat of more to come. The vicarage emulated the style of a country house on a small scale. The public rooms were on the ground floor with the drawingroom to one side of the hallway and the diningroom on the other. The parlor, which had been on the first floor, had been redesigned by Henry into a master bedroom for himself.

Henrietta often wondered where her brother had found the money to carry out the expensive improvements, from the rich rugs on the polished floors to the removal of the ivy which had formally clung to the mellow brickwork of the Queen Ann house.

“We live on the grand scale but in miniature,” Henry would say to visitors, with a deprecatory wave of his plump hands.

Henrietta sat down at the pianoforte in the drawingroom to play some sonatas to calm her jangled nerves. She was so intent on the music that she did not hear a visitor being announced and it was only when a discreet cough from the housekeeper penetrated her thoughts that she gave a start and turned round.

There stood Beau Reckford, impeccable in morningdress from his blue swallowtail coat of Bath Superfine to his glossy hessians, giving her a courtly bow. Henrietta was wearing her oldest dress of grey Kerseymere wool and she blushed painfully as she got to her feet. “I am sure my brother will be down d-directly,” she stammered.

The Beau nodded and stood for a minute, wondering if she were ever going to ask him to sit down. Custom dictated that he should make calls on all the ladies he had danced with the night before and he had hoped that the visit to Henrietta would at least prove to be an amusing interlude. But the girl seemed to be painfully awkward and shy.

“Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?” he asked in his pleasant, husky voice.

“Please…please do…sit, I mean,” said poor Henrietta, looking at him as if he had risen from the pit.

“I think we are going to have a heavy fall of snow. Do not you?” said Lord Reckford, stretching his long legs out in front of him.

“What! Oh, yes…snow. Yes…lots…I suppose,” replied Henrietta faintly, knowing that she sounded hen-witted but unable to gain any sort of composure.

“Well, that disposes of the weather,” said his lordship. “Now we shall discuss your brother’s health. He did not have an apoplexy, I trust?”

Henrietta suddenly smiled and sat down. “No, of course not. He was much improved when he reached the fresh air. Fresh air is very beneficial to his complaint.”

The tawny eyes surveyed her with a mocking look. “It’s the first time I’ve heard of fresh air curing anyone suffering from Lady Belding’s wrath.”

A delighted smile lit up Henrietta’s face. “How on earth did you…” she began.

“I noticed the little by-play,” he drawled. “Alice goes to her mother and whispers fiercely, Lady Belding goes to your brother and whispers fiercely, and your brother is suddenly smitten with some strange disease. If you will forgive me for speaking so freely, I assure you I did not enjoy the ball after you left.”

Henrietta’s large eyes shone with a gleam of mischief. “Thank you for the pretty compliment, my lord. The sudden loss of your company quite devastated me, myself, I must admit.”

The Beau, who had expected her to simper, looked at her in some surprise. He was not used to having his gallantries neatly returned, especially by country misses.

He leaned forward and said with mock intensity, “I am glad my feelings are reciprocated, Miss Sandford. May I kiss your hand?” He dropped a light kiss on her wrist and glanced up at her from under his lashes. Now how would Miss Sandford of the vicarage cope with that!