Rebel Heiress (12 page)

‘No, sir.' She put all the conviction she could into it.

‘I'm sorry for it. I wish … Oh, well, what's the use…'

Henrietta made her escape with a sigh of relief, and much to think about. It was an eventful day altogether. That evening Cedric asked her to marry him. They had been engaged to go to Almack's, but at the last moment Lady Marchmont had cried off. She had a splitting headache, she said. Her friend Mrs. Quatermain would have to chaperone Henrietta in her stead. This meant, to Henrietta's dismay, that she and her stepbrother set out, alone together, in Lady Marchmont's carriage to call for Mrs. Quatermain, who had put down her own carriage for reasons of economy since her husband's death. Lady Marchmont pooh-poohed Henrietta's scruples, calling her, as she habitually did on such occasions, a nonsensical Boston miss. And indeed, Cedric's conduct remained entirely brotherly throughout the evening until they had taken Mrs. Quatermain back to her elegantly tiny house in Mount Street. Having escorted her courteously to her door, Cedric said something to the coachman, climbed in beside Henrietta and took her hand.

‘At last,' he said as the coachman whipped up his horses, ‘we are alone.'

‘Indeed?' Henrietta withdrew her hand, and herself, to the farthest corner of the coach. ‘Pray, why is the coachman turning down Park Lane?'

‘Because I must speak to you, Henrietta. I can no longer play the comfortable brother. Have you not realised how passionately I love, admire, adore you?'

‘Why, no, since you ask me, I cannot say that I have, Cedric.'

‘Oh, Henrietta.' He followed her into the corner of the carriage and tried to seize her hand again. ‘How can you be so cruel? Why, I have given up everything for your sake. I have not been to Waiter's this sennight, nor had a decent game of cards since I remember. My friends are quizzing me already and now you say that you have noticed nothing! Did you not know that Gully was fighting a newcomer at Moulsey Hurst last Tuesday when I took you to the British Museum? Why, I am a veritable Benedict, and all for love of you.'

‘Love?' She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Are you sure, Cedric?'

‘Sure? Deuce take it, how am I to convince you? Have you not seen that I have eyes for no other woman when you are in the room? Have you not heard me fighting your battles?'

‘My battles? What would you have me understand by that?'

‘Why, dammit, I was nearly at swords' point with your Cousin George only yesterday. If your father had not intervened, it would have been Wimbledon Common for us — and a deuced good shot he is too.'

‘What a fortunate thing, in that case, that my father
did
intervene. I have no wish to be fought over, Cedric. Nor, to tell truth, do I find myself inclined to believe in this passion of yours. Come, Cedric, I beg of you, forget it and be a comfortable brother to me again; you suit me very much better so.'

‘Impossible.' He had her hand by now and looked over her, smelling faintly of snuff and the scent she had always suspected him of using. ‘You cannot ask it of me, Henrietta. If I cannot be everything to you, I will be nothing. Dammit, I'll join the army.'

‘And a very good notion too,' said Henrietta approvingly. ‘I have often wondered how you could bear to live so idly here when men are dying every day in Spain.'

‘Idle! You call my life idle! I, who have danced attendance on you daily since you arrived! Dammit, I would sooner be in the treadmill than spend so much time at musical evenings and Almack's. And all for nothing, for no thanks, merely to be “a comfortable brother”. Henrietta, you must think again of this.'

‘Must? ‘Tis an odd word, surely? Come, Cedric, if we are to continue friends, let us speak no more of this. I am most excessively fatigued; tell the man to drive straight home, I beg. We have lost too much time already; your mother will be growing anxious.'

To her relief Cedric obeyed her, though something in his behaviour made her wonder whether his mother would, indeed, be anxious, or whether the whole thing had not been arranged between them. Lady Marchmont's headache had certainly been a convenient one for her son.

In the course of a restless night, Henrietta decided to say nothing to anyone about Cedric's proposal. If he wanted to tell his mother, that was his affair. She would most certainly not speak of it to her father, who could hardly help but come to the same conclusion as she had — that Cedric's proposal was the direct result of the new will making her his heiress. She had been as much pleased as surprised by her father's approving comments on Cedric and his mother's reception of her. Why should she do anything to disturb his approval of them? Her arrival had done enough already to disrupt the family's at least superficially good relations.

She joined her father at the breakfast table that morning with a nagging, anxious headache. He knew her too well, already, for it to be easy for her to keep anything from him. But to her relief, she found that he had a topic of his own to discuss. Lord Liverpool had asked him to take his place at the forthcoming review at the new Military Acadèmy at Sandhurst, and had suggested that he might like to bring his family.

‘The compliment is to you, my dear,' Lord Marchmont said. ‘It will give you the chance you have wished for of a look at the royal family, for this is to be something of a family affair. I expect it will be damned dull, at that, but it will make an outing in the country for you. We will shorten the day by sleeping afterwards at Marchmont Hall, which I know you have wished to visit. Indeed, I am half inclined to suggest that you and Lady Marchmont stay there for a few days. You look a trifle fagged this morning, if you will forgive my saying so.'

She laughed. ‘I hope I am not such a fine young lady yet, Father, that I cannot be grateful for your noticing it. Yes, it is true, I should be very glad of a few days in the country, if it did not interfere with Lady Marchmont's plans.'

He looked at her shrewdly. ‘If you wish to go, my love, Lady Marchmont must change her plans.' And he rang the bell and told a footman to find out if her ladyship was up. Learning that she was, he went directly to her room to broach his plan. He
found her in an unusually ill humour, and, not knowing of her son's rebuff the night before, ascribed this, too, to the exhaustion of the London season. He urged, therefore, with all the more emphasis, that they should spend at least a weekend at Marchmont on their way back from Sandhurst.

Lady Marchmont cheered up at once on hearing of the invitation, which she took as a compliment to herself, and was soon enthusiastically planning the party. Yes, certainly, they would stay a night or two at Marchmont afterwards if he wished it. He was right, she had noticed that dear Henrietta was not quite herself. A day or two in the country would do them all good. ‘And as for Lady Allen's rout, why, we shall just have to ask to be excused.'

Henrietta was amazed at the energy with which her stepmother threw herself into plans for their country visit. They were to picnic on the way to Sandhurst and this seemed to entail more preparations than would have been needed for an evening party: An English picnic, it seemed, was a highly complex affair. The excursion required an entirely new suit of clothes, too, so that Madame Bégué was called in, and Henrietta found her resolution to employ another dressmaker already broken. But she did do her best to impress the volatile little woman that in the future all their dealings must be directly between themselves. ‘I am sorry my French is no better,' she said, breaking down into English at last, having done her best to make this clear by signs and frequent references to a phrase book she had found in her father's study.

To her astonishment, Madame Bégué burst out laughing and answered her in perfect English. ‘You must forgive me, mademoiselle, and promise to keep my secret. I am no more French than you are, but if her ladyship and her friends were to know it, why good-bye to my success as a modiste. For them, I chatter in the French I learned from my aunt's husband, who was indeed a French émigré, and made a very good thing of it too. I know you won't betray my secret, miss, for you're a young lady as
is
a lady, unlike some I could name, but won't. Not to make a long story of it, miss, my conscience has pricked me many a time about that bill I sent you, but how was I to get my money from her ladyship else? And lord knows your father can stand the shot well enough, but you can hardly blame him for drawing the purse strings something tight with her ladyship. Why, I could tell you things —'

Henrietta interrupted her. ‘I beg you will not; I would much sooner not hear them. And as for the bill, that is all settled, and to be forgotten. Only, in future, we will make our own arrangements. I must confess it is a great relief to find you speak English. And as for your secret, it is safe enough with me.'

Thus reassured, Madame Bégué turned to with a will to make for Henrietta, who was amazed to find how much less expensive her work was if paid for in cash. ‘But naturally, miss, I have to lay it on thick when they aren't going to pay me,' explained Madame Bégué, or rather, as she confided to Henrietta, Miss Jones — ‘But whoever heard of a modiste called Jones?
Ah, mais Mademoiselle a une taille superbe, à fair ravir
…' She was off into French ecstasies as Lady Marchmont entered the room to complain, as she now frequently did, that madame was giving all her attention to Henrietta.

The day of the review dawned clear and fine, with that hint of mist in the air that Henrietta had learned to recognise as the herald of one of England's rare, delicious, hot summer days. Even Lady Marchmont was down to breakfast, full of last-minute orders that must, Henrietta thought, be creating chaos and despair in the servants' hall. She paused for a moment in her stream of instructions to admire Henrietta's costume of sage green trimmed with black. ‘You look exquisite, child. Lord Marchmont, you will have to keep a close eye on Prinney and the royal dukes. I do not trust one of them with anything so pretty as our Henrietta.'

Lord Marchmont smiled at her over his newspaper. ‘Well, at least, my love, no one will take you for her mother.'

And, indeed, Lady Marchmont, in royal blue and swans-down, looked, even to Henrietta's ruthless eye, hardly a day over thirty. She smiled and blushed for the compliment, then returned to her plans for the day. ‘It is so fine,' she said, ‘that I have urged Cedric to take his curricle. We shall all be the better for a breather in it, after the closed carriage.'

‘An excellent idea, my love,' Lord Marchmont said. ‘And he will be glad of it, no doubt, if we decide to stay longer at Marchmont. Though we shall miss his company on our way down.'

Henrietta surprised a sharp glance in her direction. Was he suspecting her of an interest in Cedric? It was all too possible. She had soon learned how acute he was where her feelings
were concerned, and he must have noticed a certain shyness in her manner to Cedric since the night of his proposal, and might well have drawn the wrong conclusions from it. For herself, she was glad enough that Cedric was to be on his own in the curricle. He had not joined the army, nor had she ever seriously believed that he would. Instead, he had gone on dancing attendance on her more assiduously than ever. She liked it less and less and was beginning to realise to what an extent he succeeded in making her seem his property and thus keeping other young men at arm's length. Gently bred, and unused to society as she was, she found it very difficult to protect herself against his monopoly and was increasingly perplexed as to what to do about it. If she spoke to her father, it would mean a row, and it hardly seemed worth that. After all, there was no young man in London that she cared about. If she read the news from the Peninsula assiduously, that was her own affair. But she was glad that they were to be spared Cedric's company on the long drive down to Sandhurst.

It began as a halcyon day. They picnicked on a hill near Bagshot, and Henrietta, contentedly washing down cold chicken with champagne, thought she had never seen anything so beautiful as the trim countryside that rolled away below them. Except for excursions to Chiswick and Richmond, this was the first time she had been out of London since her arrival and she was amazed all over again at the garden appearance the country presented. Her father laughed when she remarked on this, and agreed with her.

‘Yes, I remember thinking your America a damned untidy place when I first arrived there. But remember how long we have been working on our landscape. In a few hundred years, no doubt Massachusetts will rival Berkshire.'

Henrietta looked doubtful. ‘I am not so sure. I do not believe people in America care in the same way for their countryside.'

Lady Marchmont smiled over her wine glass. ‘Heartless girl. You do not sound to be at all homesick.'

‘Nor am I. Though I should like to go back there one day.'

‘Oh, never think of it!' Her stepmother pantomimed horror. ‘Now you are used to live somewhat in comfort, you would find it nothing but barbarous squalor, I am sure. Why, they are little better than savages, if you ask me, and as for giving way to them and suspending the Orders in Council — I am sure I
think Lord Liverpool must have taken leave of his senses. Now, if only you had been First Minister, my love —'

Much to Henrietta's relief, her father cut short this incipient tirade by announcing that it was time for them to be moving on. Henrietta was never sure which irritated her the more, her stepmother's harping on her husband's failure to achieve supreme office, or her attacks on America. It was one thing to admit, as she herself now did, that life in America had lacked some of the civilised graces, another to hear her one-time compatriots contemptuously dismissed as savages. Anxious to hear no more of the subject, she agreed with a good grace to Cedric's suggestion that she drive the rest of the way in his curricle. It was, indeed, too fine a day to be cooped up in the carriage.