red-faced young man was paying court, rather bashfully, to Mildred, while Mildred was looking decidedly unimpressed.
Her aunt and uncle, for so she had come to think of them, might have hopes in that direction, but Mildred was looking for more from life than a prosaic match to cement a business alliance. She was looking for romance.
But then Mildred was pretty enough to have romantic aspirations. She had lovely golden hair, wide green eyes and a delicate little nose that made her look like an angelic kitten.
Perhaps that was why they had all accepted Henrietta into the household so readily, she sighed. With her gawky figure and plain face, she posed no threat to her distant cousin. When the pair of them walked into a room, all masculine attention went to Mildred.
Which had not bothered Henrietta in the slightest. She did not want masculine attention. Or at least, she had only ever hankered after the attention of one man.
But even he was beyond her reach now. Three nights ago, he’d finally forced her to accept the fact that she’d been a complete fool to follow him to London. And now she could no longer even pretend to herself that, deep down, she did mean something to him.
She could never have meant anything to him, for him to treat her as he had. She reached out and took a biscuit from the plate set on the table between her and Mrs Crimmer.
She was stuck in town until the end of June, at the very earliest, for she could not bring herself to slink home. Especially not in the light of what he’d said.
You belong in the country, not in a rackety place like London, had been the opinion he’d expressed upon the only occasion he’d called upon her. I shouldn’t wonder at it if you aren’t soon aching to get back to Much Wakering.
It was galling to admit that, in a way, he was correct. She did miss the trees and the tranquillity, and the fact that everyone knew everyone else.
But that didn’t make her a country bumpkin.
It had been a shock to hear Richard—her Richard, as she’d still been thinking of him then—speak to her in such patronising tones. She had only been in town one week, after all, and of course she’d still been a bit wide-eyed and excited.
But that did not mean she would never be able to cope with the sophistication of London society. Why, Richard himself had only acquired his town bronze after several trips. At first, the difference had only been apparent in his appearance. He’d begun to look very smart in clothes bought from a London tailor. And then the way he’d had his hair cut, well, it had drawn gasps of admiration all round. That shock of unruly curls had been tamed into a style that took much of the boyish roundness from his freckled face. He’d no longer looked like the easy-going son of the local squire, but, well, just as she’d always envisioned Paris, the man so handsome goddesses had squabbled over him. But, gradually, she’d sensed an inner change, too. She’d begun to feel uneasily as if he was drawing further and further away from her. And this last Christmas there had been a veneer of sophistication about him, expressed in languid mannerisms which were so unlike those of the blunt, honest boy who had run tame in her house for years that he had made her feel positively naïve and tongue-tied.
She ought, she reflected gloomily as she snapped her biscuit in half, to have taken heed of his withdrawal then and spared herself the humiliation she’d endured at Miss Twining’s ball. Or recognised his reference to her return to Much Wakering as a hint that he didn’t want her in town. Instead, she had persuaded herself that his words were an awkward expression of concern for how she would cope. Oh, why was she so stupid? Why hadn’t she seen? If he had really been concerned about how she would cope, he would have escorted her everywhere. Haunted the Ledbetters’ house and taken steps to shield her from all the undesirable elements he warned her stalked London society.
Well, now she knew better.
She popped one half of the biscuit into her mouth, consoling herself with the fact that at least she had not confided her romantic aspirations with regard to Richard to anyone. Which meant she was the only one who knew what a stupid, pathetic fool she’d been.
Unfortunately, it also made it quite impossible to go home. If she were to start talking about leaving, everyone would want to know why she wanted to cut her stay short. And she had no plausible excuse to give. She couldn’t possibly offend her dear Aunt Ledbetter by letting her think she was in any way responsible for her present unhappiness. And she was absolutely never going to let anybody know what a fool she’d made of herself over Richard. Her heart might be bruised, but at least her pride was still intact.
And that was the rub. If she insisted on going home without confessing the full truth, they would all assume she wanted to go back to the countryside because town life was, indeed, too much for her.
Given the choice between looking like a silly girl who’d pursued a man who didn’t love her to London, or a feeble-minded ninny who couldn’t cope with being more than five miles away from her parish church, or putting a brave face on it and staying in town when all the lustre had gone from the experience, Henrietta had decided on the latter course. She would stay in town.
Besides, she owed her aunt and cousin even more since her ignominious departure from Miss Twining’s ball. They had been so gracious about it. They had fussed over her in the coach when they’d seen her tears, and expressed the kind of sympathy for the fictitious headache she’d claimed which she had never in her life experienced before. She would never have invented a headache to explain her distress if she’d known how concerned they would be. She had just assumed they would pat her hand and send her to her room for a quiet lie down, like her brothers or her father would have done.
Instead, they’d come to her room with her, with vials of lavender water to dab on her temples, and had stayed with her while she drank a soothing tisane, sharing anecdotes about their own monthly fluctuations in health until she’d been almost crushed with guilt.
Particularly as they’d both been so thrilled to get an invitation to the house of a genuine baronet—Aunt Ledbetter so that she could gossip over the details of the interior of a baronial town house with her circle of friends and Mildred because she hoped to attract the attention of one of the sons of the lower ranks of the nobility who were bound to fill the house. She had robbed them both of at least half their pleasure, just because she’d been unable to control her temper when she’d seen that cat Miss Waverley attempting to snare yet another poor unsuspecting man in her clutches.
Even when she’d tried to apologise, their response had heaped coals of fire on her head.
‘We would not have spent even that one hour in such elevated company had you not become friends with Miss Twining,’ Aunt Ledbetter had said. ‘In fact, I thought it most gracious of her to include us in your invitation at all.’
‘Yes,’ she had replied weakly. ‘Miss Twining is a lovely person.’ Which short statement had been the only truthful remark she could make about the entire affair. For she really had liked Julia Twining for the way she had not looked down her nose at Henrietta’s London connections, nor made any disparaging remarks about their background.
Unlike some people.
‘I cannot help wondering where on earth your father dredged up this set of relatives,’ Richard had said, eyeing her aunt askance on the one visit he’d paid to this very drawing room. ‘Never heard of ‘em before you took it into your head you wanted a Season. And now I’ve met ‘em, I’m not a bit surprised. Oh, not that there’s anything wrong with them, in their way. Cits often are very respectable. It’s just that they’re not the sort of people I want to mix with, while I’m in town. And if your father ever took his nose out of a book long enough to notice what’s what, he’d have known better than to send you to stay with people who can’t introduce you to anyone that matters, or take you any of the places a girl of your station ought to be seen.’
Had she really been so idiotic as to interpret that statement as an expression of concern for her? He was not in the least bit concerned for her. He was just worried that she might pop up somewhere and