Part 16 (2/2)
Gilling chuckled. Henrietta felt a st.i.tch of anger that he found her innocence amusing. Lady Kesseley squeezed Henrietta's hand. ”Lady Winslow is only funning you, my dear.” Henrietta looked about the audience for unrespectable ladies, instead finding Lady Sara sitting in a box, sandwiched between a fair matron and a whiskered man whose corpulence could barely be contained in the seat. Several gentlemen and ladies cl.u.s.tered about them. Edward dangled about the edge of the box as if he weren't welcome. Nonetheless, Lady Sara's gaze remained locked on his handsome face. An inane smile stretched his lips. So different from the pained, anxious expression he'd worn in her parlor hours earlier, as if each moment with Henrietta was a kind of acute misery.
He never loved me.
I built my dreams on a lie.
Mr. Elliot's voice sounded in her head. ”I thought I was in love many times to find out I wasn't. Look deep into your soul. The truest part of you. The most silent of places. Is this man there?”
She looked hard at Edward and tried to imagine the truest part of her. What was the truest part of her?
Suddenly an image of the Great Ouse River unfurled like a rolled-up oil painting in her head, with detail so vivid she could look into the green water and see the reflections of the oak trees and endless sky stretching over the flat farmland. Something deeper than her heart ached, sick for its home.
Surely Norfolk Norfolk wasn't the truest part of her? Yet-somehow-it was. Silent. Perfect. wasn't the truest part of her? Yet-somehow-it was. Silent. Perfect.
Across the theatre, Edward looked up, as if feeling her stare. For a moment, their eyes locked.
Oh goodness! His face wasn't reflected in the waters. He wasn't there!
Had she spent the last few years telling herself she was in love? That couldn't be true. She was too intelligent to spend years in delusion. But it certainly hadn't felt like a delusion. She focused hard on Edward and tried to squeeze that old amorous feeling back into her heart.
It never came, just an elating liberation.
Edward leaned closer to Lady Sara, whispering something in her ear. She giggled in her gloved hand and peered up at Henrietta. They were talking about her. But Henrietta didn't care, for it struck her that his face was crooked. The left side rose higher than the right, giving him that whimsical, boyish smile everyone admired. She had never noticed it before. After Act I, everyone in the audience rose and started gathering their belongings as if the play had ended.
”A charming little play,” the princess declared, dropping her opera gla.s.ses into her beaded reticule. ”Nous allons.” ”Nous allons.”
”Where are we going?” Henrietta asked.
”To Mr. Whitmore's party, of course,” Lady Winslow answered. ”I can see your fingers are shaking, wild to play cards.”
Henrietta was jittery but not with the antic.i.p.ation of playing cards. Her world had changed. A stone had been rolled away from her heart and she was free.
She rose and reached for Lady Kesseley's wrap, but Gilling beat her to it. He wrapped the silk about Lady Kesseley, letting his fingers caress her shoulders. The intimate way he touched Lady Kesseley made Henrietta think he was much more than a mere friend. She wondered if Kesseley would approve of his mother's suitor.
She followed Lady Winslow, the princess and their gentlemen out the back of the box and waited in the corridor, holding the curtain for her mistress.
”Are you coming?” she heard Lady Kesseley ask Gilling.
”Do you want me to?” he replied.
There was a silent pause. ”Yes. But be careful.”
Lady Kesseley sent her carriage home, and the ladies took the princess's carriage to her lavish home on Berkeley Square. There they repaired their hair, and as Henrietta learned, reapplied their cosmetics. Even Henrietta dabbed a little kohl about her eyes and stained her lips. Her liberation from Edward made her feel oddly exhilarated. When she looked at herself in the princess's long dressing mirror, she saw another lady, better than old Henrietta, clad in a das.h.i.+ng silken gown, diamonds glittering about her neck, with a loose smile lifting her bright lips.
An hour later, their carriage pulled up outside one of the mansions bordering Hyde Park. It resembled a white iced Christmas cake. Inside, it was lavishly decorated in a bombastic Baroque style, as if all the old French courts had dumped their possessions into this one house before walking up the steps to the guillotine. Fas.h.i.+onable people stuffed the white-and-gold gilt hall, their perfumes and colognes mingling into one headache of pungent sweetness. Footmen hoisted trays of wine and punch high in the air to maneuver through the human congestion.
From the foyer, Henrietta could look into the parlor with ivory silk-covered walls and lacy plasterwork. A lady in flowing sea-green silk with a peac.o.c.k feather in her hair played the pianoforte, while another lady plucked an enormous harp carved with a swan's head. Around them, people lounged about on gold upholstered chairs and sofas.
The guests in the foyer parted, making way for a slender man with a fresh, boyish face and toothy smile. His stiff collar reached to the tips of his ears and his coat was padded, making his shoulders appear out-of-balance with the rest of his body. Clinging to his arm was a hunched elderly woman with unnaturally bright reddish-orange curls rising like little flames from her head. She wore a gold gown and diamonds gleamed in her hair, around her stooped neck and on her wrists and curled fingers.
”Lady Kesseley,” the foppish man bowed, ”we are honored. You know that Grandmama adores cards. She was hoping you would bring your companion.”
”Is this her?” the old woman asked in a shaky yet powerful voice. The loose skin of her eyelids hung so low, she must have trouble seeing. Even so, her eyes were steady and sharp.
”Mr. and Mrs. Whitmore, may I present Miss Henrietta Watson,” Lady Kesseley said. Henrietta curtsied.
”Enchante,” the lady replied. ”You don't think you would want to humor an old lady with a rubber or two?” the lady replied. ”You don't think you would want to humor an old lady with a rubber or two?”
”Miss Watson would desire nothing more,” Lady Kesseley said, giving Henrietta a gentle shove forward.
The host took one of her elbows, and Mrs. Whitmore latched on to the other. Together they led Henrietta down the hall. She glanced over her shoulder at Lady Kesseley. Gilling had materialized at her side. She wrapped her hand around his elbow, a secretive, expectant smile on her lips.
Henrietta was taken to a hexagonal room with indigo-blue walls covered with s.h.i.+ny swords and other ancient weapons of brutality. Six coats of armor stood guard at the angles in the walls.
A portly man with pink bald head, big cheeks and an expansive belly that strained the b.u.t.tons of his striped silk vest ambled over. Henrietta recognized him from the ma.s.s of people in Covent Gardens earlier that evening.
”Mrs. Whitmore, now you promised me a game of whist,” he said in teasing voice. ”Are you holding out for a better offer?”
”Ah! I was waiting on the right partner to set you back good and proper,” she said. ”Do you know Miss Watson, Your Grace?”
Grace? Henrietta dropped down into a deep curtsey.
Mrs. Whitmore jerked her orange head toward the duke. ”We are fierce whist enemies, the Duke of Houghton and I.”
Lady Sara's father! Henrietta's splotches broke out. She eyed the tables, wondering which would be the best to crawl under.
Mrs. Whitmore tugged Henrietta's arm. ”When he has a good hand, he looks down and to the left. He arranges his cards with spades first,” she said in a whisper so loud someone out in the hall could have heard.
The duke wagged a fat finger. ”Mrs. Whitmore, we won't have any cheating like last time, or I might have to draw my pistol.”
She winked at Henrietta. ”I can outshoot him too.”
The duke gestured to a table where four guests were deep in a hand. ”May we play here?” he asked, in a way to imply it really wasn't a question, but a command. Immediately the players set down their cards and abandoned the table. The duke pointed at a thin, slack-faced man. ”Except you, Alfred. You'll be my partner.”
”He's my cousin,” Houghton explained. ”He doesn't talk much, just plays cards.”
Alfred nodded as if this were a fair a.s.sessment.
”Watson,” the duke said as he dropped into his chair. ”You're not related to that cabbage-headed poet Edward Watson, are you?”
”He is my cousin,” Henrietta said, waiting for him to ask if she was that sad cousin whom Edward had jilted for his daughter.
”My apologies,” he said gruffly. ”I'm sorry you're related to a cabbage-head.”
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