Mary Balogh: The Double Wager

"And is that the purpose of all this fuss and fluster?" Henry asked, one arm indicating the jumbled mass of patterns, bolts of fabric, and cards of ribbons and lace strewn everywhere. "Am I to be put on the market for the highest bidder?"

"Really, Henrietta," Marian replied sternly, "I am trying my best to make you look like a lady. I would ask you to make an effort to speak like one, too. Of course it must be the aim of any young lady of breeding to find herself a suitable husband. What else is there?"

Henry was about to argue the point, but remembering a certain wager that she was determined to win, she shut her mouth with an audible clacking of the teeth.

She endured the seemingly endless spell of standing on it low stool while Madame Celeste measured and pinned, poked and prodded. Then she sat in gloomy silence for the remaining time period while her sister-in-law and the dressmaker discussed styles and fabrics and trimmings ad nauseam. Only once did she express an opinion.

"Not pink," she declared.

Marian looked doubtful. "You are probably right, Henrietta, " she agreed. "Pink might clash with your hair."

"I don't care about that," Henry declared, "but pink is fur girls!"

Marian wisely refrained from comment.

The tedium of the fitting session over, Henry breathed it sigh of relief and announced her intention of going outside for a walk. A loud argument ensued when Marian forbade her to set so much as a nose out of doors until the first of her clothes should have arrived two days later. Henry lost the argument.

She would, she felt, have gone quite mad at the tedium of the day had one incident not brightened it up. Little

Timothy's nurse could be heard shrieking in near hysteria abovestairs. Henry was sitting in the drawing room at the time busily employed with shaking her foot back and forth and counting how many shakes it took before the slipper flew off. Marian was also there, working some embroidery.

The latter leapt to her feet first and rushed for the nursery whence the sounds were proceeding. Henry followed at a more leisurely pace. Daily crises in the Tallant home had conditioned her not to panic too easily.

The scene that met her eyes when she reached the nursery door delighted her greatly. The twins were busily examining the baby's toys while the toddler himself was on the floor tangled up in the reclining body of Brutus and having his face thoroughly licked. The child was chuckling with merriment. Oscar was perched on the headboard of the gently rocking cradle, viewing the scene before him and repeating benignly, "Bless his boots!"

By the time Henry lost interest in the scene and wandered back to the drawing room, the twins had been sent back to the schoolroom with their pets; Miss Manford, who had nodded asleep over some darning before the twins had made their escape, had been scolded; nurse, who had discovered the scene of horror on her return from a visit to the kitchen, had been left to soothe a howling baby, who had been deprived of his new toy; and Lady Tallant had been helped to her room by her lady's maid and was resting quietly in the hope that she would be recovered in time for dinner.

The outcome of the incident was that Brutus and Oscar were banished to the stable. Sir Peter was quite adamant. There was to be no reprieve. He declared that he was being too softhearted to allow the creatures to be kept at all.

**********************************************************************************

When the first of Henry's clothes were delivered two days later, she discovered that she was still not at liberty to relax and order her own life. Clothed in one of the day dresses, she was whisked off to Bond Street by Marian to shop for bonnets, feathers, gloves, boots, slippers, fans, parasols, and a whole lot of other "useless frippery," as she confided to Miss Manford on her return.

"Really, Manny," she said crossly, "is this the way females snare husbands? It is all a ridiculous game. Does no man choose a woman that he feels he might be comfortable with for the rest of his life rather than a primped-up doll?"

"But some people feel it is delightful to dress up and look pretty, dearest girl," Miss Manford soothed. "And the gentlemen spend no less time in looking their best. Why, I have heard that Mr. Brummell used to spend three and a half hours sometimes merely in tying his neckcloth."

Henry burst into loud laughter. "He must have been a peacock!" was her opinion.

"Perhaps so, dearest girl, but never say so to anyone else. He set the fashion for a long time, I have heard."

"What a lot of fustian!" Henry declared before going out to the stable to join the twins in a mournful visit to Brutus and Oscar.

Lady Tallant finally revealed her social plans to Henry. For the next couple of weeks, there were to be minor social activities, including a few small dinner parties, a musical evening, and a picnic party to Kew Gardens. But Henry's official come-out was to be made with the daughter of Marian's friend, the Countess of Lambert. The Tallants had a ballroom only large enough for a moderately sized affair, but Marian wanted to make a larger splash for her sister-in-law's first official appearance. The countess had been quite insistent that they share the occasion-and the cost. Althea was a shy girl, she declared. It would help her to have another debutante with whom to share the nerves that every girl must endure on such an occasion.

Henry dutifully attended all the pre-come-out activities, listening avidly to the names of all guests that were announced. It seemed that the Duke of Eversleigh attended nothing. How was she supposed to get him to propose to her when she had never even set eyes on the man? She began to appreciate the genius of her brother and his cohorts in naming him as the object of her conquest. They must have known that it was unlikely that she would ever even meet him. But really, she thought, they were playing the game very unfairly. She conveniently forgot that she had insisted on aiming for the duke.

She was beginning to doubt the very existence of the man, when suddenly she heard him mentioned for the first time since she had come to London. Her sister-in-law had introduced her to Althea Summers during a particularly insipid party. There was nothing to do. There was no dancing. Loo tables had been set up, but the older set had occupied the tables and the younger people had drifted into unenthusiastic groups. Althea and Henry sat together, a little removed from the others, not by Henry's choice. She labeled Althea as a twit after one glance at her pasty, anxious face.

"Henrietta, are you not horribly frightened about the ball?" Althea asked, leaning confidentially toward her new friend. "I declare, I do not know how I shall live through it. "

"Why?" Henry asked. "What is there to be frightened of?"

"Why, everyone will be looking at us," Althea said, wide-eyed. "And there will be so many gentlemen. What if we do not make a good impression, Henrietta? We will be wallflowers for the rest of the Season. And how dreadful it would be to have to begin another Season next year without any beaux."

"As for me," Henry said unconcernedly, swinging her legs freely, "if the gentlemen do not care to take notice of me, I shan't take any notice of them. There is to be a supper table, is there not?"

Althea darted a frightened, rather doubtful look at her companion. "You are funning, Henrietta," she said. "You really are droll." And she tittered in uncertain amusement. "I am sure I shall forget every dance step I ever learned," she continued.

"Pooh!" said Henry. "Who cares for dancing?"

"Mama says I have to dance with Cousin Marius if she can lure him," Althea continued. "I shall just die, Henrietta. He has such a, way of looking down his nose and through his quizzing glass at one. I shall forget even which foot is which. But Mama says it would be a great coup to get Eversleigh to dance with me. It will ensure my success."