Louisa played a Mozart sonata for them. They drank tea and ate Cook’s delicious lemon cakes. The marquess sat back in his chair and said suddenly, “You were always an abominable liar, Louisa. Covent Garden? Had you been in town but several more days, you would have heard that the play there is vulgar in the extreme and not fit for a young lady. I gather that Hetty is a young lady?”
“Oh,” Louisa said.
Sir John tugged at his cravat. “Damnation, I don’t believe this, Jason. If you would know the truth, Lou and I really have no idea where Hetty is this evening.”
A dark brow arched up a good inch. “May I inquire as to the age of your sister, Jack?”
“Dammit, she’s eighteen.”
The black brow remained arched.
“Oh, very well. It seems my sister, for some reason unknown to either Louisa or me, holds you in strong dislike. We don’t understand this at all because we don’t think she even knows you.”
“How very unsettling. It seems my popularity is shrinking by the day.” He thought briefly of young Harry Monteith. At least that young cub sought him out rather than fleeing from him like Henrietta Rolland. He looked meditative for a moment, saying nothing more.
Louisa said suddenly, “Perhaps I understand. Hetty told us she attended a soiree at your aunt Melberry’s last week. Jason, were you there?”
“Yes, but what has that to say to anything, Louisa?”
“You must have offended her in some way, inadvertently, of course. Can you remember meeting her?”
The marquess stroked his chin with long fingers. “What does you sister look like?”
“She’s quite a pretty little thing. Bright, laughing, full of fun. Not one of those damned simpering misses.”
“Oh, Jack, you’re still seeing Hetty when she was five years old. Jason, she’s the beauty in the family. She’s not little at all, rather tall and slender. If you can imagine Jack the giant here as a female, blond hair and all, you’ll have Hetty.”
“Her nose is shorter than mine,” Sir John said. “And she comes only to my chin.”
“A female giant then,” Louisa said.
The marquess remembered his aunt Melberry asking him to speak to a Miss Rolland and pointing toward a very nondescript female seated with a deaf old dowager. Yes, he remembered now stepping toward the young lady, but she had turned her face pointedly away from him. At the time, he had thought her quite rude. He pictured a hideous alexandrine cap of the most putrid shade of green imaginable. Oh yes, and a gown of pea green, equally as revolting as the cap. He remembered wondering if her face were as unfortunate as her wardrobe. No, certainly that female couldn’t have been Jack’s beautiful sister. But why hadn’t he met her? If she were like Jack, then she certainly wouldn’t be a wallflower.
“She’s a beauty, you say, Louisa?” he asked slowly.
“Yes, she’s lovely. Did you meet her at your aunt’s?”
“No, I did not. Ah, then it’s a mystery we have on our hands. The young lady has taken me into dislike, yet I know I’ve never met her. Such a beauty as you describe, well, rest assured that I would have remembered her.” It was all very odd.
“Enough of my little chit of a sister,” Sir John said. “I want to talk about that dandy cravat you’re wearing.”
While the occupants of Sir Archibald’s town house were discussing in high good humor the vagaries of fashion, Hetty was wiping the remains of cold chicken from her lips and fingers.
“It’s a problem, Pottson. I can only hope that Louisa doesn’t want to take me to Almack’s or some other exalted place before she and my brother leave for Paris.”
Pottson removed the tray to the sideboard, remarking in a gloomy voice, “Bound to meet Lord Oberlon, particularly at Almack’s. It was a narrow escape you had tonight, Miss Hetty, too narrow for the warmth of my blood. Yes, another gray hair. I’ll find it in the morning.”
There was a sudden knock on the outer door. Hetty jumped to her feet. “Good God, who the devil can that be? Hurry, Pottson, you must answer. Oh yes, I’ve told you a dozen times, you already have gray hair, all of it is gray. Maybe you’ll find a black hair.” Hetty picked up her skirts and ran down the narrow hallway that divided the small drawing room from Lord Harry’s bedchamber.