Henrietta by M.C. Beaton Read Free Book Online

place called Nethercote?”
    “That’s it!” said Mr. Holmes.
    “Well, for your information, she is not bad looking at all and since she is not likely to be in town for the Season, I fail to see how she can go about talking to me let alone marrying me.”
    “Ah, but she came into a fortune,” explained Mr. Holmes. “And she’s all set up right and tight in Brook Street. But you’re right in a way. You ain’t going to get a chance to meet her. Lady Belding’s put about that she’s strange in the head and that no respectable hostess should give her house room.”
    His lordship’s thin brows snapped together. “And since when has my Lady Belding been such a social arbiter?”
    Mr. Holmes leaned forward earnestly. “Well, she ain’t exactly but the girl has no social connections. No one’s heard of her before. So everyone just goes by what Lady Belding says.”
    Lord Reckford shrugged himself into his coat. “I can’t say that I approve of Lady Belding—or her daughter for that matter.”
    “What!” Mr. Holmes nearly screamed. “Alice Belding is an angel. What’s up with you? I’ve never seen such a beautiful face.”
    His lordship smiled. “I must be getting old. I think I shall go and call on my sister.”
    Thought you was going to your club?”
    “No, I have decided that the company of my sister Ann is just what I need at the moment.”
    Lord Reckford settled his curly-brimmed beaver on his head and telling his friend that he would see him later, he ordered his curricle and drove off at a smart pace, engrossed in thought. Lady Belding, he decided, needed to be taught a lesson. And so did Miss Henrietta. Then, he would kill two birds with one stone. He would flirt with Henrietta to infuriate Lady Belding and it would teach Henrietta a lesson when he dropped her. Anyway, by the time he dropped her, he would make sure she was firmly entrenched in the London scene.
    Lord Reckford’s sister, Ann, had married a retired Colonel, Sir Geoffrey Courtney, on her thirty-second birthday. As the Colonel was in his late fifties, friends and relatives moaned over the disparity of the ages. But the marriage, now two years old, seemed to work perfectly. Theirs was a harmonious household and Lord Reckford vowed to begin making his visits more frequent.
    Ann was small and plump with her brother’s hawklike features and tawny eyes. After the welcomes were over and Ann had rung for the tea tray, her brother leaned his arm negligently along the mantlepiece and began, “I have come to talk to you about a certain young lady.”
    His sister brightened. “You are to be married at last. Will I like her?”
    He shook his head. “Last winter when I was staying near Nethercote, I attended a ball at the Beldings. There was a young lady there, the vicar’s sister, who seemed to be unmercifully bullied by her brother and Lady Belding alike. Now it seems she has come into a fortune and plans to make a late debut on the London social scene—she is in her middle twenties—with, according to Lady Belding, the object of marrying me.”
    “How dreadful!” said Lady Courtney. “What an encroaching female.”
    “I am not so sure,” said her brother thoughtfully. “Lady Belding is a spiteful, malicious woman. If Miss Henrietta indeed plans to marry me, then I shall flirt with her and give her a subsequent set down. But first to punish Lady Belding, I mean to bring Miss Henrietta Sandford into society.”
    A worried frown creased Lady Courtney’s face. “Are you not being a little too high-handed? You seem so sure that it is in your power to make this girl fall in love with you. You have never been in love so you are not aware of the amount of pain you may be inflicting on her.”
    “I doubt very much if she
is
in love with me any more than any of the debutantes who languish each Season so prettily after my title and my fortune,” said Lord Reckford with his long mouth set in an unpleasant sneer. “I want you to call on