With that salutary kick in the pants, I tore my eyes away from the window, and directed them firmly towards the closely written pages of Henrietta's diary.
Chapter Fourteen
Bookshop (n.): a den of espionage, intrigue, and sedition
"There!" announced Penelope. "You just did it again."
Browsing among the new stock at Hatchards Bookshop, Henrietta shook herself out of a daydream involving Miles, a white horse, and herself in a charmingly flowing gown. "Did what?"
She glanced from the novels she was examining, to her friend, who stood glowering over the display like a wicked stepsister come to life out of the pages. Charlotte was two feet away, immersed in a new import from France that promised to be a dashing tale of love and intrigue. Hmm, love. Intrigue. Miles. Henrietta's lips curved in a secret smile.
"Ha!" Penelope jabbed a finger at her, causing her reticule to swing straight at Henrietta like a medieval mace aimed to maim. "That… smile. You've been smiling like that all morning."
"Really." Henrietta tried to look like she had no idea what Penelope was talking about. She picked up a book at random and began leafing idly through the pages.
It hadn't been all morning. She had been perfectly composed through breakfast, and only done one impromptu twirl in the upstairs hallway, which didn't count, because no one had seen.
Last night, Henrietta had retired early from the Middlethorpes' with a torn flounce — how that flounce had come to be torn was a matter of mystery to the matrons in the ladies' retiring room, who were quite used to seeing young ladies rush in with snagged hems, but seldom ripped sleeves — and an equally ragged temper. There was nothing to do for it but go early to bed and hope the mood went away. If sleep could knit raveled sleeves of care, it could certainly whisk away a bout of ill temper. She would go to bed, Henrietta told herself, and when she woke up, the world would have readjusted itself along comfortable, familiar lines, and all would be happy again.
There was only one problem with that plan. She couldn't sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, there, imprinted on the back of her lids like a garish billboard, stood Miles. Miles grinning, Miles eating biscuits, Miles dancing with Charlotte, Miles spilling lemonade.
Miles looming close enough to kiss.
Henrietta experimented with opening her eyes, but that was even worse, because open eyes meant wakefulness, and wakefulness meant thinking, and there were too many things that Henrietta was doing her best not to think about, like Miles driving with the marquise, or, even worse, why on earth it should matter to her that Miles was driving with the marquise. It wasn't, after all, as though his taking the marquise driving presented a personal inconvenience to Henrietta. She had a lesson with Signor Marconi at six o'clock tomorrow that effectively precluded her afternoon drive with Miles, which meant that she couldn't have ridden with him even if she'd wanted to.
But she still didn't want the marquise there in her place.
Henrietta groaned and rolled over onto her stomach, inadvertently squishing Bunny in the process. "Sorry, sorry," she whispered urgently, scooting over and yanking Bunny out from underneath her.
Bunny regarded her reproachfully from under floppy cloth ears. "I'm being an idiot," Henrietta informed Bunny.
Bunny didn't argue. Bunny never argued. That was usually one of Bunny's great charms as a confidante. Sometimes a girl needed a bit of unconditional agreement.
"It shouldn't matter to me at all who Miles chooses to take driving," Henrietta said firmly, "Why should I care who he takes driving? It's of no matter to me. Well, it isn't."
There was a highly sardonic gleam in Bunny's black-glass eyes.
"Urgh!"
There was no point in arguing with inanimate objects if they were going to get the better of the argument without even saying anything.
Henrietta flung off the bedclothes and stomped over to the window, where the full moon silvered the plants in the garden, and glinted off the windows of the neighboring houses. It was a moon for lovers' trysts, for clandestine kisses in gardens, for murmured endearments. Somewhere, under that same moon, Miles was off… with the marquise? Playing cards with Geoff? Alone in his bachelor quarters? Henrietta left off trying to pretend to herself that it didn't matter. It did. She wasn't sure why, but it did.
Henrietta sank down onto the chaise longue next to the window, and tucked her feet up under the embroidered hem of her nightdress. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she rested her chin on her knees and thought back over the past couple of days, when the world had begun to fall out of joint.
She couldn't blame it on her courses; those had come and gone a week ago, with their attendant stomach pains, spots, and snippiness. That would have been too easy. This was a distemper of the mind rather than the body, and it had begun with the arrival of the marquise. No, Henrietta corrected herself with brutal honesty. Not with the arrival of the marquise. With Miles's lingering to speak to the marquise. Henrietta banged her forehead against her knees. There was really no escaping it, was there? She was jealous. Jealous, jealous, jealous. Miles was supposed to be her escort, her permanent cavalier. Where there was jealousy…
Henrietta jerked her head up so quickly that she nearly tumbled off the chaise. She couldn't have fallen in love with Miles. The very term, with all of its poetic resonance, conjured up something grand and dramatic. There was nothing whatsoever grand or dramatic in the way Henrietta felt about Miles. It was a very simple concept, really: She just didn't want to share him with anyone. Ever. She wanted to be the person his eyes sought out in a crowded ballroom, the person he nudged when he had a really smashing joke he just had to tell, the first person he saw when he woke up in the morning, and the last person he spoke to when he went to bed at night. She wanted to be the one whose ear he whispered in at the opera, and the one perched next to him in his alarmingly tottery phaeton when he drove in the park at five.
Love, Henrietta told herself with a decisiveness she was far from feeling, was something of a different caliber entirely.
Before their first Season, she and Penelope and Charlotte had spent endless hours eating whatever biscuits were left after Miles raided the tray, and discussing Love. Love in capital letters, that would swoop down with shining wings and carry them away to realms of enchantment hitherto undreamed of. Love, of course, would be properly attired in tight tan buckskins, wear an immaculately tied cravat, and have a vaguely rakish air. His arrival would be heralded by violins in the background, an impressive firework display, and the odd clap of thunder, all signaling to her instantly that the love of her life had come to her. And here she was, without a thunderbolt in striking distance, musing over Miles, Miles who had been there nearly all of her life, without any sort of emotional pyrotechnics taking place.
It was ludicrous. If she did harbor deeper feelings for Miles, wouldn't she have known sooner? Wouldn't she have felt odd constrictions of the heart as he snatched biscuits out from in front of her, and turned cartwheels into the duck pond? All the books were quite clear on that point: When one's true love turned up, one was supposed to know. Immediately.
Of course, she had been not quite two when Miles first showed up at their door, and her vision of love at the time had a lot to do with warm milk.
Henrietta turned her head to stare thoughtfully at the moon. By all the classic measures, she couldn't be in love with Miles. But how did one account for the fact that the very thought of him driving with someone else filled her with bitter wormwood and gall ? As for the thought of him marrying someone else… the idea was too harrowing to even contemplate.