Page 226 of The Ladies Least Likely
Harriette tore her eyes away from Ren and the soft, sentimental thoughts swirling through her head at this revelation. Before her on the Grand Walk stood the three macaronis who had accosted her in Leicester Square, but with a marked change in their demeanor as well as their dress.
Instead of the towering wigs of before, they wore small perukes with curls along the brow and sides and a tidy queue in back, very similar to Renwick’s. Their frock coats still boasteda multitude of buttons, but the waistcoats were muted, of a complementary rather than a contrasting color with their coats, and they had reduced the number of fobs and chains by half. Harriette’s surprised gaze stopped at their footwear. Each of the three men wore polished black leather boots with white bands about the top and a small dangling tassel. Exactly the style of Ren’s.
She swallowed a laugh as she brought her gaze back to their faces. Pasty, powdered, and patched, they were still, but with not quite as much rouge on their cheeks, nor as bright a red to their lips. It was unlikely that Ren’s sun-bronzed skin tones would set the fashion for a culture that prized paleness, but they had clearly borrowed his pattern in everything else.
Satisfaction mixed with her disdain. She had meant to make him admired, and she had succeeded.
“Lady Harriette, where is your sketchbook? I insist you draw me,” said the one who had chosen an ensemble of canary yellow.
“I recall you abused my poor sketchbook on the occasion of our last meeting,” Harriette replied. Amalie hugged her muff tightly and shrank into Harriette’s side, shaking with terror. Harriette considered making introductions, which courtesy demanded, but she was not of a mind to be courteous to these fops.
“A print by Lady Harriette is the done thing,” said the second, outfitted in orange. Harriette did not care for his petulant tone. “I want one. Indeed, several.”
“I do not wish to be sketched in the altogether, however,” said the third, garbed in a bilious green. “May I at least keep my waistcoat on?”
“I am not in the business of providing sketches to any man who asks,” Harriette said sharply.
“I say,aren’tyou?” demanded the first. “You did Runtwick and the Graf Hardy-ho?—”
“Whatdid you call him?” Harriette glared.
“Renwick.” The man hastily corrected himself. “Renwick.” He cleared his throat. “Can’t imagine what you heard, eh? But see here, miss—er, your ladyship—this is the very pattern of male beauty, ain’t it?” He flourished a beringed hand through the air, indicating himself. “Share the profits with you! Put this heavenly visage in the hands of every ladybird in London—er,ladyin London, that is—and that’ll be quite a leap up for you, won’t it? That is—er, as the daughter of a, what’s it, a foreign duchess, you—I—” He finally foundered to a stop, daunted at last by Harriette’s gimlet stare.
She felt cold fury and hot shame running through her in the same veins. It was an extraordinarily uncomfortable sensation. Did these men think she was some sort of street artist they could engage at a village fair? She’d been striving for this, for patrons, moneyed patrons, begging them to capture their image. And she wanted nothing so much as to find the nearest pile of carriage horse dung and push each one of these mincing dandies into it.
“I’m afraid I have left off sketching gentlemen,” Harriette said, trying to control the unwanted quaver of regret in her tone. “I regret that I cannot consider your requests. Good—good day.”
“Oh, but Lady Harriette!” They leapt after her as she tried to pull Amalie away. “Do walk a bit with us, at the very least. Don’t you and your friend wish for an escort? Two lovely ladies ought to have the most fashionable gents on their arm.”
“Renwick is our escort,” Harriette retorted, hugging Amalie to her as she kept moving.
“Lady Harriette!” said a new voice, a woman’s. “I am not surprised at all to find you in the thick of a crowd of admirers. You are enjoying your new status very much, I suppose?”
Harriette squinted through the shade of an overarching tree to see who had addressed her. It was no less than Lady Cranbury, one of theton’sreigning hostesses. Beside her stoodLady Bessington, casting a benign smile Harriette’s way and sparing a curious glance for Amalie.
Behind them trailed the girl Harriette had spotted sitting alone in the row of rout chairs at Lady Renwick’s soiree, a sternly beautiful dark face in a room of pale English blooms. The girl watched Harriette with a frank stare.
“Lady Cranbury. Lady Bessington.” Harriette grappled for her composure and sank into a curtsey, pulling Amalie along with her. “Oh. Er. This is Lady Amalie, Renwick’s sister. How do you do?”
Lady Cranbury had never deigned to notice, much less address her. And now these doyennes of the London scene, these pillars of Polite Society, were giving Harriette their full attention.
“We are very curious to hear how one goes from being plain Miss Harriette Smythe to Lady Harriette, daughter to the Duchess of Löwenburg,” Lady Cranbury simpered. She wore a set of wide panniers that held out the sides of her fashionable gown, in the styleà la anglaise,and her face was painted as white as her hair powder. “You must pay me a call and tell us precisely how this elevation came to be. I know—I shall send you an invitation to myconverzationenext week. A very small gathering, only the best people. Youmustcome.”
Harriette’s head whirled at the strangeness of Lady Cranbury, one of the town’s most hard to please sentinels, classingheramong the best people. She would pinch herself if it wouldn’t look gauche.
“And I would have you at one of my salons as well,” said Lady Bessington. “We speak of the usual things, politics, philosophy, art. We would be very interested in having you speak sometime, if you wish, on the growing power of Prussia and the ambitions of Frederick the Great.”
“But I am not the least bit qualified—that is to say, I know so little—and I—er, am to be married soon, and…” Harriette clung to Amalie for dear life, trying to order her thoughts. Behind Lady Cranbury, the plain-gowned companion watched Harriette with a sharp, intelligent eye, listening to every word.
“I am grateful and honored for your attentions, my ladies,” Harriette finally managed in a breathless rush. “I should like nothing more than to attend you.”
If only she weren’t leaving London tomorrow with no notion of when she might return. She had finally,finallybeen offered herentréeinto society’s most elite circles—precisely what she had wanted from Ren when she climbed the tree to his balcony—and she had a ticket on a coach to leave London the next morn.
Leaving these invitations. Leaving everything.
Leaving Ren.
The hollow ache in her middle grew more acute as Ren disengaged from his coterie and came behind Harriette and Amalie. “Wah-Lady Cranbury. Lady Be-Bessington. You have met my—my sister?” he asked, tipping his hat in deference.
