A Promise Given by Michelle Cox

Author:Michelle Cox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2018-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

As predicted, guests began to arrive at Castle Linley as the week progressed, Clive surreptitiously explaining who they were to Henrietta each morning in their bedchamber before the two of them emerged to attend the day’s events and to be formally introduced. It was mostly to be a family party, an opportunity for the English relatives to meet Henrietta and to congratulate the new couple, but like Castle Linley itself, the family had been crumbling away for generations now and only a handful of stray cousins were left.

Indeed, Lady Linley had been quite at her wit’s end as to whom to invite and had finally settled upon what she considered an acceptable assemblage. The Earl and Countess of Ashforth and their daughter, Lady Winifred, who was quite, by the way, past the optimum marriageable age, had come down from Durham, the countess being a cousin of some sort to Lord Linley as well as to the Prince of Wales himself, making them the highest-ranking pair there. Then of course Lord and Lady Fairfax had also been invited, who were not really relatives exactly, but who were still in possession of two passable daughters, which, Clive wickedly suggested, was perhaps the real reason for their presence at what was supposed to be merely a family affair, Lady Linley no doubt hoping that one of them might become family. There was also the Honorable St. John Sedgewick and his wife, Elizabeth, who had made their way up from Bath, Elizabeth being an aunt to Alcott and Montague.

The rest of the party on the night of the reception would be made up mostly of some of the landed local families that the Howards would be expected to invite, most of them, coincidentally, with daughters. To make up the numbers, then, Lady Linley had been obliged in the end to ask some of Wallace’s set, mostly former army officers, who could be counted on to behave correctly and to converse with the young ladies or make up hands at cards if required.

One of said officers, a Captain Bertram Foley, Clive seemed to happily recognize from the war when they had been stationed in France together.

“Hardly what Mother had in mind, I’m sure,” Clive said, adjusting his tie once more in Henrietta’s mirror, as he stood behind her. “Not quite the splash I think she was envisioning for us. I’ll have to exaggerate in my letters,” he smiled ruefully.

The last of the guests were arriving today, the morning of the reception, which, Henrietta thankfully discovered, was really just a big dinner party. No flaunted introductions or orchestras, just a rather formal dinner followed by a gathering of sorts in what the Howards called the reception room.

“She forgets sometimes, I think, that the English do it differently,” Clive went on.

“I prefer it this way, don’t you?” Henrietta responded, as she finished the last of the tea Phoebe had brought up to her. Henrietta had observed that everything in England had an air of tradition and

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