“Well do, please. Are you going to approach Lady Willow?”
Henrietta straightened her skirts and checked the ribbon under her chin. All straight, tidy, and proper. Good. She’d need whatever armor she had for what she planned to do. “Yes, I believe I will.” She’d decided to help her father, and if she could get Lady Willow into a Blake dress, well, she’d have done her duty.
“Do you have any mutual acquaintances? Besides Lord Rigsby. He’d never do, of course.”
“No.”
“Henrietta Blake, I don’t have to tell you—”
“No, you don’t, Ada Cavendish. It’s a risk, but look at her.”
Lady Willow stood alone, listing slightly to the side. Falling sleep?
Henrietta felt a ping of pity in her chest. “She looks a bit pitiful, doesn’t she?” Henrietta tried to keep sympathy for the other woman from rising through her chest and into her voice.
“Tired?”
Henrietta scrutinized Lady Willow more closely. The glazed eyes, the tapping feet. Not tired or pitiful. “She’s bored.”
Ada nodded. “That’s exactly it.”
“Then I shall liven up her life,” Henrietta said. “I only need an introduction. I don’t have the means to seek out an introduction, nor do I have the inclination to wait around for one to happen naturally.”
“You could seek out our hostess.”
True, but … “Lady Stonefield is busy, I’m sure.”
“But it can wait, surely. There are plenty of other people to show your dress off to.”
But Henrietta had stopped listening and started striding toward Lady Willow.
“Hen? Hen!” Ada hissed. “It’s not appropriate!”
Henrietta paused. Ada had the right of it. And she couldn’t afford to upset a mighty duke’s mighty daughter. But what about Lady Willow’s listless gaze? “I think she wants excitement, Ada, and perhaps a breach of etiquette can give it to her.” Besides, if she made an impression, the lady would remember her when planning her next wardrobe change. Which would likely be her trousseau.
Henrietta’s stomach rolled, thinking of Lord Rigsby’s hard, warm body next to hers on the bench last night. He’d visited her shop. And liked it. The fact sparked a warm glow deep in her chest. She squashed the feeling.
Ada made a military salute. “Good luck, then.”
Henrietta replied to the salute with a curt nod and crisp turn back toward her goal. She squared her shoulders and thought her plan through one more time. She could end up insulting this daughter of a duke. Lady Willow had likely never set a pinky toe outside the lines of proper behavior. She was being rewarded for it handsomely, too, with marriage to Lord Rigsby.
A future duke marrying a duke’s daughter. She imagined the wedding dress of a such a union. She imagined it coming from her shop. She imagined it completely different from the one she’d imagined for herself a year ago when Lord Rigsby had been simply Grayson, and she’d been his fiancée.
Henrietta stepped once in Lady Willow’s direction, then stopped, one elegant, slippered foot revealed beneath her swinging skirts. Surely, she didn’t actually plan to talk to Lady Willow.
Yes, she decided, she did. She had come to the house party to mingle with the aristocracy, and no one was higher than Lady Willow in this hierarchy except, of course, her father and mother. And the royal family. Well then, there were quite a few higher than Lady Willow, but none Henrietta herself had access to.
Henrietta put herself into motion once more and did not stop until she stood within a foot of Lady Willow. “Hello.” Henrietta dropped a curtsy.
Lady Willow surfaced from her blank reverie, blinked, and slowly rose from her chair.
“We’ve not been introduced, I know, and my approach is highly unusual,” Henrietta said. “But I wished to make your acquaintance, and I admit, had little patience to wait on a busy hostess for an introduction.”
“Ladies should always be introduced by mutual acquaintances,” Lady Willow intoned.
Mercy, what book had she memorized that line from? Henrietta should ask to borrow it.
“I’m not a lady, not technically. Have you heard of Blake Textiles?”
