“Isn’t it exciting! Jane and a baron! I wonder if he is unmarried! Jane reports nothing of that!”
“If he is unmarried, Emma Knightley will surely make quick work of the poor man,” Hetty said.
The wry tone was lost in the translation through her mother’s ear horn. “Oh, you’re right, of course. Mrs. Knightley will find him a proper match immediately. Likely at the Michaelmas Ball! How exciting that we shall be there to witness it! And with Jane, too!”
Hetty gave a little sigh at the reference to the newlyweds’ first country dance. She’d been expecting to attend, obviously. It was impossible to avoid such a public event when one’s aging mother required a chaperone for her favorite pastime—sitting on the sidelines of a ballroom sipping too warm ratafia in an even warmer room packed with the whole town.
But Hetty had been planning to make their appearance as quick as possible, as the hostess of this particular party had made it more than clear what she truly felt about Hetty Bates—that she was dull. So dull, indeed, that she couldn’t keep herself from running her mouth with more dull things than any could manage. A champion dullardess.
With Jane in attendance, and whatever excitement was to come of the newly arrived baron, Hetty feared the ball would no longer be a quick diversion, but instead, hours of making too loud, too silly conversation. Quite dull, indeed.
Too consumed by her own dread, Hetty was barely listening to her mother when the old lady said, “Oh! And I nearly forgot. A package arrived while you were out.”
Despite its casual delivery, the announcement was something of a shock. Packages did not arrive for Hetty. Ever. Packagesrequired either expense the Bates ladies were unable to afford, or friendship to which the Bates ladies no longer laid claim.
Nevertheless, when the older woman waved a hand in the direction of the brown-paper-wrapped package in question, Hetty could not deny the truth. Someone had, indeed, sent her a package.
The large, flat box dwarfed the low table by the sitting room door, large enough that Hetty would not have missed it had she not been distracted earlier, eager for news of Jane. She did not miss it now, however, heart in her throat, pulse pounding for no clear reason as she removed the outside paper to reveal a box the color of fresh cream, a beautiful, goldenH, stylized and swirling, and beneath it, a single word in gilded print:Mayfair.
There was no reason whatsoever for Hetty to have received a package from Mayfair. She’d never even been to London. Indeed, the only time she’d ever left Highbury had been twenty years earlier.
And still, here she was, staring down at the most extravagant box she’d ever seen. A box worth more than the Bates ladies lived on for an entire year. What could possibly be inside?
A card was inside, tucked into perfectly folded muslin. Hetty slid it from its seat, reading the single line of black text against stark ecru.
For the Michaelmas Ball.
Her brows knit in confusion, and she peered into the box.
“What is it?” Her mother, from a distance. From miles away.
“I don’t…” Hetty shook her head and reached for the crisp muslin, tucked with precision, the folds hiding what was underneath. Pulling the ends loose, she opened the fabric, revealing more fabric, altogether different.
Her breath caught. It was a dress. She reached for it, hesitant, as though it might disappear.
It did not disappear, however. Not as she touched it, letting her fingertips trail over the silk of the dress, a pale, beautiful blue, the color of a robin’s egg. Her confusion only compounded as she lifted it from the box, waves of silk and gossamer spilling to the floor, soft as butterfly wings.
And then the confusion disappeared, replaced with awe.
“Oh!” Mrs. Bates gave voice to Hetty’s shock and surprise. “How pretty!”
It wasn’t pretty, though. It was wildly more, with its cap sleeves embroidered with silver thread, and the tiny filigree of lace at the neck—a neck that was lower than anything Hetty had worn since her own coming-out twenty-one years earlier—and the embroidered panel marking its empire waist, and its layers of skirts that shimmered like moonstone.
No, it wasn’t pretty. It was the most beautiful thing Hetty had ever seen, and the most magical—as it seemed to have arrived from nowhere, like a gift from a fairy godmother, bestowed with a promise of magic.
Except it was not from a fairy godmother, as old Mrs. Bates was quick to exclaim. “How very kind! A gift from Mrs. Knightley! How very kind. How very thoughtful. That she might condescend to us in such a way. A new dress! We haven’t had one of those in the house in a decade! How very kind!”
Hetty winced at the words, loud and discordant and unwelcome and so obviously true. For who else in Highbury had the means to deliver such a frock to the doorstep of poor Miss Bates but Emma Woodhouse, who had surely felt the frock a proper penance.
And suddenly the dress wasn’t so beautiful. Instead, it was a reminder of the truth of Emma’s feelings about Hetty—of the whole village’s feelings, really: Silly. Dull.
Hetty dropped the dress into the box, her fingertips singed with disappointment and frustration.
You see, there had been a time when Hetty Jane Bates had not been at all dull.
TWO
Twenty-One Years Earlier
