Fourpenny Flyer Read Online Free

with difficulty because his mouth had suddenly grown dry. ‘Howsomever, I do not …’
    â€˜Tush!’ Miss Pettie said, thwacking him on the forearm with her fan. ‘Now look ’ee there. Ain’t that a pretty creature?’ And she actually used her awful fan to point at some poor young lady, as though she were buying a sheep at the market.
    He was so embarrassed he didn’t know where to put himself, but the old lady insisted, shaking his arm and bouncing those awful false curls. ‘Look my dear, look there.’ And in the end he had to obey her, because people were beginning to look at
them.
    There was a slender girl standing perfectly still beside the staircase, her hands clasped before her, her features composed, as pale and motionless as a candle. She was dressed entirely in white, in a simple gown made of some soft material which was probably lawn, he thought, for it swathed the gentle curves of her bosom so modestly, and its long skirt hung in soft folds in the best classical tradition. Her skin was as pale as alabaster, her eyes deep blue, and her hair was so very fair it looked silver in the candlelight, straight, neat, light hair, parted in the centre and drawn back into a modest topknot on the crown of her head. Her simplicity and stillness were quite dramatic in the hubbub around her, among the frills and furbelows and the ringlets and braids. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She is uncommon pretty.’
    â€˜Such good fortune,’ Miss Pettie was saying. ‘She belongs to my church, you know. I brought her to the ball myself, along with little Miss Turnkey and the two Miss Browns. You must meet her, my dear.’
    She was dragging him by the arm, trotting through the crowd towards the girl. ‘Miss Pettie,’ he begged, ‘pray do walk a little more slowly. I cannot keep pace with you.’ It was intolerable to be dragged about like a sack of washing and he really didn’t want to meet any of these young ladies at all, not even a nice, quiet, pretty one.
    But he was wasting his breath. Miss Pettie had caught the scent of a match and nothing and no one could deflect her now.
    So that was how Mr John Henry Easter found himself dancing the minuet with Miss Harriet Sowerby and, although he would never have admitted it to Miss Pettie, it was really quite a pleasant experience. She was so light on her feet and so very slender that to dance with her was like dancing with a shadow. And she was extremely shy, even worse than he was, ducking her head whenever he spoke to her and blushing. But faintly, of course, for like everything else about her, even her blush was subdued, being the faintest trace of apricot pink that spread across her pale cheeks and rose from the warm folds of her gown into the translucent skin of her throat. He had never seen another young lady quite like her, and at the end of the minuet he asked if he might be allowed to dance with her again, adding, ‘If you have any to spare, that is,’ in case he seemed too eager.
    She took her card from the reticule dangling on her arm and fumbled with it nervously. Her gloves were too large and clumsy for her hands, so he bent forward as if to help her and saw with a pang of pity and fellow feeling underneath its fine gilt heading, ‘Grand Subscription Ball, Saturday May 18th, 1814’, the card was almost unmarked.
    â€˜I – it is – I mean –’ she stuttered, folding both hands across the card as if to protect it. And there was that blush again and that soft lower lip was held down by two charmingly crooked white teeth.
    He rushed to reassure her, opening his own card and holding it up for her to see. ‘I have always found these occasions impossible,’ he confided. ‘I never know what to say, you see, and most of the young ladies here are such teases. They rag me all the time.’ And then he realized thathe might have gone too far and that what he was saying