Rakes and Radishes by Susanna Ives Page A

London she had read about. He just sat back, expressionless. “It gets better,” he said.
    The carriage jerked to a stop. Their groomsman shouted in some menacing, unintelligible language. A heated discussion ensued. Samuel stuck his nose in the air as if he could smell the altercation, and starting emitting deep howls. The carriage turned sharply, and the driver of a wagon of cabbages waved his hands in threatening gestures, letting out a loud stream of foreign profanity.
    “Did he speak cant? Real cant?” Henrietta asked.
    Kesseley chuckled at her.
    “What do you think he said?”
    “Something about your mother isn’t married to your father.”
    “Stop encouraging her, Tommie,” his mother said.
    “I didn’t know you could speak cant, Kesseley?” Suddenly this seemed more romantic than French or Italian or any of those Romance languages.
    “Well, I did go to Cambridge.”
    The lane twisted through intersecting streets, carriage wheels scraping together, horses biting each other, everyone fighting it out to advance.
    Henrietta was watching one exchange between a lady in a loose garish gown and a thick bearded man carrying a barrel on his shoulder, when Kesseley touched her knee. A spark of warmth traveled up her body.
    “Look,” he said, nodding out the window.
    On the opposite side of the street was a boxlike white building, dominated by four rising columns that jutted out onto the sidewalk.
    “Haymarket! Kesseley! There’s Haymarket Theatre!”
    “Oh, dear God,” Lady Kesseley muttered.
    Henrietta refrained from shamelessly pasting her face to the window like Samuel. There was more shouting, and the carriage made a sudden turn, sliding Henrietta into Lady Kesseley. Henrietta shot back over to her side.
    They had left the busy street and entered an open, stately square with a water fountain protected by a black iron gate. Here the houses gleamed a luminous white, seemingly immune to the filth covering the rest of the city. Imposing Greek columns rose up five or six stories to the roofs, so high they were almost lost in the dense clouds. Through the tall windows, Henrietta could see the swag of rich brocade curtains and the gleam of the polished mahogany. Carriages pulled up at the doors and let off ladies who could have stepped from the pages of La Belle Assemblee.
    They drove around the fountain and then turned into a dark, narrow lane. Kesseley pointed to a flat, unremarkable building. “You should know this place.”
    Henrietta shook her head.
    “It’s Almack’s.” He laughed. “I thought all ladies knew Almack’s.”
    This squat building was heaven? She had expected angels, pearly gates and St. Peter standing at the door with a guest list. It looked rather pedestrian.
    The narrow street led to a larger thoroughfare bordered with tall stone buildings of understated elegance. On the sidewalks, the most fashionable men that Henrietta had ever seen clicked their canes on the pavers, sporting cravats so elaborate they made Henrietta think of fancy rooster tails.
    “St. James Palace,” her tour guide said, but Henrietta only vaguely heard. For coming out of a wine merchant’s door was a young man with flowing mahogany locks and a pale blue coat.
    Edward!
    Henrietta’s hand touched the window glass. She wanted to scream his name. The man looked up as if he heard her silent call. A long, narrow nose ran like a line down his face, ending at a small bump of a chin. It wasn’t Edward at all. Henrietta slumped back in her seat, her heart still racing.
    The carriage weaved through two enormous squares of connected white-columned homes, one looking just like the next, and then a large expanse of green opened before them, as if London came to an abrupt end.
    “Hyde Park,” Kesseley said.
    The Hyde Park! Where the most fashionable people in the world paraded! Henrietta strained in her seat, looking between the trees to see the riders along the famed Rotten Row. Could one of them be Edward?
    The carriage