“Goodness, you do not yet know whether anyone will ask you.”
Clara drew herself up. “Then London is even more foolish than you say.”
That produced a chuckle that Aurelia could not subdue, nor did she want to.
She exhaled. “Very well.”
Clara’s hands flew together. “Very well?”
“We shall go.”
“Oh, Aurelia!” She kissed her cheek and darted away again almost before the words had settled. “We must unpack at once. No, we must ring for hot water. No, first we must examine the gowns. There is so much to do! I shall wear the pale green.Unless the white muslin is more becoming by candlelight. Do you think gentlemen prefer green? No matter, I dare say they admire everything.”
And with that she was gone once more, calling for the maid, for bandboxes, for pins, for life itself to make haste.
Aurelia remained where she was a few moments longer, with the invitation still in her hand.
A ball, on their first night, under the roof of people who likely remembered everything or, what was worse, remembered only enough to repeat it badly.
She looked down at the bold Bannerman seal, then set the card carefully beside the others. There was no use in shrinking now. London had opened its doors, whether in welcome or in warning she did not yet know. For Clara’s sake she would step inside, smile when required, speak when necessary, and keep herself as much in the background as it was possible for a woman to do while dressed for a ballroom.
If she was wise, she told herself, she would pass unnoticed.
But even as she went upstairs to prepare, she had the uneasy sense that London was not a place in which anyone, once known, could ever truly hope to remain invisible.
***
Aurelia had scarcely been in the ballroom a quarter of an hour before she began to suspect that Clara would not suffer from obscurity. That suspicion, indeed, became certainty almost at once.
There was something about Clara which invited attention without appearing to seek it. She was not the most beautiful girl in the room, perhaps, if beauty were to be measured in the cold, exacting way society preferred, which was by regularity of feature or elegance of dress. But she had youth, animation, and that bright delight in everything around her which no art could imitate. She looked as though she had stepped directly into the evening she had always imagined for herself, and meant to enjoy every candle, every note of music, every bow, and every smile that came her way.
Aurelia found herself obliged to move steadily from one introduction to another on Clara’s behalf. There were ladies who had known Louisa Blackmore in former years and who now professed themselves delighted to be of use to her daughter. There were also gentlemen with agreeable names and forgettable faces. There were dowagers who inspected Clara with the grave approval they reserved for girls who were young enough to be pleasing and sufficiently well-connected to be safe.
“You must curtsy less as though you are being led to trial,” Clara whispered once, while a portly matron turned away from them in search of stronger amusement. “No one here means to eat us.”
“You cannot know that yet,” Aurelia murmured.
Clara bit back a laugh, though her eyes danced. “If they do, I hope they wait until after the supper.”
Before Aurelia could answer, another gentleman approached, then another. One requested an introduction. The next requested a dance. Clara’s card, which had begun the evening as an object of innocent promise, was soon in danger of becoming a battlefield of names.
Aurelia looked on with a mixture of amusement and concern. It was too soon to trust anybody and far too soon for Clara to bestow her smiles as if they were entirely without value.
Then, just as Aurelia had succeeded in disengaging Clara from a solemn young man who spoke as if he had been educated exclusively by clergymen, Captain Thomas Harrow was brought forward by an acquaintance of Clara’s mother.
He was not, perhaps, a man whom one would notice first in a crowded room if one’s attention were occupied by titles alone. He possessed neither the severe beauty of a marble hero northe studied polish of those gentlemen who had been formed from infancy for drawing rooms rather than life. But there was something infinitely more useful in his countenance: ease.
He smiled as though smiling cost him nothing, and his expression carried such good humor that Aurelia felt her own reserve lessen before he had spoken half a dozen words.
“Miss Blackmore, Miss Finch,” said the lady who had presented him, “may I introduce Captain Thomas Harrow.”
Captain Harrow bowed first to Aurelia, then to Clara. “I shall count myself fortunate if I managed to arrive before your every dance is spoken for, Miss Blackmore.”
Clara, who had never yet met a compliment she could not improve by receiving with pleasure, blushed and smiled. “You are in very little danger, Captain. I still have the next set open.”
“Then I shall think myself a fortunate man, if you allow me to claim this dance.”
Clara looked at Aurelia at once, with eyes full of expectation. There was no artifice in his manner that Aurelia could detect, and better still, no trace of that faint pause that came when people recognized the name Finch and remembered all they had heard. Captain Harrow appeared to know nothing, or care nothing, of scandal.
