That done, Helen rattled on at high speed. She was still the talkative, well-intentioned and perennially good-natured lady Clarice remembered; it was easy to reconnect as if there were only a seven-week gap in their acquaintance, rather than seven years.
Beckoning her young daughter to attend them, Helen introduced the chit, who had just made her come-out. Clarice gave the girl her hand and a reassuring smile, and was taken aback when the girl sank into a deep, very correct curtsy. A swift glance at Helen showed her smiling with maternal pride. Clarice recovered swifty and bestowed on the girl her most regal and formal approval, the social blessing of the family’s most influential female.
That was what Helen and her daughter had hoped for; they both beamed. Parting from them, Clarice took Jack’s arm, and they moved on.
Glancing at Jack, she caught the amused light in his eyes, but she doubted, male that he was, that he’d correctly interpreted that little interlude. Helen had whispered that Moira was there; Clarice only hoped Moira hadn’t witnessed the moment. If she had, she’d be livid.
Clarice had accepted that to properly aid not just James but her brothers she’d have to reclaim her position in the ton. What she hadn’t initially realized was that in doing so, she would forever diminish Moira’s precarious and hard-fought-for standing, such as it was.
By her own actions, because of her attitude, Moira could never lay claim to the respect Clarice could, and it increasingly seemed did, command. If Helen’s behavior was anything to judge by, she was all but reinstated, not just in the ton’s mind but within the family, too, to the full honors by right accruing to the Marquess of Melton’s daughter.
She dragged in a breath. Jack glanced at her. She met his eyes. “I hadn’t thought it would be so easy. Or so swift.”
He smiled; his
fingers tightened briefly over hers on his sleeve, then he looked ahead, steering her through the crowd to where Lady Davenport imperiously beckoned, two older ladies beside her on a chaise.
Clarice recognized the pair; by the time she and Jack reached them, she’d metaphorically girded herself for battle, yet as, turning from greeting Lady Davenport, she curtsied before her paternal aunts, her father’s sisters who had supported him throughout in his banishment of her, she let not an inkling of her feelings show.
Constance, Countess of Camleigh, looked her up and down, cold gray gaze and haughty features giving nothing away, then she raised her eyes to Clarice’s. “I can’t say you’ve grown—you always were a Long Meg—but…” With an effort, her ladyship held out both hands. “Welcome back, my dear.”
Startled, Clarice took one crabbed hand in each of hers, and, faintly stunned, yielded to the tug and bent to touch both cheeks with her formidable, and until then she’d believed highly disapproving, aunt.
Constance knew; she humphed as Clarice straightened. “At the time, I thought Marcus was right, but later, especially after what happened to that poor soul Emsworth married, and the more we saw of Moira, well, I came to think perhaps you had, indeed, known best.”
“Indeed.” More fluttery than her domineering sister but just as high in the instep, Catherine, Lady Bentwood, nodded portentously. “And Emsworth’s second wife is faring even worse, they say. A shocking thing it would have been had he married you.”
Clarice was grateful she didn’t need to reply. She and Jack remained for ten minutes; both her aunts were exceedingly interested in meeting him, and in gleaning as much as they could about James. When Jack had reached the limit of what they’d deemed fit to divulge, Clarice stepped in and excused them.
Constance sniffed but let them go.
Clarice didn’t need to glance around to know that everyone in the entire ballroom now understood that she was fully repatriated to her former status.
She glanced up to see Jack battling to suppress a grin. “What?”
He met her eyes, let that grin—a dangerous one—fleetingly surface. “Why do I have the strong feeling that if Emsworth had married you, it would have been he who fell down the stairs?”
Her answering grin matched his. She looked ahead—straight into Moira’s furious, flashing eyes.
Thankfully at a safe distance. Her stepmother was standing, fists clenched by her sides, almost quivering with rage, along the opposite wall. Her daughter, Mildred, stood beside her, also shooting daggers at Clarice.
Clarice met their ire, then coolly inclined her head to them. Then she looked away and let Jack sweep her into the crowd.
Chapter 18
They remained at Helen’s for over an hour. Clariceglimpsed Moira a number of times, but every time she looked, her stepmother turned the other way. Inwardly shrugging, Clarice thereafter ignored her and addressed herself to refreshing her memories of the various members of her numerous and widespread family.
Time and again, she was asked for advice. Some even solicited her thoughts on the suitabilility of various matches for their daughters and sons. The irony didn’t escape her, or Jack; they shared a speaking glance, but managed to keep their lips straight. Regardless, nothing could have more strongly declared that her family regarded her as their de facto matriarch, in preference to Moira.
Later, they journeyed the short distance to their last port of call for the evening, Lady Carraway’s house at which her ladyship’s rout was in full swing. A dashing, well-connected matron, her ladyship bade them welcome, archly commenting that Clarice would find numerous old friends among the thronging crowd.
That crowd was somewhat different to those at previous events; her ladyship’s guests were primarily Jack’s and Clarice’s age. Consequently most of the ladies were married, and many of the gentlemen as well. Not that their marriage vows seemed to weigh heavily on most of the guests’ minds, at least not in terms of momentary enjoyment.
Clarice gauged the mood in a few swift glances, a few short exchanges. There were indeed a number of guests she remembered of old, yet watching a lady who had made her come-out at the time Clarice should have flirt outrageously with some gentleman while his wife, beside him, fluttered her lashes at a gazetted rake, Clarice felt nothing beyond a vague tiredness, a wish she and Jack had simply returned to Benedict’s. But Lady Osbaldestone and Lady Davenport had insisted she make her mark in even this sphere; bowing to their greater wisdom, she gripped Jack’s sleeve and sallied on.
Jack guided Clarice through the crush, cloaking his reaction with his customary easygoing bonhomie. Clarice had mentioned that her mentors had strongly recommended her appearance at this event, but he suspected they hadn’t made allowance for that waltz he and she had indulged in three evenings before. Since then, the attitude of certain males toward Clarice had changed. Altered. Witness Emsworth’s offer.
While he seriously doubted others would make such a crass mistake—aside from all else, he’d made certain word of Emsworth’s discomfiture, in all its wonderful detail, had circulated subtly through the clubs—to his mind, the male interest in Clarice had escalated to a dangerous level.