Chapter 16
Helena and Evelyn arrived together which Clara suspected was not a coincidence.
They swept into the drawing room in a flurry of silk and knowing looks, and before they had even settled into their seats, Evelyn had already fixed her with an expression that suggested she knew rather more than Clara was entirely comfortable with.
“You know,” Clara said, looking at Evelyn, “I had rather hoped that Nathaniel might exercise a little discretion.”
Evelyn smiled serenely. “Oh, he did. He held out for almost two full days before telling me everything.” She reached forward and patted Clara’s hand. “Do not look so alarmed. I am the soul of discretion.”
“That is not entirely reassuring.”
Helena laughed at this, the warm, familiar sound of it settling something in Clara’s chest. At least Helena was here. Helena, who had known her since they were girls and who would not look at her as though she were a curiosity at a fair.
“You must admit,” Evelyn continued, tilting her head to one side, “that there is something rather poetic about all of this. I need only look around this very circle to observe that there is not a single person among us who did not come to their marriage by some entirely extraordinary circumstance.”
This was, Clara had to concede, largely true.
“And yet,” Evelyn pressed on, her eyes bright, “they all ended perfectly happily.”
“Faith, Evelyn,” Helena said at once, sitting forward, “that is not the case here. This is not a matter of two people who found themselves thrown together by fate and discovered a tenderness for one another. This is a marriage that came about expressly to save a child and to protect Arabella. There were no romantic interludes. No undertones of any kind.”
Clara felt a rush of warmth towards her friend.
Not a week ago, Helena had told her much of what Evelyn now spoke of.
That there was a chance for real romance to spring up from the muddy waters of their arrangement.
And Clara had put her in her place. It seemed that Helena had understood that such talk upset her and was determined not to repeat the exercise.
“Precisely,” she said. “That is precisely it. I am grateful to Julian. Deeply so. He is a good man, and he has been kinder to me than I had any right to expect. But it is an arrangement. Nothing more.”
Evelyn said nothing. She simply looked at Clara with that same serene expression, the faintest curl at the corner of her lips.
“Stop that,” Clara said.
“I haven’t said a word.”
“You are thinking very loudly.”
Evelyn’s smile widened. “Perhaps. But I will say only this—that smirk you tried to suppress just now when you said he is a good man tells rather a different story than the one you are telling me.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You did,” Helena said and then looked immediately guilty. “I’m sorry. I am supposed to be on your side.”
Clara opened her mouth and closed it again. She looked at her hands in her lap. Were they right? Was there something there, some seed of feeling she hadn’t examined properly?
She thought of the wildflowers on the carriage seat. She thought of him noticing, all those years ago, that she despised peas.
No. She was being ridiculous. She was simply in close proximity to a charming man under unusual circumstances. It meant nothing whatsoever. She shook her head.
“What is being done to find Arabella?” Helena asked, mercifully changing course.
Clara exhaled. “Julian and Nathaniel have engaged people they trust. Men who can make enquiries quietly, without drawing attention. For the time being, we simply carry on. We are a married couple. David is our child. That is the story, and we shall hold to it.”
“And the ball?” Evelyn asked. “Nathaniel mentioned a ball.”
“Yes. A fortnight from now. We will make a proper introduction of ourselves to society, address the whispers, and move forward.”
Evelyn set down her teacup with a neat, decisive click. “No.”
Clara blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Nathaniel told me about this plan, and I told him then what I shall tell you now. It will not work.” She held up one hand to forestall any protest.
“A fortnight is a very long time, Clara. The scandal sheets will not simply sit in polite silence while they wait for your ball. They will fill the silence themselves. They will invent things far worse than the truth, and by the time the ball arrives, you will be fighting fires on a dozen different fronts.” She paused.
“You need to give them something. Before the ball. Something that controls the story rather than reacting to it.”
“Such as what?” Clara asked, exasperated.
“Outings,” Evelyn said simply. “You need to be seen. Out in public, together, and preferably with the child. Let people see that you are a perfectly ordinary, perfectly happy family going about your perfectly ordinary life. Give the scandal sheets something dull to write about. There is nothing that kills a rumor faster than a thoroughly unremarkable afternoon spent promenading in the park.”
* * *
After Helena and Evelyn left, Clara sat for a moment in the empty drawing room, turning the idea over in her mind. Then she got up and went downstairs.
Julian was in his study, a sheaf of papers before him. He looked up when she entered, and she didn’t wait for him to speak.
“I have been thinking,” she said, dropping into the chair across from his desk in the way she had noticed she’d begun to do—without ceremony, without waiting to be invited, as though she had always done it. “We cannot wait for the ball.”
He put down his pen. “Funnily enough, that is precisely what I have just been thinking.”
She told him what Evelyn had said, and he listened without interrupting which she appreciated. When she had finished, he nodded slowly.
“She is right. We need to be seen.” He leaned back in his chair. “I had a thought. Vauxhall Gardens, perhaps. Or—” he paused, and a glint of amusement came into his expression, “—the Royal Menagerie.”
She considered this. “The menagerie?”
“Vauxhall would be a good location if the two of us went together. Alas, it is not exactly friendly territory for a small child at Vauxhall. But the menagerie is open air, it is very much the kind of place a family might go on a pleasant afternoon, and I have already taken the liberty of asking Mrs. Holt to help secure a pram for David.” He paused.
“I thought perhaps we could go today if you are willing.”
She looked at him. “You had already arranged this before I came down.”
“I had an instinct.”
“By Jove,” she said, “you are insufferably prepared.”
He smiled. “Shall we say three o’clock?”
* * *
The pram was, as it turned out, a magnificent and slightly absurd contraption—a great hulking thing with wheels that seemed disproportionately large for its body, bouncing gently over the cobblestones as Julian pushed it with an expression of concentrated effort.
David, however, appeared to be entirely in favor of it.
Clara walked beside Julian, one hand resting lightly on the pram’s side.
She had, she could privately acknowledge, taken rather more care than usual in dressing that afternoon.
The Pomona green muslin was her best day dress, and the cream bonnet trimmed with matching ribbon was doing excellent work against the sun.
Whether that had anything to do with wanting to look well for reasons entirely unconnected to the scandal sheets, she chose not to examine too closely.
The Royal Menagerie at Exeter Change was a great roaring, rustling, magnificently peculiar collection of creatures housed above the shops of the Strand, reached by a broad staircase that already smelled unmistakably of animals before you had even paid your shilling.
Inside, the noise was extraordinary. The lions paced in their enclosures, their amber eyes moving with slow, sovereign indifference over the visitors.
Exotic birds shrieked from their cages, a riot of green and gold and scarlet.
Everywhere there was movement and noise and the warm press of curious people craning to see.
David’s eyes were enormous.
“He looks as though he is trying to decide whether to be frightened or delighted,” Clara said.
“That is more or less the correct response to the menagerie,” Julian agreed.
They pushed the pram slowly along the main passage, pausing here and there. It was at the far end, before a long glass terrarium housing an enormous and very still python, that Julian stopped.
“I believe,” he said, “that you have been here before. Do you recall?”
She looked at the snake which made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She’d never been fond of them and was even less so now. David, who sat up in the pram as much as was possible, was oblivious to her discomfort.
“You were about seven. I was fifteen or sixteen.” He nodded at the terrarium. “You and Arabella had lobbied my father to bring you here and he agreed. You were so excited until you saw the snakes. You both stopped here, and you went completely white.”
“Oh,” she said, watching the reptile slitter about.
“You seized my arm,” he continued, his tone entirely conversational, “with a grip that I can only describe as extraordinary for a child of seven. I was genuinely concerned for my coat. You nearly ripped it.”
“I never—”
“You did. You and Arabella both gripped me though I think you had the stronger grip.”
“Well, now that you say that, I do recall. And I also recall why I was so frightened. You told me that there was no glass on the terrarium and that the snake could come out at any moment and eat me whole. If you had not said so, I might have behaved with greater composure.”
He stopped walking entirely. A broad, genuine grin broke across his face. “I forgot that I said that.”
“You did.”
“That does sound,” he conceded, “very much like something I would have done.”
“I should slap your arm just on principle.”
He laughed at that, and she found herself laughing too, the ease of it surprising her. They moved on, away from the python and into the warmth of the wider hall.