Chapter 28
It had been a week since Dover. A week of distances and cordial exchanges and meals where they spoke about David, Arabella, the ball, and nothing else at all.
Clara stood in her bedchamber and tried not to think about it while Nell worked at the buttons down her back.
“This is such a lovely gown, My Lady,” Nell said, smoothing the Pomona green demi-train with an appreciative hand.
It was indeed a pretty dress. She had ordered it from the dressmaker when they first began planning the ball, back when she had still been excited about it. Before everything had shifted.
She had been so pleased when she placed the order. Now, she stood in the gown and felt like a fraud.
Julian had made his position perfectly clear. He had seemed to regret it these past days; that much was true. She had seen it in the way he watched her across the breakfast table, in the way he sometimes opened his mouth as though he intended to say something and then did not.
Whatever he meant to say in those moments did not matter anyhow.
None of what had happened mattered. Not the hours they had spent together, not the night at Dover, not waking up with her arm across him. He did not want it to mean anything. He had decided it would not.
She had read things into the situation that were not there, or if they were, they had been firmly put away.
Hadn’t she done the same with Benjamin? Except this was worse. She had been fond of Benjamin, genuinely fond, but looking back, she knew she had not truly loved him. She had loved what he represented, the idea of what they might be together.
“My Lady,” Nell said, and she looked up.
“Yes.”
“Forgive me, but you have had such a long face since you returned from Dover.”
“It was a difficult trip, but no matter.” She turned from the mirror. “How are the preparations? Is everything coming together below stairs? And in the ballroom?”
“Yes, My Lady. Splendidly, My Lady. The orchestra is already here, and Richmond is overseeing everything. The food is prepared, and Mrs. Parker has a firm hold on it all.”
“Good.” She nodded. “Good.”
The ball still had to go well. Whatever had passed between her and Julian, whatever had not passed between them, she and Julian had to convince a hundred and twenty of the most observant people in England tonight that they were a couple that had been happily married for over a year with a child to show for it.
If she could manage that, she could manage anything.
She had always loved the theatre after all.
They spent another half hour on her hair, added a little pomade, and a little charcoal around her eyes before she went downstairs. Julian waited at the bottom, and she made herself look at him directly because not looking would give more away than looking.
He was dressed in his finest pantaloons that gave a clear account of his legs, a white shirt, a yellow waistcoat, and a morning coat. A large cravat was arranged at his neck, and his cufflinks caught the light as he turned.
“You look lovely,” he said.
“Thank you,” she replied, as cordially as she could manage.
She had made a decision. Cordial. She could be cordial.
If she was anything warmer, he would take it as an opening for conversation, and she could not have that.
She was not going to be his friend. She was his partner in this arrangement, the one he had very clearly defined, and that was what she would be tonight and hereafter.
He offered his arm, and they walked towards the front of the house where carriages were already beginning to line up in the street. Just as they reached the front door where Richmond stood ready to open it, Julian turned to her and lowered his voice.
“This must be not only an impressive ball but a perfect performance from us. Everyone must believe we are who we say we are. David’s parents. A couple together for over a year. Perfectly happy.”
“I am aware of what is at stake,” she said. “Do not fret. I know my part, and I shall play it well.”
“We will have to dance the first dance together.”
“I am also aware of that. I have already spoken to the master of ceremonies.” She glanced towards the door. “If we stand here much longer, the guests will suspect something is wrong. We cannot keep the ton waiting on the front step.”
He blinked. The easy confidence that usually sat so naturally on his face was momentarily absent. Then he nodded. “Very well.”
Together, they went to the door and stood side by side, shoulders touching.
Not by accident this time. Not because they sought each other’s company.
Because they had to look like two people who could not bear to be apart, not even as they greeted their guests, and so that was what they would look like.
What followed was a long and not entirely swift procession of a hundred and twenty of England’s most highly ranked gentlemen and their wives, along with an assortment of respected merchants, knights, and whoever else they had deemed important enough to include.
Clara smiled and nodded and curtsied and said the right things, and Julian shook hands and was charming which cost him nothing because he was always charming, and she tried not to notice that.
Among the guests were, of course, their friends. Nathaniel and Evelyn arrived, and Evelyn leaned forward for a moment as they embraced. “You look a splendid pair,” she whispered. “It is difficult to imagine he was truly such a fool as to…”
“Please,” Clara said quietly, and Evelyn pressed her hand and moved on.
But the word stayed with her. Fool. She had not thought of it in those terms yet. That was what it looked like to their friends, that Julian had seen the potential of something real and had rejected it. The realization sat uncomfortably in her chest, but she kept her smile in place.
Lucian and Marian arrived next then Charlotte then James and Frances and last of all, Gideon with Helena on his arm. Helena squeezed Clara’s hand as she leaned in. “We must talk,” she whispered. Clara nodded.
The line of guests seemed as though it would never end.
When it finally did, she and Julian walked arm in arm into the ballroom.
People turned. There were cheers and a round of applause which she had not entirely anticipated but which made maintaining the smile considerably easier because, for a moment, the warmth of the room made it feel almost genuine.
The ball at Lynden House had been much anticipated. The scandal sheets had written about it at some length, wondering what food would be served, who would be there, and whether an announcement would be made.
There would be an announcement, of a sort but not the kind anyone expected.
She and Julian had agreed, back before Dover, that rather than a formal address, they would simply allow their story to circulate through their friends.
By the end of the evening, every person in the room would know it.
It was the right plan. It had been the right plan then, and it remained so now, even if agreeing upon it felt like it belonged to a different version of the two of them entirely.
As for the two of them, they would open the ball with a dance. That was what she had dreaded the most.
“It is time,” Julian said, and he walked her to the center of the floor. The master of ceremonies moved to make his announcement, and Clara straightened and prepared herself.
Then the man announced the waltz.
Her smile faltered for just a moment. “The waltz,” she said.
“We can dance a minuet, later,” Julian suggested, already positioning his hand at her waist. “But, for now, it must be the waltz. There is nothing more persuasive.” He drew her closer, and she resisted the urge to step back.
“It cannot be such a great imposition,” he said through a smile that did not waver, “to dance with your husband.”
“I did not say it was,” she replied, raising her chin. She looked up at him and smiled because that was what was expected of her, and she would deliver it.
“Good,” he said. “Now. The others will already have begun passing the story along, but I will make sure to speak to Mrs. Westchester before the evening is out. She supplies titbits to the gazette. I shall tell her how we met in Scotland after you arrived there.”
“We ought also to remind people that we have known each other a great deal longer than that,” she said, turning smoothly as the music directed. “That this was not sudden.”
“Indeed.” He looked at her. “Do you remember when we first met?”
“I was a child,” she said. “I would not remember the specific details.”
That was a lie. She knew exactly when she had first met him.
She had been six years old and had come to visit Arabella.
The two of them had been running together on the gravel path in the garden when she had fallen, scraping her knee so badly that blood had soaked through her stocking and stained her gown.
The governess, a woman with rather too much panic at her disposal, had made everything considerably worse.
But then someone had lifted her—she could almost still feel it, the firm hold under her arms—and Julian had carried her downstairs to the still room where a maid had cleaned and bound the wound while she was changed into one of Arabella’s dresses.
He had told them jokes all the while, he and Arabella, making them laugh until their stomachs hurt. Arabella had told her that part afterwards because she had been laughing too hard to remember it herself.
And then he had taken them to the kitchen and given Clara her first taste of marzipan.
“You are smiling,” Julian said.
“So I am,” she replied.
“You remember.”
“The day you caused my permanent attachment to marzipan? Yes.” She glanced at him. “I suppose I have you to thank for that at least.”
“You are very welcome,” he said with a small and almost shy smile, and for a moment—one inconveniently real moment—she smiled back at him genuinely. Not the careful smile she had been wearing since the doors opened. A real one.
A flicker crossed his face. Pain, perhaps, or something close to it. She was not entirely certain which. Whatever it was, she told herself he had brought it on himself.
“I suppose knowing you has not been entirely without its merits,” she said.
The flicker again. Then the music slowed, and the dance came to its end.
She was already beginning to turn away when he pulled her back. Pulled her hard enough that she came up against him, her chest against his, and the room erupted in a low collective sound of delight. Then he pressed his lips to hers.
She wanted to pull back. She knew she ought to. She knew exactly what this was, it was for the room, for the story, for the hundred and twenty people watching. She knew all of that.
She still did not pull back.
When he stepped away and let her go, she felt the loss of it before she had even fully registered what had happened.
“That was not agreed upon,” she said.
“No,” he said. “But I daresay it will rather cement our story.” He turned and bowed to the room while she curtsied, and then the two of them began to walk off the floor together.
How she managed it, she was not entirely sure because her legs had taken on a quality that suggested they were not fully committed to supporting her, and she was almost certain that if she looked down, she would find them wobbling.
She did not look down. She kept her chin up and her smile in place and walked steadily across the floor.
She was very good at this. She had always loved the theatre.
It was just that tonight, rather more than usual, she could not quite work out which parts she was performing and which parts she was not.