Chapter 3
Aurelia expected the apartment to be smaller. Not elegant, perhaps, because Aunt Louisa was too prudent a woman to indulge in needless expense, even where comfort was concerned.
Yet as the hackney drew up before the narrow brick house in a respectable street just off the greater bustle of town, and the maid admitted them into a neat little hall with a black-and-white floor and a staircase that turned away with modest consequence, Aurelia could not deny that her aunt had managed the thing very well.
There was taste in it. There was even, in its quiet way, a kind of welcome.
Clara, however, did not pause to observe any of this with moderation.
“Oh! Is it all ours?” she cried, turning full upon the maid before Aurelia could ask a single sensible question regarding their trunks, fires, or tea. “Every room? Entirely ours?”
“For the present, miss, yes,” said the woman, smiling despite herself.
Clara gave a delighted laugh and flew first to the drawing room, then to the little dining parlor, then back again, unable to choose which deserved her rapture first.
“Aurelia, do come and look! There is a pianoforte, and the curtains are blue, and there is a looking glass over the mantel, and such a charming chair by the window that I am resolved it shall be mine whenever I wish to dream!”
“You have claimed it very quickly,” Aurelia mused, removing her gloves with greater care than was necessary.
Clara spun round in the middle of the carpet, her bonnet hanging by its ribbons down her back.
“Because no one has ever allowed me to claim anything before. Mama always says, ‘Do not sit there, Clara,’ or ‘Do not speak so loud, Clara,’ or ‘You must not look out of the window at the gentlemen, Clara,’ which I never did, except once by accident. But here,” she spread her arms wide, as if unfurling her wings, “here I feel as if my life is beginning.”
Aurelia smiled, because Clara’s happiness was too sincere to resist. But even while she smiled, she felt that familiar uneasiness settling upon her spirits.
London had not changed merely because she had been absent from it.
Those were the same streets, the same houses and the same polished doors with brass knockers, still guarding the same world which had once smiled upon her mother and then, with equal ease, cast her out.
A different address did not make it a different city.
She moved farther into the room and laid a hand upon the marble mantel.
The furniture was comfortable, the air only faintly stale from disuse, and the window gave onto a street sufficiently quiet to appear safe.
Yet all the while she could think only that she had returned to the very stage on which her family had been made a spectacle.
Clara was already gone again.
“A bedchamber with yellow hangings!” came her voice from above. “And another with roses in the paper! Aurelia, you must have the yellow room, for it is grave, although lovely, and I shall have the roses because I am only eighteen and may be foolish still.”
“I do not believe anyone has ever denied your right to foolishness,” Aurelia called back gently.
No answer came beyond laughter and the rapid patter of feet overhead.
The maid, who had been directing a footman in the matter of their trunks, turned again and offered Aurelia a small silver tray on which lay several cards and one folded note. “These were left not half an hour ago, miss. One was by messenger.”
Aurelia took them, expecting perhaps some direction from Louisa’s housekeeper, or another list of names to remember and avoid confounding. Instead, among the cards, one thick cream envelope immediately distinguished itself by the quality of the paper and the boldness of its seal.
She broke it open.
Lady Bannerman presents her compliments to Miss Finch and Miss Blackmore, and has the pleasure of informing them that, having long enjoyed the acquaintance and esteem of Mrs. Blackmore, she would be delighted by the honor of their company at Bannerman House this evening for dancing and refreshments, at ten o’clock.
Lady Bannerman sincerely hopes that Miss Blackmore’s arrival in town has been comfortable, and will be very happy to welcome both ladies on so agreeable an occasion.
For one moment she only stared.
Of course it was this evening. London never allowed for hesitation. One had scarcely arrived before one was expected to be displayed.
Clara reappeared at once, as if summoned by instinct whenever delight was near. “What is it? Has someone called? Are we to receive visitors already? Oh, do say it is something interesting.”
Aurelia handed her the card.
Clara read it, gasped, and then gave such a cry of pleasure that the maid withdrew with admirable discretion. “A ball! This very night! Aurelia, how perfect! I had not dared hope it would begin so soon.”
“So soon is precisely the difficulty.”
“But why should it be a difficulty?” Clara inquired.
“Because we have only just arrived. Because the trunks are hardly opened. Because you have been in the house a quarter of an hour and are already half in love with the wallpaper. Because a first appearance in town ought not to be made in a state of fatigue and confusion. Just pick one of those reasons and it should suffice.”
Clara looked at her as one might look at a person arguing against daylight. “But it is Lord and Lady Bannerman’s. Mama said everyone attends their ball. If we are not there, people will notice. Besides, what confusion can there be? We shall dress. We shall go. We shall dance. It is all very plain.”
“To you, perhaps.”
“Yes, because I mean to enjoy myself.”
The words were spoken with such cheerful determination that Aurelia could not even resent them. Clara threw herself into the blue chair by the window, which was the very one she had previously claimed, and hugged the invitation to her breast.
“Only think,” she spoke melodiously, “tonight I shall stand in a ballroom in London. There will be music and candles everywhere, and ladies with feathers, and gentlemen, and officers whispering together. Perhaps there will be some very handsome gentleman who will ask me to dance before I have even sat down. I do not insist upon his being very handsome, however. Moderately handsome would do if he admired me properly.”
There was no arguing with such logic when it was accompanied by such affection. Clara’s enthusiasm, while often untidy, was almost always sincere enough to shame resistance.
Aurelia had indeed come for her sake. To begin at once by refusing the first invitation of consequence would cast a chill over the whole enterprise. Aunt Louisa had wanted Clara introduced properly into society. A retreat on the first afternoon would do little to recommend them.
Still, she hesitated.
“We shall be fatigued,” she said, aware even as she spoke that the objection sounded feeble.
“I shall not. I could dance until breakfast.”
“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 nor the 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.
“If Miss Blackmore is willing,” she said.
“I am very willing,” Clara replied, rather too quickly.
Captain Harrow’s smile deepened. “Then I am more fortunate than I had any right to expect.”
He offered his arm. Clara placed her hand on it, then turned back at once.
“Aurelia, do not go far.”
“I shall remain exactly where propriety requires,” Aurelia assured her.
“Which means she will watch us like a hawk,” Clara told him in an undertone that was not nearly so low as she imagined.
“I should expect no less,” Captain Harrow answered. “A lady ought to be well defended.”
“That is very proper of you,” Aurelia commented, liking him even more now.
The music was already beginning. Clara took a step, then another, only to glance back one last time, her face alight with excitement.
“Do I look composed now?” she whispered.
“No,” Aurelia shook her head, although she was smiling.
“Excellent,” Clara whispered back, and was gone.
Aurelia watched them take their places in the set.
Clara stood opposite the captain with such transparent delight that it was impossible not to smile.
He bent his head to say something before the figures began.
Clara laughed at once, and when the dance carried them apart and together again, they moved with an ease that made them look, to Aurelia’s wary eye, far too much like the opening of a fairy tale.
“Good heavens,” she murmured to herself.