Chapter 1 #2
Her parents exchanged a look that told her everything. They did not.
"Then we cannot follow her," Mr. Penrose said. "And even if we could..." He trailed off, but the unspoken conclusion sat heavily between them all. Even if they found her, dragging Clarissa back to a marriage she had fled would solve nothing. The scandal of the pursuit alone would finish them.
They all knew what was to follow this. The humiliation Clarissa had invited into their lives would be all-consuming.
Thomas Harrington was not a man of new money.
His family tree had deep roots, his wealth was known to be closer to that of a landed earl than that of an untitled gentry, and his family had been able to make allies and enemies with a single look.
He had already been giving the Penroses a significant amount of social grace.
Many argued that he was marrying beneath his standing.
But when he looked at Clarissa, Genevieve had seen that mattered not to him.
She thought of the last dinner they had shared, perhaps a fortnight past, when Clarissa had said something that made the whole table laugh.
Genevieve had glanced at Thomas in that moment quite by accident and immediately wished she had not.
The expression on his face had been so unguarded, so entirely unaware of being observed, the look of a man who could not quite believe his good fortune.
His blue eyes shimmered in the candlelight, his dark hair framing his face, the face of a man deeply in love.
To him, Clarissa was his Eurydice, and he was Orpheus, willing to follow her even into the underworld and all that lay beyond.
Genevieve had admired him greatly in that regard, wishing for a man to look at her so, but would have never interfered with her sister’s courtship.
Looking back down at the letter, however, something else also stirred in her chest. She could imagine her sister sitting in her chambers, hurriedly writing with tears in her eyes.
Clarissa was many things to many people, but Genevieve had always known that her sister’s inner world was complicated in a way that hers was not.
Imagining poor Clarissa sitting here in the candlelight, alone with the weight of what she was about to do, made something in Genevieve soften despite herself.
She knew she ought to feel only the sharp edges of this.
The betrayal, the recklessness, the profound selfishness of leaving without a word of warning to any of them.
And she did feel those things. But she felt the other thing too, the ache of knowing her sister well enough to understand that Clarissa would not have done this lightly.
Whatever else she was, Clarissa had never been cruel without cause.
This had cost her something. Genevieve was certain of that much.
“Whatever shall we do about this situation?” Mr. Penrose asked with a sigh.
“There is nothing to do, is there?” Mrs. Penrose asked between tears. “Clarissa shall make us all pariahs by leaving like this. No one shall ever wish to associate with us! We had very little besides our good name, and now even that shall be gone.”
Genevieve wrapped her arms around her mother, and the older woman hugged her tightly in return.
“All is not lost yet,” Genevieve said softly. “Perhaps there is a way to salvage the situation. We should talk to Thomas. Surely he has a way to remedy this.”
“Your optimism knows no bounds,” Mr. Penrose sighed.
“I do wish we could speak to him to find a solution, but there are precious few hours before the wedding. Indeed. Even if we were to summon him, he may expect us to have a plan already in place to salvage the situation, as it is our family who is doing his such a disservice.”
“Then we need to send someone to fetch him immediately,” Genevieve said, pulling back from her mother to look at her father. “The quicker we call him, the quicker we can all work together on a solution that is amenable to all parties.”
“Genevieve, he is to be married today, the banns have stated this for weeks. There are few ways that we have to mitigate such an impossible situation,” her father said, looking up at her.
“Well, there must be something we can do,” Genevieve implored.
Her father sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
His brow furrowed, and he focused on the floor.
She had seen this expression on his face the many times he had been dealing with the “meat” of a problem.
Difficult negotiations, suppliers that were unfit, demanding customers.
She trusted that look because he always came out of it with a remedy. The room fell quiet around him. Even her mother, who had not stopped weeping since the letter was read, seemed to still. Genevieve watched her father's face and waited. She had learned long ago not to rush him in these moments.
To interrupt was to lose whatever careful architecture he was building behind his eyes. So she waited, and her mother waited, and the clock on the mantle marked the seconds with indifferent patience.
After a moment, his eyes met hers, and his expression softened.
“Actually,” he said softly. “I may have an idea.”
He stood up and gently took Genevieve's hand in his own. It struck her, distantly, how rarely he did such things. He was not a cold man, but he was a practical one, and tenderness had never been his native language. That he was reaching for it now told her more than his words had.
“Genevieve, I am about to ask you for something I have no right to ask of you. Please, will you at least consider it?”
Her heart thudded in her chest, feeling a nervous tightness she had not expected to feel.
“Of course, father,” she whispered.
Whatever he was about to say, she found to her own quiet surprise, that she was not going to refuse him. She did not yet know why. She simply knew, in the particular way she had always known things before she had the words for them, that some part of her had already decided. She waited, an
d her hands were still, and she listened.