“I do.”
“That is because you are strange.”
Aurelia almost smiled. “No, because I am prudent.”
Clara clasped her hands before her. “Please. I shall not stay long. Only a few minutes. I cannot sit across rooms from him all evening like some tragic heroine.”
“You have known him two days.”
“That is more than enough to know whether one wishes to speak to him.”
Aurelia took a measured sip of wine and tried to appear unmoved by Clara’s transparent eagerness. “You must not fix all your hopes upon the first agreeable gentleman who looks your way. There are a great many men in town, and this season has scarcely begun. It would be wiser to talk to several.”
“But I do not wish to talk to several,” Clara pouted.
“That,” said Aurelia, “is exactly what worries me.”
Clara drew a little nearer. “But I truly like him.”
“So I have observed.”
“And he likes me.”
Aurelia frowned. “That is possible.”
“It is certain,” Clara beamed.
Aurelia laughed under her breath. “You are incorrigible.”
“I am only honest,” Clara chuckled as well. “Will you, please, let me go?”
Aurelia looked once more toward the window. Harrow was now glancing about the room with the vague politeness of a man not wholly invested in his surroundings. There was nothing in his manner to alarm her. Indeed, there was something steady and open in him which, however cautiously, she liked.
If Clara must be foolish, Aurelia thought, she could be foolish in worse company.
Still, she lifted a finger in warning. “Very well. But you are not to forget yourself. And you are not to devote every moment to Captain Harrow as though the rest of London had ceased to exist.”
Clara’s whole face brightened. “I shall remember. I promise … may I go now?”
Aurelia sighed heavily. “You may. But I shall be watching.”
Clara smiled with infuriating sweetness. “That will not signify if you are too far away to hear.”
And before Aurelia could rebuke her for such insolence, she was gone, crossing the room with all the graceful urgency of a girl determined upon happiness and very nearly expecting to find it.
Aurelia watched her reach Harrow. He turned at once, and whatever he said on seeing her made Clara smile in that tender way which always seemed to Aurelia both lovely and perilous. They stood together at the window, already at ease.
She turned away before she could grow too emotionally careless or anxious and allowed her gaze to travel idly over the room. Not idly, she corrected herself almost at once, for she had seen him.
He was standing at some distance, surrounded by a small, crescent moon of young ladies so prettily arranged around him that they might have been placed there by a painter specializing in feminine ambition. One leaned in too close when she spoke. Another laughed before he had finished answering, while a third fluttered her fan with such industry that Aurelia wondered she did not create a tornado. The whole group seemed engaged in some silent contest as to who might best attract his notice.
He, meanwhile, looked as though he would rather be facing artillery.
It was impossible not to be amused.
There was something almost comical in the contrast between their elaborate eagerness and his unmistakable discomfort. He was too well-mannered to escape, too important to be left alone, and too honest in his countenance to disguise how very little he enjoyed being admired in company.
Aurelia ought not to have watched. Yet, she did.
