Jack thought, then pulled a face. “A lost cause to imagine otherwise. With her, I can’t decree. I can only make my case and pray she’ll believe it, and that ultimately she’ll regard my suit with favor.”
Raising his glass he sipped; he caught Deverell’s gaze as he lowered it. “Any sage advice would be welcome. This is not a battlefield on which I’ve had any experience.”
Deverell grimaced. “Nor I.”
Silence fell, then lengthened.
Eventually, Deverell stirred. “Surprise.” He caught Jack’s eyes. “Taking a tack she won’t expect, or better yet would never expect, might help. She seems like the sort of female you need to keep off-balance if you want the upper hand. Or even a guiding hand.”
Jack snorted softly. “Oh yes, that’s Boadicea.”
Deverell looked taken aback by the name, then realized and chuckled.
Sip by sip, Jack drained his glass.
Deverell was right. So…what was the last thing, the last action, the last approach that Boadicea would expect from him?
Chapter 17
“Good evening, Lady Clarice.” Lady Winterwhistle, seventy if she was a day, regarded Clarice through unfriendly, beady eyes. “Quite a surprise to see you again.” Her ladyship glanced at Lady Davenport, whom Clarice and Jack had just left. “And in such company.”
Jack’s hackles had risen at the first spiteful syllable, but Clarice merely raised her brows faintly, ineffably regal, mildly returned the greeting, introduced him, then inquired as to her ladyship’s daughter’s health.
Lady Winterwhistle looked disgruntled, a harpy denied her prey. To Jack’s surprise, her beady eyes fixed on him, then again deflected to Lady Davenport. “Ah! I see.”
Jack doubted it, but the expressions crossing Lady Winterwhistle’s face suggested she was making a remarkable number of deductions.
Her ladyship fixed her gaze, almost gloating, on his face. “Your aunts like to think they can accomplish the impossible. Daresay Davenport dragooned you into this.” Jabbing her finger at him, Lady Winterwhistle turned away, dismissively contemptuous. “More fool you.”
His temper surged.
Clarice’s fingers bit into his forearm. “No—don’t react.”
Jack looked down to see her watching him. He searched her face; she seemed curiously unaffected.
Reading the puzzlement in his eyes, she sighed and looked away. “There are many in the ton like her. After last night, word has spread, and they’ve had time to polish their barbs.” She lifted a shoulder. “The best way to deal with them is simply to ignore them.”
At her urging, they strolled on, down Lady Maxwell’s crowded ballroom. Dinner at Lady Mott’s had been a more select affair; while some had certainly been surprised to discover Clarice in their ranks, none had stepped back, or reacted in any adverse way. In the main, they’d been welcoming, curious yet relaxed. But he and she were now strolling through more general waters; alerted, Jack watched more closely, more carefully assessing what lay behind the nods that came their way, most studiously polite, some wary, only a few honestly friendly.
Indeed, certain ladies, all of the older generation, stiffened at the sight of Clarice. None, ho
wever, dared cut her; cutting an Altwood under the noses of half the ton would be akin to social suicide. If Clarice was present, she’d been invited by their hostess, and almost certainly at the behest of some lady of even higher rank. Yet the looks, some mean, others frankly malicious, followed them.
After a while, he murmured, “It seems very unlike you to so mildly turn the other cheek.”
She glanced at him; amusement flared briefly in her eyes. “Their ability to disconcert me…that died a long time ago. Seven years ago, to be exact.” Looking ahead, she walked on, then murmured, her voice low so only he could hear, “Even at the time, I realized that part of what drove them—those who were so ready to crucify me for refusing to marry as directed—was that I’d dared to do what they had not.” Glancing up, she met his gaze. “There’s always a price to be paid for demonstrating to others what they might have accomplished if they’d only been strong enough.”
She looked ahead as they neared the end of the room. “My being here, once again walking among the ton, accepted into the circles into which I was born—to some that will seem like sacrilege, even now. To them, my banishment was a prescribed punishment. They couldn’t have borne it if I hadn’t been made to pay for my defiance.”
Head tilting, she considered, then her lips curved. “But if you think my reaction uncharacteristically mild, just think of what they’re feeling. The fact their censure is unable to touch me in any way, because I won’t allow them any say in my life, won’t recognize or acknowledge their spitefulness and so deny them all power…that, to them, is the ultimate rebuff.”
It took a moment for him to see not just that point, but her strategy in its totality. Summoning a smile, he squeezed her fingers and met her eyes as she glanced up. “My apologies—I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
The look she shot him was vintage Boadicea. “In this sphere, I should think not.”
They spotted Alton and Sarah and spent ten minutes in their company, then Roger fetched them to meet Alice’s aunt. As Moira was not present, they grasped the opportunity to strengthen the connection.
After that, they continued strolling, stopping and chatting here and there, but only when others approached them. Most such approaches were purely curious; only a few had any deeper intent. Nevertheless, Jack detected a thread in the comments, especially those from the censorious, when, realizing Clarice was beyond the reach of their malicious disapproval, they instead suggested, in the most elliptical fashion, that the fact she was still unmarried proved that little about her had changed.