Page 44 of Bewitching Benedict (The Lovelorn Lads #1)

"Claire?" Aunt Elizabeth spoke from the door.

Claire turned, suddenly nervous. Aunt Elizabeth smiled and came into the room, her hands extended to clasp Claire's.

She drew Claire into a gentle embrace, set her back, examined her, and finally murmured, "You look wonderful, Claire.

Mr Graham will be enthralled. He arrived early and spoke to your uncle," she added.

"He seems a fine young man. Handsome and with, I am sure, many other qualities less readily visible. Are you ready?"

"I suppose I must be."

"No," Aunt Elizabeth said with surprising candor. "If you're not certain, Claire, an engagement can always be called off. There's no shame in that."

"There are twenty-five people downstairs expecting it to be announced," Claire reminded her. "I can hardly disappoint them."

"No matter what you do, you will not disappoint anyone," Aunt Elizabeth said firmly. "Come. Let us see how it all plays out."

Together they descended the stairs, Claire doing her best to not lean heavily on Aunt Elizabeth's arm.

She had always supposed—hoped—that she might all but float into her engagement, feeling barely tethered to the world, as if she rode in a marvelous hot air balloon.

Instead she felt quite prosaic and practical.

She was not unhappy, but neither was she overjoyed.

This, she supposed, was what marriage was really like, and she ought not be dismayed by beginning in a realistic manner.

Aunt Elizabeth paused in the hall outside the drawing room, where Worthington stood ready to open the door.

Her aunt turned her toward the hall mirror, allowing her to gaze at herself in the hall mirror and take one deep, steadying breath.

Then, as if a match had been struck, Claire put a smile on her face, bright, sweet, delighted.

She could not tell, from the mirror, whether it was a lie, and if she could not, certainly no one else could.

Thus masked, she nodded. Worthington swept the door open and announced her as if it was a grand ball, not a private party in her uncle's home. A curious, respectful, admiring hush fell over the room as she entered.

Jack Graham stood prominently within the room, the foremost person her eye should fall upon. Claire offered a cursory glance accompanied by a reflexive smile, and looked beyond him into the tussle of Lads.

Two dark heads were amongst them: Misters Hewitt and O'Brien.

The air left Claire's breast and did not, for some reason, seem willing to return.

A little disbelieving, she searched for Miss Hurst, once again barely seeing Graham, but yes: she had heard Priscilla's arrival, and, inexplicably, she was alone.

Benedict Fairburn was no more at her side than he was amongst the throng of Lads.

He had not come. He had not come for her.

He had not even come for Miss Hurst, which was by all reasonable intelligence a far greater insult than failing to appear on Claire's behalf.

And yet Claire had been certain, somehow, that he would be there.

That the kiss they had shared—terrible secret, to be forgotten!

—had meant something to him and that he would have returned from his peculiar holiday in order to declare his intentions toward her.

She had, until that moment, held out hope, and there were two or three among the crowd looking on her who had it in them to see that hope drain away.

Samuel Ackerman was one. So was Evander Hewitt, though no one would be less likely to admit that than he.

So, of course, was Worthington, for all that he looked upon Claire's slim shoulders from the back and could not see her attention dart from face to face in the instant after she was announced.

He could, however, see the slightest drop of those shoulders, and their subsequent, instantaneous squaring.

Very near to him, Elizabeth Dalton sighed.

Had he been of a higher social class, Worthington would have caught her eye in shared sorrow.

Fortunately, though, Jack Graham was not among those who saw Claire's dismay, or if he was, he recognized it for the resolution of a woman marrying for practicalities, not love.

He could no more hold that against Claire than she might hold his lingering passion for Priscilla Hurst against him.

They were of a mind, Jack and Claire, and would do what was sensible even if it did not fill their hearts with romantic excitement.

None of the others saw anything at all, though not one of the Lads could look on Claire and not think of the challenge she had laid at their feet that morning.

So the admiring hush of her entrance lingered a little longer than it might have before, as one, Claire and Graham extended their hands toward one another and came together in a chaste embrace of appropriate affection.

Applause, then music, broke out. Claire, laughing brightly if not sincerely, gasped in delight to find a quartet hidden in one corner, then was finally able to see more in the room than Benedict's absence.

It blazed with merry light, candles ensconced in every nook that could support them.

From the relative lack of smoke it was clear the Daltons had chosen expensive beeswax for the evening's light, which shone against the walls and reflected in the vast mirror over the hearth, making the room seem large and inviting.

The papered walls glowed amber in the candlelight, warming the space even more.

The furniture had been removed to the room's edges, allowing for comfortable seating and a friendly square in which to dance.

Claire clasped her hands over her heart and spun toward her aunt and uncle, crying, "You have outdone yourselves!

I'm afraid you couldn't possibly do more for us, Uncle Charles, Aunt Elizabeth!

Surely our formal announcement next week will be staid by comparison. "

"It had better not be," Uncle Charles said cheerfully. "I've hired a hall to house the thing, as we'd never all fit into these walls. I expect all of Society to be in attendance."

That, Claire thought, sounded perfectly awful, and was relieved when Graham requested a dance and she was able to forget about the future for a while.

Benedict Fairburn stalked up the stairs to the Daltons' home and knocked briskly, his gloves folded into a bunch in one hand.

The door did not open instantly and he rapped again more strenuously, as though doing violence to his knuckles would cause the staff within to leap to their job with greater alacrity.

Several seconds passed and he was about to strike a third time, this time with a lecture for whomever answered the door, when it swung inward to reveal Worthington.

The valet was forever expressionless, conveying great emotion with no more than the quirk of an eyebrow or the twitch of his mouth.

This time both mouth and eyebrow spoke volumes of surprise and nonplussedness, though his actual words were an entirely agreeable, "Master Fairburn.

Do come in. The Daltons are in the drawing room. "

"All of them?" Benedict threw off his coat. "Even Miss Dalton?"

Worthington caught the coat with the ease of long practice. "Indeed, sir, even Miss Dalton."

"Thank you, Worthington." Benedict strode past, half aware of laughter from the rooms within, but did not so much as stop to check his cravat in a mirror before bursting into the Daltons' drawing room like a man who belonged there.

Every eye came straight to him, which was precisely as he expected.

What he did not expect was that there were some thirty people in the room, exclusive of a string quartet and servants.

Each and every one paused in their activities to look toward the door with interest. Benedict's blood turned to ice, freezing him in the door frame, then began to thaw under the heat of a quickened, horrified heartbeat.

Miss Dalton was there, of course, a radiant star in shimmering yellow trimmed with green lace.

Her fringe had been clipped short—shockingly, fashionably short!

—and her eyes, always large, were perfectly enormous beneath the new, becoming fringe.

She gazed at him as if he were some beast risen from the depths to scar what should have been an hour of grace.

She stood with Jack Graham, had, in fact, been dancing with Jack Graham, until Benedict's entrance had silenced even the musicians.

Graham looked very fine as well, although he couldn't hold a candle to Miss Dalton; no one could.

Unlike Miss Dalton he didn't appear filled with dread, but merely startled.

That same surprise lay across the faces of nearly everyone else in the room.

The Lads, all save Ackerman, looked astonished at his arrival.

His mother and sisters, who amongst them wore more jewelry than all the other women in the room put together, were all more pleased than surprised, but Charles's mother, Mrs Dalton, wore a look of great neutrality that Benedict knew could spell danger.

Most dreadfully of all, Miss Priscilla Hurst, whom Benedict would not have expected to see again, and whose normally reserved expression now held even greater dismay than did Miss Dalton's pretty face, was there.

She, like Miss Dalton, was attired beautifully.

Indeed, it was possible that Miss Hurst, in light blue, did hold a candle to Miss Dalton after all, although hers was a cooler kind of beauty.

Benedict took all of this in, and, fumbling for propriety, acquired a desperate smile. "Forgive me," he said in a hoarse whisper. "I…seem to be terribly late."

"So you are!" Charles said, with an all-too-false boisterousness. "Thank goodness, Benny. We Lads were about to have a celebratory drink, and it wouldn't have been the same without you."

He understood Charles's speech, and yet it took a terribly long time to comprehend it all.

Then, with effort, Benedict replied, "Of course it wouldn't have been," as jovially as he could, and began to move toward the gathered Lads.

But despite what he believed were his intentions to join the Lads, Benedict's feet stopped him in front of Miss Dalton, where he said to Graham, "Forgive me, sir, but may I cut in? "

A ripple of silence swept out from that question before Graham gave a short, almost sideways nod of his head, smiled at Miss Dalton, and stepped away.

Benedict presented himself in the pose Graham had abandoned, and the musicians struck up the music again, allowing Benedict to sweep a stunned Miss Dalton into the dance.

For several measures he did not even try to speak. Nor did Miss Dalton, whose gaze fastened on him as though she might see into his thoughts, within his heart—things which, as it happened, Benedict very much hoped were on display.

"What," Claire finally whispered, as hoarsely as he had moments before, "are you doing here, Benedict? You left town after—after!"

"I had important business to attend to," Benedict blurted. "It could not wait, not after—after!" The memory of her kiss seared him now that he allowed himself to think on it again; the softness of her lips, the warm scent of her hair. Her hair! "You've cut your hair!"

"I have," Claire said very formally, almost accusatorily. Benedict scrambled to understand why, then realized the appropriate thing to say: "It looks very well. Your eyes are unparalleled."

Claire, without humor, said, "Indeed, I should hope they are parallel, else one has taken to wandering, which would be alarming," which was so reasonable and obvious that Benedict blushed at the clumsiness of his compliment. "I only meant?—"

"I know what you meant."

"Yes. Yes, of course you did. Miss Dalton—Claire—" Every word was a quick, quiet explosion, spoken only when he was close enough to talk to her alone.

The other dancers were trying, none too subtly, to listen in, a fact which made Benedict cringe every time he opened his mouth.

This was not how he had anticipated this meeting playing out, and he could see no way at all to draw it back to the script he had intended.

Then suddenly the dance was over; he had chosen poorly, cutting in at the end of the set.

Claire curtsied formally and excused herself before he had the chance to ask for a second dance, leaving Benedict bereft and alone as the floor cleared.

He retreated to find Ackerman giving him a look of frank expectation.

Benedict spread his hands as if to ask what he could do, and Ackerman directed his attention across the room, to where a visibly trembling Claire had taken refuge in Jack Graham's arms. The whole populace of the room seemed to be looking back and forth among the three of them, ready to shatter with anticipation.

Miss Hurst, not precisely alone, as she stood with Amelia and Benedict's mother—they were three of a kind, Benedict realized with a shock.

Miss Hurst was a pale version of his mother and younger sister, and appeared as fragile without as Benedict felt within; as fragile as Claire looked in Graham's arms. She met Benedict's eyes briefly, then, as if unable to look away, returned her attention to Claire and Graham.

Graham murmured something to Claire, then put his arm around her waist as if in support, and drew a breath that called everyone's attention to him. As if, Benedict thought bitterly, anyone was already not paying attention, but now they were doubly so.

"It is no secret why we are gathered here tonight," Graham began.

He had a fine voice, Benedict realized irritably.

It held the ear, just as Graham's pleasant face held the eye.

Benedict hated him, and could do nothing about it.

"But I should like to make the announcement a formal one now.

Ladies and gentlemen, our friends and family, I am happy to tell you that Miss Dalton has accepted my propo?—"

Miss Hurst shrieked, " No! "