The Wallflowers To Wives Collection. Bronwyn Scott

possibly ruin Beatrice’s Season any more than it already was.

      ‘May I ask why?’ Cecilia looked down her nose, a supercilious stare designed to intimidate after hours of practice in the mirror. Everything about Cecilia was designed, from the hair to the stare, everything calculated to gain maximum results. ‘Does the truth offend you?’

      ‘Oh? Then he has asked for your hand? I must have missed the announcement in The Times,’ Beatrice retorted with false sweetness. ‘Which issue was that in?’

      Claire felt a little thrill of victory flicker through her at Cecilia’s hesitation. She felt envy, too—she wanted to be brave like Beatrice, brave enough to back Cecilia to the proverbial wall. Beatrice had her there. Cecilia didn’t dare lie. She would look foolish if she claimed such a thing.

      ‘Everyone knows it’s just a matter of time.’

      ‘Everyone knows? Not me. I don’t think Lashley will offer for you at all. I can imagine what you see in him, but I can’t imagine what he sees in you.’ Beatrice took another step closer to Cecilia, they were nearly toe to toe now.

      ‘Everyone who counts knows,’ Cecilia snarled, her lip turning up, wrecking the pretty features of her face. It was an ugly expression. Claire had never seen Cecilia appear less then perfectly beautiful but there was no beauty now. However, she had seen Beatrice angry before, once, when the former village butcher had cheated a poor woman out of a good cut of meat. Beatrice had railed at him for his unfair treatment and when that had failed, Beatrice had put a butcher knife to his privates. Needless to say, the butcher had relented and the woman had gone home with an excellent ham for free.

      ‘Who would that be? Your father? Is he going to buy you a husband like he bought you a pony? You are nothing without his money, his title.’ Beatrice hurled her insult. Claire saw something flash in Cecilia’s eyes. For a moment Claire almost felt sorry for her, but then Cecilia’s gaze turned in her direction. Cecilia stepped back from Beatrice and smoothed her lavender skirts.

      ‘I don’t care what you believe, Beatrice Penrose. Claire knows the truth. She knows what tonight was: a charity dance. Lashley was doing his duty, nothing more, although what he thinks he owes you for is beyond me.’ She flicked open her fan with a snap and headed for the door. ‘Come, ladies. I believe our dance cards are full and the gentlemen are waiting.’

      ‘What a bitch!’ May exhaled, flopping into a chair in relief. ‘Good Lord, Beatrice, I thought she was going to hit you.’ May snickered. ‘You made her leave the room, Bea. She might pretend it was all her doing, but she had to retreat. It just proves there’s a first time for everything.’

      ‘You shouldn’t have,’ Claire gently scolded her friend. ‘She’ll make life difficult for you.’

      Beatrice snorted. ‘I’m pregnant and unmarried—how much more difficult can life get? I have precisely two more months before I’m packed off to the wilds of some place where my family can forget I’m giving birth to a bastard.’

      ‘Oh, Bea, is it that bad?’ Claire knelt beside her, clasping Bea’s hands. ‘We won’t let them send you away.’

      ‘We’ll go with you, if they do,’ Evie chimed in.

      Beatrice smiled, over-bright. ‘Let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about Lashley and Claire and what comes next.’

      Claire stood up, suddenly feeling tired. ‘Maybe we could talk later. I think I’d like to go home.’ She had danced with Jonathon, shared a stroll with him, Beatrice had bested Cecilia. They were all reasons for celebration, but that didn’t mean some of her joy hadn’t gone out of the evening anyway.

Chapter Seven

      The carriage was waiting for her at the head of queue at the kerb. The Welton family driver knew her habits. She never stayed long at these affairs and he parked close so she could make a quick getaway.

      Claire leaned back against the squabs, drawing a lap robe over her legs more for comfort than for warmth in the spring evening. It was always a getaway. The last three years had been one getaway after another. At first getaways had been her solution. But now, they were fast becoming her problem. In hindsight, she could see the pattern. She was always retreating. At first, retreating had been a defence mechanism, a means of protecting herself, but then that very means of protection had become the means by which she’d started to lose herself.

      What had Jonathon said? You are different than I thought. He thought she was quiet, submissive, unobtrusive. She was not naturally any of those things. But she’d become them until she wasn’t entirely sure who she was any more. Was she quiet Claire, who stood on the sidelines watching others dance, or was she bold Claire, who wore new dresses and scolded handsome men who wouldn’t do their French lessons?

      She simply didn’t know. She knew who she wanted to be, though. She wanted to be the latter; a woman who could fight for what she wanted, a woman who wouldn’t back down to Cecilia because of a moment’s embarrassment years ago. That was the woman Jonathon would notice. That was a woman Claire could respect.

      But how to be someone she’d hadn’t been for years? Someone she might never have been? The road back would be difficult and scary. There would be fits and starts. There would be successes and failures, and those would, by necessity, be public. There would be witnesses and there would be Cecilia, ready to remind her at every turn.

      Claire closed her eyes as the coach bounced over the dark London streets. She forced the painful memory to materialise. It had started nicely enough; the happy laughter of a party, girls exclaiming over one another’s gowns, the Season still new and fresh, the ballroom sparkling with light, young men lining up for dance cards, for her dance card. Her hair was done in an elegant sweeping up-do, her grandmother’s pearls proudly at her neck, an understated complement to the pale-pink gown that had arrived from the dressmaker’s that afternoon in a white box.

      She was beside herself with excitement: Her first ball gown that wasn’t white. She’d loved it on sight in the pattern books, had patiently stood for hours of fittings until the gown was just right. She felt magical in it, as if she could command a room. She laughed at something Jerome Kerr had said and the room about her suddenly went silent. The crowd parted, forming a phalanx, and at the other end stood Cecilia Northam, blonde and regal in a gown identical in colour and cut to hers—her dream gown, worn by another. Not just any other, but a girl poised to be a Diamond of the First Water. Now that girl stood ten paces away, facing her not unlike a duellist.

      ‘Very pretty, Claire, but even so, I wear it better. Pink is more my colour than yours.’

      Cecilia fired first and the words were deadly. Everyone had laughed. People had backed off, leaving her alone to face Cecilia. Only Claire hadn’t faced it. Young and unprepared, Claire had fled.

      Claire opened her eyes, regretting for the thousandth time her choice that night. She’d fled and let the incident become her legacy. Now she was stuck with it. It would have to be overcome, only there was so much more of it to overcome. That moment had defined her. She’d made choices and those choices had changed her.

      She’d withdrawn from society and now she wanted to re-engage. In order to do that, she would have to face her fears, have to face Cecilia. The road back, the road to Jonathon, was through Cecilia Northam. Claire might have been brave enough once, but now? She didn’t know. She should have gone back in, faced whatever scrutiny was thrown her way and got it over with.

      Nothing will change until we do. Could she change again? She wished with all her heart she’d never left the ballroom that night.

      * * *

      Claire hadn’t returned to the ballroom. He’d been watching long enough to conclude she wasn’t coming back. The realisation stole some of the excitement from the evening. Jonathon excused himself from the group he was with and sought the relative quiet of the hall. Anyone out there was too busy with their own concerns to pay him much mind and that was fine with him. He