“We should remedy that,” he said, looking up at her.
“Do you have anything in mind?” she asked, feeling a shock of excitement shooting up her back. It was not that she missed the clamor of crowded halls and loud voices. Some part of her wanted to be able to go out, as a married woman, and show the ton their budding relationship.
"There is a ball at the Herveys' two nights hence," Thomas said, turning his wine glass slightly in his hand in the way he did when he was choosing his words. "I wondered if you would be willing to attend with me."
"I would like that very much," Genevieve said, because it was true and she had long since decided that saying true things was the only approach to this marriage that she could live with.
Something in the set of his shoulders eased, fractionally. "Good. It will help, I think, with…" he made a small gesture, brief and expressive, that encompassed the whole complicated situation without requiring him to name any particular part of it,."…the general perception of things."
"Of course," she said. "Whatever I can do."
He thanked her and said goodnight with the pleasant warmth that he always had. She said goodnight with the pleasant warmth that she always had. Then he left, and she sat alone at the long table for a moment looking at the chair he had occupied and feeling the familiar slight flatness of a conversation that had ended before she was quite ready for it to.
She picked up her book and went through to the drawing room, where his grandmother was already in her customary chair by the fire, her own book open in her lap, her spectacles on, apparently deeply absorbed in whatever she was reading and entirely unconcerned with the movements of other people through the house. Genevieve had come to understand that this appearance of absorption was not always entirely accurate.
"He has asked you to the Herveys' ball," she said, without looking up.
Genevieve paused. "Were you listening at the door?"
"I was in the hallway," Lady Harrington said, turning a page, "which is not the same thing. He told me yesterday he was considering it. I told him it was a sensible idea, and he ought to do it promptly." She lowered the book and looked over her spectacles at Genevieve with an expression that was both perceptive and kind. "Sit down."
Genevieve sat. She tucked herself into the opposite chair and looked at the fire and tried to identify precisely what it was that she was feeling, which was something she had been practicing with varying success since her arrival at this house.
She was glad about the ball. She was genuinely, sincerely glad; it was a gesture, a reaching toward something, and she was not going to diminish it by wanting it to be more than it was. It was simply that there was a distance between being glad about a thing and being settled, and she was not entirely settled.
She still did not know her husband. Not truly. She knew the surface of him: the kindness, the consideration, the quiet humor that appeared when he was sufficiently at ease. She knew the way he looked when he was thinking about something he cared about, the particular animation that came into his face when he talked about the estate or his plans for it.
She knew that he listened when she spoke and that he remembered what she said, which was not a quality everyone possessed and which she had come to value considerably. She knew the architecture of him, she supposed. She had not yet walked through it.
She wondered, sometimes, in the evenings, whether he wanted to be known. Whether the careful pleasant distance he maintained was temporary, the natural caution of a man who had been hurt and was moving slowly, or whether it was simply what it was going to be. She had decided, early on, that patience was the only sensible approach, and she had held to that decision. But patience was easier on some evenings than others.
"Tell me about the Herveys," she said, because she knew Lady Harrington knew everything and this was a better use of the evening than sitting with her own thoughts.
Lady Harrington set her book aside with the air of a woman who had been hoping to be asked. "Lady Hervey," she began, "has been trying to marry off her youngest daughter for the better part of four seasons, which makes her rather more interested in other people's marriages than is strictly good manners.
You will be a subject of considerable fascination to her. She will ask questions that would be impertinent from a stranger and are only barely acceptable from an acquaintance. You will answer them pleasantly and say nothing of any substance whatsoever."
"Naturally," Genevieve said.
"Sir Edmund Hervey is less troublesome. He is a decent man with a genuine fondness for horses and a reasonable sense of humor, and he will talk to anyone who demonstrates a willingness to listen. Thomas can manage him." She folded her hands and continued.
"The other guests of note are the Carstairs, she is sharp and means well, he is amiable and means well, between them they have enough goodwill for a room twice the size. And the younger Pemberton girl, who has recently become engaged, will be in the intoxicated state of the newly betrothed, which tends to make people both charming and slightly impractical."
"And the general room?" Genevieve asked.
"The general room will watch you," Lady Harrington said, plainly. "This is simply the fact of your situation at present, and I would rather you walk in knowing it than be unpleasantly surprised. You are interesting to people. Your marriage is interesting. The circumstances that preceded it are interesting. This will fade in time, but it has not faded yet." She paused.
"What I want you to understand is that being watched is not the same as being judged, and being curious about you is not the same as being against you. Most of the people in that room will want you to do well, because most people, given the choice, prefer a happy outcome to an unhappy one. You simply need to give them one to observe."
"And how does one do that?" Genevieve asked.
"By being exactly what you already are," came the reply, with a simplicity that brooked no argument. "You are warm and you are kind and you are possessed of rather more social intelligence than you give yourself credit for. You handled the first weeks of this marriage in public with a composure that people noticed and respected. You do not need to perform anything at this ball. You simply need to be present, and genuine, and allow people to see what I and the staff of this house have already had the advantage of seeing."
Genevieve was quiet for a moment. She was aware of something settling in her, not quite confidence, not quite, but the precursor to it. The sense that the ground under her feet was more solid than she had been treating it as.
"What do I wear?" she asked.
Lady Harrington's eyes lit with the bright particular satisfaction of a woman who had been waiting for exactly that question.