Lydia herself was a narrow, quick-eyed young woman with an excellent memory and a gift for being present in rooms where things were being said. She was the kind of person about whom other people spoke carelessly because they had decided, for reasons that were more instinct than observation, that she was not quite paying attention. Clarissa had always known better.
"You look well," Lydia said, with the warmth of someone who was examining her closely. "Considering."
"Thank you," Clarissa said, as if the qualifier had not been there. She settled into the better chair by the window and accepted tea she did not want. "Tell me what has been happening."
Lydia set down her own cup and folded her hands in the particular way that meant she had been waiting for precisely this question and had already organized her answer.
"Where would you like me to start?"
"Wherever is most interesting."
"Then I will start with your sister."
Clarissa smiled, though it did not reach anything deeper than her mouth.
"I supposed you might."
Lydia needed very little prompting.
"They were at the Petersons'," Lydia said . "Last Thursday. And the Chatworths' dinner the week before."
"Were they," Clarissa said.
"And I believe there was something at the Pembrokes, or was it the Carstairs? One of the two." Lydia helped herself to another biscuit with the unhurried ease of a woman who was enjoying herself. "They have been quite… out. Generally."
"How lovely for them," Clarissa said pleasantly.
"And in town. Mrs. Harrington was seen walking with him on the high street. Mrs. Forde mentioned it, she said they looked very… " Lydia paused, choosing her word with a care that suggested the first several options had been rejected for being too pointed. "Settled."
Clarissa turned her teacup slightly in her hand.
"Settled."
"And there was a horse race." Lydia said . "They went to the races together. Apparently she knows rather a lot about horses."
"A horse race," Clarissa repeated.
"Together. Apparently they stayed the entire afternoon." Lydia paused for effect. "She was laughing at something he said. Mr. Foster saw them and mentioned it."
Clarissa arranged her expression into something she decided was dispassionate interest. She had not expected that, precisely. She had expected Thomas to maintain the polite, duty-driven distance of a man who had married practically and knew it. The quiet, dignified indifference that she had always imagined would describe his marriage to her sister. She had expected Genevieve to be grateful and slightly uncertain, as Genevieve had always tended to be in situations that exceeded what she had planned for.
She had not expected horse races. She had not expected laughter.
She had been at enough social gatherings in her life to understand what laughing at a man's words in public meant. Not the polite, managed laughter of obligation. Rather the real kind… the kind Mr. Foster had apparently found worth reporting. It meant ease. It meant the particular comfort of two people who had stopped performing for each other and had not yet noticed the transition.
Genevieve had always been susceptible to kindness. Clarissa had understood that about her since they were girls. That her sister wanted, more than most things, to be genuinely considered by someone, and that whoever offered her that in good faith would have her whole attention in return.
She had simply not expected Thomas to be the one offering it.
"He does not care for her," she said. The conviction was so familiar that she did not notice it was partly argument rather than conclusion. "He has simply made the best of his situation. He is an honorable man."
"Of course," Lydia said, in the tone she used when she agreed with Clarissa for reasons of social ease rather than actual persuasion.
"You have seen them yourself?" Clarissa asked.
"At the Hurst's dinner, briefly. They arrived together and " Lydia paused with the instinct of someone who understood the value of the right pause, "they left together. Which I realize sounds unremarkable for a married couple, but there was nothing obligatory in the manner of it. He spoke to her before he spoke to anyone else in the room."
Clarissa absorbed this without expression.