"You are kind," Genevieve said pleasantly.
“Not at all, it is just wonderful to see you doing so well,” Clarissa said, her voice saccharine.
“It is good to see you doing well too,” Thomas said. His voice was not flat, per say. No. It was…
Measured.
Courteous.
Genevieve, watching from the particular vantage of a woman who knew her husband fairly well by now, heard the careful register of his words.
Genevieve slipped her hand into Thomas's arm—easily, as though it were simply where her hand happened to rest—and looked at her sister cheerfully. "We are so glad you are home. I have been hoping to call on you, but you always seem to be out when I come by."
Something moved through Clarissa's expression at that. Genevieve filed it away.
“Is that so?” Clarissa asked, almost stiffly. “We shall have to arrange a time for a proper reunion.”
“We shall,” Genevieve nodded.
She had developed, over the course of the past months, a habit of noticing things. Small observations, small inconsistencies, the particular weight of a silence in the wrong place. It was not suspicion exactly. It was simply that she had stopped assuming goodwill was the correct default setting for every interaction, which was perhaps a development that was overdue.
Thomas had said something to that effect once, gently, framed as a compliment rather than a criticism. She had found she agreed with him.
The group dispersed as groups at balls tend to do, called in various directions by music and acquaintance and the general momentum of the evening. Genevieve found herself eventually in the company of Caroline and a small cluster of women near the refreshments, pleasantly settled.
She noticed Lydia Hargrove on the periphery of the group perhaps a moment before Lydia made her presence felt.
Lydia Hargrove had a quality that Genevieve associated with a particular type of social operator. The type that had learned very young that visibility was a resource to be managed carefully. She was never quite in the center of things. She was always close enough though that the center was aware of her. Genevieve had seen the type before, though rarely as accomplished a practitioner as this.
She watched Lydia for a moment without appearing to watch her.
She is waiting for something.
The thing that Lydia was waiting for soon made itself very apparent .
She could not have said what alerted her. Perhaps it was the way Lydia positioned herself—not joining the conversation exactly, but adjacent to it, like a person waiting for a particular note to be struck. Perhaps it was simply that she had been watching more carefully than usual tonight.
When it came, it arrived sideways, as these things always did.
"I must say," Lydia said, to no one in particular and therefore to everyone, "it is lovely to see Mr. Harrington so much in society again. After everything." She paused just long enough. "He was quite withdrawn, for a time. Understandably so."
"Understandably," someone agreed. Mrs. Forde, Genevieve thought, without looking.
"Well." Lydia smiled the smile of a woman building something. "When one has formed such a decided attachment, and everyone knew how decided it was, and then events take such an unexpected turn, one can hardly be surprised if it takes some time to—" she gestured delicately, "—readjust."
"He has readjusted remarkably well," Caroline said, in a tone with an edge to it.
"He has," Lydia agreed warmly. "That is exactly what I mean. He is such an honorable man. Such a thoroughly decent, honorable man." She let this sit for a moment. "One does admire how he has simply—made the best of things."
Genevieve went still.
"I beg your pardon?" Caroline said, sharply.
But Lydia was already well into the architecture of it, her voice never losing its pleasant, wondering quality, as though she were simply thinking aloud among friends.
"It is only that we all knew, did not we, how things stood. Before. He was devoted to Clarissa, absolutely devoted, anyone with eyes could see it. And then of course Clarissa—" a small, sympathetic sigh.
"Well. And so here we are." She looked directly at Genevieve for the first time, with an expression of such warm, melting sympathy that Genevieve felt it like a hand closing around her throat. "It must be a comfort," Lydia said, "knowing that he is such a good man. That he would never make you feel…" another delicate pause, "second."