Study; watching the theatricals.
Perhaps the evening's entertainments were darker than Vanessa had intended, but it was surely not deliberate. The young woman in the study who had orchestrated the gathering, she was surely not to blame for the lack of lightheartedness upon the stage. She hardly looked capable of ill-thought, and she certainly did not look capable of ill-deed.
Dressed in the palest blue, and as pallid as she was golden of hair, Mina Murray stood in the study's dark corner, and she watched as a young actress crossed the platform that served as the stage for the evening's theatricals. On the far side of the platform, young men in robes waited, and they surely had foul plans for the young ingenue that came toward them. The refined women in the darkened study gasped, shielded from such frights in their daily existences. The men gathered gawped, waiting for bodice to be ripped and for blood to be spilled.
Mina simply watched, and fear didn't cause her pulse to race, though she looked every bit a demurring flower in her inoffensive blue. The women sharing the space with her, they'd chosen daring colors for a daring evening. Visiting the home of women of questionable characters, it was surely cause enough to bring out the bolder colors. Garnet, golds, blacks and rich purples, necklines plunging deep and barely-there bustles that did little to hide the female shape. In contrast, the daughter of the house stood out for the pallor of her periwinkle gown, and for the relatively modest plunge of her neckline.
She'd no idea where Vanessa was, though she hoped the evening would offer some enlightenment about those among Vanessa's circle of friends. She knew so little of what her old friend was about these days, and her concern was her motivation. They were older now, both, and their lives had followed the paths set into motion on that idyllic seaside. Certainly, all those dreadful feelings born in that place had long gone.
Upon the platform, the men in robes neared, and the wallflower blinked lazily from her darkened corner.