Re: Ball: Clementine, Irene & Declan
The room was very full of ghosts, it would appear. Ranked, like an audience with clasped hands and the lip-curl of a smile amused in the direction of so much deliberate ignorance. Irene's was smoke, the charred-sweet smell of opium resin and the metallic slither of blood. There was a promise-note written somewhere in a careless hand that she had very deliberately put out of mind, there was the expectation that she would be found, no matter where she ran. But she was here in a room, in an establishment given to opulence and it mattered not at all who she was at all.
She had no possible way to discern the reason for the speculative exchange of glances, but Irene was strung the way of a particularly expensive violin, receptive to suggestion if not outright. Clementine sparkled like gilt and paste, like the girl who had stood between limelights and cried out for direction. And Declan, Irene knew not at all.
"Darling, you merely suggest by virtue of moving with confidence that the way you do it is not wrong at all." Suseration of skirts, and a smile that verged on suggestive. "The young ladies beyond the stairs will fall into line. Are you especially confident?"
A glance to the audience: Irene, the consummate performer. "Here." Hands held out, bare palmed and quite without gloves.