Re: Ball: Clementine, Irene & Declan
Oh, distraction. Irene knew from the opium-den that men had all kinds of desires, from the infernal to the idiotic. She had a dim knowledge of younger men - boys - being sent away to schools to live amongst themselves without a sniff of a woman, and it was practically a certainty that they would turn out altered. But there was something of the theater in the way Clementine strained to catch sight of her brother, and that was not he, it was she.
The gentleman so dismissed for lack of discerning charm left, his gloves much rumpled in his hands, and Irene sipped her champagne and surveyed the room.
"It really depends on what interest you wish to kindle," she observed, watching Declan's progress. The woman in his arms was an actress of some talent -- and was extremely expensive to the man whose pocket she lived in. "Are you looking to forget who you are again? Or to remember it?"