Re: Ball: Clementine, Irene & Declan
Irene had swung around ballrooms in the arms of men who paid less attention to her than they did the looks on other men's faces. She had danced with men who were extremely elegant, and men who stumbled on her own toes but had fortunes enough that she was obliged to forgive them. The champagne in their flutes sparkled beneath the chandeliers but Irene's eyes were clear and steady, calculating grey.
"Madam," she corrected him with a smile nothing less than dazzling. He had, she discerned, something the matter with his leg - his ankle, or perhaps, as his weight transferred and she turned within his hands as smoothly as glass compensating for the trajectory - his knee. Yes, that was it.
"I haven't been a miss for a decade." Her lashes didn't lower over the notion he'd read her. Irene was fascinated by the idea that they were all written down somewhere in books - fascinated and in equal measure frustrated. She hadn't an idea how she appeared or to what extent her history was captured in bound volumes to be bought. But she smiled without a hint of trouble.
"What do I want? Are you asking me my designs upon her?" Irene began to laugh. She watched the turn of his jaw, mindlessly seeking his sister as she had him. "What if I told you she was entertainment? What would you do then? Or perhaps you paint me the picture of the seducer or the concerned friend, or a villain?" The drawl was deliberately irritating.
"Tell me, what is it you imagine I want from your sister?"