Re: Ball: Clementine, Irene & Declan
Irene had earned the right not to tolerate anything. She'd earned it in blood and in time and in determination and hours spent rigid-jawed and outwardly submissive and meek. But women, Irene thought, rarely tolerated anything. Their battles were inward, a war kept neatly within a vessel. They were not allowed to contemplate drawing lines in sand, let alone in steel. Irene didn't consider herself much of a woman despite what was beneath her skirts. No, women endured and it was not the same as tolerance. It required no patience.
Men were handed names like trophies - no, as if they were carelessly outworn shoes, to pass along the family line, but shoes required to tread a certain path. Irene didn't doubt this young man with sharp blue eyes and a gait made loose by injury, had his self-worth handed over with blood in veins and pretty eyes.
The barb buried itself beneath the skin, Irene could see that. Her eyelashes lowered demurely over satisfaction, but her smile was flint sparking off steel. "The men here, darling, aren't the type to propose marriage in dark corners," she informed him with leisurely disinterest in his displeasure.
Nor was Clementine the type to fasten the chain around her ankle, drag an anchor alongside her. Irene's interest in Clementine was rooted in exposure: frayed edges and peeled corners and one set of masks and theater lines traded for another. She was not a man, she was not invested in possession. But he was and she noted the twist of the phrase like a knife blooming behind the ribs. Curious.
She laughed. Low, and intimate and up toward his face. "You call me the villain. Villains are for stage theatrics and performances. People are people." It was a truth, startling amongst so much artifice.
"You worry over someone - a man - taking her from you?" Another barb tossed.