Well. Clio could stop worrying, she supposed. That was Phoebe as usual.
Daphne and Teddy came in next.
Clio curtsied to her brother-in-law. He jammed his hat down to shade his bruised face, barely acknowledging her with a nod before proceeding upstairs.
Daphne sidled up to explain. “Clio, you had better be grateful. We overstayed our welcome with the Penningtons in the worst way.”
“You, overstaying a welcome? How difficult to believe.”
“I was determined that we would be the last guests at the ball,” she said. “We had to manage the rumors, you know. Teddy was a saint on your behalf. He laughed off the punch as a bit of sport between friends. We told every person who asked that you swooned and Lord Rafe escorted you home.” Her sister regarded her closely. “That is what happened, isn’t it?”
“More or less.”
The events didn’t unfold in exactly the order Daphne might assume, and a great deal more had happened besides. But strictly speaking, it was a truthful statement.
“Then good,” her sister said, inhaling sharply. “That’s that.”
Clio didn’t fool herself. She knew Daphne and Teddy’s scrambling was as much about preserving their own social status as it was to do with hers.
But if the potential for scandal was already managed, there wasn’t any need for a hasty elopement. She could have whatever sort of wedding she wished.
All the choices were still hers.
“Now,” Daphne said, “unless you mean to make me the worst sort of liar, the wedding had better be spectacular. And soon.”
Clio led her sister to the sitting room. “Perhaps it will be. Come with me.”
No fewer than six dressmakers and assistants stood waiting to assist her. The room was so spattered in frothy white, it looked like a volcano had erupted. A volcano of meringue.
Clio turned to Daphne and said the words she knew her sister had been longing to hear for years.
“Make me beautiful.”
“This is madness.”
Rafe had spent enough time in drawing rooms this week to last him a lifetime. And he certainly had no wish to see Clio fitted in a gown for a wedding that wasn’t meant to be theirs.
“Maybe we ought to leave,” he said.
He didn’t know what the devil was wrong with him, but if he had any decency, he would cease inflicting it on Clio.
“Are you syphilitic?” Bruiser had his ear pressed to the connecting door. “We are not going to leave. Rafe, you don’t know what I’ve been through in the past few days. Just getting the dressmakers here from London was difficult enough. But that ring? Oh, you owe me for that ring.”
Rafe didn’t know how to argue with that. In truth, he owed Bruiser all manner of debts. It occurred to him that his trainer just might be the one person in his life he’d managed to not drive away.
“How long have we been working together?” Rafe asked. “Five years?”
“Six, by my counting.”
“And I’m going to assume that you dream about leaving my employ just as often as I contemplate setting you loose.”
“Daily, you mean? Oh, certainly.”
“So how is it that we’ve kept this partnership together?”
Bruiser gave him an annoyed look. “By not overthinking it.”
Right.
Perhaps there was a seed of truth in his trainer’s impatient answer. Rafe should stop overthinking things. He loved Clio. He’d do anything to keep her. Anything. That was God’s truth as it lived in his heart, and what he meant to tell her the instant she came through the door.
“She’s coming. Stand up.”
He knew he was in trouble before she even entered the room. He could hear it in the rhythm of her footsteps. Brisk. Confident. Fierce.
No thunks.
Or clunks.
She felt powerful. Which meant she would be beautiful.
He rose to his feet, found his center of balance, kept his joints loose, and got ready to roll with the punch.
The doors opened.
Holy God. He didn’t stand a chance.
She was a knockout.