“Why did he come?” Carlotta said loudly and hastily. “Just a fill in? Someone for you to dance with?”
Genevieve had not thought about that. On occasion her father did send someone in his place, with or without a possible suitor in tow, but it was usually someone she knew, a family friend from Evermire, or one of the older cousins, always someone solid and respectable and no longer young. “I really don’t know,” she said.
“For heaven’s sake, Genevieve! Don’t you care?”
She shook her head, which so infuriated Carlotta that she called Genevieve a long-nosed ice maiden. When Genevieve did not respond, Carlotta leaned close.
“Did you hear Glorieta and Barbara fighting? Willum asked Barbara to dance, and she said yes!”
“Isn’t that allowed?” Genevieve asked. “I’ve seen you dancing with him.”
“I’m family,” she said. “Barbara definitely isn’t! And there’s something more to it than just dancing. Glorieta has been crying a lot lately.”
Carlotta, it seemed, didn’t know the reasons for any of it, for Glorieta refused to talk about it, and though Carlotta and Genevieve whispered about it for some time, Genevieve could not think of anything comforting to say. Finally, Carlotta yawned, collected her sister from the balcony, and they went off to their own beds below.
Genevieve turned out her light and pulled the blankets around her shoulders, but then surprised herself by lying there, worrying about Glorieta. Or Barbara. Or even Carlotta. She couldn’t help it, even though she had long ago realized that the characters in her plays were not exempt from tragedy. Characters were sometimes written out. Her own mother, for example, had been written out. Someday Genevieve herself would be written out so her soul could go flitting off into paradise where it would flutter from blossom to blossom, sipping nectar, no longer needing resignation. As for this unexpected plot twist in the Amenaj play, she would watch it, of course, but there was nothing she could do about it. All plays would come to an end eventually.
Nonetheless, she had a difficult time dismissing the quarrel between Glorieta and Barbara. She was also unable to stop thinking about the Colonel. Tonight those three characters had stepped off the stage and engaged her attention at a level that was completely new to her. They had seemed real to her, especially the Colonel, for he had made her want to touch him, even before they had danced, the way she sometimes wanted to hug Barbara, though she never did, for it would be an unpermitted sensuality. The Colonel’s arms had felt strong and safe, and his questions had not, truthfully, been all that strange, though he had seemed too casual about the first one and too oddly intense about the others. But then, he was quite young. Thirtyish. And very good looking.
Outside, in the garden, Barbara, still in her ball gown, leaned against the stones of the wall while Willum watched her from four inches away, his hands on the wall on either side of her head, his eyes boring purposefully into hers.
“Glorieta is my friend,” she said weakly. “This wouldn’t be right.”
“If you’d really cared about that, you wouldn’t have sneaked out to meet me,” said Willum in his slow, slightly arrogant voice.
“Your father won’t allow you to marry me, Willum. You’re already betrothed.”
“Father will allow whatever I want. He thinks two brothers marrying two sisters sounds very nice but may lead to unpleasant complications. He was here tonight, he saw you. He’s quite impressed. Besides, Father’s getting elderly. He’s sixty-four. He doesn’t want me to wait ten years to give him a grandson, and Glorieta is set on having her full youth before getting married.”
“Well,” Barbara said in a teasing voice. “If you’re sure .”
He pulled her to him and put his lips over her own, holding her tightly. Slowly, her arms went around him. When he released her, she was panting, her eyes were softened and glazed looking, as though she had gone blind in the instant.
She murmured drunkenly. “You’ll have to break your betrothal to Glorieta first. I won’t have her saying that I broke up her betrothal . . .”