The survival of her best friend and brother was more than Angeline could have hoped for. They were the two people she loved best in all the world and the fact that both of them had been in such terrible danger without her there to help (although quite what she would have done was a little vaguer in Angel's mind) had caused her to lose sleep at night. Even her little helper had done no good and the nightmares had come repeatedly.

But today Bella was coming here. Her message, though short, had been extremely welcome and waiting in the parlour Angel had worked herself up into quite the state of anxiety by the time she heard the door go.

“Bella!” She shot across the room to embrace her friend tightly. She had been so foolish to ever take her for granted! What would she have done if Bella died?! Tig Angel clung to her determinately, holding her ever closer when she felt her shake a little. “Nothing can be that terrible if you're alive.”

Clutching Bella’s hands in her own Angel led her to the chaise and casting her eyes over her friend she didn’t see any change that might ruin her prospects. She was still beautiful and surely she hadn’t discovered her father was a halfblood too?

“Just because you were on a boat that sank?”

“No, she isn’t,” Angeline replied immediately and belligerently, doubting she would have missed that little titbit of gossip but the penny soon dropped. Shock overcoming her she fell into the seat next to Bella.

“She didn’t?”

On the one hand Angel was appalled. It was a well-known fact that catching a man through being a slut was at best a faux pas amongst one’s fellow debutantes and at worst a one-way ticket to being ostracised by society for the rest of one’s life. No one would ever forget how Mr and Mrs Prewett had wed so hastily, even if they were married for another fifty years.

But on the other hand…

Angel would never admit it to another soul – except Bella, usually, but definitely not in this instance – but they had probably all considered it with the likes of Fitzroy Prewett. And she could very well imagine that Camilla, given her circumstances, was more eager than most.

“Is she…in trouble?” Angel asked, whispering the last words cagily, as though someone might be listening.

If she’d had pearls to clutch then Angel would have done just that. Like most proper young ladies she had no official knowledge of what one could be caught doing with a young man that might necessitate having a hasty marriage but in practice she had grown up with Raph, who was no angel, and she had some suspicions of what Matilda Zabini may have walked in on.

“Perhaps he enchanted her?” She suggested, not meaning the metaphorical interpretation.

From everything she had heard there were few positions that Mr Fitzroy Prewett had not been caught in but that was by-the-by for the moment and Angel kept her face in a meticulous display of shock and sympathy for her friend. Though, and feeling rather shabby about it, she mentally removed Camilla from her group of friends; it was a shame, as far as her best friends’ siblings went she was far superior to Ligeia and Tatiana Lestrange.

“But,” she began tentatively. “It isn’t all that bad, is it darling? He might be the most eligible of them but don’t forget that Mr Prewett has three single brothers so perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise?”

It struck Angel then that if Harriet Prewett did indeed decree that the rest of the Zabinis were persona non grata then it likely wouldn’t be long before her own mother followed suit. It could be another season or two before she was even allowed to see he best friend and they would nearly be old maids by then!

Unconsciously she squeezed Bella’s hand tightly in hers.

“I won’t let her.”

Casting aside her usual decorum – if she couldn’t with Bella, then with who? – Angel shuffled closer and wrapped her friend in her arms. It was a gesture more becoming of the children they had been together once upon a time but Angel held her tighter than ever before and held back tears at the thought that Bella might have died but for Camilla being a slattern.

Angel had never been so glad of anyone else’s unfortunate behaviour.

“Everything will be fine darling, you’ll see. You know,” she suggested idly. "You could take some of my laudanum if you'd like? I get upset all the time and it makes such a difference."