Henrietta had just managed to get the pin undone (somehow; she could barely see through the curtain of tears threatening to spill out of her eyes at any moment) when she heard him swear. Henrietta was not the sort of person people tended to use profanity around, ever, so this startled her enough to look up at him, and then to follow his eyes towards the nearest table. She felt a flash of panic as she saw sparks and flames, then a sinking feeling of dread as she realized it was the primrose centerpiece that had caught fire.

As if trying to distance herself from anything that might connect her to the primroses, Henrietta slipped her wrist out of the corsage, which was still hooked onto the man's shirt sleeve. Taking a moment to gather her skirt up as high as she could (this might result in her flashing her ankles at someone, but it was a necessary evil to avoid putting her dangling train in the way of anyone's feet as she fled — and hopefully everyone would be too distracted by the fires to pay her ankles any mind, anyway), Henrietta turned and made her way as quickly as possible out of the ballroom, intending to disappear into her bedroom for the rest of the evening, or perhaps for the rest of her life.