Someone was dead and the chandelier had just come crashing down, so the party was – well and truly over, presumably. Jemima would have apparated away from the Sanditon then and there, except after fainting in Apparition lessons more than once she hadn’t worked up the confidence to take the test yet, so she didn’t trust herself to do it now.
Also the screams in the room and the shock of the chandelier had made her break the champagne flute in her hand, and after that Jemima had been almost too blankly taken aback by the jagged cut welling blood on her palm and the glass smashed at her feet to take in anything else in the room.
She should – fix her hand. She should find someone to help her fix up her hand. She should maybe find Jacob. Or at least Delilah and her husband; they had been standing close by before. She should get out of here as soon as possible – was that HALF A BODY?
Nerves wracked further by every new howl of the storm outside, Jemima hurried down the hall towards the powder room – to get out of the crush of people, to find somewhere quiet to clean up her hand, in the hope Delilah was there... she wasn’t thinking with any real coherence, her heart hammering too loudly in her chest.
And it was dark and she was alone and a little terrified, so when someone rushed after her, exclaiming with some urgency about her skirt, Jemima could only blink in detached disbelief at him, more concerned that she was almost about to embarrass herself by crying. “Really? Is now truly the time?” she said, her sniffling not making her response sound as indignant as she had planned. “It’s just a champagne stain,” she explained, face growing hot but refusing to look down at her dress again – it was just damp in places where the glass had spilled, that was all. On any other night, it might have felt like the end of the world, but... surely tonight this man had better things to worry about than the state of her clothes?
Also the screams in the room and the shock of the chandelier had made her break the champagne flute in her hand, and after that Jemima had been almost too blankly taken aback by the jagged cut welling blood on her palm and the glass smashed at her feet to take in anything else in the room.
She should – fix her hand. She should find someone to help her fix up her hand. She should maybe find Jacob. Or at least Delilah and her husband; they had been standing close by before. She should get out of here as soon as possible – was that HALF A BODY?
Nerves wracked further by every new howl of the storm outside, Jemima hurried down the hall towards the powder room – to get out of the crush of people, to find somewhere quiet to clean up her hand, in the hope Delilah was there... she wasn’t thinking with any real coherence, her heart hammering too loudly in her chest.
And it was dark and she was alone and a little terrified, so when someone rushed after her, exclaiming with some urgency about her skirt, Jemima could only blink in detached disbelief at him, more concerned that she was almost about to embarrass herself by crying. “Really? Is now truly the time?” she said, her sniffling not making her response sound as indignant as she had planned. “It’s just a champagne stain,” she explained, face growing hot but refusing to look down at her dress again – it was just damp in places where the glass had spilled, that was all. On any other night, it might have felt like the end of the world, but... surely tonight this man had better things to worry about than the state of her clothes?
