He was just going to up and leave her to the wolves? (The lone wolf. Mrs. Dempsey and her expectant looks.) Jemima could not entirely blame him for this – obviously he had not known what he was arriving into, any more than she had expected to have to explain herself to anyone – but she felt a little bit abandoned, all the same. (Everyone would think far worse of her than they would of him, if anyone did mistakenly think something untoward had happened!)

At least she could cling to the knowledge that she had done nothing wrong. (Foolish, maybe, in hiding in here; but nothing unforgivable, she hoped.) All she needed was for Mrs. Dempsey to believe her.

“It was too warm, and I couldn’t think and I couldn’t breathe – my – my corset was too tight,” she mumbled, aware it sounded like a childish, plaintive complaint. “I meant to find the retiring room,” she added hastily, “but I got lost, and – then Mr., Mr. Greengrass came through the Floo?” There was a spark of hope in her eyes now, as she looked to him; surely he would have a better alibi than her, wherever he had been!

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The following 1 user Likes Jemima Greengrass's post:1 user Likes Jemima Greengrass's post
   Fortitude Greengrass

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Ford stopped in his tracks at the snap of Mrs. Dempsey's fingers (not that he had gotten much farther than half-lifting one foot, anyway, in his attempt to flee the room). A competent explanation seemed like a fairly tall order, given how well they'd handled things so far. Ford crossed his arms and bit the knuckles on one of his hands. The young woman was regaining her composure faster than he was, because this was an almost credible explanation. Too warm, and she'd been looking for the retiring room — alright, fine, and maybe it was still a bit incredible to think she would have gotten herself so undressed just to try and cool down, but it was in the neighborhood of reasonable — and maybe combined with that stupid thing he'd said earlier about how her dress broke, it could almost be called sensible. She'd tried to just undo a lace or two, maybe, and then it had all fallen apart and left her in this state — sure, maybe they could make that claim. He didn't think Mrs. Dempsey would buy it, but they could certainly claim it.

Then she went and said he'd come in through the floo. Ford's jaw tightened, biting his knuckle hard enough to bruise now, and he shot the young woman a look of wide-eyed panic. He hadn't been expecting her to turn him over like that — not when he had said nothing about whoever she had presumably been in here with before, whoever had actually taken her dress off and whom she was clearly trying to protect. Now Mrs. Dempsey was going to know that he'd been somewhere else during the middle of the ball, and even if he was able to come up with an excuse for stepping away momentarily it would be far too easy for her to check his story against the other guests. He could claim he'd dashed home to get a headache potion for his mother, maybe, except that only took ten minutes and no one at the party had seen him for at least three-quarters of an hour. And no one found that suspicious yet, but someone at this party was going to go home tonight and find that they had been robbed, and if there were already rumors wondering where Mr. Greengrass had been —

— and, it suddenly occurred to him, there was only one potential alibi left to him, given this turn of events.

There was a buzzing in his ears and a pit in his stomach, but the decision was made. He couldn't be arrested. It would sink his entire family.

"It's no use," he muttered at the young woman, and if he'd remembered her name he would have tacked on her first name for good measure, to sell it a little more. "She's not stupid."

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The following 2 users Like Fortitude Greengrass's post:2 users Like Fortitude Greengrass's post
   Elias Grimstone, Thomasina Dempsey

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Set by Lady!

Sina just about believed Miss Farley. She was mumbling, and she'd gotten lost — and surely they were not so stupid as to have no excuse for Mr. Greengrass undressing her. Maybe Greengrass was the weird one — he certainly looked like it, with the knuckle in his mouth.

And then Greengrass spoke, and Thomasina's attention snapped to him, and her expression shifted to one of disdain.

"You'd better fix her dress, then," Thomasina said, stony — and spun around to veer back to the party.

The following 1 user Likes Thomasina Dempsey's post:1 user Likes Thomasina Dempsey's post
   Jemima Greengrass

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set by MJ

Jemima didn’t know what had just happened. She had thought – the truth. The truth, humiliating and unfortunate as it may be, had been about to be their way out of this. She had nearly even sighed a real breath of relief; instead, as Mrs. Dempsey told him coldly to fix her dress and all Jemima could do was stare blankly at him in slow dawning disbelief, the noise that rose in her throat was more like a moan.

“I – don’t understand,” Jemima said, in so small a voice that it was almost a whisper. Maybe Mrs. Dempsey wasn’t stupid, but Jemima evidently was, because she couldn’t work out what had possessed him to say it. Why hadn’t he taken the hint and just explained? Or... where could he have been, what else could he have been doing, that was possibly worse than... whatever was now implied that they had been doing here? Because she was – still half undressed in the middle of a ball; the Minister’s wife was headed for the door, suddenly inscrutable, her suspicions confirmed. If any shred of this surfaced beyond the room, be it true or mostly false, it was going to ruin her. Utterly.

Her lips tightened in an attempt to keep some composure, but hot tears were pricking at her eyes now, her hands bunched up in the bodice she still hadn’t been able to put on, and Jemima didn’t know anymore if she was more angry at herself or at him. If she said anything else now, she was going to cry before she got the words out, so all she managed was shooting him a look, part-wounded and part-accusatory, a how could you do this to me?

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The following 3 users Like Jemima Greengrass's post:3 users Like Jemima Greengrass's post
   Alice Dawson, Fortitude Greengrass, Thomasina Dempsey

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Ford had been expecting a lecture, once he admitted to what Mrs. Dempsey clearly already thought they'd done. He didn't know whether to be dismayed or relieved when none followed. On the one hand, it saved the immediate pain of having to sit through one while he was still a few feet from the floo and she was still mostly undressed; on the other hand, there was no telling what Mrs. Dempsey was planning to go do now. Maybe the lecture would be forthcoming, once she had gone and confided their secret to someone else. Only time would tell.

The door was still hanging open, gaping to the hallway beyond. He would have moved to shut it, except the girl had said something so quietly that he felt he really had to turn and look at her in order to acknowledge that he'd heard it, and then he saw her face. They'd been together during the Sanditon Hurricane, he recalled. It was the tears in the corners of her eyes that did it, finally bringing back exactly where he knew her from. This was the same expression on her face now, he thought with an acute sense of guilt. As though she suspected she would die.

He had maybe just ruined this girl forever — certainly left her reputation to the mercy of an unfriendly third party — and he felt the full weight of that in his stomach and on his shoulders. "She'd already made up her mind," he mumbled. Maybe that was true, or maybe it wasn't, but either way it didn't make him feel any less miserable about what had just happened.

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   Jemima Greengrass

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Set by Lady!

There was a sick feeling in her stomach; she felt too sick to argue, so she just shook her head at him wordlessly. Had she made up her mind? Had she really? And – even if she had... Jemima had at once supposed they would go down protesting their innocence to the end, because they had been innocent.

But – who in the world would believe her now, if even the man who knew that would not bother to say so?

But, she tried to tell herself, maybe nothing else would come of tonight at all. Maybe this was the worst she would feel. Maybe she was worrying over nothing. Although... Jemima may have never done anything so dreadful before (– a few stolen kisses paled entirely besides the implications of this –) but she couldn’t help but be afraid the people who were only acquainted with her from afar might actually think badly enough of her to believe it. More people than she cared to remember had read her diary, when she was at school; she had given herself a certain reputation then, one that she had supposed safely behind her. There was a slow trickle of dread at the back of her neck. She glanced at the fireplace, wanting nothing more than to just go home and pretend this had never happened.

But perhaps that would look worse, if she didn’t reappear. And her mother and sister were out there, so – she ought to go back out and show her face for a moment, if not to hold her head high, then to plead illness and have her mother take her home. Jemima half-wanted to look at him again to see how swiftly he would slip away now, all but impervious; but instead she turned away purposefully, and started struggling blindly with her corset-strings again. She was trembling, and she was pulling them tighter haphazardly and still trying not to sob, but she didn’t care now if she dislocated her shoulder or the corset made an awkward shape beneath her dress; she just needed to set herself to rights enough to make it through the ballroom for a minute. Perhaps she had learned her lesson too late, but she would not ask for help again.

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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The look she gave him as she grappled with the situation and the suddenness with which she turned away left Ford feeling much more soundly chastised than any words could have. He swallowed. This was a rotten situation for either of them to have been in, and he couldn't pretend he hadn't just thrown her to the wolves. The Minister's wife was about as bad as things could be, in terms of people to know your supposedly darkest secrets. But even in the face of her overwhelming dismay at how things had played out, he couldn't regret the choice that he'd made. If one of his sisters had been in a situation like hers then yes, he would have hoped for better from the man she'd been caught with — but his sisters would not get a chance to be in any situations, good, bad, or otherwise, if they were living on the streets after he'd been arrested and Noble had declared bankruptcy.

Head hung, he walked to the door and closed it, turning the handle gently so as not to make a sound... though he supposed the caution was unnecessary now. If Mrs. Dempsey was of a mind to send people after them, stealthily closing the door wouldn't avoid the inevitable. Neither would the lock, so he skipped it. He didn't think it had done either of them any favors in the past few minutes and it hadn't slowed Mrs. Dempsey's entrance much.

Ford looked back at the young woman, who was in the process of trying to fix her corset herself and didn't seem to be making a very good run of it. He took the few steps back to where he'd been before and reached towards her shoulder, but hesitated. "Can I...?" he asked, touching one of the loose edges of her dress to indicate that he meant help, since she still wasn't looking at him. She seemed to be in need of it, but given what had happened he would be entirely unsurprised if she didn't want his help.

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Set by Lady!

To think she might have felt sorry for him a few minutes before, at having mixed him up in this situation. And he must have some reason for doing what he had, and Jemima probably ought to force it out of him, but – she didn’t think it would make her feel better tonight. She didn’t think anything would make her feel better tonight.

She tensed, with a sharp inhale, at the gentle tug of her dress and the sensation of him at her shoulder again. Haven’t you done enough, Jemima wanted to snap; but she only bit down on the inside of her cheek, because the angrier she got the more likely it was that she would cry. And she couldn’t go out there with a tear-streaked face on top of all this, that would only draw more attention.

Mrs. Dempsey had told him to. Perhaps he may as well. Jemima didn’t look over her shoulder, but hand stilled, and, with great reluctance, she offered the remaining laces to him. It would be faster this way.

“Do you think she’ll – say anything?” she asked, still scarcely above a whisper. Discretion made no difference now, of course; he might have closed the door, but their fate was out of their hands. (And Jemima didn’t even like to think the word their, as if this was something they shared, but – well, he had not helped that, either.)

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She did not seem especially gratified by his offer of help, but she'd handed the laces over. He had been more than half expecting her to snap at him or to whirl and smack his hand away, so this was about as decent an outcome as he could have hoped for. She'd even made enough of a start on them by now that he didn't have to try and puzzle out which direction they were meant to go from here. Now that she'd done a few it was hard to imagine how he'd been confused about it before. Maybe that had been more to do with his state of mind than it did with the state of her corset. He did feel, perhaps paradoxically, calmer now that Mrs. Dempsey had come and gone. Maybe he'd expended all of the anxiety he had the capacity to feel for this series of minutes. Maybe it was just that things had already gotten about as bad as they could reasonably be expected to, and there was no use fretting over them when they could no longer get worse — or at least, that whether they got worse or not was solidly out of their control. Maybe he was anxious still, but had crossed some dissociative threshold for it and would feel it all later. Whatever the case, he made short work of her laces, up until she asked him a question which forced him to stop and realize how divorced she was from the reality of their situation.

"Yes," he answered, matching her volume. Of course Mrs. Dempsey would say something. It wasn't even a question. He was still a little shocked that the young woman had asked it. He felt vaguely sick about it, actually, and it took him half a beat to realize that was because it reminded him of Grace. She asked these sorts of wistful questions all the time: do you think mother will make me do introductions with everyone? before her debut as though willfully forgetting that was the whole purpose of the evening; do you think that she loves him? on the eve of Verity's wedding when they all knew very well she didn't. Grace asked questions as if she hoped by asking the question she could persuade you to change reality in order to give her the answer she wanted, and Ford hated these kinds of questions because he was forever disappointing her.

"The only real question is who she tells," he said as he got his fingers working on the remainder of the corset laces again. "I suppose the best case scenario is your parents." He had not actually decided if this was a better scenario than her telling the Minister, because while he was mortified by the idea of the Minister having any insight (even incorrectly) into his sex life he also suspected the man would do nothing about it beyond perhaps telling Morgan to lecture him, and Morgan — was not very good at lectures, to say the least. But Ford also didn't know whether his boss or the Minister were very inclined to keep secrets of this nature, and he suspected the young woman's parents would be quite eager to keep this under wraps.

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The following 1 user Likes Fortitude Greengrass's post:1 user Likes Fortitude Greengrass's post
   Elias Grimstone

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Set by Lady!

It all seemed to be going so smoothly now, the room still and quiet as if the ceiling had not just crashed in on them a few moments earlier. His certain yes made her chest hurt, but maybe that was just her corset fitted properly to her again, and maybe she’d known that answer already. But if he was trying to make her feel better with best case scenarios (– and whyever would he care to make her feel better now, when he had just gone and deliberately condemned her? –), it wasn’t working.

“Oh,” she answered faintly. Her parents. Jemima closed her eyes, hardly ready to think about it. Maybe he wouldn’t have to care, if it was only her parents, but that felt like – a death sentence all the same. And her parents were kind people, truly; they were still fond of each other, and their whole family was close-knit and loving, and both her mother and father had always taken a genuine interest in bringing up their children – in instilling their values, trying to teach them things.

Jemima might never have been their brightest child – she had been a mediocre student, and had had no real successes on the society scene, had been probably more trouble than she was worth, to be honest – but they had both always been patient with her. They had never failed to show pride in their children, when it was deserved. And so, whatever happened, no matter how bad, she was sure they would protect her. But their bitter disappointment if they heard something like this about her? Somehow that alone would be more painful to her than half of society knowing. They would never look at her the same way again.

Of course, half of society might end up getting wind of this too, so there was really no consolation to be found. Swallowing, Jemima took the ends of the corset laces from him once he’d finished and tucked the end knot back inside her skirts mechanically. Going back out there would be a walk to the gallows for her, one way or another. Was there any sense delaying it? She tugged her arms through her dress bodice and wrapped it around her back, waiting for him to help hook this layer back together too. To think she had had such a fit of anxiety before; it seemed silly now, without even having a real reason to worry. Instead, now, as Jemima reached up to try and neaten her hair, she only felt oddly hollow. Perhaps because she had tried to dredge up some hope in her for the future, and this time, for once, she had found none left.

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   Fortitude Greengrass, Noble Greengrass

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