//CLARA//
The dining room smelled of roasted duck, expensive wax, and Aunt Cornelia's mounting migraines. It was supposed to be a birthday celebration, but the atmosphere felt more like a wake.
I had insisted on inviting Beatrice and Oliver. Aunt Cornelia had fought me on it for an hour, claiming that intimate family gatherings were the only proper way to celebrate my birthday and a marriage proclamation.
But I knew better. I needed a buffer. I needed people who didn't look at me like I was a line item in a debt ledger.
"I still don't see why we couldn't have hosted a proper ball," Aunt Cornelia sighed, her fork poking at a piece of endive as if it had offended her.
She was in a foul mood, her lace collar cinched so tight I wondered if it was cutting off the blood flow to her brain.
"A birthday falling on the week of your banns? It's a sign, Eleanor. We should have been celebrating your transition into the Vanderbilt name with half of New York in attendance."
