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July 30, 2021
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Lady Mountbatten was a shrewd woman, with eyes like a cat, sweeping carefully, methodically, around the room. She spied Anne with a tight grip on Andrew's suit, and Camilla making small talk with Carrie Johnson nearby. Servants weaved in and out between the people and furniture periodically cutting her line of sight but also covering her tracks.
Jaclyn and William were nearest to her, whispering in a way that evaded most attention, but they were cut off as Boris Johnson pulled him away. Like an extension of the Duchess's shadow, Penelope slipped into place beside her offering an arm and a smile in an otherwise haunting room.
"Oh, thank god," she exhaled, greedily linking their arms together. "Can we walk? I think I'm going to combust if I don't move." Her free arm waved her clutch around perhaps in an attempt to cool herself off, and before Penelope could answer she was being dragged along.
"You look lovely tonight, new dress?"
Jaclyn gulped, and Penelope noted the way her eyes darted around, the emeralds at her ears whipping frantically amongst her dangling curls. "I just... I wanted to blend, and everything seemed too glitzy, or bright, or not covered..." Jaclyn's words halted in time with her feet, and when she pivoted towards her, she was standing taller, but her eyes were wide.
"I'm not broken," she blurted.
"I never said you were."
"And I don't regret what I did." But regret was in her eyes, the color of a sea in a storm her eyes flickered occasionally with it.
"I don't think you should regret it. It was a smart move getting him off the board." She kept them moving, aware of the evermoving eyes periodically finding them.
There was nothing to be done about it. Jaclyn herself was a hot topic at the moment, and with every day that passed she got a sinking feeling that it wasn't just going to go away. So much had changed for them in the past months, the floodgates had been opened, and there was no stopping the water rushing through. Penelope thought they would've had more time though, that they could've at least waited until the Queen passed before smoking out enemies.
