Nicola planning to vamp at the Merrick party?

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

Something I didn't really notice before my most recent read of Run Away Home. Nicola is told by Rowan at the start of the holidays that they have several party invitations. Nicola's response is 'half-pleased, half-dismayed. Natch, she was in favour of parties, but Miranda's dress was for the Merricks' do, not just for any old hooli.'

Now, I can understand that she's always thought of the dress as just for the Merricks' because it was the only party she was expecting to go to, but even when she finds there are other opportunities to wear it (and she doesn't at this point have her new Christmas present from her mother), she's very reluctant to think of wearing it more than once, to the Merricks'. Obviously, it is to do with her feelings towards Patrick, and also Ginty - and she's pleased when he briefly mistakes her for Ginty when he finally sees her wearing the Dress - but my question is whether her response to the other invitations suggests she's consciously planning to look beautiful and Ginty-ish enough to turn Patrick's head, a year on from the same party where she discovered their relationship/ private Gondal characters?

Something about this conscious planning ahead of her own effect doesn't sit right with my reading of Nicola's character in general, and her feelings about Patrick specifically, which I've always read as vaguer and more pre-sexual - he matters terribly to her, but she isn't so sure why. I wondered how other people read why the Dress is only for the Twelfth Night party?