He danced with Hermione and then with Melanie before strolling toward the open doorway into the card room. But Christine, watching him unwillingly as she took her place in the third set with Ronald Culver, was startled to see him take one step back into the ballroom, hesitate, look pained and supercilious, and then step forward again to bow over the hand of Mavis Page, the thin, plain daughter of a deceased naval captain, who was sitting with her mama as she had been all evening. No one ever danced with Mavis, who was unfortunate enough not to have a strong personality to compensate for her lack of looks.
Christine found herself with divided feelings. For Mavis’s sake, of course, she was genuinely delighted—Mrs. Page would have something truly grand to boast of for the next year or two, perhaps even for the rest of her life. But it was annoying—and disturbing—to witness the duke behaving so out of character. Christine really had not wanted to find even one redeeming quality in him. Yet it appeared now that he had spotted a wallflower and had gone to her rescue.
Mr. Fontain, another of Bertie’s tenants, led Mavis out for the next set. She looked almost pretty, with a glow of color in her cheeks.
After the third set the Duke of Bewcastle disappeared into the card room and Christine felt free to relax and enjoy herself. After tomorrow she would not have to think of him ever again. She would never have to look into his cold, arrogant face again. She would not have to be constantly reminded that he had made her a dishonorable proposal and that for a single, shameful moment she had been
disappointed
that it was not marriage he offered.
The very thought of being married to him . . .
Her relief at his absence was short-lived. After the fourth set she was making her way back to her family when Mr. George Buchan and Mr. Anthony Culver stopped her to exchange a few remarks with her. One of them would probably ask her to dance, she thought. She hoped
someone
would. The next set was to be a waltz. She had learned the steps back in her London days, though she had never danced them with anyone but Oscar.
She
hoped
someone would ask her to waltz here.
And then she felt a touch on the arm and turned to find herself gazing up into the silver eyes of the Duke of Bewcastle.
“Mrs. Derrick,” he said, “if you have not promised the next set to someone else, I wish you would dance it with me.”
He had taken her completely by surprise. Even so, it struck her that she could simply say no. But if she did, then she could not decently dance with anyone else. And this was to be the only waltz of the evening.
Bother, bother, bother
,
she thought. Five hundred botherations!
And yet her heart was pattering against her rib cage, and her knees were threatening to wobble beneath her, and she was close to panting, as if she had just run a mile without stopping. And all other considerations aside for the present mindless moment, he was truly, truly a gorgeous man.
It was the final evening of the house party. It would be her final encounter with him.
And it was to be a
waltz.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you do not waltz?”
She had, of course, been gawking at him like a fish hauled out of its natural element.
“I do,” she said, unfurling her fan and wafting it before her hot cheeks, “though it is a long time since I last danced it. Thank you, your grace.”
He offered his arm, and she snapped her fan closed, set her hand on his sleeve, and allowed him to lead her onto the dance floor. She remembered suddenly that he had danced with Mavis and glanced up at him with some curiosity. He was looking very directly back into her eyes.
They were like a wolf’s eyes, she thought. Someone had mentioned a few days ago that his given name was Wulfric. How strangely appropriate!
“I thought,” she said, “you would avoid me at all costs this evening.”
“Did you?” he asked, his eyebrows arched upward, his voice haughty.
Well, there was no answer to that, was there? She did not attempt one but waited for the music to begin.
What
had she just thought? That he was a gorgeous man?
Gorgeous?
Did she have windmills in her head? She looked up at him again. His nose was too large. No, it was not. It was his prominent, slightly hooked nose that gave his face character and made it more handsome than it would have been with a perfectly formed nose.
How silly noses were when one really thought about them.
“I have amused you—again?” he asked her.
“Not really.” She laughed aloud. “Only my own thoughts. I was thinking how silly noses are.”
“Quite so,” he said, a glint of something indefinable in his eyes.
And then the music began and he took her right hand in his left and set his other behind her waist. She set her free hand on his shoulder—and had to stop herself from panting again. He surely was holding her at the correct distance. But now suddenly she understood why many people still considered the waltz not quite proper. She had never felt
this
close to Oscar when she had waltzed with him. She could not remember feeling his body heat or smelling his cologne. Her heart was pattering again, yet they had not even moved yet.
And then they did.
And she knew within moments that she had never waltzed before. He danced it with long, firm steps and twirled her firmly about so that the light from all the candles blurred into one swirling line. She had not known what it was to waltz before tonight. Not really. It was pure sensual bliss. Light, colors, perfumes, body heat, a man’s musky cologne, the music, the smooth, slightly slippery floor, the hand at her waist, the hand holding her own, the delight in her own body’s lightness and movement—it was pure enchantment.
She looked into his face and smiled and for the moment felt utterly, mindlessly happy.
He gazed back at her, and in the flickering of the candlelight from the chandeliers overhead it seemed to her that his eyes glowed warm for once.
The enchantment did not last, alas.
He had just twirled her about a corner close to the French doors when Hector came lumbering around in the opposite—and wrong!—direction with Melanie. The Duke of Bewcastle hauled Christine right against his chest in what she realized afterward was a valiant attempt to save her from disaster, but he was too late. Hector trod hard on her left slipper, not missing even one of her five toes in the process.
She hopped on the other foot while the duke’s arm wrapped very firmly about her waist, and sucked in her breath as she watched the proverbial stars wheeling in a black sky all about her person. Melanie exclaimed with dismay and informed Hector that she had
told
him he was dancing in the wrong direction. Hector apologized profusely and abjectly.
“I warned Mel that I do not waltz,” he complained. “She knows I do not even
dance,
but she would insist I waltz with her. I am most awfully sorry, Christine. Did I hurt you?”
“A foolish question if ever I have heard one, Hector,” Melanie said tartly. “
Of course
you have hurt her, you great looby.”
“I daresay that soon the urge to scream will subside entirely,” Christine said. “In the meanwhile I shall continue to count slowly—forty-seven . . . forty-eight . . . But don’t worry, Hector, my toes needed flattening anyway.”
“My poor Christine,” Melanie said. “Shall I take you to your room and have a maid summoned?”
But Christine waved them on, gritting her teeth and trying not to look conspicuous. Why did such things always happen to her, even when she was quite innocently minding her own business?
Hector lumbered onward—in the right direction this time—with Melanie in tow. Christine became aware that she was still pressed right up against the Duke of Bewcastle’s side. The pain had not even crested yet. She sucked in her breath again.
And then he stooped down, swung her up into his arms, and stepped out through the French doors with her. It was neatly done, she admitted even as her eyes widened in shock. She doubted that many of the guests had noticed either the collision or its aftermath—or her escape into the garden in the Duke of Bewcastle’s arms. Though, if anyone
had
noticed that last point . . .
“Oh, dear,” she said, “this is getting to be a habit.” What normal woman had to be swept up into a gentleman’s arms
twice
within two weeks?
He strode some distance from the doors and finally set her down on a wooden seat that circled the huge trunk of an old oak tree.
“But this time, Mrs. Derrick,” he said, “the fault was entirely mine. I ought to have seen him coming sooner than I did. Has any real damage been done to your foot? Can you bend your toes?”
“Give me a few moments to stop silently screaming,” she said, “and to reach one hundred. Then I will try wiggling them. I suppose that every time dancing lessons were on the agenda when Hector was a boy, he made sure he was safely hidden away somewhere with a book of Greek philosophy—in Greek. He really ought not to be let loose within two miles of any ballroom. He looked quite miserable too, did he not, the poor love? Ninety-two . . . ninety-three . . . Oh, ouch!”
The Duke of Bewcastle had gone down on one knee before her and was untying the ribbon bow about her leg and easing off her slipper.
He looked very picturesque. He looked as if he were about to spout a marriage proposal.
It was strange how one could feel amusement and excruciating pain at the same moment. Christine bit down on her lower lip.
W
ULFRIC WAS NO
physician, but he did not believe any bones had been broken. There was not even any noticeable swelling in her foot, though she held it stiffly and he could tell from her ragged breathing that she was still in great pain. He set her stockinged foot flat on his palm, cupped the back of her heel with his other hand, and slowly lifted it upward, bending her toes as he did so before lowering her heel again.
One of her hands came to rest on his shoulder and gripped it. Her eyes were closed, he noticed, and her head bent forward. At first she grimaced and bit down harder on her lower lip, but as he repeated the action, she gradually relaxed.
“I do believe,” she said after a minute or so, “I am going to survive. I may even live to dance another day.” She chuckled—a low, merry, seductive sound.
It was a small, delicate foot, warm in its silk stocking. He set it down on top of her pink slipper and she continued to lift her heel and flex her toes on her own. After a few moments her hand moved away from his shoulder.
“What I fail to understand,” she said as he stood up, clasped his hands behind him, and looked down at her, “is why Hector came here at all. He is unworldly and bookish and not at all socially inclined—not with ladies anyway.”
“I believe,” he said, “he thought it was to be a gathering of intellectuals.”
“Oh, poor thing,” she said as she slid her foot back inside her slipper, arranged the ribbon about her leg and retied the bow, and then flexed her toes a few more times. “I daresay Melanie thought a party of this nature would be good for him—just as she thought dancing would be good for him this evening. She probably misled him from the start without ever lying to him outright. He probably had not even noticed—or he had forgotten—that his sister had become recently betrothed and that Melanie was bound to throw one of her famous parties for her.”
Wulfric did not say anything. A few lamps had been lit outdoors for the convenience of guests who wished to take the air beyond the stuffy confines of the ballroom. One of them was slanting its light across her and gleaming off her hair. And then she looked up at him, an arrested look on her face—and her eyes laughed.
“Oh, goodness,” she said, “it was Hector who invited
you
. Did you too think this was to be a gathering of intellectuals? You
did,
did you not? I have wondered why you came, when Melanie said you never go anywhere beyond London and your own estates. How
horrified
you must have been when you discovered your mistake. You poor . . . duke.”
“I assume, Mrs. Derrick,” he said, the fingers of one hand finding the handle of his quizzing glass and curling about it, “there was no question in what you have just said that was not rhetorical?”
He was unaccustomed to being laughed at. He could not remember ever being
pitied
.
“But you do have some of the social graces—you waltz well,” she said, clasping her hands in her lap and tipping her head slightly to one side as she continued to look at him. “Exceedingly well, in fact.”
“It is possible,” he said, “to be both bookish, as you call it, and accomplished in the social arts, Mrs. Derrick. I did not hide from
my
dancing lessons. Learning to dance correctly, even well, is an essential part of the education of a gentleman.”
He was not even particularly bookish. Although he considered himself well read, he did not have the time to keep his head buried in books. There were more practical concerns with which to fill his days. He had not even
liked
reading as a boy.
“I always loved the waltz more than any other dance,” she said with a wistful sigh, “though I rarely performed it when I lived in London. And now poor Hector has stamped out all my hopes of dancing it tonight.”
“The set is not ended,” he pointed out to her. “We will continue dancing if you are able.”
“My foot is almost as good as new again,” she said with a final wiggle of her toes inside the pink silk slipper. “I must be thankful that Hector weighs only one ton instead of two.”
“Then let us waltz.” He held out a hand for hers.
She set her own in it and got to her feet. “You must be sorry you asked me,” she said. “Disaster seems to follow me around even when I am in no way to blame.”
“I am not sorry,” he told her—and made the mistake of not moving off immediately in the direction of the ballroom with her. The lamp was swaying slightly in the breeze, wafting light and shade over her.
Suddenly it seemed as though the air between them and all about them fairly sizzled.