Lenora frowned at that peculiar statement. Before she could ask Margery about it, the crowd opened up, and they spied Lady Tesh seated at her typical place along the wall. And beside her, his back to them, was…
“Peter,” she breathed.
He stilled, then turned, as if heeding the call of his name on her lips. A silly thing, really, considering the noise that filled the place. And yet his eyes found hers unerringly, the heat in them nearly buckling her knees. Only Margery’s arm linked with hers kept her on her feet.
“I—I don’t understand,” she managed through stiff lips. “He left, set sail for America.”
“He came back,” Margery said in her ear.
Lenora swung her gaze to her friend. Margery smiled at her, not an ounce of surprise on her face.
She blinked in incomprehension. “You knew?”
Her friend merely smiled wider before she released Lenora’s arm, with a comforting squeeze, and stepped away, melding back in with the crowd. Lenora stared after her for a moment, utterly confused, feeling lost in a rough sea.
Until a familiar deep voice anchored her.
“Lenora.”
Peter stood silent and still, a great stone monolith in the midst of the chaos of revelry. And yet he looked as if he belonged. Garbed again in that expertly tailored formal suit he so despised, he was nevertheless the epitome of a noble. He stood straight as an arrow, his hair brushed and tied back into a neat queue, his beard trimmed close. He would not have been out of place in a London ballroom, surrounded by the cream of society.
But this was not her Peter. She ran her gaze over him, searching for the man she had come to love, hidden somewhere in this impeccably dressed swain. She wanted to weep that he seemed gone—until she came to his eyes. They were the same, wild and untamed. And burning.
The urge to fling herself into his arms nearly overwhelmed her. But she resisted. He had made himself clear; his revenge on his cousin was too important to him. He would never abandon his carefully laid plans. Most especially not for her.
She hugged herself about the middle, painfully aware of the crowd of people surrounding them, the happy sounds of celebration that bounced jarringly off the tense bubble she and Peter seemed to be encased in. “You were returning to Boston. You should be on the ship this very moment.”
“I couldn’t leave.”
Three words, so simple, yet full of some hidden meaning. Her heart ached to know: was she the reason he had come back? But she would not ask. Shecouldnot ask.
His gaze didn’t leave her face, his blue eyes lacking the defenses that had so filled them before, a fragile longing shimmering from their depths. “May I have the honor of this dance, Lenora?” He held one pristine gloved hand out.
In the next moment, her hand was in his. It was as if her heart had taken control of her body, doing what her mind willed her not to. He led her to the floor with careful, stately steps. She should remove her hand from his grip, should refuse him. Yet she could not.It would cause a scene, she told herself. But even as the words whispered halfheartedly through her mind, she knew they were a lie. She did not pull her fingers from his grip for one reason, and one reason only: it felt right to have them there.
It was only as he stopped in the center of the gleaming floor that her befuddled brain caught the familiar strains of the music: a waltz.
She shook her head helplessly as he bowed low, his eyes never leaving her. “You don’t know the waltz, Peter.”
In answer, he grasped her right hand, placing his free hand along the curve of her spine.
She dragged in a deep breath as longing washed over her, his scent of spices and black coffee and horse and leather bringing tears to her eyes. She dropped her gaze and blinked them away, desperate that he not see how much this pained her, how he affected her still.
He was the proper distance from her, his posture perfect, nothing scandalous in the way he touched her. Yet he filled the space between them, overpowering it with his sheer presence. He began to move, and she helplessly followed his lead.This is a mistake, her mind whispered, even as her heart pounded out quite another rhythm. Ignoring them both as best she could, she found herself focusing on the way he moved, on the elegance of his step, on the masterful way he guided her. Which only brought about more confusion to her dazed mind.
“You waltz,” she blurted out.
“Aunt Olivia was most obliging in my schooling.”
She blinked, taken aback not only by his formal speech but his address of Lady Tesh. Since when had he called the viscountess by anything other than her title? He swung her in a turn, and she caught sight of that woman and Margery, heads bent close together, watching them with beatific smiles lighting their faces. She narrowed her eyes, remembering the lack of surprise in her friend when they’d first spied Peter. And even before that, her uncharacteristic stubbornness in insisting that Lenora attend the ball.
“And Margery?” she asked tightly. “Did she have a part in your lessons?”
“My cousin was very helpful.”
His overly proper manner snapped her frazzled patience in two. “And did she also teach you how to talk like a pompous arse?”
He blinked, his steps faltering before he quickly recovered. “I’m only conversing as any of the men you knew in London would.”
