“Margaret,” he said in the bored voice he sometimes affected when he wanted to annoy someone, “I believe her ladyship is a coward.”
“Oh, do try it, Christina,” Margaret said, sounding somewhat tired and dispirited, “if only to prove to me that it cannot be done.”
The countess’s chin had lifted a notch.
“She does not even have your courage to try,” the earl said. “Doubtless she is afraid of making a cake of herself, Margaret.”
The dark eyes darted sparks. “We will see aboutthat, my lord,” she said, and she gathered the side of her skirt in one hand and swept past them in the direction of the pianoforte. “Are you very tired, Aunt Hannah? Or are you willing to play for a little longer? Averylittle.”
“Oh, I am enjoying myself vastly, dear,” Lady Hannah assured her.
The Earl of Wanstead raised his eyebrows and winked at Margaret.
Margaret laughed.
But he was not feeling amused, his lordship thought as they crossed the ballroom again and his cousin moved behind the pianoforte bench in order to watch. Good Lord, he did not want to dance with her. He especially did not want to waltz with her.
With a black icicle.
Chapter 5
“IT IS quite possible, dear Christina,” Lady Hannah was saying, beaming her encouragement. “I have seen it done. I have watched several couples twirling about a ballroom without any one of them coming to grief or treading on one another’s toes, though quite how they did it I do not know. I never saw anything more delightful in my life.”
But Christina was unable to give anything like her full attention to the words. Into what had she allowed herself to be goaded? She should have given in to nothing short of a direct command, but he had not needed to give that. He had called her a coward and she had risen to the bait just like a hot-tempered schoolgirl. And now there was no way back.
She was going to waltz—or try at least. Withhim. She could not bear the thought of touching him, let alone standing face-to-face with him barely an arm’s length apart.
And yet for the past hour she had been dancing without ever moving either her feet or her body. She had been dancing with him as she had once done in many London ballrooms. She had danced with numerous partners, but with him it had always been different. With him she had danced on gilt-edged clouds—she had even been foolish enough to tell him that once, and he had taken her hand in his, raised it to his lips, and held her eyes with his own in that intense way he had had....
She had been standing close to the doors of the ballroom, longing and longing to dance—-towaltz. With him. And asking herself if there reallywasanything so sinful about dancing. It was an activity designed to arouse inappropriate passions, Gilbert had said. Oh, yes, there was at least some truth in that.
He was not going to begin at the beginning with her, she realized in some alarm after he had followed her across the ballroom floor. He stepped close to her even as Margaret moved off to stand behind the pianoforte bench, slipping his arm beneath hers, and spreading his hand against the back of her waist. She felt the shocking heat of it through the wool of her dress, through her shift, against her flesh. And the alarming nearness of him. He seemed suddenly taller, broader, more—male. She raised her left hand and rested it on his shoulder. It was all hard muscle. The bare skin of his throat and jaw seemed very close. So did his face. He took her right hand in his.
She felt flustered beyond bearing and had to concentrate hard on keeping her cool outer bearing. This was far more intimate, far more improper even than it had looked when Meg had stood in her place. No wonder her sister-in-law had been unable to concentrate on the steps.
“Remember the steps,” he told her as if he had read her thoughts. “They are grouped in sets of three. You begin with your left foot. After that, you simply follow my lead.”
Simply! “Impossible,” she said, and then wished she had not spoken at all. The word came out sounding all breathless. She felt as if at least half the air had suddenly seeped out of the ballroom. She felt dizzy with the subtle, musky odor of his cologne. She had never, she suddenly realized, been this close to Gilbert except for their brief encounters in the marriage bed.
“Aunt Hannah, please?” he said. And then he spoke to her again. “Relax, my lady.”
He might have instructed her to turn herself into a winged rhinoceros with better hope of success. She was all wooden legs and arms and whirling thoughts. Poor Aunt Hannah, she thought dimly after they had stopped for the third time in quick succession and she had been requested yet again to play the opening bars of the music. This was not working at all.
But he spoke in the seconds before it came time to try moving again. “Christina,” he said softly, “look at me. Feel the rhythm. Feelmyrhythm.”
She was not sure if he had meant the words to sound risqué. She did not immediately think of them that way herself. But she did obey him. For one thing, she felt humiliated that she could not do something as simple as master the steps of a dance. For another, she felt annoyed that he of all people was to be the witness to her failure.
She had been gazing fixedly over his shoulder. She looked now, instead, into his face, which was embarrassingly close. She did not, of course, have to look directly into his eyes. She might have looked at his chin or his mouth. But it was into his eyes she looked, and having once done so, she could not look away again. And this time when she recognized the cue for the dance to begin, she moved off with her left foot, fitting the steps to the rhythm of the music instead of counting determinedly, shutting all else out, including the music and the movements of her partner.
She danced with him step for step and suddenly discovered that she could feel his movements and sense where he would set his feet next. She could match her steps to his. She could feel his rhythm and could relax into it and follow it. She did not need to count, to concentrate on her steps, to wonder if she would get them right. She merely had to let him lead.
Sometimes his eyes could look dreamy. It was when he drooped his eyelids over them as he was doing now. It was a familiar, long-remembered look. His size, his nearness, his body heat, the smell of his cologne no longer seemed threatening. They became like a shelter around her, wrapping her in the sensual pleasure of the present moment, shielding her from everything that threatened from the outside.
His movements had changed, she only half realized after a few moments. He was no longer dancing her back and forth over the same small area of floor. He was taking her around the perimeter of the ballroom, twirling her slowly but perfectly in time to the music. And she felt something she had not felt in years, something she had thought long, long dead in herself.
She felt a great welling of exhilaration. Of joy.
Gerard. Ah, Gerard.
