She had no idea how many seconds or minutes passed before he spoke—though they had circled right about the ballroom, she realized then.
“You see?” he said. “It really is possible.”
His voice broke the spell, and she realized what she was doing, what was happening. She was dancing. Not only dancing, butwaltzing. She was waltzing in a man’s arms and smiling at him and enjoying every moment and dreaming of him as he had once been—and of herself as she had once been. She was being seduced and she was allowing it to happen just as if she had no will of her own, no character or principles of her own.
Just as if she were that same naive, heedless girl and he was that same flawed golden boy.
She lost the rhythm and they drew to a halt.
But Margaret was applauding and Aunt Hannah joined her after lifting her hands from the keyboard.
“Oh, you waltz beautifully, Christina,” Margaret said wistfully. “But how on earth did you know when to twirl about and how to keep your feet from beneath Cousin Gerard’s?”
“Now you must admit that I was right,” Lady Hannah said. “Is it not the most romantic dance there ever was, Christina?”
“It really is not the thing at all,” she said, dropping her left hand, withdrawing her right, and taking a step back. “I daresay our neighbors would be scandalized if it were included in the Christmas ball. It must not be. We would not wish to make anyone uncomfortable, after all.” She felt decidedly uncomfortable, remembering how she had forgotten everything but the dance—and her partner.
“I am going to learn it if I must die in the attempt,” Margaret said.
“I hardly think it will come to that, dear,” her aunt assured her. “Tomorrow you will do better, mark my words.”
“Those of the neighbors who know the steps will probably be eager to show off their superior skills,” the earl said.
“Those who do not will doubtless enjoy seeing them demonstrated before their eyes. We will demonstrate the waltz for them, my lady. You and I.”
“But I do not intend to dance at all,” she reminded him coolly. His eyes, she noticed, had lost that dreamy, seductive look. They were mocking her. “I shall be your hostess at the ball, my lord, and greet everyone and make sure that all the young ladies have partners. But dancing itself is for young people.”
“Precisely,” he agreed. “You and I will waltz together.”
“Oh yes, Christina,” Lady Hannah said. “You really must. You do it exceedingly well, especially when it is remembered that this was your first try. And you are only eight-and-twenty. Of course you are young.”
“Gilbert would have disapproved.”
“But Gilbert, my lady,” the Earl of Wanstead reminded her, his voice almost silky, “is dead.” His blue eyes, she saw when she looked into them, had turned hard as steel. He was going to insist that she dance with him, not because he really wished to do so, but simply because he knew she did not wish it.
He was no different from any other man, she thought bitterly. He enjoyed exercising power over women, especially any who tried, however feebly, to defy him. He particularly enjoyed his power over her since she had once rejected him.
“It will be as you command, my lord,” she said and quelled the twinge of fear she could not help feeling when he narrowed his eyes on her as he had done in the library during the morning—before warning her not to try impertinence on him.
The rest of the week before his guests arrived was an extremely busy one for the Earl of Wanstead. He prepared for their visit in a number of ways, though it was the countess who saw to the hiring of extra servants, and the servants who undertook all the numerous menial tasks, like cleaning and airing every available bedchamber in the house, for example. He undertook a few journeys into the town eight miles away to purchase various supplies, among them a large box of skates of various sizes. It was his hope that the ice on the lake would be firm enough to allow skating over the holiday.
He diligently made the acquaintance of all his neighbors, calling upon most of them in company with his aunt or Margaret or both. Many of the people he remembered from his boyhood, of course. He issued verbal invitations to the Christmas ball even though Margaret had already sent out cards. It seemed that everyone was planning to attend.
And he spent a good deal of time with his steward, sometimes in the study, more often out of doors about the estate. He inspected all his farms, which were not very active now that it was winter. But the relative idleness of the farmers gave him the opportunity to talk with his tenants and his laborers and listen to their comments and complaints. Most of the latter concerned repairs that were too slow in getting done.
It was in the nature of workers and tenants, Charles Monck explained when questioned afterward, to believe that they had only to ask for something to have it granted. They invariably assumed that their employers were made of money.
He had a point, the earl agreed. He had been a businessman, an employer, long enough to know that a large number of workers were only too ready to take as much as they could while giving, as little as possible in return. But he knew too that there was an at least equally large number who gave an honest day’s work in expectation of an honest day’s wage—but who were sometimes not accorded quite that wage.
He would need more time to assess the situation at Thornwood, he thought, to feel quite satisfied that everything was running as he would wish if he had the direct oversight of its operation. Ideally, he would need to observe the working of his farms over spring and summer and harvest. Since that would be impossible, he must do the best he could in the short time available to him.
He tried to resist the impulse to become too involved in Thornwood affairs.
In his spare time—or so he sometimes described it to himself with wry humor—he gave dancing lessons. He taught the quadrille, the cotillion, the waltz, though sometimes the lack of other couples to make up a set made matters tricky. After that first day, when he had been thoroughly convinced that Margaret must have been born tone deaf and with two left feet, he found that she improved steadily. His cousin might never be a naturally graceful dancer, but she would be proficient enough to acquit herself adequately in the ballroom. She was learning to relax. More important, she was learning to enjoy herself. She sparkled as she danced. She had stopped giggling.
The countess did not attend any more dancing lessons. When he commented on her absence at the dining table one day, she told him that her mornings were necessarily filled with preparations for the house party and that she needed to spend her afternoons with her daughters.
“Bring them to the ballroom with you,” he suggested.
