Her eyes were smiling warmly when they met his. “The first it shall be,” she agreed.
•••
Lady Dunmore must be feeling very gratified indeed, Elizabeth thought as they entered the supper room. Chairs were close packed on either side of the two long tables, and every one was occupied, as far as she could see. Several smaller tables had had to be arranged about the perimeter of the room to accommodate the remaining guests. Colin seated her at one of them, and she was secretly glad.
“I have never particularly enjoyed waltzing at London balls,” he said, shaking out his linen napkin and spreading it on his lap.
“Yet it is the very dance you have engaged to perform with me at each ball of the Season?” she said.
“Oh.” He looked at her, startled, and then laughed. “I have never much enjoyed it—before tonight. It has always been such a chore. One feels obliged to remember the steps and execute them with precision and elegance, to guide one’s partner without either treading upon her dancing slippers or crashing into another couple with her, and—as if all that were not enough—to converse with her too.”
“But you did not converse with me,” she pointed out as she set a collection of savories and sweets on her plate from the selection in the middle of the table.
“I did not, did I?” he agreed. “You see? I am an abject failure. But I felt comfortable enough with you simply to enjoy the dance. I knew I would, though. It is why I asked you to waltz with me at every ball.”
Comfortable.There was not much romance in the word, was there? But why should there be?
“And you did not once tread upon my feet,” she said.
He grimaced. “I did it once,” he told her. “The very first time I waltzed in public. My partner was a true lady, though. She brushed off my profuse apologies with the smiling assurance that it was nothing at all, but for all of the following half hour I could see that she was gritting her teeth in mortal agony.”
They both laughed as he filled his own plate. But they were interrupted before he had finished when Lady Dunmore came hurrying up to their table.
“Lord Hodges,” she said, sounding mortified, “you really ought not to be sitting at one of these tables, removed from our other guests. There is an empty place close to the head table. Do let me seat you there.”
Colin glanced at Elizabeth. “I am quite content to be here with Lady Overfield, ma’am,” he assured her.
She turned to Elizabeth, as though noticing her for the first time. “Ah,” she said. “Now where can we place you, Lady Overfield? Perhaps closer to Mrs. Westcott?” She looked along one of the long tables.
“Please do not exert yourself, ma’am,” Colin said, a firmer note in his voice. “Lady Overfield and I are perfectly happy with each other’s company. We are, after all, almost siblings. My sister is married to her brother.”
“Ah, yes, of course,” she said. “Very well, then, but you really ought to have been more appropriately directed when you stepped into the room.” She moved away, clearly vexed with her servants.
“I do believe,” Elizabeth said, “you have been approved as a suitor for Miss Dunmore’s hand. Are you happy about it?”
He thought. “She seems to be a sweet young lady, though a little on the shy side,” he said. “Getting her to contribute more than a monosyllable here and there to a conversation is a bit like pulling teeth.”
“But she is very pretty,” she said.
“She is,” he agreed. “Exceedingly.”
“You are doing what you were thinking about at Christmastime, then?” she asked him. “You are looking for a bride?”
“I suppose so,” he said. “It seems cold-blooded. But I daresay one cannot have a wife if one does not first seek one.” He looked at Elizabeth.
For a moment she felt a stabbing of envy. If she were only ten or fifteen years younger…But even as a girl she had not been renowned for her good looks. She would have been no competition for someone like Miss Dunmore. She had actually been surprised when Desmond began to court her, for he had been a handsome man, much sought after by other ladies.
“And what of Sir Geoffrey Codaire?” he asked. “He was your partner in the first set, and I cut him out for the waltz. He was making his way toward you, and I broke into a run to reach you first.”
“Oh, you did not,” she protested, laughing. “What a spectacle you would have made of yourself.”
He always looked particularly boyish—and impossibly attractive—when he grinned, as he did now. Then he was serious again. “Is he the one you are going to marry?” he asked.
“Goodness,” she said. “There is no offer on the table.” She glanced to where Sir Geoffrey was sitting, talking with Sir Randolph Dunmore at one of the long tables. By chance she caught his eye and smiled.
“But there has been and will be again?” Colin asked. “Is he the one who offered for you last year? And do invite me to mind my own business if I am being offensive.”
“He was indeed obliging enough to ask me last year,” she admitted. “Whether he will repeat the offer this year remains to be seen. It is altogether possible he will take me at my word and content himself with being my friend.”
