He felt a curious tickle in his throat as though—alarming thought—he was about to weep.
“Weare waltzing,” he said.
And Vauxhall wove its magic around them.
All about them couples old and young, plump and thin, rich and not so rich, were waltzing. And Matilda waltzed with Charles among them.
She would not feel self-conscious because she was a staid spinster who always sat among the chaperons on the rare occasion when she attended a ball with her mother, or because she was past the age of fifty. She was not past the age of wanting to waltz or to indulge in a little romance. She was not too old to enjoy the feel of a man’s hand at the back of her waist, his other hand in hers, the whole of the waltz to be danced face-to-face, almost body to body. She could feel his heat. She could smell his cologne as well as something equally enticing that seemed to be the very scent of him. She was not too old to feel the pull of his physicality. Or to dream.
Or to fall in love.
Though perhaps it was impossible to fall into anything one was already in. To fall in love again, then. Could one fall in love twice, with the same man, when one had not really stopped loving him the first time? Was it possible …
“What is amusing you?” he asked, and Matilda shivered at the low intimacy of his voice against her ear. He knew, as many people did not, that in order to make oneself heard amid music and a babble of voices, one needed to pitch one’s voice beneath the general hubbub rather than try to shout over it.
“I am merely enjoying the waltz and the myriad sensations of being here at Vauxhall on a lovely evening,” she told him.
“No,” he said. “There wasamusementin your face, Matilda. Something tickled you.”
“Oh,” she said, “I was wondering if it is possible to have the same feelings twice in a lifetime about the same subject, or whether that would mean that really there had been only one feeling spread over a long period of time, even if perhaps it was dormant for a while, and not two separate feelings at all.”
And if he could interpretthatit would be a wonder.
He led her into a series of twirls that had her marveling that this accomplished female dancer, who did not once trip over her own feet or anyone else’s for that matter, wasshe. Matilda Westcott. Though she knew it was really the accomplished dancing of Charles that made her look good.
“I can see why you were so amused, then,” he said. “Those were enormously amusing wonderings.”
His eyes were laughing. Oh, he had used to do that all the time. And Matilda could not stop her own laughter from bubbling out of her. Then his mouth was smiling too and all sorts of lines showed themselves on his face, mostly at the outer corners of his eyes. Wrinkles in the making. Or, rather, laugh lines. Very attractive ones.
And she had never—oh, surely she had never before in her whole life, even when she was in love at the age of twenty—been happier than she was now, at this precise moment. Waltzing at Vauxhall. With Charles. She wanted to pinch herself. No, she did not. If this was a dream, she did not want to wake up. Ever.
But the waltz came to an end. Life always forged onward whether one wished it to do so or not. Matilda returned on Charles’s arm to the box, only to have her hand solicited for another waltz by his son.
Oh my. She was about to refuse. No one ever danced with Matilda. She never expected it. But nowtwopartners in one evening? She might never recover from the vanity of it all. Charles, she could see, was extending a hand for his elder daughter’s and leading her out into the dancing area.
“Well, thank you,” she said. “I have just danced my first waltz, you know. I hope I do not make a cake of myself and a spectacle of you during the second.”
He laughed as they took their place on the dance floor. “I am my father’s son in some ways,” he said. “I will see to it that you come to no harm, Lady Matilda.”
“Ah,” she said, “but can you also see to it thatyoudo not?”
He laughed again.
He was as good a dancer as his father, she decided after they had waltzed for a couple of minutes without talking—and without mishap—though he wasnotCharles, of course. He was not quite as tall and he was fairer of coloring and considerably younger. She doubted he had ever given his mother a moment’s anxiety over wild oats he was sowing. Though he had been a mere boy, of course, when his mother died.
His eyes were upon hers. “You know my half brother, Lady Matilda,” he said. “When you came to our house that day with Bertrand Lamarr, it was to tell my father about the custody hearing, was it not?”
“Yes,” she said. “I thought he might be able to help. It was very much in the balance, you see, whether the judge would order that the little girl remain with her grandparents or be restored to her father.”
“The little girl,” he said. “My niece. My half niece.”
“Katy, yes,” she said.
She guessed that he was still grappling with the knowledge that there was another member of his father’s family he and his sisters had known nothing of until very recently. Just as they, the Westcotts, had had to deal with the appearance of Anna, Humphrey’s only legitimate daughter, in their midst six years ago. It had not been easy. It had been harder for some of them than for others.
“Lady Matilda,” he said, “tell me about your niece.”
She thought for a moment that he was moving on to another subject. “Estelle?” she said. “She is not really my—Oh, you are asking about Abigail, are you?”
