The viscount took a few steps out onto the empty floor with Sophia.
“If I make a thorough spectacle of myself,” he said as the chant and the clapping died away, “would everyone be kind enough to pretend they have not noticed?”
There was general laughter.
The orchestra did not wait for anyone else to take to the floor with them.
Agnes clasped her hands to her bosom and watched with everyone else, anxious that the viscountnotmake a spectacle of himself. He waltzed clumsily at first, though he did so with laughter in his face and such obvious enjoyment that Agnes found herself blinking back tears. And then somehow he found the rhythm of the dance, and Sophia looked at him with such radiant adoration that even furious blinking would not stop one tear from trickling down Agnes’s cheek. She wiped it away with a fingertip and glanced furtively about to assure herself that no one had noticed. No one had, butshenoticed several other people with unnaturally bright eyes.
After a few minutes there was a break in the music, and other couples joined the viscount and viscountess on the floor. Agnes sighed with contentment and perhaps a bit of longing. Oh, how lovely it would be...
She turned to Dora beside her. “You taught Sophia well,” she said.
But Dora’s eyes were focused beyond her sister’s shoulder.
“I do believe,” she murmured, “you are about to be singled out for particular attention for the second time this evening. There will be no living with you for the next week.”
Agnes had no chance either to reply or to whip her head about to see what—or whom—Dora was looking at.
“Mrs. Keeping,” the rather languid voice of Viscount Ponsonby said, “d-do tell me I have no rival for your hand for this particular s-set. I would be devastated. If I am to waltz, it really must be w-with a sensible companion.”
Agnes plied her fan and turned toward him.
“Indeed, my lord?” she said. “And what makes you believe I am sensible?” And was that acomplimenthe had paid her? That she wassensible?
He moved his head back an inch and let his eyes rove over her face.
“There is a c-certain light in your eye and quirk to your lip,” he said, “that proclaims you to be an observer of life as well as a d-doer. A sometimesamusedobserver, if I am not mistaken.”
Goodness gracious. She regarded him in some surprise. She hoped no one else had noticed that. She was not even sure it was true.
“But why would you wish for a sensible partner for the waltz more than for any other dance?” she asked him.
Whatwouldbe sensible was to accept his offer without further ado, since she could think of nothing more heavenly than to waltz at a real ball. And surely the music would begin again at any moment now, even though the orchestra appeared to be waiting a little while for other couples to gather on the floor. And she had the chance to dance the waltz withViscount Ponsonby.
“One waltzes face-to-face with one’s p-partner until the bitter end,” he said. “One must hope at least f-for some interesting conversation.”
“Ah,” she said. “The weather is an ineligible topic, then?”
“As are one’s state of health and that of all one’s acquaintances to the third and f-fourth generation,” he added. “W-will you waltz with me?”
“I fear it immensely,” she said, “for now you have surely tied my tongue in knots. Have you left me with any topic upon which Imayconverse sensibly or, indeed, at all?”
He offered his wrist without replying, and she placed her hand on it and felt her knees threaten to turn to jelly as he smiled at her—a lazy, heavy-lidded smile that seemed to suggest an intimacy quite at variance with the public nature of their surroundings.
She was, she suspected, in the hands of an accomplished flirt.
“Watching Vincent waltz,” he said as they took their places facing each other, “was enough to make onew-weep. Would you not agree, Mrs. Keeping?”
Oh, dear, had he seen that tear?
“Because he danced clumsily?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Because he is in l-l-love,” he said, stumbling badly over the final word.
“You do not approve of romantic love, my lord?”
“In others it is really most affecting,” he said. “But perhaps we ought to talk about the weather after all.”
