“Those were his exact words.” His voice was as cold and sharp as the glint of light off a razor’s edge.
Oh.
Hannah had thought she understood what Mr. Corbyn was facing, but she didn’t understand this at all. No matter that she and Mama might argue, Hannah couldn’t imagine that she would ever be cut off.And I’ve certainly done far worse than Mr. Corbyn has.
He’d only been trying to help a woman in need. What kind of father would turn his child out for that? It was heartless.
“I wish you would say something.” Mr. Corbyn sounded as if he were having second thoughts over his decision to share the story.
“I was just feeling embarrassed for all the times I’ve complained about my mother,” Hannah admitted. “You must have thought I sounded like a spoiled child.”
“I thought you had some fire in you. That’s all.”
Hannah smiled. She liked the sound of that. Most men took her for nothing but a dull, timid miss. Mr. Corbyn made her sound almost exciting. She was absurdly grateful to him for that, even if she hadn’t already owed him more than she could repay.
“What if we forgot all about our parents this evening and simply enjoyed ourselves?” she suggested. After all, this might be the last time either of them were invited to such an event. Once she forced Mama to see reason and broke off her engagement, Hannah would return to the country and Mr. Corbyn would return to his own sphere of life. “Is there anything you’ve always wanted to do at a party?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been invited to a ball before.”
“No, but you must have been to a country dance or a May Eve,” Hannah encouraged him. “The same principles apply.”
“I haven’t been to many of those either,” Mr. Corbyn confessed. He didn’t sound embarrassed, exactly. Perhaps the right word was cautious. “I went to sea when I was eleven, remember?”
Hannah stopped to ponder this. She’d imagined that Mr. Corbyn was far more worldly and experienced than she was. And in some ways, he must be. He’d seen lands and peoples that she would never lay eyes on, learned lessons in hardship that she would never face. But his experience had come at the price of simple occasions she took for granted.
It filled her with an unexpected tenderness toward him.
“That’s all the more reason to do whatever you want tonight.” Hannah had planned to make the most of her evening, but now she found that she cared a great deal whether Mr. Corbyn enjoyed himself too. They could seize the moment together. Although it would be a good deal easier to accomplish if they left the area before Mama came back from the powder room to arrange any more introductions. “Go ahead. What would you like most? And remember, I’ve fled from a ball before, so I won’t object if you want to go somewhere else.”
Mr. Corbyn looked at her in surprise. “I thought you didn’t want me to sabotage our engagement until your father arrives.Though abducting you from a ball does seem an effective way to go about it.”
“Drat, I suppose you’re right. Something we can do here then,” Hannah amended. “Only hurry, before Mama comes back and forces us to dance.”
The musicians were tuning their instruments in the next room, the vibrato of a violin creeping out to reach her ears. If they lingered here too long they were liable to find themselves engaged for the next six sets.
She looked expectantly at Mr. Corbyn. There was the spark in his piercing blue eyes that told her he’d already seized on his idea, but he didn’t share it with her.
“Well?” she prodded, shooting a nervous look over his shoulder. Her mother was already back! She’d just been waylaid by Mrs. Godfrey near a large potted fern. She might rejoin them any minute.
“I want to dance with you.”
“What?” Hannah couldn’t have heard him correctly. “But we don’t have to. I don’t evenwantto.”
“I saw the program,” Mr. Corbyn explained. “They’re starting with the First Set. The same ones we learned the other day.”
“Is ‘learned’ the right word?” Hannah asked delicately.
“I studied it some more back home.”
Nothing seemed to deter Mr. Corbyn once he’d set his mind to something. If only he could have picked a better goal. “It’s going to be exceedingly long and boring,” Hannah warned him. The quadrilles were always the longest, with all their arrangements.
“There you are!” It was Mama, back to torment them before they could make their escape, just as Hannah had feared. “Why aren’t you in the ballroom? They’re about to begin!”
Mr. Corbyn observed them with a look of patient determination. “Your dance card, darling?”
Hannah knew when she was beaten. Or if she didn’t, his endearments were always enough to make her flustered and forget her arguments.
She turned the card over to Mr. Corbyn, who wrote his name in the first space. The rest were blissfully empty, for her mother had been too focused on presenting their engagement to her friends to worry about any of that.
