And now, of course, everyone was looking. Now, withthatposture, everyone knew what he had proposed to her. And now it was true that they all expected her to accept.
“That was unworthy of you,” she said with a thinning of her lips, placing her hand as lightly as she could manage into his and thunking her empty glass back on the banquet table with slightly more force than was strictly necessary.
“Was it?” he replied, grinning like he absolutely knew it was. Grinning like he enjoyed the fact.
The strings softened, the crowd parted, and the people watched as their earl led his countess to the center of the dance floor.
Claire had never said or thought the word before. She’d have been offended at the suggestion that she even knew it, but it rose in her mind all the same.
Shit.
They were alone. The other dancers had parted, had declared their preference to watch this reunion, this spectacle, rather than to enjoy their own movement and music. Many claspedtheir hands at their chests as though they were seeing further proof of romance and hope.
Wasn’t that just perfect?
She braced herself and put her hands on him as they turned to face each other. She tried to do it lightly, to avoid feeling the whole truth, the firmness of his flesh under his clothes, the reminder of how very real he was.
He didn’t tolerate it. He touched her waist like it belonged to him. He drew her nearer. He led the first steps in a sweeping, soft demand of their symmetry. He smiled.
She felt her stomach drop at the beauty of him, at that flash of his teeth, at the shine of his eyes, so very blue above that silly Portuguese sash. She felt the warmth of his touch through her clothes. She could have submerged herself in it, could have held her breath tumbled fully beyond its surface.
She moved with something beyond memory, beyond rote. She felt the music take her. She felt Freddy take her. She did not feel the ground anymore. She did not see the others. Some things came into sharp, pointed focus while others dissolved into nothing at all.
At some point, his smile faded into something more serious, more focused. His face was still so very beautiful, even as it had slowly begun to fade away the shine and smoothness of youth. If anything, it was more appealing this way, more complete, more complex.
She wanted to kiss him, she realized.
She wanted to kiss him more than she’d ever wanted to do anything in her entire life. She was abuzz with it. It was a craving. A necessity. A madness.
She pressed closer to him, felt her fingers itch for the feel of his hair, for the shape of his jaw. She bit her lip. She saw him watch her face, saw his eyes flick to the motion, saw the way his pupils flared.
And then the music stopped.
It stopped. And they did too.
They simply stopped dancing. They stopped moving. They watched one another in the silence until they had to stop doing that as well.
Claire had felt many strong, foolish things in her life. She had indulged. She had risked. She had fallen.
Dancing with Freddy tonight had been all of it. It had been indulgent and risky and very, very stupid.
But this was the only time in her memory where, after she’d made such a mistake, she was met with a wave of applause.
CHAPTER 15
Freddy knew before the final strain of the waltz that he needed to get the hell out of that pavilion before he lost his mind.
He’d held it together pretty damn well, all things considered, until she’d pressed herself against him and bitten her lip. That was it for him. That was all he could take. He needed to flee directly into the river water and hope that it was very, very cold, or elsewise take her somewhere and handle matters in the preferred fashion.
He probably should have stopped staring at her at the dinner. That was when he knew he was in trouble. But Freddy had always been bad at staying out of trouble, and those words his mother had said to him the other day about the romance of weddings were still ringing in his ears.
All it had taken was a glance over at her during the bloody fandango, glowing with exertion, dipping that little slip of lace she called a kerchief directly into the swell of her bosom, and he’d forgotten every single thing he’d ever told himself about tactor pacing or whatever the hell else was supposed to matter just now.
There was applause. Deafening applause.
Claire stepped back from him, letting her hands slide along his body as they fell, and smiled humbly for their gathered audience, like she was perfectly charmed by their intrusion. She giggled a little, dipping into a curtsey, and shook her head as she started to walk off the central dancing area.
He thought it a very good idea to turn around and walk the opposite way. He was no longer capable of the gentle, nudging romance he had envisioned for his wife, and might not be for quite a while still.
