“Ought I to be?” she asked him.
“I thought perhaps you would not be,” he admitted. “But it was a wedding celebration, you see, and involved a number of people whom I know and like. How could I have resisted coming?”
And that was the trouble with him, she thought. He could not resist being blown along by any wind that happened in his direction. She had once told him that he was a kind man. But was it kind of him to come here today only because there was to be a party and congenial company?
“You knew I would be here, then?” she asked him as they twirled about another corner.
“Yes,” he said. “It is why I came.”
And now he was contradicting himself. Was there any firmness of character in him at all?
“Susanna,” he asked even more softly than before, “are you with child?”
If she had been, the child would surely have turned over in her womb. Every other part of her insides seemed to somersault as she drew breath sharply and stumbled slightly. He drew her closer until she had regained her balance and fitted her steps to his again.
“No,” she said.
His eyes found hers and searched them. His smile had slipped, she noticed. So had hers. She donned it once more.
“I am glad,” he said.
“No doubt.”
She lowered her eyes and tried to recapture some of the magic she had felt the last time they waltzed. She deliberately let her attention move to their fellow dancers and could see Anne and Mr. Butler dancing with surprising grace despite the fact that his right arm was missing. Anne was looking a little less slender than usual, especially below the high waistline of her dress. The duchess was laughing up into the austere face of the duke, whom Claudia detested so fiercely. His pale silver eyes looked back at her with a total absorption that spoke of emotions burning just behind the autocratic façade. Frances twirled in the earl’s arms, and it was obvious that they had eyes for no one but each other.
The world was filled with happy couples, it seemed—and her very lone self.
Ridiculous, self-pitying thought!
“You are bitter,” Viscount Whitleaf said.
Was she? She had no reason to be, had she? He had not seduced her. He had given her the opportunity to stop him. He had asked her afterward to go away with him and had promised that he would look after her even when all was over between them. She had said no. They had parted as friends. Ah, that parting—that memory of him riding away across the terrace and down the lane until he was out of sight. It was a memory that had always gone deeper than pain because she had thought she would never see him again.
Now she was waltzing with him once more in the Upper Assembly Rooms in Bath. The reality of it, she felt, had still not quite hit her.
“Silence is my answer,” he said. “And I cannot blame you. It would be trite of me to say I am sorry. But I do not know what elsetosay.”
“You need not say anything.” She looked back into his eyes. “And you need not feel sorry—any more than I do. It happened. Our friendship had to end anyway. Why not that way?”
“Didit end?” he asked her.
She gazed back at him and then nodded. Of course it had ended. How could they even pretend to be friends now?
“Then I reallyamsorry,” he said. “I liked you, Susanna—Ilikeyou. And I thought you had come to like me.”
She swallowed.
“I did.”
“Past tense?” he said, and after a short silence between them, “Ah, yes, past tense.”
They stopped dancing for a few moments while the orchestra ended one waltz tune and prepared to play the next one in the set.
Did she not even like him now, then? Because he had come here today to disturb her peace again? He had come because she was to be here. He had come to ask her if she was with child.
What would he have done if the answer had been yes? Would he have gone away again faster than he had come? She knew he would not have.
She looked up at him again as they resumed their dance.
