Safe?She could have laughed, though it would have been a manic one. She’d never been more terrified. Every inch of Jack was a threat to her sanity.
Mimicking Jack’s earlier actions, George, from his seat at the side, clapped his hands and nodded at Caroline. “Begin!”
The music started. Lilting, beautiful music, and she tried to listen to that. She would float outside her body and then she would feel none of this. It wouldn’t be happening. It wouldn’t be a memory to haunt her, sweaty and restless in tangled sheets, the eye of night upon her, whispering its lurid things.
Jack’s voice came over the music, low and sure, instructing her steps. His voice was deeper than George’s. A faint rumble she could almost feel across the inch that separated their chests.
An inch? It should be more than that. She pulled back, but Jack’s hand was insistent on her back, holding her in place, and the tension that strung her bones suddenly shuddered down. Down to her belly.
“Jack…” But she didn’t say it, just pleaded it in her mind.“Let me go, please, you don’t understand…”
He only smiled. “You’re not meant to look at me, you know,” he murmured. And she realised she had been—staring up at the edge of his jaw. “You keep your head to the right, like so.”
He turned his face as they spun together in a slow circle, and her own gaze fled past his shoulder, getting confused glimpses of the room, of George watching, his expression speculative, of Caroline, her fair head bent over the keys, though her eyes lifted, a gleam in them. Lucy blushed deeper, looked up, and found Jack’s eyes on her.
“Nowyouare looking at me!”
“I am,” he said, as though faintly surprised. As though the words came from far away, his thoughts elsewhere. There was something in the grey of his eyes, a haze as warm as ruby wine, and just as deep and delicious and unwise… His gaze dipped to her mouth, and everything inside her burned and fluttered: her heart, her very breath, her insides doing their own dance, all confusion. And then…then…even more fleetingly, his gaze dipped lower still, to where her breath was caught and her heart pounded, the hot fluttering inside her giving a mightythump.
He stepped abruptly back. It was not part of the dance. Lucy, hot all over, no idea where to look, came to a stop too.
Lifting his hand to Caroline, Jack indicated he wished the music to stop. The room fell suddenly silent. Her heartbeat was very loud.
“Well.” Jack swallowed, brisk. “She’s a natural, George. You ought to work on your mother. Get this dance agreed for your engagement ball.”
And then, muttering something about needing to meet a friend, he bid them all a hasty goodnight.
Twenty
Jack wasn’t familiar with mornings. He normally slept through them or arrived home with the rising of the sun, drunkenly oblivious. But he now awoke with a vague hope the fresh day would bring a certain clarity. Or at least that the confusion of the previous day would’ve sloughed away in the night, like a scab being knocked off, revealing fresh skin beneath. No sign at all of anything having changed.
That’s what he wanted, he realised as he stood up from the bed and walked barefooted to the curtain. He drew it partially aside and watched a tradesman’s cart trundle over the cobbles. Chimney smoke drifted black against the raw pink-blue sky; a footman smothered a yawn as he trod up the steps of the house opposite. Jack wanted to go back to last week, before things had got so confusing.
His father had been a great advocate of early rising. He loved the countryside and kept unfashionable hours, getting up with the lark and riding or walking for hours before the rest of the house stirred, his dogs at his heels.
A strapping, vigorous man, he’d often cross paths with Jack in the hall, Jack dawdling down the stairs on his way to breakfast, his father slapping a big, wind-cooled hand on his shoulder, the smell of grass and dew on his coat.“Morning, son. All rested and ready for another day of mischief, eh? And look who I found to help you.”
Because often enough, there would be Min, found on her daily pilgrimage from her father’s house. A mop of warm brown curls and a glint of shy eyes peeping out, half hidden behind his father’s bulk. And Jack would smile. And the day would begin.
“Shewas the dawn,” he said to himself, then pulled a face, scowling in embarrassment, and, absurdly, glancing over his shoulder even though he was alone in the room.
“You’ve gone mad, Jack,” he said with more certainty. “Stark raving mad. And all because she looked nice in a dress. Of course she looked nice. She has—” But he cut himself off even as his hand lifted to sketch a curve in the air, refusing to dwell on Min’s…assets.
“And stop talking to yourself,” he said firmly, catching sight of his reflection in his room’s tall looking glass and seeing nothing good. He was a mess, and not just because of the rumpled nightshirt and even more rumpled hair, disordered into wildness by a night tossing and turning. It was his eyes. He dragged a hand over his jaw, the rasp of stubble loud, and tried to recognise himself.
A boy was what he saw. A little frightened. A little ashamed.
Well, that wouldn’t do, would it? He was the Viscount Orton. With a scowl, he pulled the bell for his valet.
He was dressed and downstairs at an hour that disconcerted his servants. Dalcher appeared with his waistcoat misbuttoned and his thinning hair not quite arranged in its usual scalp-concealing manner. Jack suppressed a smile at the glimpse ofshining pate visible through the strands and took the stack of letters handed to him.
The sight of his man-of-business’s handwriting flattened his smile entirely, and he handed the letters back with the instruction to leave them on his desk, before setting forth on a brisk walk, leaving the kitchen staff scrambling to ready his breakfast.
The only one of his friends likely to be up at this hour was George. And though Jack would normally turn to him for advice on the matter currently troubling him, he could hardly do so now.Hello, old friend, in a spot of bother…discovered I’m highly attracted to your future wife…Teeth gritted, Jack instead strode towards the nearest park.
He supposed it was a fine spring morning, but even trying its best, the park was uninspiring compared to the fulsome springs of his Herefordshire boyhood. The spindly trees grew towards the smoke-smudged sky, paths trod down to bare earth struck out across the uneven grass. There were neat beds of flowers here and there, beads of dew still adorning silken petals, and he wandered for a while, ruining his boots on the wet grass, and trying, he supposed, to find the spirit of his outdoors-loving father somewhere between the plants and the drifting clouds.
What the devil do I do?he asked. But in most of his memories, his father was laughing in that bluff, blunt way he had. He’d do the same now, Jack was sure. Perhaps with a sympathetic wince and that heavy hand clapped hard on his shoulder, but the underlying message would be the same.Sorry, son, but you’re a grown man now.
