Belying his claims otherwise, Temple led her skillfully and enjoyably through the steps.The mazurka was a couple’s rather than patterned dance, keeping her partnered with him throughout the set.It was also complicated enough to command the dancer’s whole attention.
Regrettably, it did not.
Despite her best efforts to ignore him, Fiona was entirely too conscious of Aylesbury’s serious gaze following her.
Until that gaze was gone.
The awareness faded, and she sighed with relief, putting some effort into enjoying herself.“Despite your warnings, my toes are surviving quite nicely.”
“It is a surprise to us both, I assure you,” he jested in his quiet way.“Much to my mother’s chagrin, I am not one to frequent society balls.”
As contained and solemn as he usually was, that didn’t surprise Fiona at all.“What brings you out tonight, then?”
“Richard wrote that you were all coming to town, so I thought it might be nice to make an exception.”
She groaned as she was twirled around the corner.“Please do not tell me that he recruited you to assist in this mad effort to see me married off!I hardly require yet another pair of censuring eyes frightening off all the eligible gentlemen.”
“No,” Temple shook his head with a low chuckle as he moved her around the floor.“I’m most definitely not here to chaperone you, Lady Fiona, but perhaps instead to join the ranks of said eligible gentlemen.”
“Join the ranks...?”she began to ask, and then it struck her what he had said.A blush blossomed on her cheeks, and she nearly stumbled.Was Lord Temple saying that he intended to court her?
“Lady Fiona?Have I shocked you into silence?”he teased lightly.“Perhaps I should have begun as I had originally intended with an invitation to join me for a ride?”
Another blush heated her cheeks, and Fiona studied Temple through her lashes, noting his strong facial features and sandy hair for the first time.His light brown eyes are so solemn yet warm.And he was tall, a pleasing aspect of any gentleman given her unusual height, with a muscular military bearing.
He didn’t have dark hair, but he was very handsome indeed, though she hadn’t once stopped to consider it before.Temple had come into their lives when her thoughts had been far too occupied with thoughts of Aylesbury to notice anything else.
Alas, that hadn’t seemed to change.
Glancing around the ballroom, it took Fiona a moment to locate Aylesbury again, not on the sidelines but amid the dancers with a young, blonde miss in his arms.He was saying something to her, though she couldn’t make it out from the distance.Whatever it was, it stirred none of the adoration in the young woman that Aylesbury usually inspired in females.
“Lady Fiona?”
She looked up at her partner again.“My apologies, Lord Temple.I’m afraid you’ve taken me quite off guard.But, to answer your question, yes, I think I would enjoy a ride.”Now that the worst had happened and she’d managed to come upon him, the last thing she needed was to let Aylesbury think she was pining for him or without options.“Carriage or horse?”
“How about bicycle?”
Fiona laughed at the thought.“I fear I cannot imagine you riding a bicycle, Lord Temple.It doesn’t suit a military man, does it?”
A pink gown swished by the corner of her eye, and she caught sight of Aylesbury close by.
“Is it true, Miss Langston?Have you heard from her?”he was asking his partner.“Do you know where she is?”
She?Fiona couldn’t help but wonder and cursed her curiosity.No!There was nothing—nothing!—about the Marquis of Aylesbury that should interest her any longer.She had put him behind her.She was ready to move on to a brighter future...one where what Aylesbury did and whom he did them with should not interest her.
“Ah, but I am no longer in the military,” Temple was saying.
“Very well,” she said, though her voice was distracted and lacking the enthusiasm it had carried before.“Bicycles it is then, though sadly, I don’t have one.”
“I shall have a pair brought around for us.Shall we say tomorrow, then?”
Suddenly, a burly uniformed man with an impressive silver walrus mustache pushed through the crush of dancers, ignoring protests along the way.He caught Aylesbury’s partner by the arm and pulled them to a halt.
Shoving the girl behind him, the older man puffed up like an outraged rooster.“I thought I told you to leave my daughter be, Aylesbury.”
Aylesbury said something more in a low tone, to which the old man bellowed, “I told you before, my daughter doesn’t know anything about it.”
“Lady Fiona?”
