“Have you considered chickens?” Lady Windermere asked Theo. “I have found there is something particularly relaxing about all that clucking.”
Annabelle gaped then let out a snort she tried to pass as a cough. Theo’s foot connected with her ankle.
“No,” Theo said, her voice a little strained. “That is—darling, do we keep chickens?”
Nathanial jerked fully awake and looked up in alarm. “Chickens? Where? I hope not.”
The terrible, hysterical urge to laugh assailed Annabelle as Theo pushed back from her chair and held out her hand to Annabelle. “I believe there is dancing over there,” she said in blind disregard for the fact Annabelle hated dancing. Anything would be better than this and both sisters knew it. “Will you join us, Lady Windermere?”
Lady Windermere, a lady in her early middle age who had been widowed a few years prior, chuckled gently. “No, no. You young folk enjoy yourself.”
Theo gripped Annabelle’s arm almost painfully as they made it to other couples swirling around a small quartet. “Heavens, I’d forgotten how boring she was,” Theo said, gasping like she hadn’t been breathing for their entire conversation. “I’m sorry, Anna, but surely dancing with Nathanial would be preferable to sitting there one moment longer.”
Annabelle didn’t have the heart to confess she hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation at all. “But who will you dance with?”
“Anyone. I hardly mind.”
Nathanial raised an eyebrow. “Anyone, my love?”
“Well I would dance with Annabelle if I could, but I think Lady Windermere would burst a blood vessel,” Theo said. “It’s a good thing your mother is ill, Nate, or she’d have had an apoplexy.”
“Luckily for us all, even if she were well, my mother would never deign to be seen in Vauxhall Gardens,” Nathanial said. “Not even for fireworks.”
Considering fireworks were loud, bright, and overpowering, Annabelle wishedshecould have been spared the delight as well. But just as she’d resigned herself to dancing at least one with Nathanial, she spied a tall gentleman approaching, daggers in his eyes aimed straight for her heart.
“Lady Annabelle,” he said when he reached them, his voice all soft menace. She felt the danger of it curling around her. “Just the lady I was hoping to see.”
Nathanial caught her eye, and she knew if she gave him the signal, he would step in for her. But she shook her head.
This was something she needed to do. And if he thought he was going to take advantage of her, he was going to have another think coming.
“Lord Sunderland,” Theo said, not bothering to curtsy. The tension deepened and everyone must be able to sense it. People turned to them.
The Marquess either didn’t notice or didn’t care. His eyes glittered as he looked at Annabelle again, and she had that same urge to throttle him. Maybe stab him with a hairpin or two. He hadnoright to look at her with that air of night and unspeakable sin as thoughsheshould have something to apologise for.
I’m ever so sorry for having a dowry you covert, my lord. Evidently you despise it as much as I do.
“Would you do me the honour of this next dance, my lady?” he asked, still looking straight at Annabelle. Her toes curled as she looked back.I hate you, her eyes said.
His smouldered.I know.
“Actually,” Nathanial said, but she cut him off, not looking away from the Marquess.
“Very well,” she said, letting her reluctance colour her voice. “One dance.”
“Believe me, I would not ask for more.”
She doubted that, but said nothing as he brought her into the middle of the floor. Of course, fate was not on her side, and the next dance was a waltz. Naturally it would have been impossible for her to dance with her nemesis to anything else.
He looked down at her, gaze moving from her eyes to her cheekbones to eventually her lips, and back to her eyes. Fury was alive in his face, and it was a dark thing, ravenous. A starving wolf confronted with a rabbit.
She lifted her chin. If he decided to take a bite, he would discover she was no rabbit.
“So,” he said, a hard edge to his words. “I hear you have been busy.”
“Not as busy as you.”
He narrowed his eyes at her and she narrowed hers right back. Two could play at that game. But when his hand gripped hers and his other, rather scandalously, landed on her waist and drew her close, her expression slipped, mortification creeping in. This was not how gentlemen danced the waltz—or at least, not how they danced it in public.
