“It’s a country dance.”
The dance wasn’t so much the problem if she was being honest with herself. The real problem was she felt as if there was a thick line dividing her from everyone else in this room. The line was of her own creation, yes, but a line all the same. She could never let Daniel swing her around like the scooping couples on the dance floor. She could never throw her hands in the air and kick up her heels.
Since discovering who her father really was, Sam had spent every waking moment constructing and crafting her careful persona. She retired the fun parts of herself, the reckless, the bits open to life’s quirks. Sam didn’t know how to give up the persona now.
She wasn’t brave enough.
“You really should go ask someone else,” she said.
There was no reason his night should be ruined because he was stuck with her.
“But I wanna dance with you.” His eyebrows knitted together, a touch of exasperation creeping up on him. “Why would I bring you to a party and not dance with you?”
“I don’t want to embarrass myself.”
“You think I’d let you embarrass yourself?”
He was too chivalrous, too kind for his own good. She wanted to punch some sense into him. Or ask him to kiss some nonsense into herself.
“I don’t want to embarrassyou,” she offered.
“I can embarrass myself well enough on my own, thanks. Don’t need any help from you.”
Daniel stepped in front of her, capturing the attention she’d been withholding. He couldn’t hear her heartbeat, right? Not over the roar of the band’s music. Her breath caught when he extended his hand. Every time they touched, the magic between them heated and threatened to boil over. What would it be like for him to hold her so close on this crowded dance floor?
“What are you really afraid of?”
I’m afraid you’ll sweep me into your arms and I’ll fall in love with you. Not for tonight, but for forever. And I can’t fall in love with you.
I’m afraid I can’t be as free as those people. I’m afraid I can’t let myself go and have fun.
Also, I reallyamafraid of looking stupid. Basically, the number one rule of being a lord’s daughter is don’t fucking embarrass him. Imagine what it’d be like if the front page of the newspaper tomorrow had pictures of me dancing like an idiot and he saw it and…
Sam didn’t realize how lost in thought she’d been until Daniel extended his hand to her once again.
“Sam?”
She remembered standing in the dressing room mirror, looking back at her strange reflection and deciding she could allow herself to be a new creation for one night.
You’re not Sam Dubarry, daughter of a duke. Tonight, you’re Samantha Dubarry, the nurse head over heels for this soldier. She’s not afraid to dance. There’s nothing else she’d rather do, in fact.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she declared.
Daniel couldn’t have looked more victorious if he tried. The band up on the bandstand struck up a runaway train of a song. Sam couldn’t place it, but the beat was so fast and loose it threatened to speed out of control. She prayed Daniel couldn’t feel how sweaty her palms were.
“Then I guess you’d better dance with me.”
She left her fear—and everything else holding her back—her father, the cryptic warnings of her brother, the Animos Society—on the sidelines. For tonight, she would let herself free.
And she did. She and Daniel danced and laughed and drank and talked and danced and danced until the sun came up.
It was the first sunrise Sam had seen since she was a child. And it was also the most beautiful.
Chapter Twelve
When she returned home, Daniel walked her to the door and asked if he could see her again. For a moment, Sam thought he might kiss her. The promise of a kiss hung in the air like heavy snow clouds, but it didn’t happen. He was every bit a gentleman, leaving her both amazed and unsatisfied.
An hour later, she was still awake in her bed, tossing through her memories of the night. Her mind wouldn’t quiet. Once it became quite clear she wouldn’t be resting, she set out to occupy herself. First, she wrote down everything she could remember, every moment she wanted to lock away in her heart’s impenetrable memory vault.
