Ramsey was compelled to point out. “There were people clogging before me.”
“The old timers. They were fun to watch, but you made the rest of us want to do.”
“Well, thank you, I guess.” She looked at Sullivan. “Were you clogging?”
“No. I was…running interference, I suppose you’d say.”
Ramsey frowned. “Running interference?”
Linda sighed deeply. “He’s talking about my mother. She must have said something. Did she, Sullivan? Did she say something to you?”
“Nothing important.” His attention shifted to Tug. “Take your lovely bride and my annoying cousin away, and keep her away from her mother. You’ll thank me for it.”
Tug did just that, taking Linda by the hand and urging her along with the kind of authority that only worked because it was their wedding day. Sullivan and Ramsey watched them go, and when they were out of earshot, Ramsey said, “Are you going to tell me what your aunt said?”
“I hadn’t planned on it. It was all better left unsaid in the first place. Repeating it gives it more importance than it deserves.”
Ramsey was on the point of replying when Ian Bode stood suddenly and asked his wife to dance. Sarah regarded him in some astonishment but announced she was game. Mrs. Packard was hardly less subtle. Her husband gave a small start as she kicked him under the table and jerked her head twice in the direction of the dancing.
Chagrined, Ramsey said, “I certainly know how to clear a table.”
Sullivan shrugged. “Is it an argument if there’s no one around to hear it?”
“You’re going to pull out that old chestnut? A tree falls in the forest…?”
“I don’t think anyone’s ever mentioned that the tree was a chestnut.”
She stared at him. Under her breath, she said, not unkindly, “Idiot.”
He shrugged again and offered no defense. “Dance with me.”
The word no flickered through her mind, but what she did was nod, accept his hand, and allow herself to be drawn away from the table. The tempo of the music slowed as the band switched to another lilting ballad. The fiddles produced sounds as sweet as violins and the string bass kept the three-quarter time of a waltz. Ramsey slipped unresistingly into Sullivan’s arms and fell into the lazy shuffle that passed for slow dancing like every other couple in the clearing.
“They’re playing a waltz, aren’t they?” asked Sullivan.
Ramsey wasn’t sure that she felt like talking. She offered a faint nod.
“It’s nice,” he said.
“Mm.”
“The date seems to be going well.”
Ramsey trod on his toes. Hard. She liked it that Sullivan did not falter. He took it in stride and said nothing. The moment spoke for itself.
10
They werethe last to return to the table. Sullivan swept up Ramsey’s warm beer and went to get them something cold. He backtracked almost immediately to ask if anyone else wanted anything. When the orders came, Ian excused himself to help fetch and carry.
Sarah Bode turned to Ramsey. “We’ve been talking about you,” she said.
One of Ramsey’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Oh?”
Sarah nodded. “I say you’ve had dance lessons. At least five years.”
Yvonne Packard weighed in. “I did jazz for five years, so I think it’s more like eight or nine.”
Ramsey smiled like the sphinx and regarded Mrs. Packard. “Are you in on this?”
