She snorted. “You are foxed.”
He grinned, teeth bared. “Never more sincere.”
She should have pulled her hand away, but she did not. The sensation was strange. Almost frightening. A surge of something she could not quite name, except to say it was the opposite of loneliness shot through her.
He seemed to sense the shift in her. His expression softened, and for a moment, he looked less like a scoundrel and more like a boy on the edge of discovery.
“Louisa,” he whispered, as if the name itself were fragile. “Say yes. Or say no. But don’t leave me in the middle.”
She considered this, the weight of it, the risk. Then, with a dry laugh, she said, “I would sooner take holy orders.”
He released her hand with a mock gasp, then attempted to stand. The effort proved too much, and he toppled backward, landing with an undignified thud against the side of the piano. Louisa slapped a hand to her mouth, half-horrified, half-entertained.
He righted himself, rubbing his elbow and looking sheepish for perhaps the first time in living memory. “I regret to inform you,” he said, “that this is the most mortifying thing to ever happen to me.”
She extended a hand to help him, her fingers steady even as her heart thumped. He took it, and for a moment they were connected. Her, upright and composed. Him, battered but oddly sincere.
He looked up at her, eyes searching. “For the record,” he said, “I meant it.”
She wanted to reply—something flippant, something scathing—but the words would not come. Instead, she helped him to his feet, letting her hand linger on his arm longer than she ought.
They stood there, side by side, two outcasts in the dying light.
“You should go to bed,” she said at last.
He nodded, solemn as a schoolboy, and released her hand.
“Only if you promise to haunt my dreams,” he said, a playful grin lighting his face.
She smiled back at him.
“Go, Lord Foxmere,” she said. “Or I’ll play the rest of the waltz myself, and you’ll never recover.”
He bowed, crooked and theatrical, and retreated down the corridor, his cravat trailing behind him.
Louisa watched him go, then turned to the pianoforte. She touched the keys—softly, so as not to wake the house. For a moment, she sat there, listening to the echo of the dare, the crash of his fall, and the hush that followed.
She sat at the pianoforte for quite sometime before returning to her room. Unable to sleep she paced, replaying his proposal in her mind. She could not help but wonder what marriage to Foxmere might bring.
She must have dozed near dawn—somewhere between the echo of a half-played waltz and the quiet shock of a dare—because it was a persistent knocking that roused Louisa from her slumber. She opened one eye to find the curtains aglow with post-dawn sunlight and realized the hour was either too early or far too late.
“Come in,” she croaked, her voice gravelly from a night filled with unsaid things.
The door swung open to admit her lady’s maid. The expression on her maid’s face was a mix of terror, excitement, and the thrill of impending disaster.
“Lady Louisa, I thought you’d want to hear it from me first…”
“Hear what?” Louisa yawned, rubbing her face.
The maid pressed her lips together, as if to suppress a shriek. “They’re saying you are to be married, milady. To Lord Foxmere. They say it’s all but official.”
Louisa’s mind needed a moment to process this. Then the memories crashed over her. The music room, the dare, Foxmere’s voice—‘I’ll marry you if you dare me to’—and her own reply, ‘Very well. Propose. I dare you.’ The image of him kneeling and the absurdity of his words flooded back.
Surely, she thought, even the wildest gossip couldn’t have survived that degree of farce. And who could have seen them?
The maid continued, her voice low but urgent, “The parlor is all abuzz. Some say you accepted. Others say there will be a formal announcement at luncheon. There’s even talk of a ring?—”
“A ring?” Louisa nearly choked on her tea. “I have nothing to do with any ring. The man could barely stand upright, let alone procure jewelry.”
