She looked into this face that she already adored and said starkly, “I don’t really know you.”
He blinked twice. He looked down. “Perhaps I spoke too soon. Forgive me. We can speak of this later.” He rose to leave.
“Mr. Nobley,” she said, and he stopped. “Thank you for thinking kindly of me. I can’t accept your proposal. I’m flattered by your attentions, and I have no doubt that many a fine lady will melt under such proclamations in the future.”
“But not you.” He sounded beautifully sad.
What an actor, she thought.
“No, I guess not. I’m embarrassed that I came here as though begging for your tormented, lovesick proposal. Thank you for giving it to me so that I could see that it’s not what I want.”
“What do you want?” His voice nearly growled with the question.
“Excuse me?”
“I am asking sincerely,” he said, though he still sounded angry. “What do you want?”
“Something real.”
He frowned. “Does this have anything to do with a certain gardener?”
“That is none of your business.”
He scowled but said, “I truly wish you every happiness, Miss Erstwhile, whom I will never call Jane.”
“Let’s toss the pretense out the window, shall we? Go ahead and call me Jane.” He seemed saddened by that invitation, and she remembered what it meant to a Regency man to call a woman by her first name. “Except it won’t imply that we’re engaged or anything . . . Never mind. I’m sorry, I feel like a fool.”
“I am the fool,” he said.
“Then here’s to fools.” Jane smiled sadly. “I should return.”
Mr. Nobley bowed. “Enjoy the ball.”
She left him in the dark library, startling herself with the suddenness of yet another ending. But she’d done it. She’d said no. To Mr. Nobley, to the idea of Mr. Darcy, to everything that held her back. And though it had nearly ripped her in two, now she felt so unburdened, her insides seemed made of feathers.
I’m done, Aunt Carolyn, and I know what I want now, she thought as she approached the palpable strokes of dancing music.
She pushed her way into the crowded, loud, spinning ballroom, and almost at once, a hand touched her shoulder.
“Miss Erstwhile,” said Martin.
Jane spun around, guilty to have just come from a marriage proposal, ecstatic at her refusal, dispirited by another ending, and surprised to discover Martin was the one person in the world she most wanted to see.
“Good evening, Theodore,” she said.
“I’m Mr. Bentley now, a man of land and status, hence the fancy garb. They’ll allow me to be gentry tonight because they need the extra bodies, but only so long as I don’t talk too much.”
His eyes flicked to a point across the room. Jane followed his glance and saw Mrs. Wattlesbrook wrapped in yards of lace and eyeing them suspiciously.
“Let’s not talk, then.” Jane pulled him into the next dance.
He stood opposite her, tall and handsome and so real there among all the half people.
They didn’t talk as they paraded and turned and touched hands, wove and skipped and do-si-doed, but they smiled enough to feel silly, their eyes full of a secret joke, their hands reluctant to let go. As the dance finished, Jane noticed Mrs. Wattlesbrook making her determined way toward them.
“We should probably . . .” Martin said.
Jane grabbed his hand and ran, fleeing to the rhythm of another dance tune, out the ballroom door, through the black-papered antechamber, and into the corridor. Behind them, hurried boot heels echoed.
