“I’ll be your partner, Helen.” Jack bowed.
Helen stared at him, eyes fierce. “There is nae music.”
“I’ll hum.”
And so he danced with Helen as he wentbum bum bumunder his breath and instructed her to turn that way or to skip this way. She needed reminding of certain figures, but they came back to her quickly. She was a lively, surprisingly graceful dancer, and he thought she forgot herself a few times. She became the girl who had grown up in the castle of Dunmore.
Duncan leaned against the wall, grinning. He must not know Jack Pike would never come to Helen Boyd’s bedchamber again. Mags was clapping and giggling, watching closely.
“You have to learn the quadrille, Helen.” He taught it to her. She picked it up easily.
“And now the waltz.” He came close to her and put his hand on her waist. She pulled away from him.
“In this dance, the gentleman puts his hand on the lady’s waist and stands very close to her.”
“Oh.”
She let him seat his hand on her waist again, but she held her body rigidly and would not meet his eyes.
She still wore no stays since the ones for her ballgown were at Mrs. Allen’s shop. So her waist under his hand felt much the same as before. Perhaps slightly more flesh here than when he had felt it first in Dunmore. But it was the same waist he had felt here in London. Delicate, yet strong. Taut and quivering right now. So alive.
He took her hand in his other one.
“Your left hand goes on my shoulder, Helen.”
She reached up, her arm over his. Her eyes were suspicious when she looked at his face briefly before she turned her head away.
She could not learn the waltz. She stumbled and jerked and did not turn with him as he directed.
Finally, she broke away, her face red. “I willnae do the waltz at the ball, Jack Pike.”
“All right.”
“And . . . and I think I will go rest now.”
She fled the drawing room. Every fiber of his being wanted to follow her to her bedchamber, close the door, and be with her. In any way she might permit. Sitting on the edge of the bed with her. Looking at her. An arm around her. The side of his leg against hers.
Jack walked back to his house, his shoulders hunched. Despite Phineas’ warning, he had made a mess of it, hadn’t he?
Twenty-Eight
The next day, Helen went to the windows of either her bedchamber or the drawing room every few minutes. She knew she wouldn’t see Jack approach the building from these back rooms, but she couldn’t go out on the street to look for him, could she?
And it would have been foolish since he never came.
Not that she should want him to come. She should want to spare herself that cruelty. But she didn’t.
The dresses were delivered to the rooms as promised, along with chemises, petticoats, gloves, slippers, hose, a little golden shawl for her shoulders. Mags was consumed with touching and looking at each piece, wanting to point out to Helen the fine stitchery, the softness of the silk chemises, the little heels on the satin slippers.
Helen had not worn slippers in five years. She put them on and stumbled. What foolish things these heels were. They made her so unsteady. Would she be able to dance in them?
She must.
In the course of a single day, her time in London had gone from the greatest adventure of her life to a round of duty. A list ofmusts. She must wear stays and she must wear a ballgown and she must dance in heeled slippers and she must go to a ball and she must find a husband.
She must do all these things and not mind that she was dead.
Themustswere her life in Kinmarloch, too. But she didn’t mind them there. Partly because in Kinmarloch, themustswere about survival. Food, heat, shelter, sheep. And partly because she was paid back for her obligation by being able to see her people, her lands, her mountains, her loch. Here, in London, with Jack gone, only Mags and Duncan reminded her why she was still going through the motions of being alive.
