“N-no.”
“It feels right, doesn’t it, darling? To come full circle this way?”
It wasn’t a circle. Thirteen years ago, she had a mother. She had an idea of what kind of husband she wanted. She had some notion that once she escaped her father’s household and her father’s criticism, she would be different.
None of those things were true now. Motherless, engaged to a rogue, and well-aware she was doomed to be herself, forever, no matter how dead her father was.
And she was glad time was not a circle. It was good it was a swerving and dipping line that had taken her to some distant place, far from where she had started. She was suddenly relieved to be thirty years of age. To have at her side a betrothed who was far more playful than her girlish notion of a husband. To know she had escaped some parts of her past even if she would never rid herself of the parts of herself she loathed.
The first dance was a country dance and she quickly discovered she didn’t have to speak to the other men with whom she did the figures. She need only meet their eyes and bob her head and pretend she needed to concentrate. And every time Phineas came around to her again, his eyes sparkled, and she thought she could smell him despite the perfumes of the women around her, and he would tell her what a lovely dancer she was and to watch out for Lord So-and-So who had two left feet.
The dance left her flushed and lightheaded.
Phineas escorted her back to her brother. She would get a dance tonight with Edmund. And maybe a second one from Phineas, since they were engaged? That was three dances, almost as many as she had had at her first ball.
“Lady Huxley is gesturing for you to go over to her, Caro,” Edmund said.
She glanced across the ballroom and saw Lady Huxley making a beckoning motion with her fan and a cluster of gentlemen standing around her.
“She wants to introduce you so you can have other partners, I expect,” her brother added.
“D-d-do I have t-t-to?”
“No.” Phineas shook his head and bowed toward Lady Huxley. He reached into a pocket in his embroidered waistcoat and drew out a small folded card with a ribbon attached to it. “With your permission?”
She nodded and he tied it to her left wrist, over her glove.
“Your dance card, Lady Caroline.” He grinned. “You’ll find it’s full.”
She opened it. Next to every dance was writtenPE, E of B.
“I’ve taken them all,” Phineas said.
Edmund’s voice. “One of those better be for me, Phin.”
“You can have one. But not a waltz. And no one else can have any.”
“B-but this is not d-d-done.”
Phineas took both her hands. “Tonight it is. Tonight you will dance every dance and you need not say a word to anyone you don’t know. You’ll just dance. I’ll take you out to the veranda between dances. No one will bother us there.” Phineas suddenly looked worried. “The veranda is not perhaps the, uh, ideal place. I guess I didn’t think this through.”
Edmund snorted. “You’re already breaking all the rules with your monopoly on Caro.”
She was going to dance every dance.
She wasn’t going to have to speak to strange men she didn’t know. Men who might laugh at her or ask her to repeat herself.
Phineas had arranged this. For her. And it was time for the next dance, a waltz.
“It’s all right, isn’t it, Caro?” Phineas asked, his eyes anxious as he settled his hand on her waist and took her other hand. “You don’t mind, do you? Not partnering another man? Breaking the rules?”
“No.”
The broadest of Phineas’ grins, accompanied by a very subtle wink. “Good.”
She leaned forward and dared to put her mouth to his ear. “Thank you.”
It was the most wonderful night of her life.
