They bowed and curtsied, deeply and prettily, in part to please the audience of watchers, some of them overt and others pretending they were doing something other than watching them.
Giles hadn’t yet given his waltz away.
In fact, when he saw Hugh repairing to the library alongside the Earl of Vaughn, he made what could only be described as a beeline for Lillias.
Her heart skipped like... a tiny stone across singing ice... when he approached.
It was familiar and pleasant. Not as dramatic as the violent lurching it underwent in the presence of Hugh. He splashed about in there like a bear in a birdbath.
“The next waltz... would you dance it with me?” Giles said at once, long friendship excusing the lack of formalities.
“Of course, Giles.”
Giles seemed sober, which rather put paid to Hugh’s theory about one of his friends forcing whiskey upon him. He had not, however, recovered all of his color and his eyes remained a trifle haunted. He looked a bit the way the heroine ofThe Ghost in the Atticallegedly looked after she’d returned from the attic. At least according to the description.
It was yet another moment in a series of moments of adjustments, a few minutes suspended between the past and the future. Bittersweet, serrated with hope and fear.
She’d waltzed with Giles before. They were well-matched, both tall and long-legged, and they’d danced together countless times, from the time they’d learned their first reels when they were very small.
“I have seldom seen you looking so lovely,” he began. This was a little effusive for Giles, but it was practically a customary way to begin conversations during waltzes, so she didn’t think it could immediately be interpreted as some sort of impassioned declaration. Especially since it was delivered so politely.
“Thank you, Giles. That is indeed a compliment, as you’ve seen me hundreds of times before. Or perhaps it’s a gentle hint I ought to have improved my fashion sense before now?” she teased him.
“No,” he said. “It was the first. You are always in the first stare of fashion.”
She wasn’t certain what to say. This was true. Although she didn’t know why that should be the reason she always looked lovely.
“Lillias, I had no idea you were... that is... good heavens... an engagement.”
As this was neither a question nor a statement, itwas difficult to know how to respond. He stopped, clearly realizing the sentence had been butchered and there was really no way to repair it.
“Neither did I,” she said, truthfully. “It just... happened,” she said even more truthfully.
She managed to produce a gentle beatific smile, which made him frown.
Even though she knew it so well, she found herself searching Giles’s face for landmarks. Some equivalent to a bite from a bear, for instance. She supposed he wore his comfortable history in the flawless clean lines of his face, a face echoed in variations across the ancestors framed and hung on walls all over Heatherfield. Giles, like her brother, took for granted a degree of female adulation simply because he looked the way he looked, but he’d never used it as a reason to be a cad. He was far too well-bred and decent for that.
“Perhaps when you mentioned you were ready to be wed to Lady Dervall, my mind went to the notion of engagements. After all, we are of age and it’s inevitable.”
His eyes flared in something like alarm.
“Oh. Yes. Quite. Well, the notion is bound to arise when one comes of age. One can’t play in creeks or gallivant across ballrooms forever, I suppose.”
“Alas,” she agreed.
“Your Mr. Cassidy seems an unusual sort.”
“Oh, he is,” she said earnestly. “That is, he is in some ways. And in other ways he isn’t.”
“I didn’t know you would be drawn to an unusual sort.” He paused. “Although...”
“Well, one must meet them first before one is drawn to them, I suppose, and that has happened only recently. Although what?”
“You’ve always been a little... well,more...than most girls.” He said this with something like rueful affection.
“More? More what? More how?”
“More willing to wade in the water, for instance, and risk falling in...”
