“Goodeveningto you, Lord Campbell,” said Lady Crowley when he didn’t move. “Lady Brynne, let’s move along.”
But neither of them stirred so much as a muscle.
Instead, they stared at each other, and the quiet, smoldering intensity of Lachlan’s amber gaze was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. Which was probably why Brynne abruptly uttered three words she’d never spoken before.
“Dance with me,” she said breathlessly.
“What?” Lady Crowley squawked.
“It would be me pleasure.” Lachlan bowed again, then offered his arm.
She took it, and even though multiple layers of fabric separated his forearm from her hand, she would have sworn she felt heat pulsing off his skin as they made their way to the middle of the floor. Either that, or she was coming down with a fever. Regardless, there was a flame there. Between them. Where once there’d been the tiniest hint of a spark. And where there was a flame, fire was never far behind.
“Yer patroness should like me head served up on a silver platter,” Lachlan murmured.
“Nothing as fancy as that, I should think,” Brynne replied, her blood all but humming when he cupped her shoulder and nudged her in a quarter of an inch closer than what was deemed seemly. Not that anyone surrounding them would be able to tell the difference. Butshedid. Lachlan as well, if the glint in his eyes was any indication.
Goodness, but he stole her breath. In a way that had nothing to do with the rigorous physical exertion required of the Viennese waltz and everything to do with the way he was holding her. The way he was looking at her. As if he were an archaeologist who’d just discovered a priceless treasure that he never wanted to let go.
“Where have you been?” she asked as they moved in perfect unison, their steps guided by the full orchestra in the viewing balcony playing the music of John Strauss II, a prolific Austrian composer well-deserving of the sobriquet “The Waltz King”.
“Where haveyebeen?” he countered. “I returned tae Hawkridge Manor the following year, but ye werena there.”
“Did you hope that I would be?” she said, a playful smile teasing her lips. She doubted, very much, that Lachlan had thought of her these past few years as often as she’d thought of him. After he left, she had expected her infatuation with him to gradually dissipate. But if anything, it had grown stronger. Unwittingly, he’d become the standard by which she compared every other suitor that crossed her path.
Did they make her laugh as Lachlan had? Did they challenge her as Lachlan had? Did they encourage her dreams as Lachlan had?
To a man, the answer was always no.
But now Lachlan himself was standing in front of her, and the answer was…
“Yes,” he said simply, and her smile faded as she recognized the truth in his gaze…and the implication of what it meant.
“I…I would have been there, if I could.” She wet her lips. “I was at school.”
“Aye, that’s what Weston said. Did ye enjoy it?”
“Not as much as I’d anticipated.”
They released each other, completed a turn, and then rejoined their hands. This waltz was quick; its tempo nearly twice the speed of the other dances. Ordinarily maintaining a conversation would be difficult, if not impossible. But there was so much that Brynne wanted to say. So much that she wanted to hear. And even though she’d not spared a glance to the perimeter of the room, she knew that the instant the music ended Lady Crowley would come marching across the marble floor to collect her. Which meant this was the only opportunity she had to speak with Lachlan alone.
She didn’t want to waste a second.
“This is yer third Season?” he asked.
“The beginning of my fourth.”
His brows rose. “And ye havena found a husband yet?”
“Don’t say it likethat.”
“Like what?”
“Like it’s a bad thing I did not acquiesce to the first proposal I received.”
“Have there been many of them?”
“Many of what?”
