Page 32 of The Subtle Craft of Courting Kate

Kate managed a wry smile. “It was pleasant enough. Did you know that Lord Shaw is Miss Applegate’s elder brother? He wished to sing his sister’s praises. Word has indeed gotten round that the clearest path to your heart is through me—so he didn’t wish to dance with me, you see, so much as he wished to put his sister’s case before me.”

“That was not well done of him.” It was uttered in a low, raw voice, nearly menacing in its gruff tenor.

The night air, which only moments ago had been soft and cool, felt at once thick and heavy. There was a crackle of tension, of a sudden strange current, not unlike the static charge of the air before a lightning storm. But the storm of earlier in the day had long passed, and the sky was dark but cloudless, the cold silvery moon hanging heavy overhead amidst a web of stars. “I was not offended,” Kate said with an awkward little laugh. “He was agreeable company otherwise, and I do like reels. At least I did not have to suffer through a waltz.”

“Oh, you must waltz,” Elliot said, and with the lightening of his voice, so, too did the oppressive atmosphere fade. “I haven’t gone through all of that effort this week for naught. We’ll waltz once we’ve made it safely back inside.”

“No!” Kate gasped, horrified at the suggestion of humiliating herself before a roomful of people. “I can’t waltz; I’ve resigned myself to it.”

“If you can dance a reel, you can dance a waltz,” Elliot said, inflecting his voice toward a wheedling tone. “Come, what’s the harm?”

“I’ll embarrass myself,” she grumbled. “I’ve stepped upon your toes at least a dozen times today already.”

“Then what’s once or twice more? In fact…” Elliot stepped closer, out of the clinging shadows cast by the hedgerows and into the small circle of moonlight that fell between them. “Here,” he said, extending his gloved hand to her. “Step on my feet.”

∞∞∞

“Step on your feet?” Kate repeated with a nervous little laugh. “Elliot, be serious.”

“I’m not always jesting, Katie.” Still Elliot held his hand extended to her in the hope that she would take it. “Can’t you hear the music?”

It was quiet in the garden, mostly. The drone of conversation, which had been at a dull roar in the crowded confines of the ballroom, had been rendered completely inaudible. But the music—high and sweet and clear, the faint strains of a waltz from the distant ballroom, could still be heard above the breeze rustling through the hedgerows.

She didn’t reach for his hand. Instead she twisted her fingers before her, and her shoulders pitched up in an awkward shrug as a grimace threatened to pull at her lips. “I haven’t managed it in the least thus far,” she said. “You can’t expect me to manage it now.”

“Not to worry,” he said. “I’ll be doing the dancing for both of us.”

Kate gave a rueful shake of her head, but at least she stopped twisting her fingers as if she might wrench them straight off of her hands. Instead they dropped to smooth at the vivid yellow skirt of her gown, brushing invisible wrinkles from the delicate silk. “Haven’t I caused enough damage to your toes already?”

Elliot offered her a cheeky grin and flexed his fingers in a beckoning gesture. “You could step on my toes a hundred more times and you’d not hear me complain of it. Come, now, Katie.”

For just a moment she went utterly still, the last vestiges of that wry, self-effacing expression fading from her face as a handful of seconds ticked by. At her sides, her fingers twitched within her gloves, as if there were some part of her that wanted to reach out to him. Not because he’d badgered her into it—only because he’d asked.

Her lips parted, and she drew in a short, shaky breath as she firmed her shoulders. “All right,” she said, as she lifted her chin decisively. “All right, but—but if I should jam my heel down onto your toes by accident, it is only your own fault.”

“I’ll take that blame,” he agreed readily, lurching forward to grasp her hand in his.

“And if I should fall on my arse, you are never to tell a single living soul—”

“Kate,” he interjected, swallowing down the laugh that had climbed into his throat. “You’ll be fine. You have my word.”

Even in the darkness, he could see the heat rising into her cheeks. How strange it was that Kate, whom he had never known to blush in such a fashion in all the years of their acquaintance, could now be brought to it so easily. Her life in Northampton, he thought, had stunted her a little. She had been only a sapling when her life had been utterly changed, those first tendrils of new branches pruned and snipped away before they had ever had the chance to flower.

Would she allow herself, now, the occasion to bloom? To discover facets of herself she had thought long since trimmed away? To grow beyond the limits she had placed upon herself much too soon in life?

Her fingers clutched his, squeezed in a helpless, spasmodic clench that felt more like a flinch than a grip. “I’ll embarrass myself again,” she said, her voice pitched to a whisper-soft murmur.

“You won’t. Here, step on my feet.”

There was the cool rustle of silk as she shifted to lift one foot from the earth. Hesitated. Placed it back on the ground once more. “I’m too heavy. I’ll hurt you.”

“You won’t.” And he prodded her in the way he knew best, in a way that he had learned from childhood, and which had never failed to get a rise out of her. “What are you afraid of, Katie?”

There. Her chin set in that familiar, mulish expression. Her dark eyes glowed with the particular fire of stubborn determination. She snatched up one foot, brought it down again—more lightly than he’d expected, given her flare of temper—to bear upon his.

The position was difficult. She couldn’t place the other foot without being hopelessly overbalanced. She would fall on her arse, and she’d pin the blame squarely upon his shoulders. Elliot wrapped one arm about her waist, offering the security of his arm at her back. “Go on,” he said.

Kate’s fingers clutched at his once more. “You daft man, you’re going to drop me!”