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“How will we keep from tripping over each other?” she asked.

A smile tipped the corners of his mouth. “Trust me. I won’t let you fall.” He made an adjustment so they were slightly offset, his foot intruding beneath the hem of her skirt. Beginning to rotate her in a turn, he said, “As I move backward, step between my feet. Aye, that’s the way of it.”

He pulled Reina fully into the dance and accelerated their pace. She had thought the close physical connection would slow them down, but somehow it let them soar. Her momentum became his, and his became hers, all superfluous movement dissolving in seamless gliding. They swept around the farthest edges of the dance floor where the shadows were deepest. Her skirts snapped in whirls and eddies of flame as he propelled her through turns and reverse turns with breathtaking ease.

She heard John’s husky laugh as he saw her enjoyment. Through her hands and arms, Reina felt the vitality and force of him flowing into her. She had never relinquished so much control to anyone . . . had never guessed that partnership could feel like taking flight.

All too soon the music ended, the yearning flourishes and harmonies thinning into silence. They were earthbound once more.

John released her with care, ensuring she was steady on her feet, and bowed.

It was over.

Reina managed to curtsey and smile blindly. She made her way along the outskirts of the room, while John followed. The pure joy of the dance had vanished. Now her throat had knotted, and it hurt when she tried to swallow. The idea of going back home was intolerable.

For heaven’s sake, what was wrong with her? She was always so level-headed. Why did this man put her in such a tumult? She’d never carried on like this before.

It had never seemed important that she’d skipped over the time in a young woman’s life when she was supposed to enjoy courtship and flirtations and garden parties. Her youth had ended at the age of eighteen, after her father had died and left her and Mamaíta to face the kind of poverty that might have sent them to a workhouse. In the years of feverish work that had followed, there had never been a spare moment to consider what she might have been missing. But it seemed that all the girlish fancies and infatuations she’d never allowed herself had come to plague her now, as a grown woman.

God, how mortifying.

The effort to maintain a social smile was ghastly. It was an unspeakable relief when she reached the top of the stairwell, away from the crowd, and could let her face relax.

The lace gloves now felt itchy and cloying. She tugged them off impatiently, almost scratching her own skin in her haste, and rubbed her bare, cold arms. The mist of sweat she’d accumulated during the dance gave her an uncomfortable chill.

John paused beside her, his gaze falling to the limp gloves in her hand. Without a word, he took them, folded them neatly, and tucked the small bundle into his coat pocket. “Allow me to go before you, ma’am,” he said. “If you lose your footing on the steps, you can reach out for me.”

Ma’am.

Reina stiffened but made no comment. She followed him step-by-step; her gaze fixed on his broad shoulders as they descended into the darkness. They reached the first landing but before they started on the next flight down, her feet wouldn’t move. It was as if the soles of her dancing shoes had been tacked to the floor. All she could do was stand there, shivering in the drafty space.

She couldn’t see John’s features, only his looming silhouette as he turned to face her.

“Ma’am?”

The note of concern in his voice was all it took to demolish her self-restraint. “I don’t want to go back,” she blurted out.

John was silent, no doubt trying to make sense of that.

“I want more nights like this with you,” she said unsteadily. “I don’t want to turn into strangers again.”

When he replied, he sounded calm but urgent, as if he were directing her through a building during an emergency. “I’m going to help you downstairs and into the carriage, and then we’ll head home. Everything will go back to how it was. It has to. If not, I’ll have to leave, understand?”

“Yes.” She was filled with yearning, drowning in it. Sharp pressure built behind her eyes and nose, and the tightness in her throat broke.

John was instantly alarmed. “Ah, Reina . . . no. No, don’t . . .”

In periodicals such as Quill & Corset Monthly, crying women were always described in delicate terms. Their dainty tears were likened to jewel drops or “morning dew upon the blushing rose.” They wept prettily and would sometimes turn pale and swoon.

Reina hardly ever cried, but when she did there was nothing pretty about it. She always turned red-faced and sniffly, and made an array of unattractive noises. This could not be allowed to happen.

As she struggled to contain herself, she felt herself being gathered up and held firmly against the fine wool of his coat.

“Shhh . . . cariad . . .” One of his hands came up to cradle her head on his shoulder while he murmured in Welsh. The sound of it was soothing, all long vowels and th’s and tender scrapy sounds like the licks of a cat’s tongue.

The Welsh words turned to English, as he reached into one of his coat pockets for a handkerchief. “Softly, now . . . softly. Troubles always seem worse in the dark of an evening.”

She took the square of soft folded linen, blotted her wet eyes, and blew her nose with an unladylike gust.