Page 56

“Then I shall add it to my list of accomplishments, alongside brooding, hovering, and staring.”

“Your list grows more distinguished by the day.”

The meal continued, easier now, the wine warming them both. Elizabeth asked about the atlas on the table, and he turned the pages to show her the places his parents had traveled—Italy, France, and the Swiss Alps—rendered in hand-colored detail that had faded only slightly over the decades since they were created.

“My mother spent a summer here,” he said, pointing to a region of Provence. “Before the Revolution made such journeys impossible. She used to tell stories about the lavender fields. You would enjoy visiting, I believe.”

Elizabeth drew the folio toward her and turned the first page. The maps were hand-colored and exquisite—coastlines in ochre and blue, mountain ranges stippled in brown, trade routes marked in faded red ink. Lady Anne’s annotations filled the margins in a small, elegant hand: Vesuvius erupted here, 1794. Sir William Hamilton’s lady watched it from her balcony and declared it superior to any firework display. How I envy her.

“She was funny,” Elizabeth said softly.

“She was.” He leaned closer, turning to the Mediterranean. “Your uncle sailed through Gibraltar. These are the Straits.” His finger traced the narrow passage between continents. “And here is Naples.”

“Tall tales and small gifts. A carved wooden box from Sicily. A silk scarf that smelled of lemons, which my mother confiscated because she considered it too fine for a girl of fifteen.” She bent over the atlas, and candlelight caught the line of her jaw and the wisp of hair that had escaped her pins. “Where would you go, if you could?”

“Greece. The Peloponnese,” he replied without hesitation. “I should like to see Olympia, the temples at Delphi, and the harbor at Piraeus where the Athenian fleet assembled.”

“A classical pilgrimage.”

“I was educated to admire the Greeks. I should like to discover whether the admiration survives the reality.”

“And if it does not?”

“Then I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that my tutors were wrong, which would be a considerable comfort after years of suspecting they were right about everything. Where would you like to visit?” he asked.

“Venice,” she replied. “I have seen paintings of the canals at sunset, and the couples sitting in the boats—called gondolas?”

“Yes, I could see us traveling there, maybe after this war ends, and from Italy, we can proceed to Greece.”

‘Where you may brood in surroundings far more picturesque than Derbyshire can offer.’ Her laughter, light and unguarded, loosened a yearning ache in his chest that had been knotted for days. The candles burned low as they shared a pear tart. The Burgundy dwindled, and Elizabeth’s cheeks glowed with wine and warmth.

“We should do this again,” she said. “Dinner in this room. Without ceremony.”

“I would like that.” He did not wish the evening to end. He rose and stretched out his hand. “May I ask you something that you are entirely free to refuse?”

“Yes?” She regarded his hand with more curiosity than suspicion.

“Would you—” The words tangled in his throat. He crossed to her side of the table, closed the atlas, and set it aside. “I recall from your conditions that you stipulated a willingness to dance. And I find myself wishing to exercise that provision.”

“I remember no such provision.” She stared at him, a smile twitching at the corner of her lips. “And there is no music.”

“There does not need to be.”

“There is no audience.”

“I was rather counting on that.”

“You wish to dance, in a dining room, without music, without company, without⁠—”

“Without any of the social apparatus that has historically prevented me from enjoying the exercise. I am told that the waltz is meant to be danced, not endured, and I should like, for once, to discover whether the people who told me so were correct.”

“I have never danced the waltz,” she said. “It is rumored to be quite scandalous.”

“Not when a woman is with her husband.” He leaned closer, beckoning, his heart pounding at the possibility she would refuse.

And then she placed her hand in his. Her fingers were warm against his palm, and when he drew her closer, settling his other hand at the curve of her waist, he felt her breath catch. The waltz required proximity—scandalous proximity, by the standards of the patronesses who refused to admit it at Almack’s—and he had never been more grateful for a dance’s impropriety.

“If you tread upon my slippers,” she warned, “I shall add it to the conditions.”