Page 23

The Earl of Riverdale again acted as master of ceremonies, though his role consisted mainly of taking suggestions from a mob of children, looking at Jennifer with raised eyebrows to see if she could play the appropriate music, and announcing the choice after she had nodded.

And they danced, children, young people, and adults alike, performing the steps with vigor mingled with good-natured laughter whenever someone inevitably took a wrong step and thus confused everyone else in the set. A number of younger children, neither knowing the dances nor caring, twirled and leaped and wafted or even just bounced on the spot roughly in time to the music. Emma Cunningham openly enjoyed one intricate country dance in her father’s arms while Susan, the twin from whom she was inseparable, was equally exuberant in her mother’s.

What an endlessly cheerful couple Joel and Camille Cunningham were. There really was a magic about them.

Thirteen-year-old Sarah Cunningham was openly thrilled to have Owen for a partner for one dance and Ivan Wayne for another. Josephine Archer and Joy Ellis, both eleven, were partnered in their turn by the single gentlemen. How very kind those men were, Stephanie thought as she danced with Justin, Earl of Brandon. She remembered from personal experience how young girls fancied themselves grown up long before they actually were. These dances would surely be among their most cherished memories of this Christmas. Owen could be a pest as an older brother and had been the bane of Stephanie’s childhood existence, or would have been if she had not given back as good as she got. But he could be the kindest, most considerate man in the world too.

“A waltz, a waltz,” some of the younger people were chanting a little later as they crowded about the Earl of Riverdale. “Please, Uncle Alex. A waltz. Please.”

He looked dubiously at Jennifer, but she smiled and nodded.

“A waltz it will be, then,” he said, shrugging and grinning as he looked across the room to where his countess was sitting with Lord and Lady Hodges.

“But not too vigorous, if you please, Lady Jennifer,” Lady Molenor called. “I still have not quite recovered my breath from that last dance. I am getting far too elderly for this.”

Her sons scoffed fondly, and Lord Molenor took her fan and waved it before her face.

“And sadly, we must make this the grand finale of the evening and of our day,” the Earl of Riverdale said. “I have just realized that the carriages will be arriving from Bath within half an hour.”

There were cries of protest and dismay, though the hour must indeed be well advanced, Stephanie thought.

“We must make this waltz count, then,” Lady Dirkson said, clapping her hands and beaming about at everyone. “Husbands and wives must waltz with each other. Peter, Ivan, and Mr. Owen Ware, I am certain, will be happy to dance with Sarah and Joy and Josephine if they know the steps, as I daresay they do, since they have been the ones clamoring for a waltz. Robbie, will you be so good as to dance with Katy?”

“Oh no, Aunt Matilda,” Katy Bennington protested, looking a bit downcast. “I do not know the steps.”

“Me, me,” Rebecca Archer, aged nine, said, jumping around to face her cousin. “Waltz with me, Robbie. Dear Robbie. I know the steps.”

He glowered at her even as he nodded curtly. She beamed at him and clapped her hands.

But Stephanie only partly noticed all that was going on around her. She just knew what was coming—anyone with half a brain would know it since Viscountess Dirkson had not allotted Viscount Watley to one of the young girls.

He knew it too and was already striding across the room toward Stephanie, holding her eyes with his own as he came. He spoke even before reaching her and before Lady Dirkson could draw breath to continue.

“I would be obliged if you will waltz with me, Lady Stephanie,” he said. “If you do not have a prior claimant to your hand, that is.”

Oh. Her mind was flooded suddenly with memories of last summer. She had said no then to the same request and had wondered ever since what would have happened if she had said yes instead. Here was a second chance. Though there was no real comparison, was there? That had been a private moment; this was very public.

“I do not,” she said. “And thank you.”

She wondered if he was having similar memories and had wondered if she would humiliate him again, but in front of his family and hers this time.

She got to her feet. She was to waltz with him after all.

—

“Since it is the end of the evening and everyone is tired, not just Lady Molenor,” Lady Jennifer Ellis said from her place at the pianoforte, “I will play something with a gentle tempo.”

“Thank you,” Avery, Duke of Netherby, said with a languid sigh as he led his wife onto the floor. “One would like to have some breath left with which to totter out to one’s carriage afterward.”

“Perhaps we might give it a try if it is indeed to be slow, Mildred,” Lord Molenor said, grinning at his wife as he reached for her hand.

“Viola?” The Marquess of Dorchester got to his feet, taking her hand in his as he did so. They smiled at each other in a way that always warmed Bertrand’s heart.

Almost every other married couple was ready to waltz too, even the Reverend Michael Kingsley and Mary, his wife. The exceptions were Jennifer and Ben Ellis. She was playing the pianoforte, and he was holding their young son, who was fast asleep against his shoulder, as he went to sit beside Louise, Dowager Duchess of Netherby, who also cuddled a sleeping child, one of her grandchildren, on her lap. They smiled at each other.

Everyone except the very young children and Katy, who could not waltz, and Andrew, who was, interestingly enough, sitting beside her, was paired up and happy for this quiet, romantic finale to their family Christmas. Or so it seemed to Bertrand. And was he happy? Yes, he thought, on the whole he was. He would tuck away the memory of this Christmas, which had begun with a wedding and had proceeded somewhere along the way to an apology, and was ending with a waltz, with other memories from the past. Tomorrow most of the people in this room, beginning with Winnie and Nicholas, would be homeward bound. That was both a sad and a cheering thought, for there was no place like home, and celebrations would become wearisome if they went on for too long.

But now, tonight, there was still this waltz left—the very dance that had caused the upset between him and Stephanie back in the summer.