Part 6 (2/2)
If she tipped her head up and he tipped his down simultaneously, and she stood on her toes, by her calculations their lips would meet effortlessly.
She'd never had such a thought before in her entire life.
The backs of her arms began to heat.
His face was a glorious geometry of angles meeting planes meeting hollows that seemed specifically designed to make hearts pound and breathing more difficult, as if the observer had suddenly been thrust into a different alt.i.tude. Olympus, perhaps.
Really, he was untenably handsome and alarmingly masculine.
But his blue eyes were warm and bemused.
”It just occurred to me that I may have absconded with you, Miss Eversea. Was this waltz already spoken for?”
”Of course it was. But I'll apologize to the gentleman in question apace,” she said airily.
”'Apace'?” He was amused. ”Would it be the man who is glaring at us? I can see the whites of his eyes as we sail by.”
”That would be Lord Cambersmith.”
”Good G.o.d, that is b.u.mble! I didn't recognize him in grown-up clothes.”
He lifted his hand from her waist to wave merrily, and b.u.mble reflexively waved back before he realized what he was doing and dropped his hand to resume glowering.
”I used to go fis.h.i.+ng with his older brother. Do you think he'll call me out?”
”Would you shoot him apace?”
”I would try not to,” he said with mock regret. ”It's just that I never miss, and I should hate to ruin his grown-up clothes, given that he is so lately in them.”
She smiled up at him. The two of them were being insufferably and uncharacteristically selfish but neither could seem to care at the moment. n.o.body else in the world seemed important.
”Well, he wouldn't be within rights to call you out, and he won't, anyway. I've known him almost since birth. He hasn't any sort of claim on me.”
A hesitation.
”Has anyone else?”
A blunt, bold question. Low, and gruff again.
”No.”
Though she sensed she had just been claimed.
Another little silence, as the truth of that settled in.
”And you, Mr. Redmond? Did you disappoint a particular young woman?”
”Dozens of them, likely. There are only so many waltzes during any given ball.”
This was so arrogant she laughed, and he smiled down into her eyes, teasing her. He was laughing at himself.
His smile faded and he grew serious and almost diffident.
”I will apologize to b.u.mble, and feel I must apologize to you, too. I can't remember the last time I so egregiously abandoned my manners. It's just that I . . . that it seemed important to reach you before you could disappear.”
That little hesitation charmed her. ”Disappear?”
He paused again. ”The way dreams do, when you wake in the morning.”
The words were gruff. She knew them to be truthful, because she sensed they'd caused him a great measure of embarra.s.sment.
This was first indication that the matchless Golden Boy Lyon Redmond, who towered over her and had shoulders for miles, could be hurt.
Just let anyone try, she thought fiercely.
She accidentally ever so slightly squeezed his hand.
He returned the pressure subtly.
Never let me go. An irrational thought, especially since she suddenly wanted the waltz to end so she could dash off, run and run like a firework let loose. Or find a corner and think about all the things she felt right now, all of them confusing, all of them dazzling, all of them filling her a trifle too full. She was not impulsive, and she always liked to know the why and how of things, and she did not know how she had come to be dancing with him. Only that she would rather be nowhere else in the world than here, in his arms, in this ballroom.
”You've been away for some time, Mr. Redmond,” she said finally. When it seemed he still couldn't talk.
”Oxford.”
”What did they teach you there?”
”Quite a number of things. Latin, cricket, how to get rich. Or richer.”
”Truly? Is there a professor of wealth, then?”
”They all are, if you listen properly. It's how one applies what one learns. And the friends ones makes.”
She hadn't the slightest objection to wealth although she often found its unequal distribution and the results thereof unfair and intolerable, and she was fascinated by this point of view.
”How do you intend to become richer?”
”Steam engines. Clever investing.”
”Steam engines?”
”Or rather, railroads. I do believe steam engines are the future of transportation. Imagine, if you will, Miss Eversea, a Great Britain united by rail from end to end. One day you may be in Scotland in a matter of hours. Or Bath. I've also ideas for importing and exporting. I do think the day of the ca.n.a.l will be finite, and-is this inappropriate waltz conversation? Ought I to be complimenting you on your . . .”
A swift glance that took in her coronet, her necklace, the soft fair swell of her bosom peeking very modestly above the lace she'd chosen so carefully for that particular gown.
He said nothing.
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