she had made it impossible for him to do so without snubbing her even more crushingly than even he seemed prepared to do.
There was no point in stuttering and apologising, so she sent him a weak parody of a smile and stood silent and embarrassed, wishing she could think of a way to banish the suggestion of mockery playing about his mouth. It wasn’t quite a sneer or altogether a smile and she found it flustered her ridiculously in a man who had once been her devoted cavalier. Anyway, she really didn’t want him to kiss her—well, not that much—and, even if she did, it was probably out of sheer, perverse curiosity. He’d grown into a much more formidable man than she’d ever dreamt he would. What a shame if he’d cooled toward her just when her interest in him had sharpened, she decided, with an odd jar of panic in her stomach. And where had that ridiculous idea come from in the first place? Why on earth would she want this man-icicle to kiss her, ever? She must have run mad without anyone noticing if she thought being kissed by Edmund Worth would bring her anything but confusion and distaste, swiftly followed by their mutual embarrassment and an even chillier estrangement between them than there was now.
If only she hadn’t had to leave him enjoying the company of her devious duenna far more than he did that of her charge, Kate might have found her dance perfectly agreeable. Her partner was an excellent dancer in direct defiance of the air of world-weary cynicism he seemed to think marked him out as a pink of the ton. Instead, she missed steps in her attempts to watch Eiliane and Lord Shuttleworth having a comfortable coze and silently dreaded what that unconventional lady might be saying to his lordship.
‘Come now, Miss Alstone,’ the gentleman beside her chided, finally losing patience with such an inattentive partner, ‘either dance with me or pretend to be overcome by the heat, so we may be quit of each other and this dance without causing a scandal.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir; I must be a little distracted by all this noise and bustle after so many months in the country, but I shall do better from now on,’ she excused herself rather feebly.
‘Good, for it does nothing for a fellow’s good opinion of himself to dance with a lady whose attention is so patently on another man,’ he told her with a frankness she found surprising in one she’d always thought dandified and affected.
Kate was very careful to mind her steps for the rest of the dance while she wondered if she had truly seen any of the gentlemen who had habitually sought her out at the balls and parties of the London Season. Until tonight she’d been able to flatter herself she was a reasonably intelligent and well-educated female who was also independently wealthy and up to snuff. So what hope was there of her finding that perfect husband for herself when she’d clearly misjudged herself so very badly?
‘Thank you, Miss Alstone,’ her partner said as the music faded and he bowed to her with jaded grace, ‘you know how to depress a gentleman’s pretensions most effectively,’ he told her quietly and calmly. ‘I shall not be troubling you with them again after tonight.’
‘Sir, I have no idea of your meaning,’ she protested rather faintly as that sense of nothing being quite what it seemed tonight haunted her again.
Was she asleep and in the grip of a nightmare where everything seemed normal, but in truth nothing was quite as it should be? Unfortunately not, for her dance partner was continuing and she doubted she’d allow him such an air of disillusioned cynicism in her dreams.
‘Not your fault, Miss Alstone. I should have had the sense to listen to fair warnings when they were given me. Had I done so, doubtless I wouldn’t feel so disenchanted now I’ve discovered they were correct.’
As they’d reached the sofa Lady Pemberley had annexed by the end of that crushing speech, the disillusioned gentleman bowed and took himself off to the card room to join his cronies, no doubt to confirm that Miss Alstone was a shameless flirt who lacked the courtesy to keep her attention on her conquests once she’d made them in order to eye up her next one. Kate’s mind reeled. How odd that she’d got up this morning believing that she was a pleasant enough person to be with.
‘Now this is our dance, is it not, Miss Alstone?’ the cause of it all informed her suavely, getting to his feet as she approached and looking as if exchanging Eiliane’s lively company for her own was a sacrifice he was most unwilling to make.
How did this confounded man ever delude himself he wanted to marry me so desperately when he’s clearly revolted by the idea of spending half an hour in my company nowadays? Kate asked herself wordlessly as they joined the couples on the dance floor for a waltz that seemed more in the nature of a penance to him rather than a pleasure. ‘So why did you keep asking me?’ she finally questioned aloud, startling herself and shocking him into actually looking at her. His arm went across her back to take her other hand and a cool shiver of something untamed with an edge of warning ran through her like wildfire.
For an instant she felt strangely shaken by the intimacy of their locked gaze and the fluid, familiar movements of their bodies as his warmth engulfed her, taking the sense of chill and alienation out of her evening for a blissful moment as their bodies at least recalled how well they’d always danced together. She was strongly tempted to lean into his arms and let him guide her expertly around the floor without making much effort on her own part. Instead she made herself whirl and turn and glide as actively as he did himself, partly because he was a superb dancer and it seemed a waste not to, and partly because it gave each of them time to think of all the changes three years had made in the other whilst he considered that appallingly crass question she couldn’t believe she’d actually asked him out loud.
‘Maybe because you dance superbly,’ he finally said with a faintly mocking smile, taking her remark at its lightest value and lobbing it back at her with a neatness that made her heart skip a beat in what felt oddly like panic.
Not because he’d once wanted to be with her above any other female then, or had dreamt of holding her in his arms from one waltz to the next, one ball to another? Not because he’d missed her sadly through all the long weary summers and winters since the last time he’d held her so close and danced with her, so superbly matched to every step as they had been so very long ago and ironically still seemed to be now when everything else was different between them?
‘Thank you, my lord,’ she replied a little stiffly. ‘Luckily I can return your compliment without the least risk of flattery. Lord Shuttleworth has always been rated one of the finest dancers to grace the ton.’
‘Now isn’t that fortunate for him?’ he parried sardonically, but his only response to her implied challenge was to make their dance even more energetic, perhaps to stop her finding breath to ask him any more inconvenient questions.
‘Very,’ she gasped and decided to wait for anything more until they stopped spinning about the room in this dizzying whirl.
He moved with a poise and latent strength she couldn’t recall noticing before and a tingle of awareness shot through her when he tightened his grip on her to guide her past a dab of candle wax on the highly polished floor. Kate had to remind herself she was looking for a courteous and undemanding husband, not a disdainful and probably very demanding lover, and that Shuttleworth clearly didn’t want to occupy either position in her life anyway. Her body remained unconvinced by such logic and troubled her with the most outrageous fantasies which her mind shied away from while they waltzed in apparent harmony. Kate did her best to ignore her own baser instincts and Shuttleworth’s unspoken disdain while she smiled at nothing in particular as if her life depended on it.
Edmund George Francis St Erith Standon-Worth, keep your head, that gentleman silently demanded of himself as he held the ravishingly lovely Miss Katherine Alstone in the crook of his arm and tried not to think her being naked
