endeavour to tell a friend.’
Back to that, were they? It seemed this conversation had started out with such a discussion before it had meandered in this very dangerous direction. How had they gone from French lessons, to a game of twenty private questions? ‘I had a marriage proposal once.’ There was no good answer. If she said no, he would think her prudish, a dried-up stick. If she said yes, he might think she was loose.
He wagged a scolding finger. ‘Tut-tut, Claire. That’s not what I’m asking. Have. You. Ever. Been. Kissed?’ There were dangerous glints of mischief in his blue eyes now.
She wanted to take a step back, but there was nowhere to go. She dropped her eyes. If she said no, would he kiss her now to remedy it? She hoped not. She didn’t want a charity kiss any more than she’d wanted a charity waltz. And yet, she did want him to kiss her. Just not like that.
‘Ah,’ Jonathon said softly. ‘I have my answer. Never fear, Claire. It will happen when it should.’ He dropped his voice low. ‘Now, we know each other’s secrets. We are really truly friends.’
She should let it be. But the statement provoked Claire. Couldn’t he see how impossible it truly was? ‘Men and women being friends? Is such a thing realisic, Mr Lashley?’ She moved the discussion back to the intellectual high ground where she was more comfortable. This was a debate she could win, although at the moment she wasn’t sure why it was so important to win it.
They began walking again and she was glad to give her body something to do besides look at him, besides imagining a kiss that couldn’t happen. ‘Society doesn’t think so. It has numerous rules in place to keep men and women apart aside from the purpose of marriage.’ She made her case. ‘For instance, does Miss Northam know you visit me daily for French lessons?’ There. That would be a bucket of cold water on a conversation that had gone astray. She already knew the answer. Cecilia had no idea how Jonathon spent his mornings. Most didn’t. It was a source of embarrassment for him. To have those lessons from her, a wallflower out for three years and a noted bluestocking, would further that humiliation no matter how neat the bloodlines of her birth. ‘How would Miss Northam feel if she did know?’ Another rhetorical question. She already knew the answer. ‘Miss Northam would see me as competition.’
‘But that’s ludicrous!’ Jonathon began his rebuttal and she tried not to be hurt by the truth. It was ludicrous. The old doubts surfaced. How could she possibly compete with Cecilia Northam? Why would a man like Jonathon, who had everything, have an illicit interest in someone like her when he had Cecilia draped on his arm.
And yet, it was what she’d hoped for, wasn’t it? Had waited years for: a moment when Jonathon would see her for herself and love her for it.
‘I think we should prove them wrong,’ Jonathon said. ‘We should declare ourselves friends and we can start by dispensing with the “Mr Lashley” bit. Let us be Jonathon and Claire,’ he declared with an elaborate expansiveness that made her smile as he stuck out his hand.
She took Jonathon’s hand and shook it, meeting his warm eyes. Oh, foolish, foolish hope. She was too late. Cecilia had all but claimed him. She was setting herself up for failure and heartbreak and she couldn’t seem to stop herself from doing it. Just for a moment, she let herself believe in the impossible: He’d missed her. He had noticed she’d left the ball and then he’d left early, too. He found her intriguing. Those were words she could live on for the rest of her life.
* * *
What the hell was he doing, asking for friendship from the likes of Claire Welton when he knew better the impossibility of such a thing? Jonathon was still asking himself the question as he walked down Bond Street that afternoon.
It wasn’t just the social impossibility of such a friendship. Claire had made good points there and he felt compelled to agree with her. Men simply weren’t friends with young, unmarried women of good breeding, especially when the man in question was committed to another.
Well, that was arguable. He wasn’t technically committed to Cecilia. Even as his mind made the debate he felt guilty. He was playing with semantics now. But who could blame him? Claire had caught him entirely unprepared: the feel of her in his arms as they danced, the look in those sherry eyes, all of that intelligence, all of that innocence turned on him. It had been a heady combination on the dance floor. Hell, after a week of lessons, it was becoming a heady sensation wherever she was: the garden, the ballroom, the library. He wouldn’t for a moment suggest Claire Welton was naïve. Naiveté implied the person in question was unworldly and she was far too intelligent to ever be that. She was merely untried, her desires and dreams untested beyond the confines of her quiet life.
And she was ready to test them. The answer came to him so suddenly he nearly tripped over a crack in the pavement. The new clothes, the desire to actively pursue her erstwhile suitor. It was all there. She was ready to break out of her self-imposed exile, a butterfly emerging from the cocoon, still somewhat fragile, still learning the powerful of its wings, its beauty. After all, she’d left early for whatever reason. She had not told him why she’d left, but since it hadn’t been to sneak off to the terrace with her beau, he could only conclude that the lack of success in that regard had encouraged her flight.
Jonathon stopped outside the window of his usual florist’s on Bond Street, studying the blooms on display. He could help her with the metamorphosis and not only with dances. The bell over the door jingled as he entered the exclusive Bond Street florist. The man behind the counter looked up from where he stood arranging a bouquet of yellow and white daisies, one of a hundred he did daily for the aspiring debutantes of the ton and their hopeful suitors.
‘Ah, Mr Lashley!’ He wiped his hands on his wide apron and hustled forward with a smile. ‘Have you come for something for your lovely girl?’
‘Yes, the usual for Miss Northam, if you please.’ He always sent a bouquet of pale pink roses, her signature colour, to Cecilia on the days she and her mother hosted their at home. ‘And the irises in the window, I’d like to send them to a second address.’ He pulled out his card case from the pocket of his coat. ‘Perhaps, you could mix in something yellow to go with them?’ He wrote a short sentence carefully in French on the back of his card. ‘Send this with it.’
Phipps nodded. If he thought anything above the ordinary about two separate orders to two separate women, he gave nothing away. ‘I have some daffodils that have just arrived.’
‘I leave it to your discretion, Phipps.’ It would be a vibrant but sophisticated arrangement, not a mere debutante’s bouquet. ‘I would like them delivered this afternoon.’
Jonathon signed the bill, feeling very smug imagining Claire’s surprise when the flowers arrived, and then the surprise of her suitor when the man realised he couldn’t take her affections for granted, that there was, perhaps, another hound at the hunt. He had expected the action to leave him with a feeling of accomplishment. He’d done something to help a friend. But the feeling eluded him. Why did he feel more like a dog in a manger than that hound at the hunt?
He was prepared for her that night at the Rosedale ball. He signed not one, but two dances on the little card dangling from her wrist, making sure that the second one was late into the evening to ensure that she stayed.
The first dance was early, a lively country romp that left them breathless and laughing. ‘I haven’t danced like that in ages!’ Claire exclaimed between gasps, reclaiming her breath afterwards. It had been exhilarating. If he’d thought, or hoped, that the waltz had been an anomaly,
