She closed her eyes tightly, and those words echoed in her mind. Dance with me ...
“Dance with me, Carmen!”
She laughed up at her major. “You are moon-mad, Major Everdean! How can we dance here? Outdoors ... with no music? And I am not wearing my ball gown!”
She pirouetted about in her trousers and boots.
“Can you not hear it?” His face, golden with the touch of sunlight, was merry as he looked down at her. The lines about his eyes deep with a smile.
“Hear what?”
“The music, of course. I believe it is a waltz.”
Carmen heard only the rush of the river they were strolling beside, the sounds of voices and laughter from the nearby encampment. But she cocked her head to one side, pretending to hear the lilting notes. “I do believe you are correct, querido! A waltz, indeed.”
He held out his hand. “So—will you dance with me, Carmen?”
“I would be honored, Peter.” She dipped into an elaborate court curtsy, as if she wore the grandest satin ball gown and diamonds.
Then Peter swung her in a wide arc, his hand warm at her waist. They were much closer than would ever be proper in a fine ballroom; her very traditional mother would have fainted, had she been alive to see! Carmen cared not a whit. Peter whirled her around, around, until the sky tilted above them, and she leaned her forehead against his shoulder and laughed until she cried ...
Carmen blinked quickly, back suddenly from her sunny riverback. Peter stood before her, not the dashing English officer who had waltzed with her beneath the branches of trees, but unsmiling and stern. His red coat was gone, replaced with elegant but austere dark green superfine.
This man would not dance with her on a grassy floor until she was dizzy with love and laughter and blossoming love and they collapsed, breathless, onto the ground.
She looked at him now, and saw all that she lost since that magical day. She burst into tears, breaking away from Robert and fleeing the ballroom. The crowd parted before her in utter silence, entranced by the possibility of a scene in their midst.
Peter moved not at all, staring directly before him, until he turned on his heel and left the room in her wake. He hurried past the gawking crowd, the footmen at the front doors, onto the pavement outside the Carstairs’s house. But Carmen had vanished.
The street was quiet, except for rows of carriages waiting for the ball to cease and their owners to return.
Then he heard the faint click of shoe heels on pavement. He turned and saw a fur-trimmed burgundy satin train disappearing around a corner.
He dashed off down the street, calling after her. “Carmen! Carmen, please wait.”
When he came around the corner after her, he found that she had halted at his cry, but had not turned back. She stood there on the pavement, one hand on the wrought-iron railings of a fence. Her shoulders shook a bit, as if she were breathing too deeply, but otherwise she was completely still.
Peter had the sudden, powerful urge to kiss the pale, vulnerable nape of her neck, exposed by her new cropped coiffure.
“Carmen,” he said. “Why did you run away?”
“Why did you follow me?” she answered.
“Well, I ...” Peter paused. Why had he run after her so impulsively? “I wanted to apologize.”
“For asking me to dance?”
“It seemed to embarrass you. Perhaps you simply could not bring yourself to dance with the likes of me.”
She turned around. Her eyes seemed too bright, but she was composed. “It would only do my reputation good and no ill to be seen dancing with the famous Ice Earl, aside from those silly gossipy articles. And, if you are as fine a dancer as you once were, I am sure it would have been most enjoyable.”
“Then, why did you leave?” Peter was baffled.
“I was—startled.”
“Startled?”
“Yes. That you would ask me to dance, a woman you dislike so. I suppose I questioned your motives.”
“My motives were only to dance with you!” And to separate her from Robert Means. “To speak with you.”
“Indeed?”
“Indeed. I have many questions I would like to ask you.”
“I am here now. Ask me, Peter.”
Peter looked about. The street they were standing on, wide and well lit, faced a small square where there were several benches. “We cannot talk standing here.”
“I do not wish to return to the ball. No doubt it is buzzing with speculation.”
“Then, will you sit with me over in that square? Just for a moment. When you are feeling more the thing, we can return to the ball. Or I can see you home.”
Carmen glanced uncertainly at the square. “Are you sure it will be safe?”
“Carmen, you will be much safer sitting there with me than wandering the streets of London alone.”
She nodded. “Of course. Yes, I will sit with you for a moment.”
“Thank you.” Peter took her arm to lead her across the street. There was a small patch of skin below her sleeve and above her glove that was bare, and that was where his hand fell. It was almost a shock to feel his palm against her warm flesh. It was as soft as velvet, just as he remembered that once all her body had been.
Once her hair had been long and had cloaked her sun-golden, soft nakedness like a shining black curtain, as she leaned forward to kiss him ...
His hand jerked on her arm.
She turned her head to look at him. “Peter?”
He drew his coat closer about him, hoping it was too dark for her to see the new fullness at the front of his close-fitting trousers. “Shall we sit here?”
“Yes, certainly.”
Carmen looked up at Peter as she settled herself on the bench, puzzled. He seemed so—discomposed suddenly. Almost as much as she was. “What did you wish to talk about?”
His eyes were wide as he looked down at her, almost as if he were rather startled to find her there. “What?”
“You asked me to dance because you wished to speak with me. I merely inquired what about. After all, when you came to call on me at my house, you seemed to have everything settled about me in your mind.”
“No more than you have about me!” he snapped.
“I beg your pardon? I did not hurl accusations at you.”
“No. You just think me capable of being cruel and close-minded. You think me bitter and implacable.”
Carmen rather felt that was the gist of it. “Did you not accuse me of spying against your regiment?”
“Yes, of course. But—no.” He shook his head. “Forgive me, Carmen. I am rather confused.”
“Well, that makes two of us. I have been utterly bewildered ever since I saw you again.”
Peter drew in a deep breath. “It is true that I have buried myself in regrets these past years. I did think those things of you, on the evidence I had at hand.”
“The flimsy evidence of seeing me with Chauvin!”
“That, and—other things.” But he did not want to bring Robert Means into it just at present. He only wanted Carmen to understand his own feelings. “Yes, flimsy evidence, as you say. But as the years passed, I clung to my anger, and it grew. Anger was so much preferable to grief.” He laid his hand, very gently and tentatively, against her own. “Now, as I see you again, I remember other things.”
“Things such as what?”
“How very brave you were. How outspoken, how valiant. How you made me laugh, made me want to dance, when it seemed I would never want those things again.” His hand moved on hers, his fingers curling beneath her palm. “What a grand kisser you were.”
Carmen gave a choked laugh. “Oh, Peter!”
“It is true that you were! Why, I recall that afternoon we went walking beside what you called a river, but what was really only a small creek ...” He broke off and stared at her. “That was it, was it not? When I asked you to dance, you thought of that afternoon.”
“Yes. I remembered how very happy we wer
e that day, and how our lives have changed since then. I was—overcome.”
“I remember that day, too.”
“Do you?”
Their gazes met, clung, and a silence, deeper than words, fell around them.
Then a carriage clattered past in the street. Carmen pulled away from him and rose to her feet. “We should go back. It will already be a great on-dit that we are both missing, and Elizabeth will be looking for me.”
Peter stood beside her. “Yes. Of course. But I still have so many questions, Carmen.”
She was walking away from him, her train now caught up and tossed over her arm. “As do I,” she called. “I am sure we will meet again, Peter. And then all questions will be answered.”
Carmen shut her bedroom door firmly, and leaned back against the solid wood. Her ribs ached from her swift run up the stairs to the safety of her room, and something that felt suspiciously like tears was making her cheeks damp.
She wiped at them impatiently with her gloved hand, then tossed her wrap and reticule onto the turned-down bed. As she stripped off her gloves, she noticed that somewhere she had lost her painted silk fan. It seemed she was losing bits of apparel every time she went out in public, first her comb and now her fan. And not even for interesting, amorous causes.
“Ah, Peter,” she sighed.
She sat down at her dressing table, and rested her chin in her hand. In the glass, she appeared a disgruntled, rumpled-haired schoolgirl, with an unflattering frown on her face.
Peter was as much a puzzle as he had ever been. Did he hate her? Or did he—and this was the truly frightening thought—love her still, deep in his heart?
As she still loved him. So very much.
There. She had thought it. She loved him.
She shook her head fiercely, and sat up straighter. There was nothing she could do about Peter, or her feelings for him, that night. A better subject to occupy her mind was her own silly behavior.
“What a nodcock you were!” she told her reflection sternly. “Dashing out of there simply because he asked you to dance. What were you thinking? Do you want to cause a scandal?”
And she had been having such a productive evening with Robert Means. Robert, so open, artless, and charming. So very happy to see her again.
He had been such an unlikely soldier all those years ago; more a gentleman farmer than a warrior. He seemed an unlikely blackmailer now. Yet Carmen had learned, in very difficult and painful ways, that the way things seemed were so often not how they were.
Robert could very well be her letter writer. He knew of her activities in wartime; now he knew of her new place in Society. He was really her most likely candidate, as painful as that was to confess. But she would need more time to be sure.
Elizabeth’s house party would be the perfect chance to become better acquainted with Robert Means. She would have to be sure he received an invitation.
Carmen’s bedroom door opened, interrupting her thoughts. A tiny, white night-gowned figure appeared there, clutching a favorite doll with one hand and rubbing sleepily at her eyes with the other.
Carmen smiled at Isabella, and held out her hand. “What is it, darling? Could you not sleep?”
“I had a bad dream. I was going to find Esperanza, but I saw your light.” Isabella glanced speculatively at the bed. “Could I sleep with you, Mama? Just for tonight?”
“Of course you may! Come to Mama, and tell her all about your dream.” Isabella rushed into her arms then, and Carmen pressed kisses to her daughter’s sleep-warm curls. Spies and blackmailers were completely forgotten. “Telling about it makes it disappear ...”
Chapter Nine
“Well, you certainly jumped into the scandal broth last night, brother.” Elizabeth stood before him, her face fierce and frowning in the harsh morning sunlight that flooded from the high library windows.
“Not now, Elizabeth,” Peter bit out.
“Yes, now! Whatever were you thinking? It is not at all like you to behave so—so improperly. Embarrassing Carmen in front of everyone! Tell me what you were thinking.”
“I was not thinking.”
Elizabeth snorted. “That is obvious! I do not rightly understand you. You say you want nothing to do with her, that you have made a new life, then you accost her on the dance floor and cause quite an on-dit. Have you read the papers this morning? Are you trying to drive her back to the Continent? Do you love her, or do you not?”
“I—do not know,” he said quietly.
Elizabeth shook her head at him. “Oh, Peter. Of course you know. You love her, despite everything. Just as I love Nicholas.”
“But the past ...”
“Bother the past! If I can move beyond what happened when I first met Nick, then you can surely find a way to be with the woman you love.” She smoothed her hair back into its neat coiffure and tucked her shawl about her shoulders, her mind obviously now spoken. “I must go and finish packing for the journey to the country. We will see you this weekend at Evanstone Park, will we not?”
“Will Carmen be there?”
“Of course!” she answered blithely. “As will Lady Deidra Clearbridge and her dear mother. I received their note just yesterday.”
Two days after the disastrous Carstairs rout, Robert Means came to call on Carmen.
Unfortunately, despite his cheering presence and conversation, Carmen was still distracted over her moonlit conversation with Peter.
What could it all mean, his sudden desire for peace between them? Could it mean he was at last willing to listen to her account of what had occurred in Spain? Did he merely wish to wed his proper Lady Deidra, without the dark cloud of his hasty marriage hovering over him?
Or did he desire that they be friends again? Or, perhaps, more than friends? And what did she feel about that?
Hm.
“Carmen,” Robert said. Then, louder, “Condesa!”
She snapped her gaze back to him and smiled. “Yes?”
He shook his head ruefully. “You have not attended a word I have been saying.”
“Indeed I have!”
“Then why, just now when I mentioned an orphanage my mother is sponsoring in Cornwall, did you smile?”
“Oh, Robert. I am sorry. I have been so tired these last days, so—distracted, by many things.”
“Yes.” He looked away from her, to the fire that was crackling in her drawing room grate, and to the mantel above it, crowded with many objects and pictures. “And I believe I could say what one of the chief distractions could be.”
The blackmailing letters? Carmen leaned toward him. “Yes? And what is that?”
“Your husband.”
“Oh.” The word seemed to strike her physically, and she leaned back in her chair. “Yes, it has been rather a shock to find him suddenly in my life again, after so many years.”
“You still love him, do you not?”
“I—oh, Robert, really!” she protested.
“Forgive my informality. I still find it difficult to remember that I am no longer in an army billet! Especially with old friends such as you.”
“I sometimes have the same problem. And, yes—I do still love Peter.” And what a relief it was, to finally say it aloud.
“Does he love you?”
Carmen shrugged. “Perhaps not. We have been apart a long time.”
“I doubt that very much. That he does not love you, that is. How could he not?”
“Do you really think so, Robert?”
“I do.” His voice hardened just a bit, and he would not meet her eyes. “I never saw a man so in love as Peter was—is with you. We seldom saw each other when we returned from Spain, but I did hear that he was not doing well at all. I knew it was hopeless mourning.”
Carmen could feel the hot pricking of tears behind her eyes, and she blinked very hard to hold them back. It would never do for her to suddenly become a watering pot, especially in front of someone she was not entirely certain of. “I mourned, as well. But that was a
long time ago; Peter has a new life now. As do I.”
“Now, that I do not believe.” Robert still would not look at her directly, but he smiled. “I will confess, Carmen, that when we met again, I cherished a few hopes of my own.”
“Robert!”
“Yes. I so admired you in Spain. I had never met anyone like you. Then I saw you again, here in England, and I thought perhaps ...” He broke off on a short bark of laughter. “Now I see I was mistaken.”
Carmen reached over and patted his hand gently. “You are a dear man, Robert. I am sure you will find happiness very soon, with a very proper English miss!”
He shook his head. “Such as Lady Deidra Clearbridge, mayhap?”
Carmen laughed. “How very convenient that would be! If only you could be so obliging, Robert.”
“I am not certain even I could be so obliging, Carmen.”
“Well, Elizabeth kindly obtained vouchers to Almack’s for us. I am sure she could do the same for you, and then we could look over the newest crop of young misses and find you a lovely one.”
“I will look forward to it. But now, I must be going.”
“Of course. It was so kind of you to call. And I am sure we shall see more of each other in the future.”
Robert bowed over her hand, lingering just an instant more than was proper. “I am sure we shall. Good day, Carmen.”
“Good day, Robert.” And she watched him leave, more puzzled than ever before.
But she did not have time that day to sit and ponder over Robert Means, and whether or not he could be the blackmailer or was just a lovestruck swain. She had packing to do.
Carmen carefully folded a soft Indian shawl and laid it atop the gowns already in her trunk. “I do believe that is everything I shall need.”
Esperanza handed her a pair of satin dancing slippers. “You forgot these, Carmencita.”
Carmen groaned. “Dancing! I do not think I’ll want to do very much of that this weekend.”
“You love to dance!” Esperanza’s tone conveyed that she did not exactly approve of dancing, not for proper widowed ladies anyway.
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