Slightly Dangerous

by Mary Balogh

  Balls had never been his idea of pleasurable entertainment, though they sometimes had to be endured. This one was of that number. Since he could hardly shut himself into his bedchamber with a book, he dressed with his usual meticulous care, allowing his valet to spend longer than usual over the tying of his neckcloth, and descended to the ballroom at the appointed hour. He reserved the opening set with Lady Elrick, the second with Lady Renable, and hoped that after that he could decently withdraw to the card room.

  The young ladies, he noticed as he strolled to where Mowbury was standing, looking awkward, if not downright miserable, were all decked out in their most opulent finery, jewels sparkling in the candlelight, plumes nodding above elaborately styled hair—perhaps a deliberate ruse to distinguish themselves from the less gorgeously clad neighbors, who had already begun to arrive.

  “I reminded Melanie that I was born with two left feet,” Mowbury told him, “but she would insist that I put in an appearance here and dance with someone. I have asked Christine—Mrs. Derrick. She was married to my cousin, you know, and is a decent sort, I have always thought, even though Hermione and Elrick don’t seem to like her, do they? Tiresome things, balls, Bewcastle.”

  She was across the room, talking with three ladies and a gentleman—Mrs. Derrick, that was. Wulfric recognized the vicar and his wife and assumed that the other two ladies were her mother and eldest sister. Mrs. Derrick certainly had been blessed with all the looks in that family, he thought. The vicar’s wife was unremarkable. The eldest sister was downright plain.

  Mrs. Derrick was wearing a cream-colored evening gown with a single flounce at the hem and matching frills at the edges of the short, puffed sleeves. The neckline was deep though not immodest. Her short curls, brushed to a sheen, were threaded with pink ribbon to match the length about the high waistline of her gown. The ribbons were her only adornment apart from the closed fan she carried in one gloved hand. She wore no jewels, no turban, no plumes. The gown itself was not by any means in the first stare of fashion.

  She made her fellow houseguests look rather ridiculously fussy.

  “So Mrs. Derrick has agreed to dance the opening set with you,” he said.

  “She has.” Mowbury grimaced. “I promised not to tread all over her toes. But she will just laugh at me if I do and tell me they needed flattening anyway, or some such thing. She is a good sport.”

  Kitredge, whose portly form was positively squeaking inside his stays, had joined her and was being presented to her family. For a moment his plump, beringed hand rested against the small of her back. Wulfric’s fingers curled about the handle of his jeweled evening quizzing glass. The earl’s hand fell away as she changed her position a little to smile up at him. She nodded and Kitredge moved away. The second set had been promised, Wulfric guessed.

  He let his glass fall on its silken ribbon.

  CHRISTINE HAD ALWAYS enjoyed dancing. She had not always enjoyed balls—not for the last few years of her marriage anyway. Oscar had started to object to her dancing with other gentlemen, though she had tried pointing out to him that the whole point of a ball was to dance with a variety of partners. He could not dance with her himself all night. It would not have been good etiquette. Besides, he had liked to spend time in the card room or socializing with his male friends, and then she had been caught in the dilemma of either being a wallflower by her own choice or displeasing her husband.

  She really had found marriage far more of a trial than she had ever expected. For all his extraordinary good looks, Oscar had been very unsure of himself—and of her. He had become increasingly possessive and dependent. She had loved him dearly, but it had been hard not to resent his lack of trust in her. She even feared she had fallen out of love with him before the end, when his accusations had become more hurtful and even insulting.

  But those difficult, unhappy days were over, and tonight she was free to dance every set if she wished—and if enough gentlemen asked her. She laughed her way through the opening set, guiding Hector through the patterns of the country dance and rescuing him more than once when he would have gone prancing off in one direction while all the other gentlemen were gliding gracefully in the other. He thanked her profusely afterward and even forgot himself sufficiently to kiss her hand.

  She danced cheerfully through the second set with a sweating Earl of Kitredge and steered the conversation firmly away from the flirtatious banter with which he had been regaling her for the past week. When he would have drawn her through the French doors into the garden in order to enjoy the cool evening air for a few minutes, she assured him that it would break her heart to miss one single step of one single dance during such a splendid ball.

  She danced with Mr. Ronald Culver—she had learned to distinguish him from his twin—and with Mr. Cobley, one of Bertie’s tenant farmers, who had asked her three times during the past year and a half to marry him, and laughed and talked a great deal.

  She noticed with some satisfaction that Hazel had been asked to dance each set and that even Eleanor, who despised dancing, had been persuaded to take the floor for two sets.

  She smiled with warm pleasure whenever she saw Audrey and Sir Lewis Wiseman together. Although they were not at all ostentatious in their affection for each other, they nevertheless seemed very well suited. They were happy together. Happiness was such a rare commodity. She hoped it would last for them. She had always been fond of Audrey, who had been little more than a child when Christine had married Oscar.

  Tomorrow, she recalled, she would be going home. What a glorious thought that was, even though in many ways the party had been enjoyable and most of the guests amiable. But three of them had not been, and that had made all the difference. There had been a terrible tension between Christine on the one hand and Hermione and Basil on the other since the day of the picnic. They had avoided one another whenever possible, though every day Christine had resolved to corner them somewhere and have out with them whatever it was that needed to be had out. But it was difficult at a house party to find a private moment—or perhaps she had not tried too hard. And the Duke of Bewcastle had offered to make her his mistress—and then had been witness to her humiliation at the hands of her brother- and sister-in-law and to her show of bad temper and spite and indiscretion afterward. It was all very disturbing indeed.

  She could hardly wait to get home.

  Never, never, never again would she allow herself to be drawn into any entertainment that involved the ton in general and Hermione and Basil in particular. She did not include the duke in her resolution since there was no possible chance that they would ever meet again.

  For which happy fact she would be eternally grateful.

  Nevertheless, all the time in the ballroom—every single moment—she was aware of the Duke of Bewcastle, looking severe and immaculate and positively satanic in black evening coat and silk knee breeches with silver waistcoat and very white stockings and linen and lace. He also looked as if he despised every mortal with whom he was doomed to spend this final evening of a house party that appeared to have brought him no pleasure at all. It probably appalled him to be forced to share a ballroom with people who, though they all had some claim to gentility, were nowhere near his own elevated social rank. Her mother and Eleanor, for example.

  He danced with Hermione and then with Melanie before strolling toward the open doorway into the card room. But Christine, watching him unwillingly as she took her place in the third set with Ronald Culver, was startled to see him take one step back into the ballroom, hesitate, look pained and supercilious, and then step forward again to bow over the hand of Mavis Page, the thin, plain daughter of a deceased naval captain, who was sitting with her mama as she had been all evening. No one ever danced with Mavis, who was unfortunate enough not to have a strong personality to compensate for her lack of looks.

  Christine found herself with divided feelings. For Mavis’s sake, of course, she was genuinely delighted—Mrs. Page would have something truly grand to boast of fo
r the next year or two, perhaps even for the rest of her life. But it was annoying—and disturbing—to witness the duke behaving so out of character. Christine really had not wanted to find even one redeeming quality in him. Yet it appeared now that he had spotted a wallflower and had gone to her rescue.

  Mr. Fontain, another of Bertie’s tenants, led Mavis out for the next set. She looked almost pretty, with a glow of color in her cheeks.

  After the third set the Duke of Bewcastle disappeared into the card room and Christine felt free to relax and enjoy herself. After tomorrow she would not have to think of him ever again. She would never have to look into his cold, arrogant face again. She would not have to be constantly reminded that he had made her a dishonorable proposal and that for a single, shameful moment she had been disappointed that it was not marriage he offered.

  The very thought of being married to him . . .

  Her relief at his absence was short-lived. After the fourth set she was making her way back to her family when Mr. George Buchan and Mr. Anthony Culver stopped her to exchange a few remarks with her. One of them would probably ask her to dance, she thought. She hoped someone would. The next set was to be a waltz. She had learned the steps back in her London days, though she had never danced them with anyone but Oscar.

  She hoped someone would ask her to waltz here.

  And then she felt a touch on the arm and turned to find herself gazing up into the silver eyes of the Duke of Bewcastle.

  “Mrs. Derrick,” he said, “if you have not promised the next set to someone else, I wish you would dance it with me.”

  He had taken her completely by surprise. Even so, it struck her that she could simply say no. But if she did, then she could not decently dance with anyone else. And this was to be the only waltz of the evening.

  Bother, bother, bother, she thought. Five hundred botherations!

  And yet her heart was pattering against her rib cage, and her knees were threatening to wobble beneath her, and she was close to panting, as if she had just run a mile without stopping. And all other considerations aside for the present mindless moment, he was truly, truly a gorgeous man.

  It was the final evening of the house party. It would be her final encounter with him.

  And it was to be a waltz.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “you do not waltz?”

  She had, of course, been gawking at him like a fish hauled out of its natural element.

  “I do,” she said, unfurling her fan and wafting it before her hot cheeks, “though it is a long time since I last danced it. Thank you, your grace.”

  He offered his arm, and she snapped her fan closed, set her hand on his sleeve, and allowed him to lead her onto the dance floor. She remembered suddenly that he had danced with Mavis and glanced up at him with some curiosity. He was looking very directly back into her eyes.

  They were like a wolf’s eyes, she thought. Someone had mentioned a few days ago that his given name was Wulfric. How strangely appropriate!

  “I thought,” she said, “you would avoid me at all costs this evening.”

  “Did you?” he asked, his eyebrows arched upward, his voice haughty.

  Well, there was no answer to that, was there? She did not attempt one but waited for the music to begin. What had she just thought? That he was a gorgeous man? Gorgeous? Did she have windmills in her head? She looked up at him again. His nose was too large. No, it was not. It was his prominent, slightly hooked nose that gave his face character and made it more handsome than it would have been with a perfectly formed nose.

  How silly noses were when one really thought about them.

  “I have amused you—again?” he asked her.

  “Not really.” She laughed aloud. “Only my own thoughts. I was thinking how silly noses are.”

  “Quite so,” he said, a glint of something indefinable in his eyes.

  And then the music began and he took her right hand in his left and set his other behind her waist. She set her free hand on his shoulder—and had to stop herself from panting again. He surely was holding her at the correct distance. But now suddenly she understood why many people still considered the waltz not quite proper. She had never felt this close to Oscar when she had waltzed with him. She could not remember feeling his body heat or smelling his cologne. Her heart was pattering again, yet they had not even moved yet.

  And then they did.

  And she knew within moments that she had never waltzed before. He danced it with long, firm steps and twirled her firmly about so that the light from all the candles blurred into one swirling line. She had not known what it was to waltz before tonight. Not really. It was pure sensual bliss. Light, colors, perfumes, body heat, a man’s musky cologne, the music, the smooth, slightly slippery floor, the hand at her waist, the hand holding her own, the delight in her own body’s lightness and movement—it was pure enchantment.

  She looked into his face and smiled and for the moment felt utterly, mindlessly happy.

  He gazed back at her, and in the flickering of the candlelight from the chandeliers overhead it seemed to her that his eyes glowed warm for once.

  The enchantment did not last, alas.

  He had just twirled her about a corner close to the French doors when Hector came lumbering around in the opposite—and wrong!—direction with Melanie. The Duke of Bewcastle hauled Christine right against his chest in what she realized afterward was a valiant attempt to save her from disaster, but he was too late. Hector trod hard on her left slipper, not missing even one of her five toes in the process.

  She hopped on the other foot while the duke’s arm wrapped very firmly about her waist, and sucked in her breath as she watched the proverbial stars wheeling in a black sky all about her person. Melanie exclaimed with dismay and informed Hector that she had told him he was dancing in the wrong direction. Hector apologized profusely and abjectly.

  “I warned Mel that I do not waltz,” he complained. “She knows I do not even dance, but she would insist I waltz with her. I am most awfully sorry, Christine. Did I hurt you?”

  “A foolish question if ever I have heard one, Hector,” Melanie said tartly. “Of course you have hurt her, you great looby.”

  “I daresay that soon the urge to scream will subside entirely,” Christine said. “In the meanwhile I shall continue to count slowly—forty-seven . . . forty-eight . . . But don’t worry, Hector, my toes needed flattening anyway.”

  “My poor Christine,” Melanie said. “Shall I take you to your room and have a maid summoned?”

  But Christine waved them on, gritting her teeth and trying not to look conspicuous. Why did such things always happen to her, even when she was quite innocently minding her own business?

  Hector lumbered onward—in the right direction this time—with Melanie in tow. Christine became aware that she was still pressed right up against the Duke of Bewcastle’s side. The pain had not even crested yet. She sucked in her breath again.

  And then he stooped down, swung her up into his arms, and stepped out through the French doors with her. It was neatly done, she admitted even as her eyes widened in shock. She doubted that many of the guests had noticed either the collision or its aftermath—or her escape into the garden in the Duke of Bewcastle’s arms. Though, if anyone had noticed that last point . . .

  “Oh, dear,” she said, “this is getting to be a habit.” What normal woman had to be swept up into a gentleman’s arms twice within two weeks?

  He strode some distance from the doors and finally set her down on a wooden seat that circled the huge trunk of an old oak tree.

  “But this time, Mrs. Derrick,” he said, “the fault was entirely mine. I ought to have seen him coming sooner than I did. Has any real damage been done to your foot? Can you bend your toes?”

  “Give me a few moments to stop silently screaming,” she said, “and to reach one hundred. Then I will try wiggling them. I suppose that every time dancing lessons were on the agenda when Hector was a boy, he made sure he was safel
y hidden away somewhere with a book of Greek philosophy—in Greek. He really ought not to be let loose within two miles of any ballroom. He looked quite miserable too, did he not, the poor love? Ninety-two . . . ninety-three . . . Oh, ouch!”

  The Duke of Bewcastle had gone down on one knee before her and was untying the ribbon bow about her leg and easing off her slipper.

  He looked very picturesque. He looked as if he were about to spout a marriage proposal.

  It was strange how one could feel amusement and excruciating pain at the same moment. Christine bit down on her lower lip.

  WULFRIC WAS NO physician, but he did not believe any bones had been broken. There was not even any noticeable swelling in her foot, though she held it stiffly and he could tell from her ragged breathing that she was still in great pain. He set her stockinged foot flat on his palm, cupped the back of her heel with his other hand, and slowly lifted it upward, bending her toes as he did so before lowering her heel again.

  One of her hands came to rest on his shoulder and gripped it. Her eyes were closed, he noticed, and her head bent forward. At first she grimaced and bit down harder on her lower lip, but as he repeated the action, she gradually relaxed.

  “I do believe,” she said after a minute or so, “I am going to survive. I may even live to dance another day.” She chuckled—a low, merry, seductive sound.

  It was a small, delicate foot, warm in its silk stocking. He set it down on top of her pink slipper and she continued to lift her heel and flex her toes on her own. After a few moments her hand moved away from his shoulder.

  “What I fail to understand,” she said as he stood up, clasped his hands behind him, and looked down at her, “is why Hector came here at all. He is unworldly and bookish and not at all socially inclined—not with ladies anyway.”

  “I believe,” he said, “he thought it was to be a gathering of intellectuals.”

  “Oh, poor thing,” she said as she slid her foot back inside her slipper, arranged the ribbon about her leg and retied the bow, and then flexed her toes a few more times. “I daresay Melanie thought a party of this nature would be good for him—just as she thought dancing would be good for him this evening. She probably misled him from the start without ever lying to him outright. He probably had not even noticed—or he had forgotten—that his sister had become recently betrothed and that Melanie was bound to throw one of her famous parties for her.”