An Inconvenient Beauty

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  “Lord Naworth, you’re too much. Whatever made you think that bird would stand still while you tried to catch it?”

  Griffith rolled his eyes. He wanted to stroll around the corner and rescue Isabella from the man who had obviously used the ploy of wildlife to get her alone. But he wanted to gauge the situation before he strolled into it. Were more people with them? Did the situation call for an amiable duke or an intimidating one?

  “Ah, well, I shall just have to try again when the bird returns. It is the most elusive ones that are worth the effort.”

  “Whyever would you wish to catch it in the first place?”

  “To cherish the beauty and show it to the world, of course.” The man cleared his throat. “Much as I’d like to do with you.”

  Griffith actually smirked and shook his head at the hackneyed compliment.

  Isabella laughed again. “Why, Lord Naworth, I don’t know what to say. I’m very flattered.”

  “Say you’ll let me court you. Let me enter a room with you on my arm. Take you riding in the park so everyone will know.”

  Griffith frowned, willing Isabella to give the forward man the cut direct. To tell him no and walk away. After this week, after Griffith’s declaration of wanting to dance with her, she had to know he intended to pursue her. Even though he hadn’t fully committed to it himself until somewhere between the house and the ruins.

  “I had no idea you felt this way, Lord Naworth. I haven’t even spoken to my uncle about you, and I value his opinion highly on matters such as this.”

  “How wise you are to seek counsel about your future, Miss Breckenridge. I will gladly approach your uncle and discuss the matter with him so that he can assure you that I am in earnest.” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps he can relay more details about your situation. And your dowry?”

  Griffith’s frown darkened, deepened. Why was she letting him talk to her that way? Yes, the rumors of Isabella had been vague. Even he had heard them. But while many large dowries were practically public knowledge, it was not out of the ordinary for someone to keep the particulars of the situation private. The Isabella he knew was not a simpering miss, dependent upon the counsel of her uncle. In fact, he’d gotten the impression she thought the man was rather revolting. She shouldn’t have any problem telling this man to redirect his attentions.

  Unless she didn’t want him to.

  He considered moving round the corner then, but what would he say? He wasn’t sure he could keep the accusation from his face in such an intimate setting. It would be better to see her again once she’d rejoined the group, where the number of people would force him to remain impassive and calm. The group wasn’t far. Most of them were gathered in the room Griffith and Trent had called the showroom when they were children. It had the most ornate stonework in the ruins, elaborate carvings over wide archways and faux columns carved into the walls.

  It wasn’t long before Isabella and Lord Naworth left their little alcove and made their way back to the group. Griffith counted to one hundred before he approached them. “Lord Naworth.”

  “Duke. I think this may be the farthest I’ve ever driven to watch you not dance.” The man grinned, and Griffith was forced to remember that despite his ridiculous flirting antics, the man was usually quite pleasant and someone Griffith had talked to frequently at his club. “Unless of course you intend to break your pattern tonight. I don’t suppose there will be some sort of announcement?”

  “I considered it.” Griffith couldn’t help but stare down Isabella until she blushed. “But I’m afraid the lady in question wasn’t interested.”

  Lord Naworth was silent for a moment and then broke into laughter. “I’m never sure whether to question your sanity or mine when your wit goes beyond my understanding.”

  Griffith lifted a brow, wondering at the man’s intelligence. There had been nothing at all witty about Griffith’s veiled barb. The false flattery and forced respect left a sour taste in his mouth.

  A glance at Isabella proved that she too thought the man’s mirth was a little farfetched. But still she smiled and simpered in a way that seemed to indicate he was the most fascinating man on the planet.

  If she were to give Griffith’s suit any encouragement at all, he would be forced to question whether his feelings had been genuine or manipulated. Of course, she could be doing that on purpose, saving her less obvious attentions for the more mentally inclined.

  Griffith didn’t like not knowing his own mind. Always he’d been able to count on facts and things he’d thought through, contemplated. His decisions had always been supportable and evenly considered. Isabella made him question everything. Even the intentions he’d had when he joined the gathering.

  It was enough to make him dizzy.

  Desperate to think through what to call the feelings bubbling in his chest like a witch’s cauldron in a Shakespearean play, he made his excuses and skirted around the couple to go play the happy host a bit more.

  The ballroom was beautiful.

  What Isabella could see of it, anyway.

  At her uncle’s insistence, she’d made an entrance, danced a handful of dances, and then slipped from the ballroom. Enough to make a presence, but not enough to distract anyone who might be considering Frederica.

  The fact that such a problem hadn’t been the slightest of concerns until the duke had visited raised Isabella’s annoyance several levels.

  So now she was in an upstairs parlor, clinging to the shadows and overlooking the ballroom. From here she could enjoy the music and the swirling couples. The noises that reached her were indistinct, happy noises. Laughter carried well, and it was easy to pretend that everyone down there was enjoying life.

  Was everyone putting on as much of a pretense as she was?

  The door opened behind her, and she whirled around, prepared to be rushed off by some servant or another. She’d had to venture into the private family wing to reach this room.

  A considerably larger figure hulked in the open doorway.

  “Griffith,” she murmured. “How did you find me?”

  He stepped in and pulled the door, leaving a hand’s width gap and a sliver of pale grey light.

  “I’d love to say something romantic such as I always know where you are or that God had placed an undeniable urge to come up here, but the truth is I’m simply tired of people staring at me, waiting for me to dance.”

  “So you came up here?”

  The dark shape of him shrugged before he stepped closer to the window, and light from the ballroom below highlighted the bone structure of his face. “This is where I watched balls when I was a boy.”

  Picturing him as a young lad, hiding away, perhaps kneeling and peeping over the windowsill, made her heart melt in ways she couldn’t afford.

  “I am very sorry to have intruded upon your private space.” She headed for the door but barely had time to shift her skirts before he reached out a hand to hold her elbow. “Don’t leave. If you don’t wish to join the festivities, this is truly the best place to watch from. Please join me?”

  Isabella hesitated, wondering at the wisdom of staying with him yet unable to deny that the prospect of a few more stolen moments, out of view and hearing of everyone else, was incredibly appealing.

  She stepped closer to the window so she could see the columns of dancers working their way through a quadrille. “Why don’t you dance?”

  “You think I have a deeper reason than not wishing to knock into everyone around me?” Griffith turned to lean his hips against a chair, directing his attention to her instead of the ball below.

  “I think you have a deeper reason for everything you do.”

  His chuckle was low, and the dark made it feel intimate. “I suppose I do most of the time.”

  “And this time?” She moved to the hulking shadow of a chair set at an angle to the one he leaned against and half sat on the arm. Somehow, settling into the actual chair felt too risky, as if they would no longer be able to call this a c
hance encounter if they settled in to talk properly.

  “That’s all it was in the beginning. I learned quickly that my size threw off most dancers. My shoulders were too wide, my steps too long. The hopping steps in particular seemed to cause distress for any woman I was partnering. So I began limiting my partners to family.”

  “Why not refuse to dance at all?”

  He tilted his head, light from the ballroom touching one side of his face, enough for her to see his surprise at the question. As if the answer were obvious. To him it probably had been, a logic he never stopped to think about because it made such perfect sense. Isabella would have dearly loved a few more moments of that sort of clarity in her life.

  Fabric rustled as he shifted against the chair and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I didn’t want to lose the option. I never knew when I would need to be able to dance. Eschewing dancing entirely would have made such a thing nearly impossible without creating an incredible stir.”

  “Hasn’t it turned out that way?”

  “Perhaps.”

  More shifting. What was making him restless? Did he want to sit but wouldn’t because she was still propped on the arm instead of seated in the chair?

  He shrugged. “But it has had its advantages as well. When Trent married, for instance, his wife was not immediately accepted. Dancing with her declared her family.”

  Didn’t he realize the protective passion in his statement? Suddenly Isabella hated that she had refused him. Hated that she couldn’t afford to claim a moment of that sense of belonging for herself.

  He cleared his throat. “I actually waltz rather well.”

  A puff of laughter breathed out of her lungs before she could stop it. “I’ve heard you never waltz.”

  “Long legs.” One massive shoulder lifted and lowered. “But I danced with both of my sisters as they were learning. When I was home from school they would take turns playing the piano while I whirled the other around the room. Sometimes I lifted them up so their feet dangled above the floor.”

  “You enjoy waltzing.” The statement was hushed, spoken into the dark like a confession, even though it wasn’t her admittance to make.

  “Yes.” There was no hesitancy in his voice, no hint of awe or shame in the admission. “When I waltz I can go where I wish, adjusting to only one person.”

  He pushed off from the chair and strode to the window, leaning his shoulder against the opening. “They used to have balls here two or three times a year, when Father was alive. At Christmas they’d invite the entire village just to fill the room.

  “When Father died, so did the balls. It made Mother sad, sometimes, particularly at Christmas. She would stand in that doorway over there and look across the empty room. Sometimes she hummed. Once I saw her cry.”

  She could imagine it, at least from Griffith’s side. A boy, forced into the role of a young man, trying to be what his mother needed. It was difficult to imagine Lady Blackstone as anything resembling weak. She scared Isabella a bit, if she were being honest, but Griffith wouldn’t have seen her the way Isabella did. “You would dance with her.”

  His head snapped in her direction as if surprised she was able to guess. “Yes. We would hum Mozart’s ‘Three German Dances’ and I would take her across the floor. It was how I marked my growth. We danced every Christmas, our own private family ball. I don’t even think the servants knew about it. Each year it’d be a little easier to guide her, until I was having to adjust my steps to her smaller ones.”

  Isabella couldn’t stay away any more. She crossed into the square of pale, flickering light, needing to be near him and to offer whatever comfort she could without actually touching him. “Why do you deny yourself something you so obviously enjoy?”

  “Because I can’t only dance the waltzes. And that, down there—” he nodded to the colors swirling on the floor below—“that’s not enjoyable. I step onto that floor and every eye turns my way, every tongue bears my name. I become a show, and my choice becomes all anyone wants to talk about. Who I dance with becomes more important than what I think of the latest developments in France. Speculating over whether or not I’ll marry the person creates a vulnerable and socially acceptable personal interjection into any discussion.”

  His fingers began to fidget, rubbing against each other and causing a play of shadows across his hand. “That was a vulnerability I couldn’t afford as a young duke. And then my sisters were out and I needed all the power I could retain to intimidate anyone who would take advantage of them. Now it’s a habit I can’t afford to break.”

  They fell silent as the song ended below them once more. The strains of “Three German Dances” started up, and couples paired off to waltz across the floor.

  Griffith dropped his head to the ornately carved framework around the opening to the ballroom below. Isabella leaned forward to follow his gaze and could just make out the head of his mother and sister in the corner. The Duchess of Marshington looked up toward their hiding place, and Isabella ducked farther back into the shadows.

  “Will you dance with me?” Griffith asked, his voice as rough as it had been after all the whisky, but this time she couldn’t blame anything other than emotion for the cracked rumble.

  He stepped away from the wall and approached her. When she didn’t move he took her hand in his and threaded his fingers through hers, warmth seeping through the glove. “Will you go back downstairs and waltz across my ballroom with me?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  His entire body seemed to sag, though she saw no visible change to his posture. The song wrapped around them, and she couldn’t imagine the memories he had to be facing just then. He’d given up something he enjoyed for the greater good, for his family. Perhaps she could give a little of that back, though not as much as he seemed to want. “But I’ll dance with you here.”

  Chapter 21

  It wouldn’t be wise. Simply being in this room with her wasn’t wise. And Griffith prided himself on making the right decisions. But right now, his heart was pounding so hard, so fast, that the shrewd part of his brain seemed to be cut off from the part that made the actual decisions. Because even as he told himself that the right thing to do would be to walk away, he found himself sliding a hand around her waist and wrapping his fingers around hers.

  And then they were dancing.

  The space was small, and in moments his breathing was far harsher than the limited physical exertion called for. Waltzing with Isabella felt nothing like waltzing with his mother or twirling his sisters. He’d never held a woman like this before, with the curve of her waist under his hand and the heat of her body searing his palm.

  Her fingers gripped his tighter as he spun her around the chair, trusting his intuition and his memory to move them around the furniture in the darkened room. The pulses of air against his throat told him that she too was affected by their dance.

  Was this helping his cause or hurting it?

  He stopped dancing, pulling her closer when she stumbled.

  “You’re a lovely dancer,” she whispered. “Why did you stop?”

  Why had he stopped? It didn’t make sense. If he was trying to ingratiate himself to her, to win her affections, shouldn’t he continue when he knew she was enjoying the dance? But his mind wasn’t driving his actions just then. He wasn’t entirely sure what was. Somehow he was deciding what was right without putting any conscious thought to it at all.

  And he knew that this dance wasn’t something he could continue. Not here. It would become too much—he wanted too much.

  He cupped a hand around her neck, relishing the way the fine hairs grazed his fingers even as the sensation made him feel things, want things he had no right to. And that was the dangerous part. “Come downstairs. I’ll dance with you all night long.”

  “People will see.”

  “Let them.”

  She stepped forward, her breath still washing over him in steady pulses—a hint of the punch being served in the ballroo
m combined with the light scent of rosewater on her skin. “And what then?”

  Her voice was stronger, and he knew reality was intruding on their dark bubble. “What do you mean?”

  “What happens then? Once everyone sees, once the moment has been spoiled for you by all the prying attentions of your peers?” Her slim, gloved hand reached up to cup his cheek. “What happens when we go back to London?”

  He wrapped an arm more securely around her waist to keep her as close as she’d ventured on her own. “We dance again. Everywhere. Until no one doubts that you have my full attention and all the other men fade away.”

  The stiffness that ran down her back radiated tension into his arm. He’d said the wrong thing. Mentioning the other men had made her pull away, mentally if not physically.

  He dropped his arm and stepped back, pain slicing up his now chilled, injured arm and settling in his chest. He’d ignored the pain while he was dancing, but now it more than made itself known as it combined with emotional pain he hadn’t expected. For whatever reason she wouldn’t give up the other men. “That’s why you won’t dance with me, isn’t it?”

  “What?” She sounded disoriented, as if the loss of contact had scrambled her thoughts as much as it had his. But one thing was remaining clear in his mind.

  “You can’t make me part of your collection. I’d scare away too many suitors.”

  He actually heard her swallow. “That’s rather arrogant of you.”

  “Nothing was ever gained by denying the truth.”

  “No, I don’t suppose it was.” Her fingers curled into fists, tight enough to make her shoulders shake.

  Was she angry? What did she have to be angry about? She wasn’t the one being denied a craving so deep it had prompted him to set aside decades of personal rules and convictions. She wasn’t the one being rejected.