by Mary Balogh
He inclined his head to her. He could decently fade away to distant parts now
“Ah, here he comes,” she said, looking beyond him and smiling a warm welcome at Allingham.
“I am to sit out with Miss Acton,” Merton said a little ruefully. “She is not allowed to waltz, you know, as she has not yet been granted permission by any of the patronesses of Almack’s. I had better go and find her. Excuse me, Meg? Kate? Monty?”
And he was gone.
So, within the next few seconds, was Miss Huxtable.
Which left Jasper stranded with the younger sister.
A waltz.
Hmm.
Distant parts—in the form of the card room—beckoned urgently
“I have heard,” he said instead of bowing and hurrying away as fast as he decently could, “that moving a single body part continuously, without rest, can cause rheumatics in later life.”
She noted the direction of his gaze, and her fan abruptly stopped waving. Her arm fell to her side.
“That,” she said, “would be my problem, Lord Montford.”
It was not a very witty or original response. But it was firm and spirited enough to show him that she had neither forgotten nor forgiven.
Neither fact surprised him.
“Unlike the infant Miss Acton,” he said, “I daresay you were granted permission to waltz an age ago, Miss Huxtable. Not that I wish to cast aspersions upon your advanced age.”
“I am to dance the set with Mr. Yardley” she said.
“Yardley” he told her, “was called away from the card room half an hour or so ago and left at a trot. I believe his wife is in a delicate way and had reached a crisis in her… ah, confinement.”
“Oh,” she said, and looked mortified.
Perhaps she had not realized Yardley was married. He liked to keep the fact a secret whenever he could, being the consummate ladies’ man. This was Mrs. Yardley’s sixth confinement if Lord Montford had not missed one or two when he was not paying attention.
“You had better waltz with me instead,” he said.
Was he quite insane?
“Had I?” Her eyebrows shot up, and her fan went to work on her cheeks again. “I think not, Lord Montford.”
“It will appear that you are a wallflower if you do not,” he said. “That is a nasty feeling for a lady, I have been told. Especially for ladies of a… ah, certain age.”
“Of a certain—”Her nostrils flared, her wrist stilled, her bosom swelled, her eyes glared, and… she laughed. Suddenly, unexpectedly, and unmistakably with genuine humor. Memory caught at the edges of his mind.
“How absolutely outrageous of you,” she said. “I think it is something I liked about you at one time.”
“Until you did not like me at all,” he said, tipping his head slightly to one side, his eyes fixed on hers.
“Yes, until then,” she agreed. She was looking at him consideringly. “For a long time I thought you the embodiment of evil. But then it struck me that the very fact of your deliberately not winning your wager that night proved that there was a shred of decency in you.”
He shuddered theatrically
“That failure,” he said, “has been a blot upon my reputation that clings to memory like a limpet. That fact, in addition to the humiliation of having someone think me decent, brings me to the very brink of despair.”
“Oh,” she said, closing her fan with a snap, “you need not worry unduly about that, Lord Montford. I certainly do not think you a decent man—only one who on a single occasion in his life did something almost decent.”
He smiled at her.
“We had better waltz,” he said. “You do not wish to be a wallflower, do you? And I do not wish everyone assembled here to see me publicly rejected after I have humbly begged for your hand in the dance.”
He thought she would refuse and marveled over the fact that he hoped she would not.
Lord! Devil take it, he had avoided all thought of her for a number of years. She represented his greatest humiliation. The only humiliation, in fact. Without her, his glorious reputation would have remained unblemished. It was not a pleasant experience to be forced to admit publicly to all one’s peers that one had failed to win a wager. Especially one concerning a woman—and a wager he might have won handily It was not good for a man’s pride.
“Oh, very well,” she said briskly, sounding rather cross. “Why not?”
She obviously did not expect an answer. When he offered his arm, she placed her hand on his sleeve and allowed him to lead her onto the floor where all the other dancers were already assembled.
And so here he was, not only in company with Miss Katherine Huxtable again, but also about to waltz with her at a ton ball.
Whatever next, pray?
The world was about to end?
Pigs about to fly?
The moon about to turn to cheese?
6
K A T H E R I N E had come to the ball with her brother and eldest sister despite considerable misgivings. What if he should be there too? She had no wish whatsoever to see him ever again. But such an attitude was cowardly, she had decided. Was fear to keep her cowering at home? After three years? She could not remain at home throughout her stay in London or avoid the capital for the rest of her life. It would be ridiculous.
Besides, even remaining at home had not protected her from encountering him, had it? He had invaded her home—or Stephen’s, to be more accurate. He had been standing in the library as if he had had every right to be there. As he had, of course— Stephen had invited him.
And besides again, she wanted to attend the ball. Though she did not come to London often and did not crave all the myriad entertainments a Season had to offer, she did enjoy a taste of them now and then.
So she had come tonight, telling herself that it was not the type of event that would attract Lord Montford. And sure enough, when she arrived with Meg and Stephen, he had been nowhere in sight.
But then, just when she had felt assured of his absence, Stephen had mentioned that he was in the card room and that he hoped to entice him out of there long enough to present him to Meg, who had not yet met him. He was a particular friend of Constantine’s and therefore of Stephen’s.
It had all been very provoking. For how could she have protested and begged Stephen to leave him in the card room where he belonged? He would have wanted to know why. So would Meg.
She had been rather proud of her behavior when Lord Montford had eventually arrived with Stephen. She had remained aloof and slightly frosty without doing or saying anything that might catch her brother and sister’s attention. Meg had been unable to accept his offer to waltz with her since she was to dance the set with Lord Allingham, Stephen had gone off to find Miss Acton, Katherine had expected Mr. Yardley to appear any moment to claim his set, and the ordeal was all but over.
She had acquitted herself well.
Why, then, was she now standing on the dance floor facing Lord Montford, about to waltz with him?
It all defied rational explanation.
She found herself enveloped in a scent so startlingly familiar that she almost expected to see Vauxhall Gardens spread about her instead of the Parmeter ballroom. It was something expensive and musky and utterly masculine—his shaving soap or his cologne. It was a smell that evoked memories of temptation and unbridled passion and humiliation, none of which powerful emotions she had experienced with such intensity either before that night in Vauxhall or since.
And none of which she had the slightest wish to experience ever again.
Lord Montford was just as handsome as she remembered him, with his tall, slim, elegant figure, his dark hair and arrogant eyebrow and lazy eyelids shading keen, mocking, intelligent eyes. Just as handsome, and just as attractive. And just as dangerous—if she were any longer susceptible to that sort of danger.
Which she was not.
The waltz was about to begin. The musicians had readied their instruments, and a slight hus
h had fallen on the dancers, who were taking their positions.
Lord Montford’s right arm circled her waist, and his hand came to rest against the small of her back. It felt as if it were burning a hole through the satin of her gown. His other hand took hers in a firm, warm clasp. She tried to keep her fingers from touching his hand, but inevitably they curled inward to rest against the back of it. His shoulder beneath her other hand was all solid muscle—as she remembered its being the last time she touched it.
She felt half suffocated with the physicality of it all.
She had never really enjoyed waltzing. She had always found it a little disconcerting to be in close proximity to one gentleman for all of half an hour, and a little tedious to have to make polite conversation exclusively with him. Of course, she had always guessed that with the right partner the whole experience could be gloriously romantic.
Lord Montford was definitely not the right partner.
She glared at him, as if he had just verbally claimed that he was.
“I suppose,” she said, “your intention is to lead Stephen astray while he is still young and foolish?”
Both his eyebrows arched upward.
“And make a degenerate rake of him?” he said. “But of course. Why else would I have befriended him? It could not possibly be because he is the cousin of one of my closest friends, could it? And is Merton foolish as well as being young? That does not say much for the upbringing your eldest sister has provided for him.”
She had walked into that trap with wide open eyes.
“I ought to have chosen my words with more care,” she said crossly “I ought to have used the word impressionable rather than foolish”
“But is there any real difference?” he asked her. “Is not an impressionable man a foolish man? A weak man? Can I possibly corrupt your brother if he is determined to be incorruptible?”
“I do not know,” she said. “Can you?”
He could easily have corrupted her.
It seemed that not a muscle in his face moved. But his eyes smiled suddenly and wickedly from beneath his heavy eyelids, a change that had an immediate and quite unwelcome effect upon her knees.
“But why would I wish to?” he asked. “Have you made me into the devil incarnate in your imagination, Miss Huxtable?”
“ Is it imagination?” she asked him.
He chuckled softly. “But you have already admitted to having found a modicum of decency in me,” he said. “The devil is surely incapable of anything remotely good. It is a contradiction in terms.”
She was saved from having to frame a suitable reply when the music began at last and they started to waltz.
Ah.
And ah again.
Her mind was incapable of any coherent thought for the next few minutes.
She had not expected him to be graceful, to move as if he had been formed specifically to waltz. Though she might have guessed it if she had ever paused to think about it. Such a man would always see to it that he did everything to perfection—riding, fighting, dancing, dicing, making lo—
There! She was thinking, after all.
But only deep down, where unconscious thoughts dwelled. The rest of her became the music and the rhythm and the swirling colors of gowns and candles and the sound of voices and laughter and the smell of a masculine cologne and the smile of lazy dark eyes.
And she had been perfectly right. The waltz was gloriously romantic when danced with the right m—
Thought was intruding again.
And with it came the rather horrifying suspicion that for several enchanted minutes she had not removed her eyes from his. And that her lips were curved upward into a smile. And that her cheeks were flushed and her eyes shining.
And that for several minutes she had been enjoying herself quite mindlessly and quite totally—enjoying waltzing and enjoying the company of a man who danced and twirled her about the ballroom just as if there were no floor beneath their feet.
A dangerous man.
Lord Montford, no less.
And she no better than the green girl she had been three years ago.
She let her smile fade and lowered her eyes. How could she possibly have been enjoying his company? What was she thinking?
She remembered him telling her quite bluntly and insolently and dispassionately about that ghastly wager.
And she wondered again, as she had a thousand or more times since that evening, why he had not completed what he had started and claimed whatever prize there was to claim. She had never wanted to believe— she still did not—that there might be some decency in him, that perhaps he was a man with some conscience. She preferred to believe the explanation he had given at the time—that she had been too easy a prey to be of any real interest to him. Would that have mattered, though, when there was a wager at stake?
“You still hate me,” he said softly.
His voice sounded abject—suspiciously so. There was also surely the suggestion of humor in it. She amused him.
“Are you surprised?” She raised her eyes to his again.
“Not at all,” he said. “You informed me on a certain infamous occasion that I had disappointed you. How can one not hate the person who disappoints one in such a way?”
He was definitely laughing at her. But her effort to think of some suitably cutting retort was thwarted when he twirled her about one corner of the ballroom, using fancy footwork that somehow persuaded her own feet to match it. She laughed with delight before she remembered that she was not delighted at all.
“I could teach you not to hate me, you know,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Would that not be doing you a favor?” he asked.
“On the assumption,” she said, “that if I did not hate you, I would be indifferent to you and would not glare at you every time we met? That would be convenient to you, no doubt.”
“Indifferent to me?” He drew her to a halt for one of the brief pauses between waltz tunes but did not release his hold on her. “Miss Huxtable, I doubt even I have the power to make you indifferent to me.”
Her stomach was performing a somersault again. She could not seem to look away from those lazy eyes.
“I suppose not,” she said with a sigh. “Dislike is not indifference, is it?”
He smiled openly and chuckled aloud.
“I could teach you not to hate me or dislike me,” he said, speaking very low since the music had not yet started again. His eyes dipped to her mouth. “I could teach you to love me if I chose, Miss Huxtable.”
She was startled almost speechless.
“Ha!” was all she could manage to say. It was half exclamation, half question.
“Was that agreement?” The music had begun again, a somewhat faster tune this time. He twirled her several times before she could answer. “You admit, then, that I could do it?”
“Never in a million years,” she said when she could command her voice. It shook with indignation. “Never in a billion years.”
“Would it take a billion and one, then?” he asked her. “How very tedious! And how very firm-minded of you. But I believe you underestimate me, Miss Huxtable.”
“And you underestimate me!” she retorted so vehemently that the couple dancing by them both turned their heads to look. “You are about as likely to persuade me to love you, Lord Montford, as I am to persuade you to love me.”
He did not answer. Which was horrible, really, as her words seemed to hang between them and follow them about the dance floor as they waltzed in silence to an exhilarating rhythm, and the growing heat between them made her more and more aware of him physically and more and more uncomfortable.
She quite understood why the waltz was considered fast among a large segment of society Fast as in not quite proper, that was. It was quite the most improper dance ever invented. It was… it was nothing short of lascivious.
Their hands, clasped together, had turned hot and damp.
The faster tune did
not last long. Soon, almost without a pause, the orchestra began playing something far slower and more… romantic.
Still they danced without speaking—until eventually he broke the silence between them.
“It does seem like an impossibility when phrased that way,” he said just as if five minutes or so had not elapsed between her words and his answer. “I have never been in love, Miss Huxtable, and I never expect to be. Lust is far more amusing and satisfying. My falling in love is an absolute impossibility, I am afraid.”
“As it is for me,” she retorted hotly “An utter, complete impossibility.”
“It is so mutually impossible, in fact,” he said, “that it sounds quite perfect for a wager, does it not?”
“A wager?” She looked at him with a frown.
“Oh, I know,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. “A re-fined lady does not lay bets. And anyone who wagers against me, male or female, inevitably regrets it anyway I never lose, you see.”
“Except once,” she said tartly
He raised his right eyebrow It half disappeared beneath that errant lock of hair.
“Except once,” he agreed. “How obliging of you to remind me, Miss Huxtable. Though we both know, do we not, that I forfeited rather than lost that particular one.”
“What wager exactly are we talking about now?” she asked him after a short pause.
Was it her imagination, or were they dancing somewhat closer together than they had been a little while ago? She tried to edge backward, but his hand was as firm as a wall against her waist.
“A sort of double wager, I suppose it would have to be,” he said. “An interesting prospect. That I can make you fall in love with me for my part, that you can make me fall in love with you on yours.”
“Ha!” she said again. “There is no way on this earth that you would win your part of the wager even if you were given a thousand years. Or a billion.”
“And no way in this universe that you would win yours,” he said pleasantly. “It is a wager made in heaven, Miss Huxtable, I do assure you. The only wagers worth taking on are the ones impossible to win, you see. All others offer no worthy challenge at all.”
“As I did not in Vauxhall?” she said, and could have bitten out her tongue.