“If you must know, Mr. Adams was promised this dance, although his mind seems to have deserted him on that matter. Not that I blame him. Miss Tolbertson appears to possess an unexpected degree of grace on the dance floor.”
David’s instincts marched toward high alert. Miss Baxter was, after all, a part of the summer set that tormented Caroline. “You sound surprised.”
“Well, she lives in Brighton, Mr. Cameron. I would not have thought she had much opportunity to dance. And she is just so very tall. Mr. Dermott told everyone—”
“Mr. Dermott is an idiot who wouldn’t know a diamond from a horse apple.”
Miss Baxter’s eyes widened. She regarded him a pensive moment before her mouth twitched upward. “I shall have to remember that,” she said lightly, “because I am ever so fond of diamonds.”
David’s shoulders relaxed at the defused threat. Though her carefully coiled red curls came far short of his chin, Miss Baxter carried herself with confidence, a fact he could admire, even if the sentiment fell short of genuine attraction. She might not yet be an ally in his quest to change the summer set’s opinion of Caroline, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be.
He extended his hand. “Would you care to dance, Miss Baxter?”
Her cheeks went from pale to pink. She flashed one more pointed look toward the couple whirling by them. And then she placed her hand in his.
“I would be delighted.”
He was a heartless brute, truly he was. Because Miss Baxter was indubitably the most beautiful woman in the pavilion tonight. She was the daughter of a viscount, and no doubt had a dowry that would solve every financial problem he had ever entertained.
And yet, as he took two turns around the floor with this vibrant woman in his arms, he could think of nothing beyond a simmering annoyance that he could not get closer to Caroline. He listened with half an ear cocked toward the stream of chatter Miss Baxter was feeding him. Something about who had done what with whom and why it was important that they not do it again. And the entire time he tried to maneuver closer to Caroline, employing every military tactic he knew so that when the music finally changed, he was positioned right beside her.
As the band transitioned into the lilting strains of a new song, he all but shoved a surprised Miss Baxter into Mr. Adams’s arms, snatched Caroline up in his own, and set off at a determined clip. Caroline’s body flowed into his arms, sending his mind careening in a very dangerous direction as they began their own sojourn around the crowded dance floor.
Her mouth, however, did not follow the steps as well as her feet.
“That was a bit uncalled for.” There was a slight drawl to her vowels, telling David that whatever else Caroline was enjoying tonight, she had also enjoyed several glasses of champagne. “Mr. Adams was a pleasant dancer, and I was enjoying his company.”
“You don’t want a pleasant dancer.”
“Don’t I? Who are you to tell me what I want?” Her lips pressed against each other in irritation. It occurred to him, though he wished it had not, that he had kissed those lips the previous evening. They appeared harder now than the ones in his memory.
Then again, last night they had been framed by moonlight and murmuring his name.
David spun Caroline around with a tad more force than was necessary. “You spent the afternoon instructing me on technique, so turnabout is only fair. I offer my opinion on the matter so you do not make a mistake.”
“I know how to dance, David. ’Tis the one thing my mother taught me that stuck.”
He could find no disagreement with that. Indeed, she knew how to dance very well. He could feel her body moving in perfect time to the music, even through the layers that separated their skin. “Dancing is a bit like kissing. You can know the motions, you can even practice the steps, but choosing a partner who is your proper match makes all the difference in the encounter.”
She raised a dark brow. “Mr. Adams knows how to dance as well.”
“You described him as a pleasant dancer, which is not the emotion a good partner should conjure.” He leaned forward, until they were pressed indecently against each other, muslin to wool, breast to chest. “For example, would you label me a pleasant dance partner?”
Her body quivered in his arms. She tripped over a step. Righted herself. Shook her head. “Not precisely.”
“Mr. Adams knew the steps, but he didn’t make you forget them. You should be so caught up in the experience you don’t even think about the placement of your feet.”
She swallowed. “You seem to have mastered the effect.”
He nodded, satisfied she finally understood what he was trying to tell her. “That is what you need to look for in a match, Caroline. Do not settle for bland. You need a partner who can match your spirit if you are to find the lifetime of happiness you deserve.”
She searched his eyes, even as he did his best to ensure the room spun around them. “And if I believe I may have already found such a partner?”
This time, it was his turn to almost trip. Her words hit him in some deep, primitive part of his brain, but beyond the first glad flash of male-soaked pride, reason quickly took over. He realized, with sudden and startling clarity, that Caroline was staring at him with very much the same expression that Mr. Branson had on his face while watching her.
And while his pulse danced faster at her words, his head reacted in completely the opposite fashion. When Caroline was playing along nicely in the platonic role he had assigned her, it was easier to deny his own feelings. But now, when she was looking at him as if he might be an iced cake, his thoughts became panicked.
How could he not have seen it? How could he have so completely missed the sort of emotion she hoped for, emotions he could not admit even to himself? In the past eleven years, he had never let himself get close enough to a woman to risk this. He had convinced himself Caroline was a safe sort of danger to him, a friend with whom he could control his baser instincts.
Remorse didn’t just nudge him then, it cuffed him over the head. Goddamn it. How had this progressed from a bit of not-quite-innocent instruction to something far more precarious? There was no mistaking her suggestion. She believed him to be her match.
And there was no mistaking his necessary response.
Chapter 15
“THEN YOU SHOULD be dancing with him instead of me,” David told her as he maneuvered them across the pavilion floor.
Caroline blinked against the hurtful words. The light breeze coming in through the pavilion’s open walls held not even a prayer to cool the sudden scald of humiliation that washed over her. “I . . . I thought . . .” she stammered, every bit as tongue-tied as her sister usually was.
He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. A brotherly squeeze. The blue eyes she had spent much of the afternoon staring into shifted to scan the other couples, a marked departure from his attentive gaze of just moments before. “Let us peruse the crowd for someone who might be a better partner for you than Mr. Adams or that slavering pup Branson.”
The music from the brass band, which had shimmered with promise only moments before, tarnished in her ears. She didn’t understand. Hadn’t they been getting on well? Hadn’t David kissed her, without any hint of duress, not once, but twice?
Hadn’t he just wrestled her out of another man’s arms, for no purpose other than having a go with her on the dance floor?
“I don’t want to dance with someone else,” she told him. Her mind, which had been tied up in knots, began to slip free. In fact, it started sliding down the steepest of slopes, tumbling end over end, with only one possible outcome in sight. “I want to dance with you.”
He shook his head, a notion that made him appear unexpectedly vulnerable. “Whatever you think of me, whatever misimpression I have fostered, I am sorry. Truly, I am.” His voice had gone hoarse, and she latched on to the regret that hung in his words with all the finesse of a drowning woman. “But I am not a worthy partner for you, Caroline. I am just trying to help—”
His arms slackened about her, which made her want to howl in frustration. “By dancing with you to show the crowd how lovely you are. By changing their impression of you from someone worth tormenting to someone worth wanting.”
Caroline stared at him, stricken by the explanation that was so unwanted, and yet made perfect, horrific sense. He didn’t feel for her the same soul-crushing want that she did for him. He entertained a far simpler emotion in his regard for her.
He felt sorry for her.
The music shifted, signaling the end of the current musical number. David’s palm fell away from her waist as if it could no longer bear the punishment. Caroline numbly followed him from the floor. Apparently, his comments about forgetting the dance steps applied to walking too, because she would have been hard-pressed to identify her feet over her kneecaps at the moment.
She liked to think she wouldn’t have said anything, but for the effects of the three glasses of champagne. Surely that was the reason her tongue had gotten ahead of her. Now she was left facing the quagmire of her next decision, without the courage of a glass in her hand.
He pulled her to a quieter corner and levered her back up against one of the columns that held up the pavilion’s roof. Steps away, the cool night air beckoned, as did a forgotten tray of champagne glasses, laid out on a receiving table.
What next? She could apologize for her presumption, she supposed. Tell him she had been joking, having a bit of fun at his expense. She could claim a fierce and sudden headache, or she could pretend to twist her ankle, or . . .
Or she could have another glass of champagne.
Caroline snatched a glass and tossed it back, not even caring that it appeared to have been half drunk by someone else.
David pulled the emptied flute out of her hand. “Do you think that is a wise idea?”
“I seem to be fresh out of wise ideas,” she told him, welcoming the scald of her fourth glass, an indulgence she refused to regret. And least, not tonight.
Tomorrow might be a different tale.
The shadows from outside the pavilion seemed to reach for her, offering relief and anonymity. “I should go home,” she said, seizing on escape as a new option worth considering. Of course, she couldn’t leave without Penelope, and her sister was still spinning about the dance floor in Mr. Hamilton’s arms, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling.
David fixed her with a blue-eyed stare that might have been sharpened on a whetstone. “I hadn’t pegged you for a coward. Let’s address the problem, rather than avoiding the discussion.”
“Oh yes, let’s.” Caroline half hiccupped, already questioning the wisdom of that fourth glass. Her head felt fuzzy, irregular. Her tongue, however, felt as free as the sparrows that performed dizzying acrobatic maneuvers on the air currents above her swimming cove. “I am the girl that people laugh about behind cupped hands. An almost-spinster, spilling out the secrets of her heart to a handsome, eligible gentleman. You do not think of me in a way that might be considered romantic. The problem is solved.”
David sighed, and the sound cut through the fog of her brain like a beacon. He rubbed a hand against the back of his neck, assessing her as if she was a conundrum that required sorting out. “You mistook my interest, Caroline, that is all. I might have even encouraged it. But I am only here for a short time, and will return with my mother to Scotland in a few days’ time. We would not suit as anything other than friends.”
Caroline fought against a disbelieving snort of laughter, forcing herself to acknowledge the rational aspect of his words. Of course he didn’t find her attractive. Of course this little game he had been playing hadn’t been about any feelings of admiration he might harbor for her.
Why would he be any different from the other gentlemen in Brighton?
David’s explanation and her own self-doubts sent Caroline reaching for a fifth glass, but he placed his big hand over hers and firmly tugged her fingers away. “And I had not pegged you as someone to embrace public drunkenness, given the verbal tongue-lashing you gave me eleven years ago for the same sin.”
She glared up at him, the only gentleman she had ever had to look up to since attaining her full height. There was no way she could see herself clear of the hole she was digging beneath both of their feet. There was no way she could take her words back, no way she could erase such a glaring tactical error. She had just confessed the intensity of her feelings for this man, had given voice to an emotion that had permeated the very fabric of her life since girlhood.
Surely public drunkenness was her only remaining alternative.
HE HADN’T MEANT to hurt her. He’d never intentionally hurt any woman.
But Christ above, was he destined to do anything else?
She stood stiff-shouldered, fingering a remaining glass of champagne that had been left on a tray by a waiter who ought to be hunted down and flogged. She was going to regret such impulsiveness on the morrow, but short of tossing the entire tray on its end, he had no ability to prevent her from further overindulgence.
He needed to pull her attention away from the danger of the champagne, but far from finding some sort of resolution to the problem she presented, he found he could think of nothing cogent beyond how she had tasted last night, there where her hair lay against her skin. One tempting coil had loosened during their dance, and it now lay draped across the delicate column of her neck. He longed to loosen it and let it fall in its natural state, as he had seen it this afternoon: unleashed, damp, unruly.
And though he was in a public place, though she was angry as a wet cat with him, his body hardened with what was fast becoming a remarkable predictability around this woman.
“I do not want this to damage our friendship,” he argued, trying to approach this as he would a dilemma presented to him in his role as Moraig’s magistrate. The offending party would be expected to offer an apology, and he had done the offending tonight. “I admire you. Respect you.”
“But not enough to offer for me.” Her voice pierced his scrambling thoughts with the surety of an arrow.
David sucked in a breath. Hell, but she was a forward chit. “I cannot offer for anyone,” he said, by way of the most inadequate answer ever crafted by man.
“Can you at least tell me why?” She turned now to face him, the glass of champagne finally forgotten in her apparent need for information.
Information he was not, under any circumstances, going to divulge.
David recoiled against the hope he saw etched on her face. He considered how much to tell her. Not enough to destroy all faith in him. But enough to convince her of how inadequate he was for the role of white knight she seemed determined to fashion for him.
He settled on a stilted version of the truth. “I am in love with someone else.”
Her face drained of color, and he heard the ragged intake of her sudden breath. “But . . . but you kissed me.”
He welcomed her well-deserved outrage. He shouldn’t have kissed an innocent young woman, for all that he had meant to be helpful. He needed the reminder tattooed somewhere on his person.
“The person I love would not object,” he told her, his stomach knotting up to describe it in such terms. “At least not in the literal sense. She died eleven years ago.”
Caroline’s lips parted in surprise, softening the tense line of her jaw. “Oh,” she breathed.
“Her name was Elizabeth Ramsey, the vicar’s daughter. We were both twenty-one. And I loved her very much.”
Caroline’s features settled into a sympathetic mask. It struck him, then, how little she actually knew about his past. In Moraig, any mention of Elizabeth Ramsey among the townsfolk there caused a far different reaction.
“You remind me of her, in some ways,
” he told her. “No doubt it has caused me to behave inappropriately in your presence at times, and for that I am sorry.”
It wasn’t precisely true. He had been naïve in thinking that Caroline reminded him of Elizabeth, yesterday on Miss Baxter’s terrace. The physical differences were obvious, of course—Elizabeth Ramsey had been petite and fair, whereas Caroline was anything but. But in their innocence, and in his body’s reaction to each of them, he had thought them quite similar.
He reconsidered that notion now. There was steel in Caroline, a core of strength that even now showed itself in the firming of her lips and the squaring of her shoulders, that Elizabeth had never possessed. If Caroline was a rock jutting out of turbulent water, Elizabeth had been the water itself. Her mercurial moods had been the near death of him, and had certainly been the death of her.
“If the woman you loved . . .” Caroline swallowed, as if the question pained her. “If she has been dead for so long, then why can you not see yourself offering marriage to someone like me? We get along well enough, I think.”
David let out his bunched thoughts on a long, slow slide. The noise of the crowd, which had receded to the point of silence, began to creep back in. This, then was the crux of his problem. Most men would have buried their loss years ago, moved on to find another love. But he was not most men.
And penance was a matter best kept private.
“Elizabeth Ramsey took my heart with her when she died, lass. I am not free to give it to another, and do not imagine I will ever be.”
Her uncertain gaze dropped to a level that would have been shocking had it not come from someone who had already seen him in smallclothes. “Are you . . . celibate?” she whispered.
“No.” He permitted his lips to turn up, though it seemed somehow less than appropriate. “Although I am stretched to understand how you even know such a word.”
“Penelope has a book that I read—” Caroline exhaled noisily, then waved her hands about as she searched the crowd, apparently for her sister with a penchant for naughty books. “It does not matter. None of this matters. I am sorry I said anything. I didn’t know . . .”
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