Chapter 23 #4
She held out her hand. He eyed it as though she had offered him a live coal. “We have discussed my ineptitude at country dances.”
“We have not tried this one,” she said. “Besides, if you step on my toes, I shall know it was not malicious. Come.”
He hesitated just long enough to make her arm begin to ache, then stood, setting his tankard down.
“Very well,” he said. “If I make a fool of myself, I shall insist you share the blame.”
“I have every intention,” she said.
She led him to the cleared space. A few of the locals glanced up, curious. No one bowed or scraped, they merely shifted to make room.
“Watch,” Isla said quickly, as the couples turned. “It is simple. Four steps forward, four back, hands, turn. Like a country cotillion but with less showing off.”
“I dislike being told anything is simple,” he muttered. “It is usually a lie.”
She suppressed a smile. “Follow my lead. You survive tempests. You can survive my dancing.”
The fiddler marked the end of the current figure with a flourish, then nodded at them as they took their places.
The reel began again. Isla moved. It came back as easily as breathing.
The steps her mother had shown her on a wooden floor in Perthshire; the rhythm that had carried her through more harvest feasts than London had balls.
Edward missed the first turn by half a beat, nearly collided with a woman who only laughed and propelled him in the right direction.
His second attempt was better; by the third he had found the pattern.
His body remembered more than his mouth liked to admit.
Isla laughed aloud when he spun her with unexpected skill.
“You said you were bad at this,” she accused.
“I said I was bad at balls,” he replied, a little breathless. “This is entirely different. There are fewer feathers.”
He caught her hand, his palm warm against her fingers, and for a moment the din of the room faded.
She felt his grip, the surety of his movement, the shared, ridiculous pleasure of not tripping over one another.
They turned, stepped, clapped with the others as the reel sped up.
Henry and Elizabeth joined in on the next round, Henry managing admirably until he became entranced watching Elizabeth’s laughing face and forgot which foot was meant to go where.
The room blurred with motion. For a few bright moments Isla forgot Deverell, Glenmore, the burned stones of Strathmore.
There was only the music, Edward’s hand in hers, the shared grin when they narrowly avoided collision.
When the fiddler finally let the tune collapse into a flourished end, Isla was breathless and flushed.
Edward, too, was breathing harder than usual.
There was a light in his eyes she had never seen in London. He looked alive.
“Not bad,” she said, as they stepped back to the edge of the room to let others take their turn.
“I did not fall,” he agreed. “This is a victory.”
“Next time we will try a Strathspey,” she said. “If you survive that, even your mother will have to admit you have hidden talents.”
“She would consider this a hidden talent,” he said. “Unworthy of a Wexford.”
“Then we shall not tell her,” Isla replied.
Henry and Elizabeth were still on the floor, a tangle of arms and laughter. Henry had entirely surrendered to enjoyment. Elizabeth moved with unexpected grace, guiding him as much as he guided her. Edward watched them for a moment, something like fondness softening his features.
“They will be happy,” Isla said quietly.
“Yes,” he said. “I think they will.”
The room grew warmer. Edward tugged at his collar.
“I am going to take some air,” he said. “Would you care to …”
“Yes,” she said, too quickly. “I would.”
He blinked, as if he had half-expected a refusal. They skirted the dancing, slipped through the doorway into the narrow corridor, and stepped out into the inn yard. The night had cleared.
Stars pricked the dark, the air was cold enough to cut the heat from their faces in a single breath.
The scent of peat and damp earth hovered.
For a few moments they stood in silence, the muffled fiddle still audible through the wall.
Isla wrapped her arms around herself, more for something to do than from cold.
“You did not take the York road,” she said.
“No,” he said.
She could not pretend she did not know why. She could not admit that she did.
“You changed your mind,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I did.”
“Why?” Her voice was low.
He was silent a moment, as if assembling words with care.
“When we left Wexford,” he said at last, “I had a picture in my head. Of you as a problem to be solved. A question to be answered. Deverell’s story was part of that. My mother’s … opinions. It all tangled together.”
He stared out toward the dark line of distant fields.
“I told myself,” he went on, “that if I could just find this Deverell and hear him describe you or the woman he claims was you that I would know. That I could slot you neatly into ‘guilty’ or ‘innocent’ and behave accordingly.”
“And now,” she prompted, heart in her throat.
“And now,” he said, “we have ridden together for two days. I have watched you with Henry, with Elizabeth, with strangers at inns. I have seen you give away bread to a beggar boy without making a show of it. I have heard you speak of Strathmore until your eyes shine. I have seen you curse at a rut in the road with more creativity than half my crew.”
She huffed. “You sound as if you are writing a report.”
“This is how my mind works,” he said, a touch apologetic. “I collect observations. I weigh them. I compare them to statements. Deverell’s letter is one statement. So is my mother’s conviction that you are a sly fortune-hunter. So is Glenmore’s delight in your difficulties.”
“And my brother’s idiocy,” she put in.
“And your brother’s idiocy,” he agreed. “Against those, I set what I have seen. You, worrying over the stable boy’s ill-fitting boots. You, insisting Henry will have work at Strathmore. You, offering to return to Scotland alone rather than be a thorn in my side.”
She swallowed.
“I find,” he said quietly, “that I am more inclined to trust what I have seen than what others tell me they saw when I was not there.”
The simple statement landed with more force than any flowery declaration could have.
Isla looked down at her hands. Her fingers had curled into her sleeves.
“You trust me,” she said, barely above a whisper.
“I am learning to,” he said. “It is not an easy habit to acquire. My father raised me to suspect weakness in myself and in others. Rearden taught me to rely on the men whose lives I could see laid out in front of me. You …” He broke off, shook his head, laughed softly.
“You have been inconvenient to every theory I ever had about women.”
“That sounds like a compliment,” she said. “Of a peculiar sort.”
“It is the best I can do,” he said. “For now.”
“Thank you,” she said. It seemed inadequate, but it was true.
He turned to face her fully at last.
“What I see,” he said softly, “is a woman whose company I have begun to crave. Who infuriates me, and challenges me, and makes me laugh when I am determined not to. A woman I find myself looking for when she leaves a room.”
The yard seemed very quiet.
“And,” he added, “a woman I do not wish to be without. Whatever Glenmore, Deverell, or my mother may prefer.”
Her chest felt too small.
“Edward,” she said. There were a dozen things she might have said after that, some sharp, some foolish, some so tender they frightened her. She chose, instead, the most practical.
“You spoke of trust,” she said. “Does it extend only to believing I am not a schemer? Or do you mean to … open other doors?”
He held her gaze for a long, searching moment.
Then he reached beneath his shirt, fingers closing around something on a cord.
When he drew it out, the small metal object that hung there caught the faint starlight.
A key. He closed his hand around it for a second, as if reluctant to let it see the air, then stepped closer and took her hand.
The key was cool and surprisingly heavy when he laid it in her palm.
“This,” he said, voice low, “is the key to the locked wing at Wexford. I took it from my desk before I left. I have worn it since, like some relic.”
She stared at it.
“I told you,” he went on, “that my father’s rooms are there. His books. His clothes. The things he left behind. My mother says there is a diary. I have not had the courage to look. It is … the part of my life I am most ashamed of. The part in which I failed him. Or believe I did.”
She closed her fingers reflexively around the key. The edges bit into her skin.
“I thought,” he said, “if I kept that wing sealed, I could keep those years sealed with it. That if I shut the door, the boy who disappointed him would stay on the other side.”
“And now?” she asked.
“Now,” he said, “I would rather you see it. All of it. Read what you wish. Look at what you wish. Judge me, if you must, on the whole of what I have been. Not just the tidy pieces I chose to show you.”
Her throat burned.
“You would give me this,” she said. “Knowing … what it costs you.”
“Yes,” he said simply.
She looked up at him. The inn light spilled faintly through the cracks around the common room shutters; the rest of the yard was lit only by stars.
His face was in half shadow, but she could see the openness there, the vulnerability that made his usual armor of sarcasm and control look suddenly thin.
“This is more than trust,” she said, because she could not keep the tremor from her voice otherwise. “This is … you are offering me the worst of yourself, as well as the best.”
“If we are to make any sort of life,” he said quietly, “I cannot keep parts of myself in locked rooms and expect you to live content in the corridors.”
“And what do you expect in return?” she asked.
He smiled faintly. “I am already getting it. You are still here.”
Her fingers tightened around the key.
Slowly, deliberately, she slipped the cord back over his head, letting the cool metal rest briefly against his throat. His breath hitched almost imperceptibly at the contact.
“Keep it safe until we are home,” she said. “Then we will open that door together.”
He swallowed. “Together,” he repeated.
She rose onto her toes before she could talk herself out of it. He was not so very much taller. She could feel the warmth of him, the steady solidity. For a heartbeat they hovered, the space between them charged. Then he closed it. The kiss was not perfect.
Their noses bumped, she tasted a trace of ale and smoke. His hand came up, hesitated, then settled at her waist with the cautious certainty of a man who had spent his life guiding ships rather than women. She curled her fingers in the lapel of his coat, drawing him closer.
Heat flared, then gentled. The world narrowed again to his mouth on hers, the rasp of his stubble against her skin, the way his breath caught when she parted her lips in invitation and he answered. When they broke apart, the night seemed altered.