Chapter Ten #2
There were cheers and arguments between two sisters about which of them would have to dance with their eldest cousin, and calls from one of the aunts that no ankles were to be broken this time—which didn’t bode well—and Reginald and Jessica, hand in hand, were swept away on the tide of Chance cousins as they poured out of the dining room and down a corridor.
Reginald could not help but laugh, the exuberance and the joy of the family overtaking him, and Jessica laughed with him and dear God, he could do this forever.
I could do this for the rest of my life.
It was a passing thought and not one that he decided to pay much heed to—not as they all burst into a room Reginald had never entered and which turned out to be a rather cavernous ballroom.
“How large is this place?” he muttered to Jessica as Lady Liliana was beseeched by a great number of cousins to play the pianoforte for them, a request she was vehemently rejecting.
“Larger than you would expect,” Jessica rejoined with a wry look. “Look, if you don’t want to—”
“I want to.”
He spoke with passion modulated by her clear discomfort.
There were shouts and laughter echoing around the ballroom now as cousins divided into pairs, those who had married into the family being squabbled over as no one really wished to dance with a sibling, and he could see the noise crowding Jessica’s thoughts.
Reginald stepped closer, wishing to pull her into his embrace and shield her from the cacophony.
But she smiled. There was a clarity in her expression, a fierce determination, that he had never seen before.
“No one has ever asked me to dance before,” she murmured as Lady Liliana started playing an old-fashioned country dance on the pianoforte in the corner.
Reginald almost staggered as she pulled him over to the top of the set that had formed. Never—never been asked bef—never?
But there was no time for that. The music had reached the point where he would have to dance, actually remember what to do with his hands and feet, and Jessica had left his mind very little room for those actual thoughts.
He was not usually one to fear a dance. Not that this was fear—and yet it tasted like fear. The frantic beating of his heart, the tension in his shoulder blades, the shiver of panic that was roaring through him…
And it all faded away as Jessica stepped forward, nerves in her eyes yet boldness accompanying it, and took his hand.
The music slowed, their movements reduced, and Reginald grinned as he felt the clasp of Jessica’s fingers around his own.
This was… This was everything. This was a moment of perfect clarity, as though time had decided to stay still so that he could relish every single second. She was smiling, her expression full of trust and contentment.
And then she was stepping back.
The pain of their separation was visceral and it was only when Reginald realized that it was the movement that the dance required, and not a statement of her desire to be close to him, that he managed to calm.
Dear God, if this is what a few seconds in a dance can do to me…
“You look…strange,” Jessica murmured as they stepped together again, arms encircling each other for a brief moment before they were all too soon divided by the progress of the dance.
Reginald tried to speak, but his mouth was dry, his throat naught but sandpaper. “Argh… I… Erm…”
Christ alive, he had to better than that!
She was looking up at him now with a quizzical brow. “I beg your pardon?”
What on earth was wrong with him? “I… I feel strange,” Reginald said honestly, unable to tie up his words into something more delicate or impressive.
Her delight was unadorned. “Good. I would feel lonely, feeling strange all by myself.”
What was it she had said? Reginald tried to think as they stepped through the motions of the dance, his fingertips fizzing every time they came into contact with any part of his partner.
“No one has ever asked me to dance before.”
He had not believed it then and he could hardly believe it now. The idea that no man had ever seen the beauty of this woman, the elegance, the entrancing nature of her smile, the way she listened so carefully to anything you said, really listened…
There was something almost erotic about the way Jessica Chance paid attention to a man when he was speaking.
And it wasn’t just that. It wasn’t the mere sense of being attended to that made Jessica all the more alluring. It was how she responded, her brilliant mind, the wit she somehow kept hidden until it was right there in front of you, dazzling you, so bright, it was almost difficult to see her.
Perhaps that was how she had managed to go through so much of life without being noticed.
One could not stare straight at the sun.
“You are very quiet,” said Jessica as they promenaded down the set, the cousins laughing or chattering away without much heed to the music. “I am usually the quiet one.”
And I am usually the one with too much to say, Reginald could not help but think. But you’ve staggered me, Jessica. I can hardly breathe when I am with you, and that is…
Well. Most confusing.
“I don’t know what to say,” he managed to voice aloud.
Jessica’s face did not fall, not exactly, but she did not look so content. “And yet I am usually the one with nothing to say.”
“Oh, I have a great deal that I could say,” Reginald said before he could stop himself. “I could say that you are beautiful, and a wonderful dancer, and I’m—I’m intoxicated by you, Jessica.”
It was the wrong thing to say. At least, it appeared to be the wrong thing.
Jessica looked down at her feet, no longer willing or able, it seemed, to hold his gaze.
When she stepped forward and raised a hand to meet his own as the dance required, she did so without looking at him. Without looking at him at all.
Pain twisted within Reginald. He had spoken the truth—it had poured from him without much control—and yet it had somehow displeased her.
“I—I am sorry,” he said, hardly knowing how to fix this. How could he fix this when he did not know precisely how he had managed to break it?
“Why?” She had whispered the word and was now, much to his relief, looking at him.
The trouble was, the way she was examining him made Reginald feel as though he couldn’t feel his feet. It was all he could do not to trip over.
Never fear: if she kept looking at him like that, he was going to have a third leg…
“Because I… I thought I had offended you,” Reginald said a little lamely.
And she smiled and all was forgiven and he could have flown to the moon on the joy that filled him when Jessica said, “I’m intoxicated by you, Reginald. It’s just… I thought I was alone in that.”
“You are not alone,” he breathed as they stepped together, his hand on her waist.
The dance required them to separate after a beat and Jessica attempted to do so, her natural instincts following the rhythm of the music—but Reginald kept such a hold on her waist that she was unable to do so.
Reginald stood there, his Jessica in his arms, and wondered precisely when this woman had become his. When this marriage of convenience had ceased to be convenient, and the emotions flowing through him had started to be most inconvenient.
A snort—a laugh, a stifled sentence.
“What are they doing?”
Reginald blinked. Then he suddenly realized what he was doing and hastily released the furiously flushing woman.
“My apologies,” he said gruffly, trying not to catch the eye of any of the cousins—most definitely not her siblings Miss Irene or Mr. Chance, one of whom was grinning, and one of whom was glaring. “I didn’t mean to—I didn’t think—”
“I know,” Jessica said softly, and though the dance did not require it, she placed a hand on his arm. “I know.”
And she did know. And that is the damned trouble, Reginald could not help but think as the dance came to an end and the ballroom erupted into delighted applause.
“Truly excellent, no one stepped on my foot this time—”
“—much better this time, Samuel. You almost managed to—”
“Frank, no, you cannot dance in trousers next—”
And amongst it all, as Lady Liliana demanded that someone else take over at the pianoforte for the next dance so that she could waltz with her husband, and footmen poured in with little glasses of sherry on trays, and one of the aunts popped her head in and ordered them to have as much fun as possible but to keep the noise down after midnight, Reginald stood there with Jessica’s arm slipped through his and realized…
Realized it had all gone wrong.
He couldn’t do it. At least, he could do it, but it would be for completely different reasons now.
He had selected Jessica to be his bride to be useful. To use her name to protect his. To ensure his sister could find a husband. To prevent their brother from entirely destroying everything that they were.
And now…
Now he cared about her. Jessica Chance was a very special woman, and it simply wasn’t right to treat her in such a way anymore.
No, marrying her would be wrong.
And yet, not marrying her would be wrong.
Reginald did not quite understand the flurry of feelings jostling for notice within him, but a great deal of them were demanding that he marry Jessica on the morrow and make sure she could never discover the worst of him and leave him.
The very thought, the very idea of her not being by his side…
Reginald looked down at the beautiful woman beside him, and a smile crept over his lips, unbidden.
He had to find the words, even if he could not articulate them well.
He had to try to explain just what she was starting to mean to him.
That she was beyond compare. That he had never felt so…
so himself, so comfortable in her presence.
That he wanted to take her to his bedchamber here and throw her on the bed and strip her of all her clothes and kiss every—
“Reginald?”
He jolted, almost dropping Jessica’s arm at the surprise at her murmur of his name. “Jessica.”
It was an instinctive response, another one that surprised him. Since when had his instinctive response to someone saying his name become to say her name?
“Reginald, what…what are you thinking?” Jessica’s clear eyes were bright, and curious, and there was no archness in her brow, just honesty. “Right then, you were thinking something…something important. I could see it in your expression. What are you thinking?”
For a moment, just a moment, Reginald hesitated.
What was he thinking? What was he thinking, pulling a woman like Jessica into a plan like this, tying her forever to a family that was traitorous to the Crown?
“Nothing,” he croaked, hating himself. “Nothing. Shall we have another dance?”