Chapter 12 #2
“In the interest of education?” asked Ravensworth, utterly committed to the absurdity.
“Of course.”
Juliet’s gaze shifted and found Rory’s eye.
He lifted a single eyebrow. A sudden giggle rose up, and she was powerless against it.
Rory’s face lit up in a smile, and he gave a loud guffaw.
Juliet found Delilah observing her as if she’d committed a grave betrayal.
Still, Delilah must’ve seen the humor in the exchange.
Perhaps not the part about the Duke of Ravensworth delivering a firm smack to her bottom.
Juliet coughed and cleared her throat. “Must’ve been something I ate.”
“That gave you a laughing fit?” asked Quincy, observing her as if she were the silliest woman alive and was, in fact, making his case for him that women were brainless creatures.
As galling as that was, Juliet had no intention of disabusing him of the notion. “It happens on occasion.”
She couldn’t allow herself to meet Rory’s gaze again.
They could now communicate without words.
That was new.
She didn’t dislike it.
The string quartet who had been brought in all the way from Edinburgh—apparently Ravensworth’s generous gift to the village tonight—chose that moment to strike up a waltz. A frisson of excitement sizzled through the air.
At the very same moment, Ravensworth and Quincy took a step forward, each holding out a white-gloved hand, and opened their mouths to say, “Lady Delilah, if you—”
But it was Quincy alone who finished the question. “Will do me the honor of this dance?”
Ravensworth’s mouth snapped shut, looking as if he’d just bitten into an apple and found half a worm.
Delilah glanced back and forth between the two men, a mean, little smile playing about her mouth. “With each of you being men of such important distinction, how could I possibly choose between you?”
Ravensworth’s face looked like thunder. Quincy, well, he remained utterly like Quincy. In fact, his chest might’ve puffed out.
Delilah tapped a contemplative finger to her mouth before stabbing it into the air. “Oh, I have the very answer.”
Ravensworth had the good sense to look wary. Quincy, possessing not a lick of good sense to begin with, didn’t. A note of hope hung about him. Juliet could almost feel pity for him…if it weren’t for the fact that he was utterly unpitiable.
“Since you both wish to dance so badly, perhaps you could dance with one another.”
And with that, Delilah whirled around—she’d ever been fond of a dramatic exit—and marched toward the ladies’ retiring room.
Ravensworth pivoted and strode away in the opposite direction. Quincy gave his cravat a slight adjustment and made his way toward a group of men who had been particularly vocal about Parliament’s recent passage of the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act and how it would affect farmers.
Juliet found herself alone with Rory.
She shifted on her feet, suddenly unsure where to set her gaze. The tops of her slippers seemed the most logical place.
He cleared his throat, forcing her gaze to lift. “Would you do me the honor of this dance, Miss Windermere?” He held out his hand.
Juliet understood two facts at once.
She couldn’t refuse him. Not after Delilah’s little performance. Too many eyes were upon her and making assumptions—likely correct ones.
But even more… She didn’t want to refuse him.
She wanted him to take her into his arms and sweep her across gleaming Scottish pine and not stop until the slippers had been danced off her feet.
She placed her hand in his. Through silk gloves his masculine warmth slid into her.
She’d never given much thought to the idea of feeling safe in a man’s arms. In truth—and admittedly ungenerous to her own sex—she’d always half-thought the notion silly feminine fiddle-faddle.
But when Rory led her the few feet to the dancing floor and placed his other hand on the indent of her waist, she felt secure and sure, like nothing beyond the circle of his arms could touch her.
He pulled her into the swirl of the waltz already begun, and her heart beat in rhythm to the light movements of her feet.
Dancing was as close to flying as she would ever come.
Her gaze lifted, and she found him staring down at her, lopsided smile tipping at his mouth. “You love to dance, Miss Windermere.”
“I do, Lord Kilmuir.”
“How is it we’ve never danced before now?”
“Simple,” she said. “You never asked.”
A line formed between his eyebrows. “Come to think of it, I don’t recall seeing you at any dances.”
“I was there. But you wouldn’t have noticed me.”
“Why is that?”
She laughed, the buoyant sound chorusing gaily with the laughter from the other waltzing couples. “Because I have a particular ability to blend into a wall when I so choose.”
“No longer,” he rumbled, a smile on his mouth, a seriousness in his eyes. He gathered her closer than was strictly proper and bent his head so his lips touched her ear. “You’ll never be invisible to me, Juliet.”
How his words, hot and humid against her skin, blazed an arrow of longing straight through her, to places only he had ever touched—in her body…in her soul.
She was helpless against such words.
She’d been infatuated with this man for nigh on a decade, but she understood now those had been a girl’s feelings that only saw surfaces. This last week, she’d seen so much more of the man below his appealing surface. What she felt now ran deeper.
These feelings were a woman’s.
“You’ll never be invisible to me, Juliet.”
Until this very moment, she’d been utterly unaware they were words she needed to hear.
They were as fresh droplets of rain upon parched earth.