32. The Ellesmere Ball #2
When the musicians rested after an hour-long set, trays of champagne were passed for all to partake.
Lady Gidding-Wedmore quieted the buzzing crowd to read a toast from Henry’s mother in her absence, and was the first to raise her crystal flute, being the hostess of the ball.
Fanny and Warnaby followed suit, with a nod to the happy couple.
Althea and company joined in clinking their glasses, each privately imagining herself in Annabel’s shoes.
Reverend Tudor, red-cheeked from dancing, raised his sloshing glass with a mirthful A-men, which provoked laughter across the room.
Harriet caught Annabel’s gaze as she nudged her mother to raise her glass and winked as if to remind Annabel of the “something special” that awaited her.
When the players returned to tune their instruments, the tipsy crowd thrilled at the prospect of the next dancing round. Henry lifted Annabel’s empty glass from her hand and deposited his and hers on a waiting tray, then offered his arm.
“Shall we?”
“Another round, Mr. D’Evercy? I don’t think I’ve seen you this carried away.”
“What do you suppose has come over me?” He returned her intimate smile, his dimple on particular display. “I have it on good authority there have been forty-eight elegant new dances introduced just this year. Surely, I can muddle through a few.”
Annabel took his arm. “Then muddle we will.”
He led her back to the dance floor, where they were top couple for three longways country dances, all the usual moves but in a different order and with slight variations.
They did better than muddle through, trying not to flaunt their happiness—there was decorum after all—but it was hard to keep in check their subtle smiles and smoldering looks.
After the third dance of the second round, all the dancers caught their breath while eagerly awaiting the next to be called.
Annabel spotted Harriet huddled with Reverend Tudor and the first violin, in an animated discussion.
She assumed this must be the surprise she was promised; maybe they were at odds over the propriety of moving what would normally be the last dance of the ball to its very middle.
Harriet seemed to win the day when Tudor obediently handed the new sheet music around to the players, who put it foremost on their stands.
As Henry and Annabel took their places, she leaned in. “I have it on good authority that we will now have a Virginia reel. But you will know it as Sir Roger de Coverley.”
“Then I shan’t embarrass myself. An old favorite, indeed.”
Warnaby took second place next to D’Evercy in the line; Fanny slid in beside Annabel. Several other couples completed the longways line. The musicians raised their instruments, waiting for the dance to be called. It was then that Reverend Tudor turned to the crowd, mopping his brow.
“As a somewhat unexpected, that is, out of programme, that is, decidedly not on your dance cards . . .” He cleared his throat, puffing his cheeks like a blowfish, and pulled on his collar.
“How shall I say, I suppose I’ll just say it, that we shall now have .
. . a bit of a surprise!” He glanced at Harriet, who nodded firmly back, and mopped his brow once more for good measure.
“Yes, that’s right. We shall now have . . . The V-V-Viennese Waltz!”
One-two-three, one-two three . . .
A collective gasp on and off the dance floor accompanied the first few notes, but no one took a step.
Eyes rounded, jaws slackened, hands flew to open mouths.
The couples poised to dance looked at their neighbors, across at each other, at Reverend Tudor, the musicians, perplexed.
The younger women gripped each other’s forearms—Could this be it at last?
—for they’d been wishing for a waltz for months.
Lady Gidding-Wedmore looked at Fanny, who shrugged.
Mrs. Lackington turned to Harriet, who signaled to her mother that she knew exactly what she was doing.
Annabel caught the moment between them. This was Harriet’s plan all along.
One-two-three, one-two three . . .
The dancers began to dwindle from the dance floor two by two, flummoxed or offended, except Althea and two friends, who looked woefully disappointed. Fanny took Warnaby’s arm, glancing at Annabel as he escorted her away. Only she and Henry remained.
He offered his arm, a graceful escape. “It appears there’s been some mistake.”
Harriet trained her malevolent grin on Annabel.
One-two-three, one-two three . . .
“I don’t think it’s a mistake, Henry. I think it’s a dare.”
“A dare?”
The steady, circular rhythm centered her, slowed time. She squared her shoulders and looked at him. “I think we should accept.”
He stiffened and lowered his arm. “I think perhaps we should have another glass of champagne.”
Annabel swept her gaze across the room, the musicians, Harriet and her mother, the waiting crowd.
Tudor mopped his brow again; Althea watched with bated breath; Fanny reached for Warnaby’s hand; Lady Gidding-Wedmore fanned her hot face.
All eyes were on them, the two of them, again the epicenter of attention, but not the kind they wanted.
“Annabel?” There was a hint of edge in Henry’s voice. He offered his arm again.
One-two-three, one-two three . . .
It was a beautiful, flowing melody with harmonies uplifting and melancholy all at once. It almost demanded that one dance, the way she had with Jane in the garden at Norwood Manor, danced and laughed, and spun around, and held each other close. How could one contain joy like that?
Annabel looked at her beloved. “Waltz with me, Henry.”
Everyone was watching, whispering. He lowered his arm.
“I know you know how,” she said.
He shook his head. “This isn’t Paris.”
“Please, Henry. One waltz . . .”
He hated being the center of attention now. Agitated, he looked at her with pleading eyes.
“. . . that could alter the course of both our lives.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She put her hand on her chest. “I’m asking you, from the deepest well of my heart.”
“Asking me to waltz?”
“Asking you to believe me. Believe in me.”
He dabbed his brow with a kerchief from his pocket. “It isn’t done, Annabel.”
She recoiled from his stern tone.
He put the kerchief away, his eyes not stern at all. “Not here. Not now.”
“Like women writing?”
His shoulders tensed. He turned to the musicians, still playing, if half-heartedly. They didn’t know what to do. D’Evercy raised his hands in aggravated protest.
“Please stop.” His jaw was tight. “Please. Just stop!”
One by one, the players lifted their bows, the last notes hanging in the air, discordant.
He looked around the room. “Please, everyone. Enjoy some refreshment, won’t you?”
Some looked away, but no one moved so much as rearranged themselves to watch less conspicuously, feigning disinterest. D’Evercy turned back to Annabel, his voice quieter, trying to afford them some privacy. He ran a single finger across his heavy brow.
“Annabel. I cannot see what waltzing has to do with writing.”
“I know. I didn’t see it either. Until just now.” She touched the back of her neck. “The thing is, Henry, women are going to waltz. And they’re going to write too . . .”
He searched her eyes, not understanding.
“And in time, the women who write will far exceed the women who waltz . . .”
She saw him struggling to grasp what she was saying, pressed her hands together, trying to find the words, not on the page, but here, now, when she needed them most.
“They’re going to do so many things, Henry . . . You can’t begin to imagine . . . Not just waltz, but cha-cha and swing dance and twist and shout and churn the butter, and run—run marathons and companies . . .”
She thought of her own life, and her sister’s.
“They’re going to go to college . . . and see the world . . . all by themselves if they want to, without chaperones . . . and wear whatever they feel like wearing . . . and love whoever they want . . .”
She thought of all the women she’d studied and read and admired.
“They’re going to influence people, so many people . . . and invent things, new ways of thinking and being and doing . . . The possibilities . . .”
The whole room was watching, but Annabel didn’t care.
“Think of it, Henry . . . women might fly to the moon!”
He shook his head, utterly lost. Annabel’s eyes prickled with tears.
“But they’re going to write, Henry . . . about all of it.”
He touched the silk tie at his throat. “I don’t understand. You had rather go away from me, and write your novel? Is that it?”
She shook her head, but it was more yes than no.
“The one I’m writing now, since the last time we met, it’s about a young woman, like me.
” She looked around at the scene, at everyone watching them, watching her.
“But I think no one here would ever understand or accept her. I’m only just beginning to, myself. ”
He ran a hand through his hair, his anguish palpable. “I do accept you.”
“How can you?” She blinked back tears. “I’ve never been in love before, Henry. You’ve shown me what love is.”
“As you have me.”
“But it’s your world. Your circumference, not mine.”
When he dipped his chin toward his shoulder, Annabel saw Fanny nearby. She had tears in her eyes too, clutching Warnaby’s hand. Annabel waited for Henry to raise his eyes to hers.
“I can’t be who I am here. Not all that I am. So how could you possibly love me?”
“It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together, then set her gaze to meet his.
“Where I’m from, if women are lucky enough to find this, what you and I have here .
. .” She lightly touched her fingers to his chest, then hers.
“. . . it’s with someone who loves them for all they do, and can do, and want and wish for.
Who wants for them what they want for themselves. ”
D’Evercy looked at the floor and rubbed his forehead with his whole hand, almost imperceptibly shaking. But Annabel could see it.
“And I thought my only wish was for you,” she said. “That you were all I’d ever need for my happiness.”
When he looked back at her, she searched his eyes for some glimmer of understanding, but he looked utterly at sea.
“I will never meet as fine a man as you.”
“Yet you find fault with me.”
Her eyes rimmed with tears. “Only that you were born in the wrong century.”
“Annabel—”
He was the sailor overboard. But the only way she could save him now would be to let the sea swallow her whole.
“I know you can’t understand. But I can’t be who I am here, Henry. Knowing what I know about what I might be . . . what women will be . . . what’s possible.” She tried to stem her tears, but couldn’t. “I have to go back.”
His hand fell heavily at his side. Annabel reached for it and held it to her cheek. She was whispering.
“And I wish, with all my heart, that you’d come with me. Because I’m not sure you can be who you are here either.”
He cocked his head, confused and hurt. Finally, he shook his head, profoundly sad.
The room was still. Annabel lowered his hand but didn’t let go.
She looked down at how hard their fingers were holding on to each other, a white-knuckle, end-of-the-world kind of hanging on.
And then, casting off all decorum, she leaned up and kissed him on the lips—a kiss full of fire and tenderness.
He was surprised but didn’t pull away. Instead, he kissed her back.
The crowd gasped; Mrs. Lackington swooned; Harriet stormed away. Reverend Tudor downed his drink and crossed himself; Althea bit her knuckle. Fanny and Warnaby looked on with shock but also awe. Lady Gidding-Wedmore wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.
When the long kiss came to its natural end, Annabel took a staccato breath and put her fingers to her lips, as if to permanently etch it there.
It was, just as predicted, like nothing she could have imagined, an earth-shattering, life-altering kiss in the history of her.
But unable to speak another word, she rushed out of the ballroom as the crowd parted to let her pass and crossed the threshold one last time.