Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
He met her as she reached the bottom of the staircase, reached for one of her gloved hands, and kissed the back of it, not caring what others would make of it.
The waves of murmurs that crested through the room surpassed the crowd’s earlier response. Even those already on the dancefloor gawked shamelessly.
He closed an arm around her middle as he walked back to Silas. Bowing, Stromwell took her hand and kissed it, “You’re stunning, Your Grace.”
“Thank you, Lord Stromwell,” Ariadne replied. “I am glad to see you.”
“I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” Silas said as the butler invited the gathering to enjoy the refreshments while the orchestra prepared for the first dance.
Lord Stromwell said, “The ladies that were introduced before you are certainly your sisters. The resemblance is uncanny.”
She smiled, “I must credit our mother for that. Father gave us our hair, but everything else is mother.”
“May I ask if your sister Celestine would like to dance with me?” Silas asked.
Looking delighted, Ariadne replied, “I know she would love to dance with you.”
Hunt called for the first dance, a waltz, a silent encouragement for the guests to find partners. Pulling Ariadne into his side, he dipped his lips to her ear. “How did you organize this ball?”
“Cleverly,” she said. “With Lady Hamden’s help, I invited mostly married pairs but exactly ten single lords and ten single ladies.
I wanted to make sure no one was left out.
Clara is a jewel in a coal mine because she knows all the gossips, rumormongers, and rakes in the ton and made sure to strike them from the list.”
Cedric nodded to where Silas was speaking to Celestine; the girl looked like Silas had hung the moon. Celestine curtsied and took his hand before Silas swept her off to the floor. With delight, Ariadne saw that Marigold and Isolde also had partners—then across the room saw a flash of red hair.
The same man she and Isolde had seen at Hyde Park. She grabbed at Cedric. “Do you know who that man is?”
His brows creased as he pulled her to the floor as well. “Who are you referring to?”
“The lone redhead in our home,” she said giddily as the violins leaped to life and the beautiful strains filled the ballroom.
He took her into his arms as they began to dance. Holding her in this way was another form of intimacy because he rarely danced. He swung her, and she swiveled, and the movement of her spine under his hand felt so sensuous.
“I have no idea,” he said. “Why do you need to find out?”
“It was the impression I felt coming from Isolde when she saw him that day,” Ariadne’s lips tilted wryly.
“I’ll find out,” he said. “I must tell you that I have not danced in a long time, so forgive me if I fumble a bit.”
She giggled. “That is, if I don’t step on your feet first.”
In his previous life, the year before his first marriage, Cedric had danced with many women, too many to count, but this, being with Ariadne, was another experience for him.
Dancing was no longer a simple matter of stepping to music or making chitchat to pass the time or thinking about other things he’d rather be doing.
Holding Ariadne in his arms, staring into her unparalleled eyes, he felt a rightness that he’d never felt before, a movement he had not expected to feel.
Christ, the way she looked in that dress. Her loveliness made a chaos of his mind. She laughed breathlessly as he took her into a spin, and he caught glimpses of other men staring at her.
When the dance ended, it required all his willpower to let her go. He wasn’t ready to relinquish their moment of privacy, public as it had been. The need to be with her felt urgent, overwhelming.
“People...everyone is looking at us,” she whispered.
“Let them look,” he said, peering down at her, his eyes somber.
“Do you like dancing?” she asked.
“I used to,” he replied. “But after the fire, it was not something I felt was important. Matter of fact, I am surprised I haven’t tripped over my face by now.”
“You’re giving yourself a disservice,” she said. “You are incredibly light on your feet.”
“Thank you—” he spun them again in a dizzying set of turns that she floated through. He spun her in several sweeping arches before bringing her back closely, too closely for society’s rule. “—for stroking my pride.”
“Is your pride as high as your stubbornness?” she asked. “I may work on that next.”
He turned them again, expertly crossing behind Silas and Celestine, his face pensive. “You never look at me with fear or disgust.”
“Why should I?” she asked. “For heaven’s sake, it’s scars. It is not a contagion, nor is it a blight on the soul; it is not a description of the man beneath. It is just ruined skin, ruined skin that is a testament of you doing something brave and right, and nothing else.”
The rest of the room seemed to fade from his awareness as they stared into each other’s gazes, never once breaking that connection.
“Do you not see how Emily looks at you?” She asked. “She only sees her father, not your face.”
“She does do that,” he replied.
His hand slid lower, onto the curve of her spine. As the music rose in crescendo, he twirled them, and she clung to him. When her eyes met his, he could see the laughter there, and she floated in his arms, with him cherishing every moment of it.
The last strains of the melody lingered in the air as he held her tight before reluctantly stepping away and inclining his head instead of bowing. Ariadne did curtsy before he wrapped his arm around her middle and whisked her away to the refreshment room
As they slipped into the crowded room and into the side room with dazzling chandeliers, at her request, he poured her a glass of water while he had punch.
“Why do you think Lord Stromwell asked Celestine to dance?” She asked.
“Silas could be asking for true interest, or he could be because he has a whim,” Cedric shrugged. “To be honest, that man is a conundrum at times.”
Ariadne’s brows knit in two, “What do you mean?”
“I mean that as much as I know Silas, I don’t truly know him the way he knows me,” Cedric admitted. “He is a very private man, yes, I have seen him court a few ladies before, I know his business, and he had told me about his family before.
“In passing, he had mentioned his late parents and distant cousins, and from what I gather, there is bad blood on both sides,” he said.
“I have no intention of forcing him to relive awful memories. He does keep a lot to himself, and I do not push,” he said.
“It’s an arrangement that works for us, and I see no reason to change it. ”
Privately, Ariadne held her doubts, but she had to trust Cedric to know his mind and who was in his company.
They barely stepped out of the room when another lord asked for Ariadne’s hand, and Cedric only leaned into her ear. “Dance as much as you would like, but the waltzes are for me.”
The lord she danced with was overly gracious, as were the three who followed him. Her dance card had filled with astonishing quickness, and she’d obligingly twirled around the floor with a number of partners.
Although she would have been content to dance the night away in her husband’s arms, her mother had shown her that a healthy couple did not live in each other’s pockets.
She didn’t mind as Cedric had danced with each of her sisters and at the end of the set, got refreshments and congregated at a nook away from the mingling crowd.
Celeste had stars in her eyes, “Lord Moreland is utterly delightful,” she sighed in bliss. “He is so handsome and smart. I cannot believe he has not married yet. A lord like him should easily be the bachelor of the Season.”
“He is handsome,” Marigold looked over her shoulder to where the lord in question was talking to a willowy lady in a breathtaking icy blue gown.
Looking over Celestine’s shoulder, Ariadne saw Cedric speaking to the redhead lord from the park.
“Isolde,” she turned her gaze to her sister, “Do you see any familiar faces?”
Frowning, Isolde slowly shook her head, “What do you mean?”
Spotting Cedric and the young man approaching, Ariadne smiled and nodded to the two, knowing Isolde would follow her lead. “Look for yourself.”
The second Isolde saw the two, her face went bright red. This closer, she saw that his features were the stuff of dreams: straight, strong, classically male. Ariadne expected that he was younger than she had first assumed, in his mid-twenties, most likely.
His eyes were now as green as she had expected but had a hint of hazel in them; his tailoring was undoubtedly superb, the azure double-breasted tailcoat, tan waistcoat, and buff trousers showcasing his long, sinewy form.
His tall black boots, banded by brown leather at the top, hugged his muscular calves.
“Ladies,” Cedric said, “May I introduce Lachlan Basset, Duke of Igthorne in east Scotland. Igthorn, my wife Ariadne, her sisters Marigold, Celestine, and Isolde Hargrave.”
The young man bowed, and when his warm highland burr rang out. “Pleased to meet you all.”
Maybe one more than the rest of us.
“Scotland,” Ariadne took the horns of the conversation. “You certainly are a far way from home. Are you simply visiting, or, as I am now familiar with the running of a dukedom, is it for business?”
“A bit o’ both, I suppose,” Lachlan replied casually. “My da encouraged me to see both sides of the aisle for a year. I just returned from Spain a month ago. T’is a beautiful country, from the seaside to the vineyards.”
“I’d imagine the culture and the people are beautiful as well,” Ariadne said innocently.
Cedric, however, gave her an eye at her meddling.
“Very so,” Lachlan said, his gaze flitting to Isolde. “Extraordinarily beautiful.”
An uneasy moment lingered between them before Cedric plowed on, “It so happens that he’s looking into creating a trade venture between our countries, and I extended my help to find partners willing to fund it.”
“Oh,” Ariadne blinked, “That’s wonderful. I’d love to see you again.”
Hunt cleared his throat and announced the new set, starting with another waltz; Ariadne already knew Cedric was about to whisk her to the floor, and while she wanted to meddle more and subtly nudge Duke Igthorne to ask Isolde to dance, she knew her sister would not appreciate it.
The Scotsman, however, did not seem to need as much of a nudge as he bowed to Isolde, “Lady Isolde, would you do me the honor of being my first dance of the night?”
Isolde’s mouth parted in shock, and for a moment Ariadne feared she would lose the chance, to her delighted surprise, Isolde said, yes.
As they went off the floor, Cedric caught Ariadne around the middle and murmured in her ear, “Your matchmaking was not exactly covert.”
She tilted her face to him. “It worked, did it not?”
As they made their way off to the floor, Silas was heading toward them, and the tight expression on his face was not comforting. Straightening, Cedric asked, “Is something wrong?”
“I’d say so,” Silas replied, while waving a card in his hand. “One of my runners just delivered this to me. They found him, Holloway, they found your erstwhile steward.”
“They…. found him?” Ariadne echoed, not like the implications of that word at all. “As in….”
“Dead,” Silas said. “They found him dead.”