Chapter 19
Nineteen
At the very moment Caroline suggested dancing, Lucy was wishing fervently for an end to the evening. It was all too much. The heat of the room, Jack’s presence, and the heat of him as he leant toward her, talking about love…
Left to her own devices, she would’ve mumbled an excuse and flown to her bed, where she could sort through all the impressions and feelings of a day that had already been a sore trial, from Jack’s uneasy congratulations of the morning, to the exhausting but rewarding visit to Somerset House—Mr Thornton had given her the studio’s address, and it had taken all her small reserve of courage to bring up the topic—and now this awkward evening and Jack’s strange mood.
But he sat upright and energetic in his chair, laughing at Caroline’s suggestion. “A capital idea. I said I’d engage you a dancing master, Lucy, and I never did. But we can teach you ourselves. George is an excellent dancer, and Miss Sedgewick more than proficient on the pianoforte.”
“And what are you contributing to the lesson?” Caroline asked.
“An observer’s eye!”
“I would rather play,” said Lucy. “And Caroline can dance.”
“Nonsense,” said Jack. “It’s you who needs to learn.” He grinned, a dazzling one, harsh and bright as gas lights. “Or is this marriage of yours just an attempt to join the old matrons at the side of the room and bypass your dancing years altogether?”
He got up, not waiting for an answer to his teasing, but she answered seriously, addressing his broad shoulders as he crossed to where Caroline stood. It was the best case for marriage anyone had yet made. “I would not mind it.”
“The world would.” His grin and his wink were directed at the others. “The world would mourn. Besides”—this last was aimed at George—“you’ll have an engagement ball, I’m sure.”
“Oh!” She shot a startled look at George, who pulled an uncertain face.
“Your mother will insist, George,” Jack told him. “You know it as well as I.”
“It’s true,” George conceded with an apologetic look at Lucy. “We’ll not be allowed to do the thing quietly.”
“I should think not,” said Jack emphatically as George came over and offered his arm to Lucy. She stood on uncertain knees, all her muscles reluctant. “One of London’s plumpest bachelors, picked at last. And by a notable heiress too. It’ll be the talk of the season.”
He walked to the door before any more protests could be made. “Your instrument is in the dining room, isn’t it?” he asked Caroline.
“Yes, and I’ve already asked William to move the table and chairs to the side. Though you ought to be warned, it’s only an old harpsichord and barely in tune.”
“You will make it sing,” Jack told her with a flashing smile before leading the way from the room.
They found William still in action, assisted by a red-faced, grumbling cook, his dignity very offended at being made to move furniture.
The two gentlemen stepped in to help, ushering the cook back to his rightful domain.
As she watched Jack remove his coat and set to work, Lucy couldn’t help but wonder how this modest, homely affair compared to his usual evenings.
But Jack had always been able to find amusement anywhere.
A sleeting wet afternoon at Orton House might have made him grumble for a moment, but it was only a matter of time before he’d invented some madcap game or scheme to keep them all laughing.
Frivolous he might be, even vain, but he had no real conceit.
“There, Bill,” he said, clapping a hand on the manservant’s shoulder once the centre of the room was cleared and the rug rolled away. “What a ballroom we’ve made, eh?”
William left, shaking his head but smiling, and Caroline sat down at the instrument, rummaging through sheaves of music. “A reel? I have a dozen or more.”
“We can hardly dance a cotillion with one couple,” said Jack. He smiled at Lucy. “Much to your relief, I’m sure. And we won’t even mention the word quadrille, lest you run out the door. A simple country dance.” He turned back to Caroline. “You’ll have more than a dozen of those.”
“The leading lady ought to call it,” said George, rebuttoning his coat as he came to stand beside Lucy. “You’re in charge now, my dear.”
Jack was putting on his coat again too, drawing the sleeve up his arm as he grinned at her.
He was absurdly handsome in evening dress, especially in this slight state of déshabillé, the sleeves of his shirt very white, making his hair look darker, that lock of it across his forehead itching to be tugged.
Perhaps that would wipe the smile off his face.
A starburst of heat shot through her. Embarrassment and something else too. Anger. It was anger as she remembered the last time she’d danced and exactly whose fault it had been. She lifted her chin, resolute.
“Then, if I am in charge, I request you and Lord Orton dance this first dance together while I am the one to sit and observe!”
George and Caroline burst out laughing.
“Served with your own sauce, Jack,” said George, still laughing as he took his position and bowed very elegantly at his unimpressed friend.
Jack was motionless, scowling, his fingers stilled upon his coat buttons.
Lucy, heart racing like a rabbit, flounced past him, feigning a smile, chin still held high.
His admonishing glare glanced off her cheek, and she took her seat, shaking slightly, as he finished fastening his coat and firmly tugged it straight.
“Very well.” He flashed her a sickeningly sweet smile over his shoulder, his eyes promising all manner of revenge, then turned back to George, stepping opposite him. “A pleasure, George, and scarcely the first time. Though I’m usually far more brimful of wine.”
“And insisting on dancing some sailor’s jig or other.”
“The hornpipe is a venerable dance,” he pronounced, miming a very pretty curtsy that had the two ladies giggling. “And much trickier than it looks.”
“That’ll explain why you ended up in that horse trough.”
“A deliberate move to restore my wits.”
“If only you’d done so half an hour earlier.”
“Enough, gentlemen!” cried Caroline. “Your audience is waiting!” And she crashed loudly into the first notes of a familiar tune.
Lucy watched, laughing, her nerves forgotten, as the two men danced—both elegantly and accurately, to be sure, but with exaggerated gestures of gallantry from George and coquettish flirting from Jack, who, at the end of the dance, feigned a swoon as George bent over his hand and collapsed dramatically onto the floor.
“The salts! Bring the salts!” cried George, laughing, as Jack sprang up again and took his bow.
Then Jack fixed a pointing finger on Lucy and all her nerves swept back into her stomach. “And now it’s your turn.”
She knew that look and knew her respite was up. Jack took her elbow and towed her to stand across from George, then took the seat she’d vacated. With a clap of his hands and a nod at Caroline he called, in French, for them to begin.
Lucy was stiff, and self-conscious, but she survived the dance, George murmuring patient instructions.
Ever since her disastrous debut at Almack’s, she’d spent more time than she cared to admit reading a dance book taken from Caroline’s shelves and mentally reviewing every dance she vaguely remembered from her childhood.
Also, despite her laughter, she’d paid close attention to the gentlemen’s moves.
“You’re doing very well,” George praised her halfway through. She blushed, but her confidence grew, and by the end she was smiling and even enjoying herself.
Caroline, George, and Jack broke into applause when she stopped, breathing hard. It was more exercise than she was used to.
Jack stood, smiling broadly, and came over with his own words of praise. “A little more practice and you’ll be more than ready for your engagement ball.”
Cold, sharp guilt cut through her happy glow. She turned away in confusion under the guise of fixing her hair. But almost at the same moment, Caroline played a few bars of a waltz.
“What?” she protested when everyone looked over to the instrument. “I mean to make her fashionable. I told you so from the start. And the French Slow Waltz is really quite simple compared to some others.”
“I hardly think my mother is going to permit any waltz at a ball of hers,” said George.
“All the more reason to dance it now! Who knows when you might get the opportunity again? If you remember, George, we had a conversation recently about providing opportunities.”
George paused, and Lucy’s heart gave a frightened spasm. She suddenly feared her new friends’ intervention in her affairs went far further than she’d guessed. No, she silently protested, don’t—
“You’re quite right,” George said. “Lucy ought to have every opportunity for enjoyment. But I’m afraid I’ve, ah, hurt my ankle. Twisted it. Yesterday at Jackson’s.”
“You never said,” said Jack.
“No…it was only a small thing. And I didn’t think it would trouble me at all. But all this dancing seems to have, um, aggravated it.”
“Oh no!” mourned Caroline. “But it seems such a pity to deny Lucy her waltz, all for a measly ankle.”
“Alas,” sighed George. “Unless… Jack? You could step in. You wouldn’t mind, would you?”
Jack lifted an indifferent shoulder—a gesture which made Lucy’s fears seem instantly absurd. He thought nothing of it. And if it was nothing to him, then it would be nothing to her.
To let him…let him clasp her…it meant nothing between friends.
Besides, the dance could hardly be as scandalous as she’d heard if all three of her friends were considering it.
Caroline’s manners were teasing and lively, but she’d never propose something truly improper.
And even if she had, Jack wouldn’t permit it, nor George, she was sure.
And how could she make a fuss anyway, without making herself look ridiculous—or, worse, revealing more than she wished? All three were looking at her. Jack smiled.
“You’re still the leading lady of this evening’s dance, Lucy. You get to decide.”
“V-very well.” She was hot all over. She wished she was wearing gloves. “I will try it. Though I am sure to get it wrong.”
“Who minds if you do?” said Jack, coming to stand very close. “You’re among friends here. No one will laugh. And I promise that, this time, I’ll not let you fall.”
He smiled as he said it, but she blushed at the memory of their dreadful first dance at Almack’s. Then she blushed further as Jack took her hand and placed it on his shoulder.
Oh no. It was horrendous. His shoulder was so high and firm and square. And her wrist brushed the solid plane of his chest. Under the rich fabric of his coat, he was as hot and alive and full of muscle as a hunting horse. A tremor went through her that she was sure he could feel.
They were so close. He smelt of soap and starch and fresh linen.
And brandy and wine and…heat. Why was he so hot?
But she was hotter, red everywhere, she was sure, blotchy and damp and…
awful, it was just awful as he took hold of her other hand…
and then his arm came lightly around her waist, his palm on the small of her back.
The muscles there clenched, and her breath caught in her throat.
“Don’t look so terrified.” Jack was smiling. Still smiling. As indifferent as the careless shoulder he’d raised.
He squeezed her hand, and his splayed fingers also pressed briefly against her back. “Holding you like this, you cannot fall. You’re in safe hands.”
Safe? She could have laughed, though it would have been a manic one. She’d never been more terrified. Every inch of Jack was a threat to her sanity.
Mimicking Jack’s earlier actions, George, from his seat at the side, clapped his hands and nodded at Caroline. “Begin!”
The music started. Lilting, beautiful music, and she tried to listen to that.
She would float outside her body and then she would feel none of this.
It wouldn’t be happening. It wouldn’t be a memory to haunt her, sweaty and restless in tangled sheets, the eye of night upon her, whispering its lurid things.
Jack’s voice came over the music, low and sure, instructing her steps. His voice was deeper than George’s. A faint rumble she could almost feel across the inch that separated their chests.
An inch? It should be more than that. She pulled back, but Jack’s hand was insistent on her back, holding her in place, and the tension that strung her bones suddenly shuddered down. Down to her belly.
“Jack…” But she didn’t say it, just pleaded it in her mind. “Let me go, please, you don’t understand…”
He only smiled. “You’re not meant to look at me, you know,” he murmured. And she realised she had been—staring up at the edge of his jaw. “You keep your head to the right, like so.”
He turned his face as they spun together in a slow circle, and her own gaze fled past his shoulder, getting confused glimpses of the room, of George watching, his expression speculative, of Caroline, her fair head bent over the keys, though her eyes lifted, a gleam in them.
Lucy blushed deeper, looked up, and found Jack’s eyes on her.
“Now you are looking at me!”
“I am,” he said, as though faintly surprised.
As though the words came from far away, his thoughts elsewhere.
There was something in the grey of his eyes, a haze as warm as ruby wine, and just as deep and delicious and unwise…
His gaze dipped to her mouth, and everything inside her burned and fluttered: her heart, her very breath, her insides doing their own dance, all confusion.
And then…then…even more fleetingly, his gaze dipped lower still, to where her breath was caught and her heart pounded, the hot fluttering inside her giving a mighty thump.
He stepped abruptly back. It was not part of the dance. Lucy, hot all over, no idea where to look, came to a stop too.
Lifting his hand to Caroline, Jack indicated he wished the music to stop. The room fell suddenly silent. Her heartbeat was very loud.
“Well.” Jack swallowed, brisk. “She’s a natural, George. You ought to work on your mother. Get this dance agreed for your engagement ball.”
And then, muttering something about needing to meet a friend, he bid them all a hasty goodnight.