Chapter 4 #2
“I dislike parts of it,” she confirmed.
“Only parts?”
“I am trying to be charitable.” She was unable to resist smiling.
“An admirable effort.”
Before she could say anything to that, he bowed before her. “I do beg your pardon, Miss, but I’m afraid I see a gentleman whom I do not wish, under any circumstances, to greet, so I must excuse myself.”
For a moment, Aurelia thought he had to be jesting, but then, he turned and disappeared into the crown, leaving her with a folded fan, clutched tightly between her fingers.
She found herself utterly unsettled. He was not merely handsome, which would have been easier to dismiss.
He was the more inconvenient thing: interesting.
That was when the music ended. Clara and Captain Harrow came toward her almost immediately. Her cousin appeared flushed with dancing and delight, and her whole face was shining.
“Aurelia!” she cried before she had quite reached her. “Oh, it was heavenly. Entirely heavenly. I am certain there has never been such a dance.”
Captain Harrow, laughing, bowed over Aurelia’s hand. “I fear Miss Blackmore does me too much credit.”
“No,” said Clara warmly. “I do not. You were exactly as agreeable as I had hoped.”
“That is the most dangerous compliment a man can receive. It suggests expectation fulfilled.”
“It was fulfilled,” Clara agreed with cheerful certainty.
Aurelia could not help laughing. “You have known the gentleman a quarter of an hour. Pray do not hand him his entire consequence so quickly.”
Clara turned to her, scandalized by such coldness. “Aurelia, you have no romance in your soul.”
“On the contrary. I have enough to know better.”
Captain Harrow grinned and bowed before them both. “It was a pleasure, Miss Blackmore. I hope to have the pleasure of another dance this evening.”
“Oh, certainly,” Clara beamed, upon which the Captain smiled, and took his leave from them.
“You must come with me this instant, Aurelia,” Clara gushed. “I have a thousand things to tell you, and if I do not tell them now I shall burst before supper.”
Aurelia allowed herself to be drawn away. Once they had gone far enough into the crowd to speak privately, Clara clasped both Aurelia’s hands.
“I am in love,” she confessed in a tone of breathless conviction.
Aurelia stared at her. “You cannot be serious.”
“I have found my husband.”
Aurelia raised a concerned eyebrow. “You have found your first partner.”
“It is the same thing,” Clara waved a dismissive hand.
“It is very much not the same thing.”
Clara only smiled more radiantly. “You did not hear him, or see him, or dance with him.”
“Mercifully, no,” Aurelia rolled her eyes.
“Oh, Aurelia, he is exactly what I imagined,” Clara beamed, pressing her hand to her chest.
“After one set?” Aurelia spoke up again, incredulous at what had just happened.
“Love at first sight may happen in less than one set.”
Aurelia laughed outright. “My dear Clara, you shouldn’t fall in love with the first man in uniform who smiles at you.”
“But he did more than smile.”
“Oh, then all is lost,” Aurelia spoke, and she was still smiling.
Clara gave her an impatient little shake. “You laugh now, but you shall see. He is kind and funny, and not vain at all. And he listens when I speak, which is more than can be said for half the world.”
“All excellent qualities,” Aurelia concurred. “And still insufficient on such short acquaintance to justify matrimony.”
“There is plenty of time for the rest.”
“Ye, precisely. Plenty of time. Which is why you need not decide tonight whether you two are destined for the altar.”
Clara sighed with the forbearance of the truly romantic. “You are hopeless.”
“And you are absurd.”
“I am happy.”
At that, Aurelia softened. “Yes, I can see that.”
Clara’s smile turned teasing at once. “And you looked happy, too.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“With that gentleman.”
Aurelia felt herself grow still. “I did not look anything of the kind.”
“You did. At least, you looked interested. Who was he?”
Aurelia turned before she could answer and looked across the ballroom.
The man in question was now standing beside Captain Harrow in conversation, his dark coat setting him apart from the brighter crowd around him.
He was not dark in coloring, perhaps, yet there was something darkly compelling in the gravity that seemed always to hover beneath his ease.
Even from this distance, he seemed less dazzled by the room than quietly separate from it.
And then, with a sudden and ridiculous shock, she realized the truth.
“To tell you the truth, I do not know,” she admitted.
Clara blinked. “You do not know what?”
“His name.”
Clara stared at her for a beat and then laughed so hard that two ladies nearby turned to look.
“You stood there talking all that time and never learned his name?”
Aurelia, against her will, felt the corners of her mouth betray her. “It would seem not.”
“Then, my dear Aurelia,” said Clara, slipping her arm through hers and beaming up at her, “you are in far greater danger than I am.”