Chapter Eleven #2
Beneath her gloves, Kate’s palms felt hot and damp. Her heart pounded out a fractious rhythm behind her ribs, fluttering like a caged bird.
Richard coughed into the cup of his palm, snaring Kate’s attention. “I promise you,” he said, sotto voce, in a manner which Kate thought he meant to be reassuring, “Elliot, at least, will be gracious enough to ask you to dance…bruised toes notwithstanding.”
∞∞∞
“I know, I know,” Elliot said, affecting an abashed expression as he arrived at the edge of the ballroom where Kate was firmly ensconced between Rebecca and Richard, “I am abominably late. In my defense, I spent entirely too long engaged in heated argument with my valet.”
He had wanted to match Kate, whom he had learned from Rebecca would be wearing a yellow gown.
But his valet had insisted upon a blue coat instead of the black coat which Elliot generally preferred, and it was only after Elliot had capitulated and put on the blue coat that he had had to admit that his valet had been correct in his assessment after all.
As he found a place there amongst their little group, he sidled closer to Kate, bending to ask, “What in the world have you got stuffed into your reticule? It looks like it’s about to burst.”
“My notebook,” Kate said dryly. “And a pencil. Just in the event that any notes were requested of me. I assume you intend to dance?”
She hadn’t sounded particularly thrilled about the prospect, and there was some satisfaction to be found in that.
“One does generally dance at a ball,” he said.
“And it is incumbent upon a gentleman to ask, you know. Some gentlemen bestow their attention so begrudgingly that they will blithely let ladies languish at the edges of a ballroom all evening in want of a partner.”
Kate canted her head, and a loose curl drifted across the bared skin of her shoulder.
Somehow, she restrained herself from batting at it or otherwise puffing it away.
She still looked just a bit uncomfortable in the ball gown, but that was to be expected—it was the first time she’d worn one quite like this.
But Rebecca had done right by her, and she looked…
just lovely. Like a fresh spring flower come into full bloom, her dark hair in its perfect silky ringlets bright and shiny against the eye-catching yellow of her gown.
“But you’re not one of them,” she said. “Those gentlemen who thumb their noses at ladies in want of partners?”
“No,” he said. “Not usually, at least. I enjoy dancing.”
A soft huff beneath her breath, and her lips pursed in sullen reflection—no doubt recalling her recent frustration with waltzing. “That’s because you’re good at it.”
“I’ve had years of practice,” he said, as he plucked her empty champagne glass from her hand and passed it off to a servant, who provided him with a full one of his own.
“I’ll admit I’ve danced less than usual just lately.
Devon’s pronouncement put me in a bit of a predicament, and I didn’t want to give any particular lady the wrong impression.
” He let that settle between them for just a moment, and noted the subtle relaxing of her shoulders before he added, “So you will have to pick my partners this evening.”
Kate ruffled up like a wet hen. “What?” she inquired sharply. “Why?”
“You’ve been keeping the notes,” he said, with an inclination of his head to indicate the overstuffed reticule hanging from her wrist. “Come, be honest—how many callers have you entertained these last few days?”
Her jaw tautened, and a muscle flexed in her cheek.
Absently, one gloved hand curled around the dance card affixed to her wrist and began to worry it between her fingers.
“Six,” she admitted, and though he thought she had tried to keep her voice modulated to an even, bland monotone, the tightness of her jaw had imparted a rather irritated inflection.
“So many?” Elliot let out a low whistle. “Any who might happen to be present this evening?”
Another flex of her jaw. Kate shifted her shoulders, notching her chin higher as she scanned the ballroom. “A few,” she said. “Miss Applegate, Lady Harriet Whitby, and Miss Watson.”
Perfect. “It looks as though Lady Harriet is not engaged at present,” he said. “I’ll just—”
“Not Lady Harriet,” Kate said stiffly, the stubborn jut of her chin suggesting a deepening annoyance.
Elliot swiped a hand across his jaw in an effort to erase the smile that wanted to settle there.
“Oh?” he forced himself to say, injecting a mild, curious inflection into his voice, though in truth Kate’s swift and severe reaction had not surprised him.
Lady Harriet was the only child of a marquess, and her parents had spoiled her unmercifully.
She could, when she judged it necessary, comport herself as an amiable and pleasant woman.
But only to those whom she considered her social equals.
To those she had judged to be of inferior standing, she was often rude, cutting, and dismissive; a fact which had caused her parents—whom Elliot had always found to be pleasant people all around—no small amount of public and private embarrassment.
And Kate was by no means her social equal.
Probably, he thought, Lady Harriet had made Kate excruciatingly aware of that fact.
Kate shifted uncomfortably, made a strange little sound in her throat as she struggled for words. “She was—I found her rather—”
“You need not explain further,” Elliot said. “I trust your judgment implicitly.”
“I’m not certain you should,” Kate muttered, her gaze sliding away from his. A hint of a flush climbed into her cheeks. “Perhaps I have let a petty grievance color my judgment.”
“You’ve never steered me wrong before,” Elliot said. “If you say Lady Harriet is right out, then she is right out, and there’s nothing else for it.”
Kate relaxed once more, her nervous fingers releasing the dance card she’d been rubbing between her fingers, metaphorical feathers smoothing again back into place.
“Who, then, amongst those present this evening, would you find suitable?” Elliot asked.
That color in her cheeks burned hotter still, and her hand clutched at her reticule as if she could sense the words written upon the pages of her notebook within through her fingertips alone.
She didn’t want to choose. It was there in the hollows of her cheeks, in the sharp line of her jaw. Every bit of her resisted the very thought of it—and he didn’t think it was because every lady she’d entertained these last few days had proved herself utterly incompatible.
“Miss Applegate is lovely,” Kate admitted begrudgingly, looking for all the world as if she had had to force the words from her throat. “She would suit you.”
Elliot swallowed down a laugh. If Kate’s expression had not already been sour enough, then the words certainly had. So Kate had found no eliminating flaw in Miss Applegate’s character or manner. Perhaps she had even found much to admire. But she did not like it.
“Miss Applegate it is to be, then,” Elliot said cheerfully, nudging her shoulder. “I’ll ask her as soon as this set concludes. What would I do without you, Kate?”
“Probably,” Kate muttered sulkily as she clasped her hands before her, “you would end up married to Lady Harriet.”
Elliot made a valiant effort to swallow back the laugh that rolled up his throat, but it emerged anyway, in an inelegant snort that seized Kate’s attention once again—for only a moment or two, until Rebecca snatched it away once again with a hand placed upon her shoulder.
“Kate,” she said, with a delicate gesture of her free hand to a gentleman at her side—a man of perhaps thirty years, impeccably dressed and groomed. “May I present Lord Shaw? He has come to request a dance of you.”
“A dance?” Kate repeated, her face falling into lines of horror as she stiffened up like a corpse. “Of me? But—”
“I suggested a reel,” Rebecca interjected lightly, and Kate’s shoulders sank with visible relief. “They are your favorite, are they not?”
“Oh,” Kate said, her breath shuddering out of her lungs. “Yes. Yes, thank you, a reel would be delightful.” Slowly she extended her hand, and with it the dance card tied about her wrist.
As Lord Shaw penciled his name in upon Kate’s dance card for the next reel, Elliot flexed his hands at his sides and reminded himself silently that it was simply not done to plow one’s fist into another’s face in a crowded ballroom.
That Kate deserved to dance, to experience for herself the Season she ought always to have had.
That he had wanted her to enjoy her time in London; to find it not quite so intimidating as she might have expected.
To find her own place here amongst the people in his social circle.
Rebecca had done well to suggest a reel—at which Kate excelled—rather than a waltz, which she had surely grown to dread over these last few days.
So Elliot held his tongue, knowing that if he opened his mouth to speak, any words that would emerge would be rendered in the selfsame sulky, faintly resentful tone in which Kate had earlier rendered her opinions to him.
The point of an elbow jabbed him in the ribs. “Careful,” Richard warned beneath his breath. “You’re scowling.”
Was he? Elliot scraped one hand over his jaw, felt the strained tightness that lingered even after Lord Shaw had taken his leave of them. Christ. He was.
Subtlety was proving itself more difficult than he had expected.