Chapter Thirteen #2
Elliot fought against the fierce urge to hang his head like a scolded puppy. “Kate has got the wardrobe, now, to allow for it,” he muttered.
“Oh?” Richard speared Elliot with such a piercing gaze that Elliot found himself squirming beneath it as if it had truly pinned him to his seat. “And?”
“Well,” Elliot hedged, tugging at his cravat in futile effort to relieve his discomfort. “Kate’s mother is wearying of so many late nights, you know, and I’ve kept them both out until well past midnight this past week. And I was thinking—hoping, really—that you and Rebecca might deign to—”
Richard interrupted with a derisive snort. “You’ll have the devil of a time convincing Rebecca to play chaperone,” he said over his glass of brandy. “She’s still rather put out with you, you know.”
Stifling a groan, Elliot let his head fall against the back of his chair. “It couldn’t be helped.”
Richard lowered his voice to a gritty murmur to avoid being overheard by any of the other members of their club currently present and said, “Kate was gone for nearly half an hour. Rebecca was beside herself, and utterly convinced she’d be responsible for the ruin of Kate’s reputation!”
“Yes, well, I did tell her where Kate was eventually,” Elliot said, “and I knew Rebecca to be clever enough to concoct some sort of excuse in the event that anyone had made note of Kate’s disappearance.”
“That’s hardly the damned point, Elliot,” Richard groused. “Of course Kate ought not to have gone off on her own—”
“Things are different in the countryside,” Elliot interjected sulkily. “She knows better now.”
Richard made a sound of annoyance beneath his breath and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers in consternation. “Even if she did not know better,” he said, “you certainly did.”
That was…a fair accusation. And a true one, besides. “I suppose I do owe Rebecca an apology,” Elliot conceded, ducking his head. “At first, I just wanted to find some safe place to put her until I could send Rebecca for her. And then…” Elliot hesitated, abashed.
“And then?” Richard prompted, his brows drawing in reproach.
Elliot’s shoulders slumped. He braced his arms upon the table and clasped his hands before him. “Then we were in the maze,” he said, with a helpless shrug. “Alone. In the moonlight.”
Richard scoffed, affecting a patently sardonic inflection, “Oh, well, then. So long as there was moonlight.”
Elliot scrubbed at his face with his hands.
“Despite my—and her—best efforts, Kate hadn’t been able to manage a waltz all week,” he said.
“I knew it had been a frustrating experience for her.” An embarrassing one, also, since she was known to be a formidable and capable woman accustomed to doing everything she attempted competently and well.
The fact that she had found herself defeated by a simple dance had been galling, infuriating—and humiliating.
“We’re never alone here,” he said. “Every dance lesson was supervised by her mother, or else Mrs. Norris. And I so badly wanted to waltz with her. So I thought…well, what could be the harm in it, when I knew Rebecca to be perfectly capable of diverting suspicion—”
“Which she might have been happy to do, had you bothered to inform her that such a thing would be expected of her,” Richard said dryly.
“And you do owe her a proper apology for the stress of it, for she had truly convinced herself that Kate would be ruined, and she would be to blame for not having kept a closer watch upon her.” His severe expression softened minutely as Elliot sank further down in his seat as if the weight of the world had collapsed upon his shoulders. “That said—how was it?”
“Transcendent.” Elliot turned his palm up upon the table and flexed his fingers, and for just a moment he could almost feel Kate’s hand in his again.
The memory of it had been seared into his skin, carried now in blood and bone.
“She stood on my feet. We waltzed. She laughed, and it didn’t sound forced. ”
“I beg your pardon,” Richard said, with a slow, bemused blink. “Did you say she stood on your feet?”
“So she wouldn’t miss the steps,” Elliot clarified.
“It was lovely. She took me seriously.” Because he hadn’t played the fool only to make her laugh?
He couldn’t be certain. But something between them had…
shifted. A little to the left, perhaps; a difference of a few crucial inches.
Like the veil of friendship through which she had always seen him had begun to lift.
As if, for a few precious moments, she had seen beyond the boy whom she had grown up alongside to the man he had become.
Even if it had held only for the length of a waltz, it was enough to pin his hopes on.
“Well,” Richard said, blowing out a breath. “That’s something, I suppose.”
It was more than something. For that moment, it had been everything.
“And she danced,” Richard added. “Not every dance, to be sure, but enough of them. A success of a first ball, I’d say.”
“Yes.” Which was as he’d hoped. Kate hadn’t found herself frozen out of a society which could be all too selective over whom they allowed to enter their exalted ranks.
Richard and Rebecca’s patronage had likely helped there.
And she would waltz again, now that she had found the confidence to do it.
“I think—I hope—she might have been just the tiniest bit jealous,” Elliot ventured.
“Oh?” Richard’s brows lifted in interest. “Of who?”
“Miss Applegate.” Elliot gave a hesitant shrug.
“She made an oblique reference. Very small, nothing overt. Said I looked to have been enjoying myself. But she sounded…” Perturbed.
Nearly petulant. “And consider, if you will, that she recommended Miss Applegate to me,” he explained.
“When I asked her with whom I ought to dance.”
“Elliot,” Richard chided. “Surely you can choose your own dance partners?”
“Yes, but I have got her keeping notes,” Elliot said, “and it seemed a prudent way to discover what she thinks, and of whom. But I would swear—I would swear she cared. At least a little.” Perhaps more even than she had ever expected. More than he had dared to hope.
“Of course she cares. She thinks she is choosing your wife!” Richard said in an exasperated mutter as he rubbed his brow. “You have got such a damned flair for the dramatic. Of all the harebrained, complicated, convoluted schemes you might have devised—”
“I know,” Elliot said, and raked his hands through his hair in a restless motion.
“I know. I have earned every reproach you could offer.” And every reproach Kate could offer, which might well present a problem in the future.
But that was a problem for the future, and not one he could afford to waste time fretting over now.
Richard heaved a great, longsuffering sigh, rolling his eyes heavenward as if engaged in a futile prayer for patience. “Dinner,” he said succinctly.
Elliot straightened. “I beg your pardon?”
“Dinner. Tomorrow evening. Not the theatre—dinner. A quiet affair at our townhouse. Rebecca’s of the opinion that Kate could use a bit of a respite from the social whirl. The both of you have been dragging her all about town just lately, and it is wearing upon her.”
“But she wants to attend the theatre,” Elliot said, his face falling in disappointment. “I promised her we would.”
“Feh. Your brother’s box will be available so long as he continues to pay for it, and a play is still a social event—there will be interludes and visits and ladies vying for your attention.
Give her an evening first to catch her breath.
You might not have noticed,” Richard said, “but when you were dancing, Kate was often scribbling away in that notebook of hers.”
Yes. For the purpose of finding him a suitable wife. “Did she look—”
“Not well pleased,” Richard admitted drolly.
“But you have got to give her the time, Elliot, to sort through her own feelings on the matter. How is it to your benefit if you keep her so busy with social engagements that it is all she can manage to accomplish the task you set before her? What if she should find you a wife before she has had the time to examine her own feelings?”
Blast it all, Richard was right. “I suppose you’re right,” Elliot admitted.
“Of course I am,” Richard agreed. “And you do owe Rebecca a proper apology. You may give it to her tomorrow evening when you arrive, or it is doubtful that she will allow you into the house.”
Elliot managed a crooked grin. “Am I to assume that I am forbidden from taking Kate from Rebecca’s sight for even one moment in the future, when and if she agrees to act as chaperone again?”
“That,” Richard began dryly, “would be hypocritical in the extreme, considering you have in the past assisted in facilitating more than a few of our private moments. But for God’s sake, Elliot, you’ll damn well do us the courtesy of informing us first.”