Chapter Four #2
A collective hush seemed to fall over her private world as the man began to move.
He advanced with a predatory grace, a slow, deliberate stalking across the polished floor that suggested a hunter closing on its unsuspecting prey.
His eyes never left hers, an unwavering, relentless lock that transcended the noise and movement of the party.
With every step he took toward her, a corresponding wave of rapid, shallow breaths racked Petra’s chest while the rest of her stood still.
Their gazes remained fixed, a silent, unbroken tension that transcended the bustle of the ballroom.
Once he neared, Petra noted that he was playing his part remarkably well.
So well, in fact, that she was having a physical reaction she had never had before, as her body froze as if she had been turned into a statue by the gods.
Lord John has never looked at me in that way, she thought, and as she recalled her intended, the spell broke.
She turned away from Lucifer approaching, scouring the ballroom for the man who ought to make her pulse race.
Yet before she was able to search beyond her immediate vicinity, Lord Wolfridge reached her with his long strides.
“My lord.” She curtsied, unable to meet his eye.
“My lady.” Lord Wolfridge bowed. “May I inquire after your dance card this evening?”
“I have not yet had a chance to fill it, my lord,” Petra offered the card to him, frowning at the small shock she received as his fingers brushed hers. From the way he paused, she sensed Lord Wolfridge felt the same spark as he glanced blankly into space for a moment.
Petra swallowed, stilling her features as she had learned to do over the years.
When Lord Wolfridge handed the card back to her, there was no repeated shock, thankfully.
It must have been one of those small mysteries of life one will never know the answer to, Petra thought.
It surely did not mean anything of significance.
She glanced down at the card. Lord Wolfridge remained where he was, clearly waiting for her reaction.
“Two dances, my lord?”
Everyone knew what two dances meant. A lady did not dance with a gentleman more than once without some deeper meaning.
“Bold strokes, my lady. Remember Lady Edith?”
Petra bit the inside of her cheek to keep the vexation from showing on her face.
And yet she could sense from his lingering that something inside of Lord Wolfridge enjoyed trying to ruffle her feathers.
Much like the detectives in the novels she secretly read, he would throw a variable at her to see how she would react.
As if he were trying to figure her out. And yet she still did not know to what end.
“Very well, my lord.”
Before he could get in another retort, Lord Voxwell, a young baron with whom Petra had always been friendly, appeared before her to inquire after her first dance.
Lord Wolfridge gave the man a dark look but bowed and took his leave as Petra agreed to the first dance with the young lord.
Voxwell was remarkably kind and agreeable, but both of them knew that Petra’s father would never allow a union between them as Voxwell had little political influence or industrial power, so their friendship stayed as light and agreeable as the man himself.
After their dance ended, Petra offered a curtsy to the young baron. Raising her head after the pleasantry, she caught a dark figure stalking toward her and her body tensed up in a potent mix of dread and anticipation.
Why was this happening now?
Distracting herself from her thoughts, she remembered she ought to check on Jillian, as it was her first ball.
Thankfully, Petra noticed Lord Voxwell approach her cousin to bow and Petra sighed in relief.
She usually trusted her instincts, as was the case with Lord Voxwell, whom she believed would not harm her or her cousin.
But her instincts were all topsy-turvy with the darkly handsome man rapidly approaching her.
So often she could determine a person’s intent from mere study, a lesson learned at her father’s knee.
This gentleman before her said he wanted to help her secure Lord John’s hand.
And yet he gazed at her as though he wished to burn down the very floor they stood upon for a taste of her.
Petra could make neither hide nor hair of his intentions, nor her strange reaction to his intensity, one which froze her.
She had once read of a city discovered over a century before, one that had been nearly frozen in time and place by the eruption of a nearby volcano.
As Lord Wolfridge’s smooth steps oozed towards her like lava, Petra feared she might never move again.
And yet, once he reached her and bowed, the gallopade quadrille moved so rapidly there was little time or space to feel like a relic or a statue.
“You dance well, my lord,” Petra practically gasped as she caught her breath. Indeed the man had a certain quality of movement she had not expected, like a large jungle cat, his dancing had power and economy writ into every step.
“I suppose I should say that you do as well, my Lady P.” Lord Wolfridge popped the letter P on his tongue in such a way that sent an unaccountable shiver down Petra’s spine. Blinking, she continued on as if unbothered.
“You suppose?”
“Come, come, we are far beyond such trivial compliments as ‘You dance well, my lord’ are we not?” he said, using a clear falsetto imitation of her voice.
The blasted man. At that moment, Petra did something she had never done in all her years in Polite Society. She stepped on a man’s foot.
As Lord Wolfridge grunted, she responded demurely. “I suppose you cannot return such a compliment, my lord.”
And yet, despite his initial grunt of discomfort, a fire danced in the viscount’s eyes at her response.
Why should her striking back delight him?
Any small mutiny she had engaged in her one and twenty years under her father’s roof had only ever been met with threats and annoyance.
Who was this man, whose eyes gleamed as she insulted him or stomped on his foot?
Her lack of clarity around him was worse than her reaction to him and suddenly, she longed for the end of the dance.
She needed to see Lord John now. He was steady.
Tethered. Nothing like this storm in a bottle of a man before her, a man whose every motive was obscured by a shroud of unpredictability.
When she withdrew her hands once the dancing slowed to a halt, the knowing look in Lord Wolfridge’s eyes faded. “My lady?”
Petra gave him a tight smile as the dance ended. “My lord, please forgive me the second dance with you.”
“Of course,” Lord Wolfridge’s voice lost the knowing quality that so vexed Petra, replaced by an almost sympathetic tone as he gave her gloved hand an extra pulse before he let her go.
Petra decided she would retreat to the retiring room to have a moment to herself. And yet her moment of peace was not to be.
“How do you think she snagged an invitation to such an event as this?”
“She’s Kemberley’s niece,” another lower voice exclaimed. “He has the power to snap his fingers and things are how he wishes.”
“He isn’t Midas,” the other voice scoffed. “He cannot make silk from a sow’s ear. Her father was dissolute, her brother is a murderer, and her mother was…Greek. Besides, I believe she married some little foreign fellow, as if that would make us forget—”
“Excuse me,” Petra did not wait to make her presence known.
While she was not fond of heavy set-downs, she could not let any censure of her cousin stand.
“But Midas did not make silk, he made gold from his touch. And any half-Greek, such as myself or my cousin, Mrs. Eden, could tell you thus. In fact, I believe Mrs. Eden could recite all of Lemprière better than an Oxford don, can you imagine that feat?”
Petra now recognized the two young gossips of the ton gawking at her like chickens caught outside the coop.
Petra smiled at them serenely. It appeared quite certain that the pair possessed not the slightest inkling of the distinction between their Lemprière and their Tennyson, a conclusion corroborated by the vacant, almost glassy expressions within their pale blue eyes that peeped from amidst an over-abundance of meticulously arranged ringlets.
She sighed as the two women squawked and scurried on, unable to insult Petra to her face and also unwilling to suffer the social ill will if they did.
While fans were mostly ornamental these days, Petra withdrew hers and fanned herself for a moment before tapping her own chin.
That dance with Lord Wolfridge had unsettled her in a way she found difficult to analyze within herself.
While Petra adored the new stories that were coming out, those of mystery, she only truly appreciated a certain kind of mystery.
On one hand, she loved the unknown, uncovering the motives for why a person might steal or, worse, commit a murder.
On the other hand, she did not care for stories with elements of chaos, where the incident was unplanned, just an accident or a spur of the moment decision.
Lord Wolfridge, despite his tall, lanky handsomeness and his appearance of a gentleman, had leapt into her life like a pure agent of chaos sent to throw her thinking off of its axis.
Taking a deep breath, Petra purposefully opened and closed her fan, intending to put the thing away.