Chapter 19
Nathaniel couldn’t explain the anger in the pit of his stomach.
To tell the truth, it wasn’t even anger.
Not exactly. It was a profound dissatisfaction, a feeling that something had been said that he simply couldn’t allow to go unchallenged.
He had felt like this before in his life, at times when people had been particularly foolish. It was the itch to correct something.
But correct what? Nothing she’d said was incorrect.
The two of them weren’t courting, and they wouldn’t be in the future.
And she was right, too, that there would be talk if they did.
It was exasperating that she hadn’t been willing to laugh with him about it, that she had found the idea so un-funny.
But that wasn’t the same as being wrong.
She was entitled to feel however she wanted about things being humorous.
He didn’t feel like sitting down, so he paced back and forth instead, full of nervous energy. “So,” he said. “You’re going to give me lessons in the best ways to charm a lady.”
“Well, I’m going to try,” she said. There was doubt in her voice that he hadn’t heard there before. “It might be more difficult than we’re anticipating.”
“You don’t think I’m up to learning this?”
“I imagine you’re very intelligent,” she told him. “But some things can’t be learned from books.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not trying to learn from a book,” he said, keeping his voice cool. “I have you to teach me. Isn’t that what we agreed on?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“What’s the matter?” He was starting to feel a little impatient with her.
First all the comments about how the two of them couldn’t possibly be courting one another, and now this…
“Don’t you believe you’re up to the challenge?
Or maybe you’ve been a wallflower so long that you simply don’t understand what’s involved in flirtation? ”
Her chin lifted. “I can manage just fine, thank you very much. It’s you I have doubts about.”
“Well, don’t worry about me,” he told her. “I’ll manage just fine. Now, go on, show me what you think I need to be doing.”
She nodded. “Very well,” she agreed, rising from her seat. “For this to work…I think it’s best that you pretend I’m Lady Isabelle.”
“Lady Isabelle?”
“She was the one who caught your eye, wasn’t she?”
He hadn’t even spared a thought for Lady Isabelle since the dinner party. “I think she caught your eye more than she did mine,” he said. “You were the one who pointed her out to me.”
“But you mean to pursue her, don’t you?” Dorothy pressed him. “I pointed her out, yes, but you found her fitting enough.”
“I don’t even know her.”
Dorothy sighed. “Nathaniel. The thing you do next is get to know her.”
“All right, but how?”
“Well, she’ll probably be at the Earl of Sanford’s ball next weekend,” Dorothy said. “So, you’ll start there. You’ll dance with her. Twice.”
“Twice? That’s very specific.”
“Yes it is,” she agreed. “What you have to understand is that everything means something Nathaniel. When you dance with a lady, you’re telling her that you’re interested in her.
Doing so twice indicates a serious interest. And Lady Isabelle will know that.
Her family will have told her all her life that if a gentleman dances with her two times, it means something. It’s a way of declaring yourself.”
“What if she isn’t so interested in me, though?” Nathaniel asked. “Will she refuse the dance?”
“You really haven’t done this before.”
“I’ve never attended a ball at which I had an agenda,” he clarified.
Dorothy nodded. “She’s unlikely to refuse you. To do so would be the height of rudeness, and it would reflect very badly on her. On both of you. If she’s not interested, you’ll be able to tell in other ways. More subtle ones.
“Like what?” Nathaniel asked. “I don’t care about how it reflects on us, I’d rather just have clarity. I wish she would just give me a straight answer. That way I would know for certain.”
“Well, that isn’t going to happen,” Dorothy said. “You’ll have to read her body language. Here, ask me to dance.”
One of the chamber maids glanced at them, then quickly looked away.
Dorothy ignored her. These were members of her staff, so they would be loyal to her.
They wouldn’t report what had happened here to her sisters.
At least, Nathaniel hoped they wouldn’t.
He wondered what would happen if Lady Honora and Lady Abigail found out the conversation had taken this turn.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” he asked.
“If you can’t dance with me, how are you going to dance with Lady Isabelle?”
“I can dance with you. That wasn’t what I asked you.” Annoyed, he took her by the hand and pulled her into a hold. “There’s no music.”
“Pretend.”
“What dance are we doing? What steps?”
“Oh my goodness, Nathaniel, it doesn’t matter. We don’t really need to dance. I’m trying to show you something. Now, watch. If I’m dancing with a gentleman and I have no interest in him, it might look something like this.”
She went a bit slack in his arms, as if the energy had gone out of her. She focused her gaze at the wall over his shoulder. After a moment, she glanced around as though looking at the other couples dancing at a ball.
Then she returned her gaze to him. “Did you see how I changed?”
Of course he had. He wasn’t a fool. “You weren’t paying attention to me,” he said grudgingly, not thrilled at having to admit he was learning from her even though that was what he’d wanted all along. It wasn’t easy to admit that anyone knew something he didn’t.
“That’s right.” She didn’t lord it over him. “I wouldn’t give you my attention if I didn’t find you interesting.”
“Not even to be polite?”
“You might find that a lady gave you simple answers to your questions if she had no interest but was trying to be courteous,” Dorothy said.
“I might say yes or no if you asked me something, but then not elaborate or ask you a question in return. Now, let’s try it the other way.
This time I’ll play the role of a lady who is interested in you. ”
She stood up straighter and fixed her gaze on him.
She smiled slightly. Not broadly, just a hint of it playing around the corners of her mouth.
She had done something different that he couldn’t quite define, too.
Her eyes were sparkling. It was as if she’d lit a fire within herself, come alive in some intangible way.
And he could see the difference at once.
Of course he could. It was ridiculous, all of a sudden, to imagine that there was any possibility he wouldn’t have recognized this.
Of course this was what a lady looked like when she was truly interested.
He felt as if there was no one else in the room but the two of them.
“Don’t just stare at me,” she said, and it broke the spell of the moment. “You’ve got to do something. This is the part where you try to engage her interest.”
“If she’s looking at me like that, she’s already interested,” Nathaniel pointed out.
Dorothy sighed. “Yes,” she agreed. “But you’ve got to do more, Nathaniel. You’ve got to let her know that this isn’t just a dance. You have to make her believe that she has a reason to hope you might offer her something more—a courtship, in this case.”
“So, this is the part where I tell her that?”
“No. You can’t just tell her that, you’ve got to be charming. Flirt with me.”
Nathaniel felt frozen. Flirt with her? This was the very thing he didn’t know how to do, and he was certain that if he tried, he would only end up making a fool of himself, which he didn’t want.
But he had come here to learn this skill, after all. This was what he’d asked her to do for him. It would be a fine thing if he just refused to cooperate now.
“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted, feeling a little ashamed.
She nodded. “I figured. That’s all right. You can start by paying me a compliment. That’s a good way to break the ice.”
He paused, thinking for a moment. “Your gown is lovely.”
He felt foolish at once, but Dorothy smiled. “That’s a good one,” she said. “It lets a lady know that you’ve been looking at her, and that’s important, but also that you think she has good taste. It’s two compliments in one.”
“You’re blushing,” he told her.
She really was blushing. That hadn’t been a part of his flirtation. But she nodded in approval. “Very good,” she said. “You might be a natural at this after all.”
“Wait. How was that good?”
“You’re not letting me get away with anything,” she explained. “You’re letting me know that you know your words had an impact on me, so that I can’t pretend otherwise. It’s very clever of you.”
“I didn’t mean to do that,” he confessed.
“Then you’re better at this than you think you are.”
He wondered whether her blush had been real. Was it possible she’d forced it somehow to see how he would respond, as a test? That seemed hard to believe, and yet she was certainly taking his reaction in stride, as if she’d expected or even hoped for it.
He had to know, suddenly, how real this was. He reached up and brushed the tips of his fingers against her cheek to see whether it was warm.
It was. Scorching.
She went still as he touched her. He could feel the tension in her body. She was staring into his eyes, and she sucked in a breath.
Nathaniel felt sure, suddenly, that nothing about what was happening here was a posture. It never had been. She was blushing because, quite simply, he had caused her to blush. He had caused her to feel something.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he really was better at flirting than either of them had originally thought.
Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment, and he found himself noticing her long lashes.
They brushed against her cheek. His heart beat faster.
He pictured himself giving her a compliment about that, telling her how beautiful she looked when she closed her eyes like that.
It wasn’t the kind of thing she’d expect him to say.
Would it make her blush even more? Would she think that compliment compared favorably with the one about her gown? Or…
What was he doing here?
This was not what was supposed to happen. The whole thing was supposed to be safe and distant from one another. They were supposed to be going over the instructions for a flirtation, not engaging in a real one.
But the lines had blurred. She was scarlet in the face and he was touching her as if she was something that belonged to him, and it occurred to Nathaniel that if her sisters were to come back in the room right now, they would see exactly what they had expected to see, and exactly what Dorothy had warned him she didn’t want to show them.
Of course they would think this is a courtship. Anybody would!
He dropped his hand to his side and stepped back quickly. Dorothy kept her eyes down to the ground, saying nothing.
“I’m sorry,” he managed, his voice more gruff than he meant it to be. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
He cleared his throat. “I ought to go,” he said. “But will I see you at the Sanford Ball?”
“I…yes. Yes, I’ll be there.”
“Good,” he said.
And then he turned and fled the room quickly, before he could betray himself anymore with thoughtless words or actions.