Chapter 13
“You are not listening,” Joseph said, from the middle of the music room floor. There was an air of impatience in his voice.
Albina did not look up from the piano keys.
“I am listening, it’s just that I simply find this particular piece very limiting.”
“It is a waltz,” Joseph groaned.
“I know it is a waltz. I have been playing waltzes since before your father was born.”
“Lady Wilmington.”
“Fine then.”
Temperance watched this from the chair by the window with her book open in her lap. She had been in the room for the better part of an hour watching Joseph move through his lesson with focused, slightly pained concentration.
It was not as though he was a bad dancer, rather Albina was proving to be a bad partner.
“You keep missing the step,” Joseph said again. “It’s as though you are not even trying.”
Albina laughed, and Temperance knew that her mother was getting some sort of entertainment out of this entire thing.
“But isn’t it so much more interesting to miss a step?” she replied. “It’s so boring when everything is in order.”
“Sure, but that barely helps me learn,” Joseph said frustrated.
“For the next dance, may I suggest that you change your partner?” Mr. Fowler suggested carefully. Joseph turned to look at Temperance immediately.
“Yes, will you do it?” he asked without missing a beat. “It would bring me great relief.”
Albina laughed again, as though her objective had been reached.
Temperance sighed as she set her book down.
“I should warn you,” she said, crossing the floor toward him, “that I am genuinely terrible at this.”
“How terrible?” Joseph asked.
“Considerably more than you are hoping.”
She was not exaggerating.
She had known this about herself for years, had made a kind of peace with the fact that she was a terrible dancer.
“I suppose we will find out,” Joseph said, looking relieved that he didn’t have to be subjected to Albina any longer.
Temperance lasted approximately forty seconds before she stepped directly onto Joseph’s foot. Then she turned the wrong direction entirely and walked into his shoulder, and his composure slipped.
“You are not following,” he said. “Instead, you are going wherever you want to go.”
“That is not intentional, but I told you already that I am no good at this.”
“It is very inconvenient,” he said, with crisp disapproval, “Mr. Fowler, she is not following.”
“A good leader,” said a voice from the doorway, “does not blame his partner for what his lead fails to communicate.”
Everyone in the room turned and Harper was standing at the door with his coat still on, which meant he had come directly from wherever he had been. He was looking at his son now, assessing.
Joseph straightened, immediately.
“Father, it is not something that you can blame me for. She simply wasn’t following.”
“She wasn’t following because you weren’t leading,” Harper said, coming into the room. “Not all your partners will be good dancers. Most of them won’t be and the point is that a good lead makes it possible for any partner to follow. If she can’t follow you, the problem is yours.”
Joseph absorbed this, and to no one’s surprise, did not argue any further.
Mr. Fowler, who had clearly been waiting for exactly this kind of opening, said, “Perhaps Your Grace might demonstrate?”
Harper looked at Mr. Fowler and a silence occurred. Temperance became very interested in a point on the far wall.
“One demonstration,” Harper said, handing his coat to the footman near the door before he crossed the floor, and Temperance turned back from the wall and found him already in front of her, one hand extended.
She looked at the hand.
“Me?”
“Why do you look so surprised?” Harper replied, seeming amused. “You were dancing with Joseph just a moment ago.”
“Yes, and I had told him that I am no good at any of this,” she replied.
“Enough,” he took her hand in his and his other hand came to her waist. She had the immediate, inconvenient awareness of how different this was from Joseph’s careful, practiced grip.
There was no deliberateness to it. He simply knew where his hand went and put it there, and the effect was entirely different from being positioned and considerably more difficult to be sensible about.
Suddenly, it was as though her head felt lighter and her heart was beating faster.
Usually, she would arrive at symptoms like this when she had not eaten much. There was a name for it.
A head rush.
“Ready?” he said, quietly, just for her.
“Not really,” she said, honestly as her heart beat wildly in her chest.
“You look a bit flushed.”
She was embarrassed at the fact that he had noticed.
“It’s just that I am not used to dancing, as you know,” she tried to cover it up. Though whether or not if she was successful, she did not know. “It’s been a long time since I have had any lessons.”
Something moved at the corner of his mouth, and he seemed rather amused by her plight.
“Something I said?”
“Oh, no. Just that... well, I suppose I am not ready either,” he said as the music sounded again and they began to move.
The first thing Temperance discovered was that he had not been wrong about leading. With Joseph she had felt dimly aware of where she was supposed to be going. But with Harper the direction was simply there, communicated through the pressure of his hand and the slight movement of his frame.
“You’re counting the beat,” he said.
“If I stop counting I’ll lose the beat.”
“You don’t need the beat,” he said. “You need me and the beat is my concern. You should only follow.”
He said it with such authority that Temperance was not sure if she could refuse even if she wanted to.
“Look at me,” he said. “Not the floor.”
“I’m going to step on you.”
“Possibly. Look at me anyway.”
She looked at him. He was closer than she generally allowed herself to think about, and his eyes were very dark.
They turned through the first figure. She didn’t step on him and was so surprised by this that she almost stepped on him.
“There,” he said. “You see.”
“I see that I haven’t destroyed your shoes yet,” she said. “I wouldn’t call that a permanent achievement.”
“I’m choosing to be optimistic.”
“That is unlike you.”
“You bring it out in me,” he said, with the dry, unhurried delivery he occasionally produced when he wasn’t performing anything for anyone, and she felt it land somewhere in the middle of her chest with the precision of something well-aimed.
Behind them, she heard Joseph say something quietly to Mr. Fowler and Mr. Fowler respond in the same register, and she had the sense of being observed but found, to her own surprise, that she minded it considerably less than she should have.
They moved through the second figure. Her feet found the pattern with something approaching reliability, and she stopped waiting for them to fail and began, tentatively, to trust the lead, and the difference was immediate and remarkable and she filed it away for future reference even though she was not certain when the future reference would be useful.
“You’ve done this before,” she said.
“Danced? Yes.”
“Taught someone to dance.”
He considered this for a moment. “Not in this way.”
“What way is this way?”
He looked at her. “Patiently,” he said, and she laughed before she could stop herself, the quick genuine one, and felt his hand at her waist adjust slightly in a way that she chose not to interpret.
“Has anyone ever told you,” she said, “that you are very bossy with your dance partners?”
“No one has ever needed to tell me,” he said. “My previous partners followed without requiring the commentary.”
“Your previous partners were probably better dancers.”
“My previous partners were better at following instruction,” he said. “Which is not the same thing as being better dancers. You have quite good instincts when you stop arguing with them.”
She looked at him, and blinked.
“Was that a compliment?”
“It was an observation.”
“It sounded like a compliment.”
“Then you are hearing what you want to hear.”
“I am hearing what you said,” she said. “Quite good instincts. Your words.”
“I am already regretting them.”
“I imagine you are.” She let him turn her through the next figure, and her feet did what they were supposed to do, and she felt the particular satisfaction of a thing going right that had previously gone wrong and found it disproportionately pleasing. “You’re still bossy, though.”
“You require it,” he said. “Other partners simply needed guidance, you require the full authoritative version.”
“That says more about you than it does about me.”
“Does it?” he said.
“A man who escalates to authority as his first response rather than his last suggests a certain….”
“I did not escalate,” he said. “I started at the appropriate level for the situation.”
“The situation being me.”
“The situation,” he said, “being you, yes.”
She looked up at him, prepared to continue this, and found him already looking at her with something in his expression that was not quite the argument she had expected, something quieter and more direct, and she lost the thread of what she had been about to say.
They were, she noticed, closer than the dance strictly required, not in any way that Mr. Fowler or Joseph would have found remarkable from across the room, but enough that she was aware of it.
She looked back at where their joined hands were and then back at his face and found he hadn’t moved his eyes from hers.
“You’re not looking at the floor,” he said.
“You told me not to and I’m simply following your instructions.”
“And you’ve decided now is a good time to finally listen to what I have to say?” he asked in a teasing voice.
“Oh, I don’t understand you. It’s like you are not happy either way.”
“I said nothing about being unhappy,” he said, suddenly pulling her closer. At that moment, it was as though she had forgotten how to breathe entirely.
“I…” she said, “you do this strange thing where you leave me feeling rather flustered.”
She was being more honest than she usually was, which was surprising to her considering they were being watched. She only hoped that no one could hear them.
“It’s not something I’m used to being, mind you,” she tried to recover but saw the satisfied grin on his face. “So, it’s somehow unique to you that you manage to bring this out of me.”
“I’m not sure if I should be flattered or concerned,” he grinned, seeming entirely too pleased with himself.
“Neither. I think you should concentrate on teaching me how to dance,” she said, blushing. “Or rather, demonstrating to your son, which is the point of this exercise.”
“I suppose my practicality has rubbed off on you,” he teased again.
She rolled her eyes at him and then her foot turned wrong.
It was a small misstep, but she stumbled forward and his arm came around her, his hand moving from her waist to the small of her back, pulling her in to keep her upright, and for a moment she was considerably closer to him than she had been.
Close enough that she could see the exact shade of dark blue that his eyes were in this light, close enough that she was aware of him with a completeness that left very little room for anything else.
He held her there for one breath, and then another before he stepped back. His hands returned to their correct positions, and his expression returned to the composed, neutral version she knew.
She looked back at the middle distance and said nothing and concentrated on breathing at a normal rate. But on the inside, her mind was flying in every direction.
Surely, they had just shared a moment. Temperance had never been this close to a man before, and she wondered if it had any impact on the duke.
But annoyingly, he did not let any reaction show. Was it possible for him to be this unbothered about everything? It was irritating, if not a little offensive.
“That was better,” he said to the room in general. “Joseph, did you see how to do things differently?”
“Yes,” Joseph said from the side of the room.
Harper looked at his son.
“I suppose we are done here,” he let her go entirely, and she felt the absence of it at once. Though she tried her hardest not to let her emotions show.
If he’s not going to react, then I shall not either. Why should she give him the upper hand?
“That was a good lesson,” Joseph said. “Miss Hosmer seems to be a better dancer than I thought, though one can forgive that last misstep.”
Harper nodded at his son and then turned back to Temperance and said, “There is a masquerade on Friday. We should be ready by eight.”
“A masquerade?”
“Yes, and we are required to be there,” he said, not bothering to add any more context.
“I…”
Her words were left unfinished as he left the room before she could get them out.