Chapter 5 #2
After, the room cleared for the wedding breakfast, and more guests appeared.
In the interim the house seemed to give a genuine sigh of relief for an occasion that had finally concluded without disaster.
Patrick was speaking to Aurelia’s aunt with the diplomatic expression he deployed when managing difficult situations.
The clergyman had found safe harbour in conversation with someone near the window.
A quartet, apparently encouraged by the young Miss Penrose, whose cousin was on the violin, began playing in the corner.
Evander moved to where Aurelia was standing with Miss Penrose. He accepted a glass from a passing tray and offered her one, and she took it.
“Shall I be the first to toast?” Miss Penrose said, mimicking a toast with her empty hand. “To your eternal happiness and joy, et caetera?”
“Why not?” Aurelia smiled nervously and raised her glass in the air. She clinked it against Evander’s, surprising him, and took a sip. He focused a moment on her lips around the rim of the glass – and that surprised him too.
Miss Penrose took Aurelia's elbow. Then she turned to Evander with a smile of complete sincerity.
“Your Grace. I don't believe we've been properly introduced.
I'm Miss Lydia Penrose. I've been Aurelia's closest friend for what is only two months but feels like forever.
And I know essentially everything about her, which I mention purely so you're aware of the dangerous situation you've entered.”
He took the measure of her quickly. “Yes, welcome.”
“I want you to know,” she continued, entirely undeterred by the brevity of his response, “that I think this is all very romantic, and that you should not listen to the naysayers – especially those society writers.”
“Lydia,” Aurelia scolded.
“In a practical sense, of course,” Miss Penrose added, without breaking stride. “They may have called this arrangement a barbarism, but I don’t think that could be further from the truth. It is… the world righting itself. And in that sense, it is very practically romantic.”
Evander smiled.
“And that’s a very good quality for things to have,” Miss Penrose continued. She looked past Evander, her eyes narrowing in thought. “Lord Rosdale is here now. Lord Rosdale, don't you think there ought to be dancing?”
Patrick appeared from somewhere behind them, taking a sip from his glass. He looked immediately and deeply interested – by the prospect of dancing, and by Miss Penrose. “I think that's an excellent idea…”
“Miss Penrose,” Aurelia said quickly, seemingly out of breath and dizzied by the speed at which Miss Penrose spoke. She had competition in Patrick. “It's a drawing room. There is no room to dance. We have not even chalked the floors.”
“Room enough. And we will just have to try not to slip. It will make the dancing more exciting. Oh, yes, we must make the most of the quartet. The violinist is both my cousin Henry and my chaperon, you see,” Miss Penrose pointed out, gesturing at the corner where the musicians played.
“A quartet implies dancing. The quartet would not have been brought in otherwise.”
Aurelia narrowed her eyes playfully. “The quartet was brought in by you.”
“Implying dancing,” Miss Penrose said, without the slightest hesitation.
She turned to Evander then. “Your Grace, a wedding without at least one moment of joy is a tragedy, and I refuse to be present at a tragedy if I can help it. Well, again. One dance, that is all I ask. Just one,” she performed a moue that made Patrick laugh, “little dance…”
Patrick was looking at him with a careful but daring expression, implying he was not going to intervene but knew what should be done. Evander turned to Aurelia.
Her chin was up slightly. Her glass was very still in her hand. To hell with it, he thought. A little dancing wouldn’t kill them, surely?
He sighed and offered his hand, palm up. She looked at it for a moment. Then she took it, and something in the room shifted… Like the way air shifts before the weather breaks.
Not just weather, he thought, but a storm.
On Lydia’s command, the quartet shifted into a slower piece, with both excellent timing and excellent instruction.
Slowly, the other guests redistributed themselves toward the edges of the room.
Violet directed the footman to move the furniture even further out of the way.
They worked together to roll back the carpets.
“What a funny kind of wedding,” she said to Evander, who stood rigidly beside her.
“It is not the worst I have attended,” he said coolly.
“If you are about to make a joke about brides fainting–”
“It is too soon for that, I think,” he replied, looking wholly unconvinced. “But there will be a time when this is all amusing.”
She smiled. “I think that time will come sooner than you think.”
Eventually, the room was organised suitably for a round of dancing.
Without warning, Evander’s hand settled at her waist. Aurelia held a breath, ignoring the tingles his touch sent down her side.
She wondered whether she would have felt this way at her wedding breakfast, had Frederick not abandoned her.
Excited but nervous, foolish and young. It was absurd, really, to be touched by the man who was going to be her brother-in-law once upon a time – to like being touched by him, to want him even closer.
She swallowed guiltily at the thought. That was likely not what Evander intended.
He had implied as much already. But the music was starting, and Violet was shooing the dogs out of the room so they didn’t get underfoot, and their collected closest family and friends were waiting for a dance…
So she locked her doubts away for now and concentrated and what she had rather than on what she didn’t.
The hand, for all intents and purposes, was at a perfectly correct position.
She had danced with dozens of gentlemen over two seasons, and had felt approximately nothing on each occasion.
That had been normal, she thought. It was how dancing worked when the person dancing with you was simply a person and not… whatever this was.
“You look nervous,” he murmured down at her. “You’re a musician. You must be a proficient dancer.”
“It’s not that,” she let slip, then bit her lip. “There are so many people watching.”
He smiled reassuringly – a smile she had not thought he was capable of producing – and slipped his hand off her waist to find her wrist. “Then pretend it is only me and we are somewhere far away.”
Evander’s palm was warm through her glove. He didn’t adjust his grip or shift his weight or do any of the small restless things that most men did when they were dancing with someone new.
They moved well together from the first, now that Mozart played, which she had not anticipated. He seemed too tall to be graceful. He liked all the things that would have pointed to him being a terrible dancer.
But there is music and rhythm in him, she remarked silently, her chest growing hot with the thought and how close they were. How surprising this man proved to be, time and time again.
“You dance well,” she said, feeling the impressed stares of the guests around them. Slowly, Lydia grabbed a gentleman on the dancefloor – it was the Earl, Evander’s friend – and other pairs joined soon thereafter.
Evander gave a breathy laugh. “You sound surprised by that.”
“You don't seem like someone who would like dancing, that’s all.”
“What do I seem like?”
“Like you would sooner take me riding.”
“Oh, I intend to,” he replied, smiling more widely. He almost missed a step but corrected himself quickly. “Once we are in the country.”
“Will you not miss London one bit?”
“Not at all.”
“I will,” Aurelia confessed, gazing up at him, watching his brow furrow slightly in concentration as the waltz – because of course Lydia had chosen the salacious waltz – progressed. “I will miss the culture and the salons.”
“There are salons in Norwich – and churches.”
“Will you take me to them?”
He laughed again, that same breathy laugh that made her knees weak. “To the salons or the churches?”
“Both,” she replied. “Or just take me riding. I am sure I will like riding too.”