Chapter 8 #2
He took a step forward, toward her, and Mya took a breath she forgot to let out again.
She didn’t like him, she reminded the part of herself that was melting into want at his approach.
He was arrogant. And condescending. And the fact that he was handsomely gorgeous did not change any of that. It didn’t.
But when he closed the last distance between them and brushed the backs of his knuckles tenderly over the curve of her cheek, Mya didn’t pull away. She leaned into the touch, breath escaping in a sigh.
The touch felt so strangely familiar. So perfectly right.
He leaned down and kissed her, and Mya forgot her objections about his character entirely.
Voices in the hall made them startle apart an instant later, Mya’s cheeks burning red as a signal light.
Anyone who walked into the room in that moment was going to know exactly what had happened.
They might as well have shouted it. But no one came in.
The footsteps receded onward down the hall, and Mya slipped out the door and back toward the noise of the ball before Kayden could stop her.
By the time she arrived back at the edge of the ballroom, all traces of what she had been up to in the corridor were gone.
***
“Well,” Lottie said in the early hours of the morning as the coach rattled back down the road toward home. “You have had your first ball. Was it everything you dreamed that it might be?”
Mya, half asleep already despite the constant bumping of the wheels over rocks and into potholes, blinked her eyes open.
Lottie was sprawled across more than her share of the seat opposite, with her head resting on Eleanora's shoulder, regarding Mya through half-lidded eyes like a pleased and sleepy cat.
“It was not quite what I expected, actually.”
“In what way?” Eleanora asked, genuine curiosity in the question.
“It was more exciting, I think.” Mya smiled “After all the rules, I thought most of the entertainment would come from throwing those who broke them out of the house.”
Lottie laughed. “They save that particular attraction for holidays. It would be rather expensive to keep it up indefinitely.”
“Though…” Mya looked down at her hands, not sure that she could get through telling her story with a straight face if she raised her head to find Lottie staring at her. “I did threaten to kick Kayden McGregor down the hill.”
“Lord McGregor? Whatever for?” Lottie asked
“When he invited me to dance with him, and then invited Agnes after, I told him she would remember that for a long time.” Mya’s voice tightened.
“He told me that he was just doing what was expected of him, and that he found no more joy in it than any good man finds in doing what is required. I told him he had better not say that to Agnes.”
“Are you sure he meant it the way you took him to?” Lottie asked.
“Does it matter?” Mya asked.
Eleanora and Lottie both looked at her across the interior of the carriage in silence.
Mya sighed. “He said that he meant I shouldn’t praise him for doing something that was simply good manners. But I think that’s nonsense. He meant that he didn’t actually want to dance with Agnes.”
“That is part of the ball,” Eleanora said. “Gentlemen make sure that all of the ladies get to dance, whether they want to dance with that particular woman or not. Would you rather they were simply ignored? Left to sit alone with no attention?”
“No! But I don’t think he needed to be saying things like that where she might hear them. Isn’t making certain the women don’t know that they were chosen out of duty rather than interest part of the etiquette?”
She vaguely remembered one of them saying something of the sort.
“Yes,” Eleanora said. “It is.”
“Do you know that when you are upset, you start to speak more like you did when you first came to us?” Lottie asked, leaning forward a little in her seat.
Mya’s eyebrows drew together as she turned to look at the other woman. “What do you mean?”
“Contractions. Saying things such as ‘don’t’ and ‘isn’t.’”
Actually, Mya hadn’t realized. She shook her head. “No. I did not know that.”
“It intrigues me, to be completely honest,” Lottie said.
“It is a lower-class habit, using them.” She held up a hand to forestall Mya’s denial before she could speak it.
“I am not saying that I would judge you for such a thing, if it were true. It simply makes me wonder where it is you come from. Your accent, in general, is a bit different to others. There is something… traveled in it, perhaps. An interesting contradiction.”
Mya had known that she had a slightly different way of speaking than the rest of them.
She hadn’t realized that others had noticed, though.
She supposed it didn’t actually matter, though she would have to watch herself around company.
Lottie and Eleanora might not care that she had not come from a wealthy family, but other people would.
When they arrived at the house, Mya wished the other women good night and returned to her own room.
It was tempting, as the night outside began to give way to the first light of dawn, to collapse fully clothed onto the bed, but she suspected she would regret falling asleep in a corset, and ruining the gown would hardly be a proper “thank you” for the amount of money Lottie had paid for it.
There was a maid, but Mya didn’t want to wake her so late.
Or rather, so early. Chances were, she would have to be getting up soon anyway, and Mya wasn’t going to disturb the little bit of sleep she would have left.
Which meant undressing herself. Not an impossible task, but one more difficult than she would have preferred after hours of dancing.
Something knocked against the window. Mya startled, turning to look out over the dim, gray landscape. The tap came again, on the side where the French doors opened onto the lawn. Mya turned, and pressed a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound that wanted to escape.
There was a man waiting outside the door.
A man, she realized, who had to be Kayden. As she approached, his form became clearer in the light spilling through the glass, resolving itself into the man she had expected to see. A sigh of relief rushed from her.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded as she opened the door. “You nearly frightened me to death!”
“I had to see you,” he said. “I could not wait.”
He leaned down and pressed his mouth to hers.