hand right before we entered the room.
“Ready.” I nodded. “You?”
“As ready as I’m going to be.”
“You look exactly like Darcy, only better,” I said, smiling at him.
“Thank you. You look exactly like Lizzy, only better,” he replied.
It didn’t take me long to spot Harrison and Lacey. Lacey was wearing a white gown that seemed somewhat demure from the back, but was a full assault of décolletage from the front. “As if Lizzy Bennet would have ever been on display like that,” I huffed under my breath.
“What was that?” Jeremy leaned down to hear me better.
“Nothing.”
We danced the minuet, the cotillion, and the quadrille and managed to score perfect tens on each. Jeremy was right. We weren’t entirely out of it yet. Lacey had managed to trip during the quadrille, and had a point taken away. We were only two points behind. I’d brought my day planner with me to tally the scores of each round and keep track.
After the quadrille, Jeremy came up to my side. “I need some fresh air. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
A few minutes turned into ten. The groups were lining up to perform the waltz. We were scheduled to go last, no doubt a bone they’d thrown us because of the way I’d screwed up yesterday during the acting, but I was still nervous. I grabbed my day planner from our table (because I never left it anywhere alone) and hurried out of the ballroom, into the corridor, and out of the building into the street. The grand columns of the building behind me, I glanced back and forth down the stone-tiled street for Jeremy. He was nowhere to be seen. Some of the other contestants were milling about with a few of the spectators, but no Jeremy.
I wandered around the side of the building, hoping I might find him. I made my way down the alley along the side and had nearly turned the corner to the back of the building, when I heard a noise behind me and whirled around to find Harrison there. He seemed out of breath, as if he’d jogged to catch up with me.
“I didn’t mean to scare you, Meg,” he said, holding up his hand in a conciliatory manner. Yes, he was definitely out of breath.
“I’m looking for Jeremy,” I said, wanting to leave him there and continue my search for my partner.
Harrison stepped in front of me, blocking my path. “Look, Meg, I know how awful it looked with Lacey the other night, but I swear to you it wasn’t mutual. Lacey leaned in to kiss me precisely when you came around the corner. I never had an inkling before that she was interested in me.”
I pressed my lips together tightly. I guess we were doing this right here, dressed to the nines, in the alley next to the Upper Assembly Rooms.
“The timing seems convenient,” I replied, clutching my planner to my chest. “And you did have an inkling because I’d told you. Or tried to at least.”
“I admit I’ve been naïve,” Harrison continued. “But I truly never thought a woman like Lacey would be interested in a man like me.”
It was so close to what my own thoughts had always been. I bit my lip. I wanted to believe him, but the truth was that I still couldn’t forgive him for tossing me over for Lacey to begin with. I’d thought about it a lot last night and most of the day today. Jeremy’s words from last night rang in my memory. “If you were mine, I’d never choose a Megan Fox wannabe over you. I wouldn’t care what my boss said.” That was the issue, really. It might not have been on my checklist, but I wanted a man who wouldn’t toss me over for job or country. If that was too much to ask, then so be it.
“We both really want tenure,” I had offered lamely to Jeremy once when I’d been defending Harrison for his indefensible behavior.
“Some things are just more important than your career,” Jeremy had said, the night we’d eaten pizza in a half an hour, because like a crazy person I’d wanted to get home to grade stupid papers.
That was Jeremy, wasn’t it? A man who’d thrown off the corporate handcuffs to work in his shop with his smiling dog all day. He wasn’t being trite. He’d meant what he said. He’d changed his whole life for that belief. He truly wouldn’t choose someone else over me just