at his formal show of manners. The little girls giggled.
Anne considered him a moment, and then she curtsied in response, a deep, graceful movement. This time when he held out his hand, she placed hers in it.
If this had been a ballroom, she would have worn gloves and he wouldn’t have known the warmth of her skin. Nor would he have been able to devise his own dance, one suitable to his purpose.
A step in, a step out, then circle the partner, a hand resting on her waist. It brought them very close. It forced them to move as one.
“I thought you said you couldn’t dance,” she said, her voice slightly breathless.
Could it be her pulse raced as fast as his? He shrugged. “I’m clumsy.”
“I find you anything but,” she said, as he took her hands and raising them over her head turned her in a classic tour de main.
The children loved the step and practiced it themselves. Cora watched thoughtfully.
“Perhaps I’ve grown out of it,” he said.
She smiled. He moved near enough to smell the scent in her hair. Her breasts lightly brushed his chest. He longed to touch them, to feel their shape and taste them. His hand returned to the curve of her waist.
Their circle of steps came to a halt.
For a moment, neither moved. It seemed as if neither breathed.
Aidan lost all sense of time and place in the depths of beautiful sea-gray eyes.
The clapping of the children broke the spell. Anne pulled away. “I think they have the idea,” she said to excuse herself, but she couldn’t fool him. Something had passed between them. Something unfathomable. Something rare and vital.
Aidan turned to the girls and aped another bow, not at all displeased with his dance.
“We should go in,” Anne said. “I’m sure Mrs. MacEwan has cold water or hot tea for us to drink.”
“Oh, yes, and toast, too,” Cora added. “Come, let me have your hands.” She took the twins, who claimed to be “beyond hungry,” and started up the path.
Aidan said, “Go along on with your friends, Marie. Lady Tiebauld and I will be along in a moment.”
The poppet looked from one to the other, her bright eyes speculative, and then she raced up the hill after her friends as fast as her bare feet could travel.
Alone, Anne sidled away like a skittish foal. She moved toward a rock large enough to be a chair. Her silk stockings and those silly kid slippers were half buried in the sand beside it.
For a second, he hoped she’d put her stockings in front of him. He might even offer to help. But she didn’t. She merely slipped her feet in her shoes.
“You need sturdier shoes,” he said.
She made a noncommittal sound.
“Send a note to the cobbler in Wick,” Aidan said. “He’ll make a pair of shoes for you. You might need a new pair of dress shoes, too.”
“Thank you,” she said, and rose to her feet. She still hadn’t looked at him, not once. She started for the path.
Her studied nonchalance irked him. Thank you? That was all she had to say?
He reached for her arm as she passed him and brought her around. “Anne—” he started, and then stopped.
He didn’t know what he wanted to say. And she wasn’t going to make it easy. She frowned, waiting.
“You don’t wear the pins I bought you.” His statement sounded silly, but he did wonder.
Her gaze hardened and shifted from him to look out over the sea. Overhead, gulls rode the current of the wind, their harsh calls mocking. Before his eyes, the warm woman who had danced in his arms slipped away to an unreachable place, a place where he wasn’t welcome.
Almost desperate, he ran his hand lightly up her arm. It was only a touch, and yet it made him yearn for more. “If you don’t like the pins, I don’t mean to press you. It wasn’t what I came down here to say anyway.”
“Why did you come?”
To see you.
Those words refused to pass his lips. If he said them, he’d be lost to something he wasn’t certain he wished to explore.
“To tell you my mare Doublelet is in foal.” It had been his true reason.
A beat of silence. “That’s good news.” Did she appear mildly disappointed? Had she wished for him to say something else?
“Yes, I have big plans for the foal.”
He sounded like a country oaf! She’d be wise to walk away—but she didn’t. Instead, she hesitated, her expression thoughtful, as if she could