One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,24
grand entertainments his wife adored. From here, Amanda could see guests milling about in what yesterday had been the receiving room, now cleared of most of its furnishings and transformed into a ballroom. Not a crush, but respectable nonetheless.
“I’ve so been looking forward to this evening, Lady Wrexham,” she said, squeezing her hostess’s fingers.
“As have we all,” Lady Wrexham replied with a sly glance toward her brother, who was studiously refusing to allow his gaze to travel any lower than Amanda’s chin.
“May I have the honor of the first pair of dances, Lady Kingston?” Lord Wrexham asked, and she knew then that the gossip-mongers had not been wrong. She and Lord Wrexham were to open the ball, with George and his sister following. Every eye would be upon her, every tongue would wag about her inclusion in the family circle. George almost certainly intended this evening to be the prelude to something momentous. A question. An announcement.
If she gave him the chance.
“Of course,” she murmured with another curtsy, before turning a dazzling smile on George, who gaped and stammered and could not quite muster the words to ask her for the second set before she glided past him into the ballroom.
The scent of flowers, the glow of a hundred candles, the sound of the musicians tuning their instruments—all of it made her heart beat faster, just as it had when she was little more than a girl, nervously stepping out on a very different sort of adventure. Then, she’d been thinking of marriage, of doing what she must to attract the proper notice of a proper gentleman. Of minding her step.
Quite the opposite of what she was thinking about tonight…
As she moved about the room, she nodded and spoke to the acquaintances of what seemed a lifetime ago. She kept her chin up and did not mind that her long-delayed return to society was likely the subject of at least some of the whispering that was presently going on behind gloved hands and fans. The Countess of Kingston had no reason to hide.
When the music began, Lord Wrexham approached and they took their places at the top of the dance. He was a pleasant-enough partner, though she knew his heart and mind were upstairs in the card room. She could hardly fault him for that: her own thoughts were almost entirely filled by a small green book and poor Major Stanhope in footman’s livery, standing in the rain.
Don’t look for me, he’d instructed, but it was difficult not to wonder when and where she would see him again.
Even as her feet went through the motions of dancing with Lord Wrexham, in her mind’s eye, she traveled over the unlighted parts of the house, anywhere Lord Dulsworthy was likely to have laid down a book and forgotten about it.
Though the figures of the dance brought her in frequent contact with George—the touch of hands, a little walk, ample opportunity for conversation—she managed to evade any and every question he might be primed to pose, by keeping up a steady stream of chatter herself.
Despite George’s clear intent, Mr. Hurst secured the next dance. Mrs. Hurst had been a school friend of Amanda’s, and that gentleman was eager to report his and his wife’s delight at Amanda’s unexpected acceptance of their invitation to the theater. Cymbeline was to be the play, and they spent a pleasant half hour moving through the steps while discussing both Mr. Shakespeare’s genius and Mr. Kemble’s.
By a stroke of something that at the time seemed far from luck, her third partner was Lord Penhurst, whom everyone present knew to be penniless—and in search of a wife who was not. Given that oleaginous gentleman’s predicament, he naturally made every effort to be charming. He was not, however, an accomplished dancer. Still, partnering him allowed her to avert a tête-à-tête with George for yet another set.
But she knew she could not avoid her fate forever. Foregoing the duties of a host, George had carefully watched the progress of her dance with Penhurst, ensuring he was at her side as soon as the sweaty-palmed younger man released her hand.
After a quick glance around the assembled company, and a silent prayer that she might discover Major Stanhope searching for her in one guise or another, she faced George and favored him with a smile. “Yes, of course, Lord Dulsworthy. I shall be honored to partner you. I only wonder it has taken you this long to ask.”