To Dance until Dawn - Emma V. Leech Page 0,3

of love affair that her parents had experienced, though she knew it was unrealistic. Love stories of the kind they had lived did not come along very often, but Phoebe still longed for it. She wanted desire and excitement, a man who would make her breath come fast and her skin ache with longing. The only kisses she had been given so far had been horribly disappointing. Oh, they’d been pleasant enough, but there had been no intensity of feeling, no thundering of her heart, no sense that she would die if she could not be in that man’s arms again the next day and the next, and every day after that.

Not being a fool, she knew the kind of marriages she saw before her in her parents and their closest friends were not always possible, and were often hard won. So, meeting some nice young man in a ballroom and marrying him and living happily ever after did not seem to be the correct way to go about it. Surely there would be some cataclysmic event, some sign that he was the one? She needed someone who would fight dragons, not for her, but with her. Someone who would not lock her away in a gilded cage to protect her from the world, but face its challenges and dangers at her side. A man like her father was for her mother. What she had learned during her first season, was that such a man seemed to be about as realistic as the dragon itself.

Having scraped her bowl clean for a second time, Phoebe let out a breath and leaned forward, trying to ease the pressure of her corset from squeezing her stomach too fiercely. Perhaps that second helping hadn’t been a good idea.

“It was worth it.”

Phoebe looked to her left to find Ellisborough’s amused gaze upon her.

“What was?”

“The roulade. I believe it was worth the discomfort you’re in. I’ll bet that corset is laced too tightly to accommodate it, though.”

Phoebe blushed.

“Gentlemen do not refer to a lady’s undergarments,” she said, sounding uncharacteristically prim, but there was something about Max that always made her feel like a naughty child.

He was effortlessly sophisticated, always said the right thing—except to her—and was universally adored. Characteristics guaranteed to make her appear like an absolute hoyden—which she was—but still. Even Papa liked and admired him. It was nauseating, and she acknowledged the sensation of being out of sorts. Max made her cross and jittery, and she did not understand why that was.

The earl chuckled beside her. “And ladies don’t hike up their skirts and climb into parties via a window, but….”

“That was an accident,” she hissed, irritated with him for bringing the subject up again. “I just went out for a breath of fresh air and some fool locked the door behind me.”

“You went out with Beecham,” he said, a disapproving note slipping into his voice.

“For some air,” she insisted, annoyed now. She glanced up at him despite her better judgement and huffed at the pained expression of patent disbelief he returned. “Well, I trusted him, which I agree—with hindsight—was idiotic of me, but I thought he was my friend. I didn’t know he would go all love-struck and stupid the moment he got me alone, nor that he would be so ungentlemanly as not to take no for an answer. I had thought better of him than that.”

“So had I,” Max said darkly. “Though he’ll not make such a mistake again, I’ll wager.”

Phoebe smothered a grin, remembering how Mr Beecham had curled in on himself with a cry of agony as she’d introduced her knee to his soft parts with enthusiasm. Max still did not look happy about it and, at the time, she’d struggled to stop him challenging Beecham to meet him at dawn. His anger had rather shocked her. Max never got angry.

“I was foolish,” she said, hoping to placate him. “But I dealt with him quite well on my own. I just… I just wasn’t expecting it of him.”

Max shook his head at her, incredulity shining in his dark eyes. “I do not understand why. All men leave their brains behind and turn into mindless idiots when they get near you. Is it your perfume, I wonder? Do you drug them with Eau de Opium?”

Phoebe batted her eyelashes at him.

“No, it’s my winning personality,” she said in a breathless singsong voice.

His lips twitched. “Hmmm. Well, whatever it was, you were lucky I noticed and let you in again, or you’d