a closing argument in court.
“I should be pleased to dance with Dot,” Mr. Delacorte said.
He would until he tried it, thought Delilah.
Dot performed a witty little curtsy and managed not to tip over, and Delacorte extended his arm.
“Miss Gardner and Miss Gardner?” Captain Hardy surprised everyone by aiming a determinedly inviting expression toward the sisters in the corner.
“Oh, we cannot dance,” Jane Gardner said very, very meekly.
“But I insist,” Captain Hardy said. Kindly. Very gently. “I shall be happy to show you how to waltz if you’re unfamiliar with it. Every woman ought to know it.”
There was a brief silence as they stared at him, eyes enormous, before Margaret looked down at her lap again.
“You must,” Captain Hardy repeated. Coaxingly.
“Oh, no one wants us to trod upon their feet.” Jane gave a soft laugh. “We shall dance with each other. It’s how we learned, after all.”
There were token protests and demurrals, but finally the Gardner sisters were persuaded to stand up together. They would need to run a gauntlet of furniture and dancers to escape from the room, anyway.
That left Miss Wright to turn the pages of the music for Angelique.
Angelique laid her fingers on the keys and leaned into a sprightly, competent version of the “Sussex Waltz.”
And the unlikely troop of strangers rotated about the room in a rather constrained oval.
Mr. Farraday’s version of a waltz approximated a lope, and it was a bit like hanging on to a large dog by a lead. Not unpleasant, but it required all of her skill and focus.
It was undeniably a surprising pleasure to dance again. Derring had done the minimum required of him at the three balls they’d attended while they were married. It had seemed so freeing, so very unlike Derring, to surrender to something so frivolous as turning in a circle around a room. Derring’s inner life only revealed itself in the things he bought.
“Sorry. Oh, sorry,” Dot was muttering as Delacorte steered her past. He jerked his trod-upon feet from under hers with swift grace for one so sturdy. It almost resembled a jig.
When Captain Hardy sailed competently by with Miss Bevan-Clark, through some graceful magic, he somehow smoothly transferred Miss Bevan-Clark into the arms of Mr. Farraday.
While he absconded with Delilah.
Her breath was quite lost for a second.
They took a wordless few moments to adjust to the feel and rhythm of each other.
It was an uncommonly sweet feeling, her hand in his, his hand at her waist, rotating about in a circle in this pleasant homely room surrounded by a cheerful lot of near misfits. He wanted to be kissing her. He wanted to feel his body against hers.
But holding her hand like this seemed nearly as intimate, and in some ways more.
And as it turned out, it was as much a sport as a dance, because it involved the additional challenge of avoiding collision with other dancers.
They’d rotated once around when he cleared his throat. “I was born in St. Giles.”
She didn’t fling her arm up to ward off the terrible shock of his slum birth. Her body didn’t stiffen beneath his hand. Her pace didn’t falter.
She didn’t say a word.
But her eyes didn’t leave his face. They were warm as a hearth. And soft as that damn comfortable bed in his room.
He ought not continue. Every word he said felt like a hole punctured in his armor; every word he said planed away a bit of mystery and brought her closer to his rawest self. It felt unnatural and new, as awkward as using his left hand instead of his right, though he could, of course, fight with both. But he could not stop himself from giving her what she wanted. To ease, if he could, whatever shame or discomfort she felt.
“I never knew my father. I’m not certain my mother was ever given his real name. And I didn’t know my mother for long, either. She died when I was eight. I became a captain’s assistant at ten.”
Her ribs rose and fell beneath his hand when she drew in a long breath.
But there was no gushing. No questions. And no pity.
She watched him, not her feet, and somehow they remained in perfect time and managed to avoid colliding with the other dancers. Then again, he’d had a good deal of experience with navigation.
And she trusted him.
The honor of her trust, and the shame of his deception, made a wishbone of him.
“I suspect you are an exceptional man for many reasons, Captain Hardy,” she finally