back, but the sleeve of his coat was suddenly seized, which was a feat, as it was perfectly tailored for his frame.
“Sir, I am no’ being forward,” the beauty insisted, clenching his sleeve with a tightness that he’d have been hard-pressed to break. “I am no’ attempting to trick or trap you—”
“Madam, this is not personal,” he interrupted firmly. “I have no desire to waltz with anyone this evening.”
A bit of a whimper escaped her as she looked back over her shoulder, and Graham took the opportunity to attempt to shake her loose, but it was fruitless. She returned her attention to Graham and took a half step closer to him, the vibrancy of her eyes that much more stirring for being closer.
“I have no plans, sir,” she told him, her voice tight, “and I have no designs on you or any man here. I hate to force you into something you clearly have no wish to do. But no one has claimed this dance, which was no’ an issue until this moment, and I absolutely must dance with someone right now, and you were the closest man. I am out of time, so please will you haud yer wheesht an’ take this waltz with me?”
Graham looked at her for a moment, searching the earnestness and tension in her fair face, his irritability fading despite his reluctance to do what she asked. Then, his eyes moved off her to a motion over her shoulder.
A thin, angular man in overdone finery was coming towards them, his eyes fixed on the back of the woman before Graham, and the expression on his face resembled one Graham had once seen on a weasel. The various pieces of the story fell into place without any context for verification, and he stiffened. His brow creased, and his eyes were back to the beauty, his decision made.
Exhaling softly, he covered her hand on his sleeve and turned towards the dance floor as the strains of the next waltz struck up.
“My dance, I believe,” he announced, his tone somehow back to that of his normal one.
He heard the whoosh of her exhale as they moved and found himself leaning closer. “I take it you just told me to stop talking?”
“More or less,” she forced out, seeming almost to stammer with it. “And less politely.”
“I figured as much.”
Her hand trembled in his hold, and he heard a noise resembling that of a sob coming from her, one of her gloved hands going to her throat.
“Steady,” he murmured as he took her waist in hand, leading her into the first motions of the dance. “Nobody is that emotional to dance with me.”
“Then this will be a first,” she managed, forcing a smile. “You must accept that you are my hero tonight.”
He grimaced as he turned her, his movements feeling easier than he remembered a waltz being. Perhaps not thinking about the waltz made it easier to dance the waltz.
“I am no hero, madam.”
His partner glanced over his shoulder, then shivered and shook her head. “Yes,” she said softly, “you are.”
For agreeing to waltz with her? Hardly. He’d seen her pursuer, but what could he have been but an interminable annoyance on the dance floor, as he’d previously suspected her to be fleeing from? He gave her a strange look, then turned the pair of them so he could see where she had been looking.
The weasel was standing there, glaring at them both, a sneer fixed on his face, something superior and threatening in his stance and gaze.
Graham glared back, feeling the desire to pull the woman in his arms closer to him purely out of instinct.
“I don’t like him,” he informed her after a moment.
She looked up at him so quickly her head nearly hit his chin.
“You know him?” she whispered hoarsely.
“No,” he said with a shrug, “but he looks too much like a weasel for my taste. And he forced me to waltz.”
The woman bit her lip, a half-laugh escaping. “Which is worse, sir? The weasel or the waltz?”
Graham looked back down at her, noticing for the first time the intoxicating scent of lavender and pine rising from her, as if sprung into being from her fair skin. Her lips were no longer pulled tight, as when he had first seen her, but relaxed and full, somehow flushed from the recent pressure of her teeth upon them. The hint of a smile she was giving him now, the first he had seen her bear, created an unspeakable sensation