A Dance in Moonlight (The Fitzhugh Trilogy) (5 page)

“No, I am suggesting that you have the appearance of an otherwise stoic man who is perhaps ill-served by his stoicism. And now allow me to be like that fictional detective—what is his name?”

“Sherlock Holmes.”

“Indeed, I will be Mr. Holmes and divine the story of your life. And if I am right, you have but to take a sip of your wine.”

“And you, will you drink when you are wrong?”

“I shall take the liberty to imbibe either way—it is an excellent night to be tipsy, perhaps even outright intoxicated.”

As if to underscore her point, she drank from her glass, then focused her attention on him. He did not fail to notice the quick blinking of her eyes, which happened almost every time she looked full-on at him—she still had to make an effort to untangle him from her Fitz. It was an odd feeling: whether anyone cared for his face or not, he’d never been consistently mistaken for someone else. Particularly not in such a manner as to yank the beholder’s emotions left and right, for he could see them on her face: confusion, a flicker of involuntary hope, then resignation, the three bundled now in such a tight package that they were but one fleet shadow upon her face, chased away the next moment by a conscious resolve on her part to appear normal and unaffected.

She touched the rim of her glass to her chin. “The color of your complexion indicates that you have been abroad a great deal in hot, sunny places.”

He took a sip. “Good, but a low hanging fruit. What else can you guess?”

“You have been to India.”

He obliged with another sip. “That fruit was so low it had already landed on the grass and been pecked over by all the birds of the orchard.”

“North Africa, too.”

“Slightly less low hanging. Logical deduction, or lucky guess?”

“Somewhere in between. Let’s see. You are not a member of the diplomatic corps—these gentlemen do not go out in the sun much.”

“Indeed I am not.”

“And you are not a soldier. I have been around a great number of those; I can tell one from a furlong away.”

“Not a soldier.”

She blew out a breath. “It is the end of low-hanging fruits as we know them. Now I must actually climb the tree—or shake the branches awfully hard. Do you happen to be an adventurer?”

“No.”

“I have no other ready guesses. What are you then?”

“I am a cartographer.”

She sucked in a breath. “All the mapmakers I have met are secretly spies.”

“Not surprising, given that mapmakers who pass through military cantonments are likely in the employ of the empire. But mapmaking also has legitimate civilian uses. No construction of roads, railroads, and canals can proceed until those in charge have the most accurate maps possible.”

“I don’t doubt that, but what are you?”

“Not a spy,” he answered honestly. “Though I will admit, on certain expeditions the local embassy has been known to insert one or two gentlemen as ‘observers’. Those gentlemen, I imagine, are indeed spies—or at least better trained in covert arts than I.”

“I’m surprised the spymasters didn’t exert greater pressure on you to swell their ranks. They are not always scrupulous in their recruitment methods.”

“I am lucky: I can name myself the Duke of Perrin’s heir.”

Her eyes widened. Most ladies, upon learning that he was in line to inherit a title, glowed with greater interest. Her reaction, however, was all alarm. “Are you? I hope you will be one of the more fortunate peers who will not need to marry an heiress to keep a roof over your head.”

“Thankfully, the Perrin estate has always been in excellent repair—not to mention the current duchess is a very wealthy woman.”

She exhaled and raised her wineglass. “A toast then: to becoming a duke without becoming a pauper.”

Wine seemed to affect her swiftly. Her cheeks were already flushed, a flirtatious shade of pink, like that of a woman freshly pleasured. “A toast,” he echoed and drank deeply.

No one ever said being a gentleman didn’t have its costs.

“So…” She twirled the stem of her wineglass. “Have you been overseas so diligently to avoid the scheming mamas?”

She winked at him. All of a sudden he saw her as the girl she must have been once, bursting with vitality and thirst for life, ready to make her mark on the world.

Abruptly her expression turned somber. “No, no, what was I saying? Of course you haven’t been running away from the matchmakers. You have been running from something else altogether—that which you could not bring yourself to speak of earlier.”

HE DID NOT SAY ANYTHING. He didn’t know whether he wouldn’t or couldn’t.

This time, it was Mrs. Englewood who rose, lifted the wine bottle by its neck, and refilled his glass. The hem of her dressing robe brushed against his trousers as she sat down in the chair next to his.

“As a rule I don’t pry,” she said, her voice quiet and solemn. “But I don’t believe you came here to
not
speak of it. So if you will forgive me, whom did you lose?”

He breathed hard. To calm himself, perhaps—or to hungrily inhale her faint scent of fresh rose petals.

“Is it a lady?” she asked, her instinct unerring.

It was a long time, or at least it seemed so, before he could nod.

“What is her name?”

Now he had no choice but to speak. “Charlotte,” he said, his voice sounding almost rusty. “Her name was Charlotte Fitzwilliam.”

She flinched a little at his use of the past tense. “Your wife?”

“Yes.”

“Were you married long?”

He shook his head. “Three months.”

Two of them absolutely glorious, the last filled with despair and denial. He’d remained by her bedside almost every minute of the day, holding her hand, trying to keep himself together, unable to comprehend the possibility that he might become a widower at twenty-two.

“When she died, I refused to let her body be prepared for burial. I had to be forcibly removed, shouting at the top of my lungs that putting her into a coffin would suffocate her and I would never allow it.”

He looked at Mrs. Englewood and attempted to smile. “So you see, your action can never compare to mine, when it comes to grief-driven irrationality.”

Her eyes glimmered—her tears were again gathering. She rested her hand on his cheek. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

He placed his hand over hers. And now that he started speaking, he couldn’t shut up. “Do you know what I regret? Mrs. Fitzwilliam wanted to visit the Faroe Islands during our honeymoon. She’d read all about their misty greenery and those brightly painted houses against a gray Atlantic. But we married in October. I told her the weather would be harsh so late in the year and promised to take her the next summer.”

But Charlotte had not lived to see the next summer. “I went myself—it was an almost eerily beautiful place. I should have taken her that October, so she’d have had her heart’s wish.”

Seven years had passed, but that regret had remained as constant as the sea.

Mrs. Englewood cupped his face with both hands. “No.”

He stared at her, not sure what she meant.

She gazed into his eyes, her own swimming with unshed tears. “I cannot speak for Mrs. Fitzwilliam, but I don’t believe she minded the Faroe Islands. I have always wanted to go to Mykonos and Captain Englewood had promised me he would take me there someday. He died before we could go and I would have gladly given up all chances of ever visiting Mykonos if it would have saved my husband—or just kept him on this earth for a few more hours, to say a proper goodbye.

“So if Mrs. Fitzwilliam had any regrets, it would be that the rest of her life was too short to spend with you—because
that
was her heart’s desire, not the Faroe Islands, and not anything else.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks. The strangest feeling overtook him. It was a few seconds before he realized that he had a lump in his throat.

“You did say a proper goodbye to him,” he told her. “He went to his rest knowing that he had the love of his wife and children. It would have been more than good enough for me.”

Her lips parted in a slow smile, even as another drop of tear made its way down her cheek. “Thank you.”

He touched his thumb to her cheek, wiping away her tears. Then, to his shock, he realized she was doing the same to him: The tears that had eluded him all these years were falling freely.

And through his tears, she was as beautiful as a dream.

Almost without thinking, he pulled her to him and kissed her.

IT WAS A SWEET KISS, almost like a whispered “thank you” in the ear, a squeeze of the hand, or an umbrella held out in a downpour.

Sweet and brief.

When they pulled apart, Mr. Fitzwilliam did not apologize or explain himself—he had done exactly what he meant to, it seemed, and no words were needed. For a few seconds, they existed in perfect camaraderie, her hand on his cheek, and his hand on hers, two friends who had shared the most intimate details of the heart.

And she did not mistake him for Fitz in the least.

Then all the norms of etiquette and decorum began pressing in. Isabelle dropped her hand and drew back into her seat. He, too, looked as if he was at a loss for words.

She cast around for something to say, “Do you carry a picture of Mrs. Fitzwilliam with you, by some chance?”

He pulled out his pocket watch. It had a hidden compartment that held a small photograph of a pretty, demure-looking young lady. In return, she opened the locket she wore around her neck to show him a photograph of her entire family, taken six months before she became widowed.

“Was Mrs. Fitzwilliam as decorous as her image would like me to believe?”

“Ha! Mrs. Fitzwilliam lived to belie her image. Magnificent mustache on Captain Englewood, by the way.”

She smiled. “Ridiculously so, isn’t it? I stepped on his foot twice the first time we danced because I kept staring at the mustache.”

Dear Lawrence had grown so conscious of it that he’d shaved off the moustache entirely before he came to call on her the next day and she had not recognized him without it.

“Are you sure you are not blaming this magnificent moustache for your own clumsiness? Perhaps you are naturally mistake-prone.”

“I will have you know, sir, that I am light-footed and graceful, and never has a more elegant figure graced a dance floor.” She rested her head against the back of the chair and sighed. “I miss dancing. It has been so long since I last danced.”

She missed the crowd, the excitement, the sensation of being young.

He rose from his chair. “Then let us dance.”

She sat up straight. “Here?”

The room was not large, and there were too many pieces of furniture.

“There is a terrace in the back. Come, the moon is rising.”

Dancing, the two of them pressed together. She had not forgotten what he felt like in a heated embrace: a big, strong man, fully aroused. She was hot in the back of her throat—and everywhere else too, it seemed.

“What about music?”

“I will provide the music,” he said, gathering the bottle and the wineglasses. “But do take a wrapper. It will be chilly outside.”

“Won’t we be seen?”

“One would have to be standing directly at the gate, peering in. It is late enough that no one respectable would be out walking and anyone driving would be unable to see out the window.”

He held out his hand. She placed her fingers in his, but she still hesitated. “Do
you
miss dancing, Mr. Fitzwilliam?”

“I miss—I miss not forcing myself to have a good time.” He smiled ruefully. “Does that make any sense?”

It made perfect sense: Only a man who had disguised his heartache with gaiety would have found anything remarkable in her naked pain.

“Then let us dance,” she said, rising.