Edith Layton (11 page)

A ball was like a lottery. Partners had to dance to whatever music was playing when their time came round. Camille rejoiced, for she and Eric stepped into a waltz. He put up his big hand and she placed hers in it and moved in close to him. She felt his arm go about her. They barely touched. But she had never been so aware of a man’s body. He was so large, so strong, a wall of warm male flesh. Still, he held her so gently, as though she was treasured, as though she were fragile. Prudes might say a waltz was shockingly familiar, but it wasn’t half enough so for Camille. She wanted to burrow into his arms, not just stand inside his clasp. But she was close enough to feel the heat of the man, near enough to revel in his clean scent and feel his warm breath on her ear as he spoke to her. He spoke pleasantries. She heard rhapsodies. She was in Eric’s arms, and they moved together.

He was an accomplished dancer, and though he said he’d look for Nell, every time Camille looked at him she saw his smiling eyes bent on her. She couldn’t look into those eyes, she didn’t dare. But neither could she look away from them for long. When she did, she studied his face. She could see how closely he had shaved. She could see the fine grain of his skin and notice the bracket that formed at the side of his mouth when he smiled down at her, and he did that often, as though he knew no greater pleasure than to hold her.

She’d have paid the musicians her whole dowry
if they would only have kept playing; but too soon the dance was done. She turned to Eric, her eyes alight.

He was looking over her head. “There she is,” he said.

Camille turned to see that Nell was with her cousin Dana. They’d just stepped out of the dance together and were a pretty pair to watch, both dark, fine boned, and even featured. They turned as one and came directly to Eric and Camille.

“There you are,” Dana said to Camille. “May I have this next dance?”

“You could, but not with me,” Camille said. “We’ve had two dances already. If we have one more, they’ll have us leg-shackled.”

“What a sweet fate,” he said, smiling at her.

Nell looked up at Eric, her question clear in her eyes.

Eric nodded. “But we haven’t even had one, have we?” he asked Nell. “Shall we?” He offered her his arm.

Camille’s heart sank when she saw the sort of smile Nell gave him as they danced off together. The difference in their sizes would have looked ridiculous if they hadn’t looked so well together. Eric, so tall and broad and fair, Nell so slight, lithesome, and dark. Eric’s hand almost covered the whole of her narrow waist; her head was thrown back to show the smooth line of her throat as she looked up at him. He was so much bigger than she
was that he had to bend over her so that they could speak quietly. He looked so attentive, their closeness seemed so intimate, that Camille caught her breath. They stood the proper distance apart, and when they danced, moved only to the music. But they seemed absorbed in each other, and he frequently laughed, and Nell’s smile was much older than she was.

Camille’s stomach hurt.

“My cousin,” Dana said slowly, “is perhaps a bit too free with her smiles. Or is it the nature of them that worries me?”

“You don’t have to worry about Eric,” Camille said. “He’s a perfect gentleman.”

“It’s not Lieutenant Ford I worry about,” he said, turning his attention to Camille. His dark eyes were steady and searching. “I must ask you, has my cousin been…circumspect? I mean to say, I’ve been watching her this evening. Her reactions are too candid. I worry they may be misinterpreted. For example, I wonder if her smile of greeting is a shade too welcoming. Or am I wrong?”

“It’s not her smiles,” Camille said bluntly. She made a decision. “Thing is,” she said slowly, “I was worried too, and not just because of smiles. I didn’t see her for the longest time tonight. I looked for a half-hour, and she was nowhere to be found. It would be a disaster if she went off with someone on her own.”

Dana’s face went still. Then he nodded. “Oh, that, yes,” he said. “I’ve kept my eye on her all
night too, but I didn’t see her for a few minutes either, and I got worried as well. But I found her in the hall outside by herself, trying to look like part of a potted palm. It took me a full half-hour to talk her back into the ball. She was overwhelmed. She was so popular, so many gentlemen had asked her to dance, that she had an attack of shyness. She said she couldn’t find you or me, and so she was waiting to get her courage back. She never realized that by so doing she might endanger her reputation. I’m glad I found her when I did.”

“So am I!” Camille said with relief. Her heart felt considerably lighter, even though Eric was dancing with Nell. But she still wished the music would stop.

“Nell isn’t the only one who has trouble with parties,” Dana said suddenly. “I do, or rather, now I do too. Society rings us round with taboos. I’m very glad your brother invited me to come with Nell this evening, but it frustrates me as well. I know I can’t have more than two dances with you in one night, but the truth is I want to spend time with you.” He took a breath. “So,” he said quickly, “since I’m new to your world too, forgive me if I make a disastrous mistake. But I must know. I’d like to see you, Miss Croft. I’d like to go riding, walking, dancing, whatever you please, with you. Would my attentions be unwelcome?”

Camille blinked. She didn’t know what to say.

He smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not making you an offer—though it is an offer of friendship that might
one day lead to more. But I don’t know how high the barriers are in your world. I’m only a man-at-law. You’re a lady. So I have to ask: would you, could you, consider seeing more of me in order to know if you would like to see more of me? That’s all I meant. If the answer’s no, I would still always be grateful to you for how you took Nell in.”

He waited.

“But the thing is, I…” Camille found herself in a tangle of words she tried to sort through. Dana was a very nice man, but she didn’t feel
that
way about him. She didn’t dislike him either, and she never wanted to be thought of as a snob. She sought the right thing to say, lifted her eyes, and saw his cousin and Eric gliding past, looking like a couple made of sugar on a wedding cake.

Camille tossed up her head. “The thing is,” she finally said, “that it would be fine to go for a walk, or take tea, or dance with me. So long as you know I’m not very serious about it, at least, not right now. A gentleman doesn’t have to declare his intentions for things like that in my world. It’s only when he wants to ‘declare his intentions’ that…” She laughed. “But we don’t know each other enough for anything like that.”

“I hope to remedy that,” he said, looking deep into her eyes.

Flirtation was something she understood. She might be too overwhelmed by Eric to get up to much of it with him, but this was different. She knew how to defuse a flirtation too. Camille snapped
open the fan she wore at her waist. “Now I see why this was part of the costume,” she said, fanning herself vigorously.

He joined her in laughter. She looked up to see Eric’s head turn to look at them. And then she really felt like laughing.

But not for long.

The pleasure went out of the evening for Camille after that. She couldn’t dance with Eric again, and she certainly couldn’t bear watching him dance with other women. Nor did she want to encourage Dana. She’d danced her fill, and it was a while until supper would be served. Until then, there was nothing she really cared to do. No other men interested her, and the silly gabble of most of the fashionable young women always bored her to bits.

“Besides,” she commented grumpily to Belle’s suggestion that she chat with someone more her age, “this is not the best place to strike up a conversation with anyone. I don’t know how they expect girls to pick husbands in this sort of situation,” she went on, warming to her subject. “You can’t really hear, much less get to know anyone, at these monstrous parties. It’s all shouting quips, giggling, and posing.”

“Don’t get on your favorite hobbyhorse with me,” Belle said. “I agree. But do go dance or flirt or at least try to look happy to be here.”

Camille decided she’d go for a breath of fresh air. The ballroom was crowded, and the mingled smells of hot candle wax, burning lamp oil, and
perfumes was making her dizzy. When she’d searched for Nell, she’d noticed someone slipping out of a door down at the end of one of the many corridors that led from the ballroom and had felt a fresh breeze against her face as the door closed again.

“Very well, I’m off,” she said lightly, left Belle, and wove through the crowd in the ballroom in search of the exit she’d seen.

The opera was like a rabbit warren, with many exits and entrances, so it wasn’t easy to find the one she sought. There was one door that seemed quite popular with the gentlemen who were going out to blow a cloud, or so it seemed from the scent of tobacco that wafted in every time the door opened or closed. That certainly wasn’t her door.

It took some time before she found the right corridor. It was a long one, and at last, she came to a heavy green door. It took some pushing, but Camille wasn’t a weakling, and soon she had it open. She felt a cool breeze, pushed harder, and looked outside. The door opened on a dark, cluttered alley—and the cold, breezy night. There was no one there. Camille smiled, and stepped outside.

She walked a few paces, breathing in the fresh air, congratulating herself on her cleverness. But the refreshing air quickly felt chill on her bare shoulders, and the brick floor icy against her thin slippers. She looked around and decided that a silent, empty, dark alley wasn’t the most comfortable place to find
herself. Ominous shadows seemed to be lurking in the shadows. She decided to return to the ball.

She had taken only three steps back before she gasped in pain.

Camille hopped wildly on one foot and tried to grasp the other in her hand so she could see what she’d stepped on. Whatever it was, it had pierced her slipper and hurt like the blazes.

She could see nothing because of her wide and wildly swaying skirts. She looked around for a place to sit and decided against hopping into further darkness to find one. So it was either sit on the floor, among who knew what filth, or try to make her way back into the opera house. Camille hopped to the door and pulled—but she couldn’t get purchase standing on one foot, and the door remained closed, no matter how hard she tugged.

Weeping wouldn’t help, so she refused to cry and was ashamed of the whimpering she heard coming from her own throat. But her foot felt on fire and she was very worried. Could she hop all the way to the front of the alley? But what direction was that? She tasted tears on her lips and hated her own weakness.

And then the door swung open.

“Cammie!” Eric said. “What the devil are you doing here?”

“Hurting!” she cried, and hopped toward him.

He caught her in his arms. “What the devil…?” he muttered.

“The devil this, the devil that,” she said from between clenched teeth, “I stepped on something sharp and I can’t put my foot down again.”

He picked her up in his arms as though she weighed a feather and strode back into the opera house with her. It was beyond wonderful to be caught up in his arms, held close to that hard body, and actually feel the words as they rumbled in his chest.

“You were gone so long Belle got worried and sent Miles and me to look for you,” he said. “I asked around and discovered your direction. I tried the door because there was nothing else to see down that corridor. Lord, Cammie, where was your head? A stabbed foot is the least of what could have happened to you out there in the dark by yourself. Let’s have a look,” he said as he strode toward a bench under a flaring gaslight high on the wall.

He sat with her on his lap, pushed her skirts to the side, and picked up her foot. She bent her leg so he could see it, but was hesitant to look at her wound herself. Instead, she watched his face to see if she could discover the extent of her injury by his expression.

He frowned and grunted, “Blast. There’s blood. But I can see what it is. Ah! You’re lucky, it’s a piece of glass. Much worse if it had been a nail. Hold still, lass. This may hurt.”

It did. But Camille put her face in the crook of his neck and bit back her cry of pain.

“Sorry,” he murmured, holding up a wicked-looking shard of glass. “But there it is. Looks like from a broken bottle. Luckily it’s dark green. We can see if there’s any more in there. I’ll just ease your slipper off and see. There. Doesn’t look like there’s any left. Feel that? No? Or that? Good. It’s all out, I think. Cammie? Are you all right?”

She sniffed. “No, it hurts.”

His mouth ticked up in a little smile. “Well, yes, slicing up your foot will do that. But it was a clean cut. You may not be dancing any more tonight, but you’ll dance again, I think. With me next time, if you will.”

“I’m not a child,” she said haughtily. “You don’t have to promise me treats to get me to stop crying.”

She wanted to vanish when she heard what she said and ducked her head again. He sat silent for a moment. She stayed unmoving, feeling his warm body beneath her, knowing she should move away from him, knowing she could not.

She felt his fingers on her cheek as he lightly touched the wetness of her tears. Then he silently handed her his handkerchief, picked her up in his arms, and strode back to the ball. Neither of them spoke again.

Eric paid the hackney driver, stepped out of the coach, and stood on the pavement in front of his house, breathing deep. It was sleeting, but he needed ice on his overheated flesh. He wasn’t sick again. Lust was the only fever he suffered from to
night, and he knew it wouldn’t kill him. Not right away, at least.

Tonight had been hell. He’d only held two women in his arms. One had nearly broken his heart, while the other was a temptress. One only served to point up the fact that only the other mattered. Why had he thought he could hold her, touch her, and remain unmoved? She’d interested him from the moment he’d seen her again. But he’d deceived himself, hiding his desires in a welter of rationalizations.