It Happened One Midnight (PG8) (22 page)

The man dancing with her—for the
second
time this evening—reportedly decidedly did.

Certainly he spent his days and nights touching them, if only socially, if only during waltzes and reels and the like. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know this already.

It was quite another thing to witness it.

He was smiling, too. And why watching him smile down at a beautiful blond woman was peculiarly like taking a pickax to her own heart, she didn’t know. Especially since she had been particularly relieved when he hadn’t appeared at the salon this week, which left her to flit from one man to another as usual, collecting compliments, distributing charm, lightening moods. All apart from her own.

And so it was torture. But she couldn’t
stop
watching him.

Surreptitiously.

From behind statuary.

And the Countess Mirabeau’s wig.

Tonight the Countess Mirabeau looked like a member of the Sun King’s court, with her towering powdered wig and patches, and long trailing sleeves. She overlapped two hands on her cane, found a bench next to the wall long enough to accommodate her enormous bead-encrusted dress, and watched the proceedings with a faint pleased smile on her face, nodding in time to the music. It was really all the countess required of balls these days, to sit on the bank of the river of gaiety and watch it go by.

She’d entreated Tommy to accompany her, just as an escort, and Tommy now wished she’d thought better of it. She was gripping her fan so tightly she’d nearly snapped the sticks. And she knew an unaccustomed urge to flee, as if she’d been cornered by a predator, except that for the moment she was all but invisible. Which was ironic, given that she was usually the one wearing the metaphorical tiara, the recipient of smiles, the bestower of attention. It was just that no one would ever expect to see Thomasina de Ballesteros here, among the glittering entitled, the women who would grace Jonathan Redmond’s infamous Diamonds of the First Water deck, and the men who visited her salon and fell over themselves to earn her attention. She was quite simply out of context. And her dress, her very best, was altogether ordinary.

She watched him dancing with the sort of woman he was destined to marry, and breathing became difficult.

What do you want?
Jonathan had asked her.

The shame of the realization scorched her cheeks. He’d known full well her world was
literally
a demimonde, an in-between world, no world at all, really. She
had
no context. She didn’t fit in among the people in this ballroom, and she didn’t fit neatly into any other strata of London society, unless you counted the Building of Dubious Occupations a strata.

But
he
fit in. He would fit anywhere. She’d earned her confidence through use, and it was a muscular thing. He’d been
born
with his; it was his birthright. And in the face of that, watching him now, effortlessly charming, dashing, very male and sure of himself, she suddenly felt abashed and unworthy and absurd for wanting him. He’d dived into the Ouse without a thought to rescue her. He’d found a place for a little girl, by dint of his family name. He was extraordinary, through and through.

And who was
she?
She’d been proud of survival. But . . .
animals
were content to survive. She’d done what she’d needed to do to survive, which is precisely what animals did. More acutely than ever before, Jonathan Redmond reminded her how this was simply not enough. Of how desperately she longed to
belong
.

What did she
want?
Unhelpfully, she now knew more about what she
didn’t
want.

She didn’t want to
need
anything, particularly something—or someone—she quite simply couldn’t have. Too much had been taken from her already, and she’d had enough of accommodating pain, of straightening her spine, of soldiering on.

And
that
was the danger in kisses. Or at least the sort he’d given her. They stripped away layers of defenses and exposed her life for what it was, as rickety on its foundations as the building she lived in.

She stirred when a little cluster of young girls, charming in white muslin, shyly approached the countess and stopped to exclaim over the countess’s dress.

“Madame, c’est une jolie robe!” one of them braved.

“Merci, mademoiselle. Vous êtes très jolie ce soir aussi,” the countess replied regally.

“Je pense que vos cheveux gros est très charmant.”

If Tommy wasn’t mistaken—her French was rudimentary, as her mother had only taught her a little of it before she died—the young girl had just told the countess she found her big hair charming.

The countess chuckled.

And as more schoolgirl French and giggles erupted around her, Tommy, like a wound spring, finally burst away from the wall to look for the foreroom.

She wasn’t fleeing. It was just that she felt more comfortable when she was moving.

I
RONICALLY, FOR A
girl who could find her way through the labyrinth that was London in the dark, she got lost on her way to the withdrawing room.

Which she supposed was simply more metaphor. Or more evidence that she didn’t belong in a house like this.

Her footsteps echoed across marble floors and she knew she was getting farther and father away from the ballroom when the sounds became mere echoes.

She stopped when she encountered a long low table pushed up against a pair of French windows. Clearly she could go no further.

When she was still she heard the footsteps echoing behind.

She spun, reflexively prepared for attack.

She froze when she saw him.

Standing not more than ten feet away from her.

Her heart leaped like a spring lamb.

They stared at each other for a moment. And then a wondering smile started at one corner of his mouth and slowly spread to the other.

All the tension went out of her, and her confidence exploded into full bloom, and doubt withered in the face of the fact that she now knew there was a world of difference between the smiles he gave the likes of Lady Grace and the ones he gave to her.

The smile he gave Lady Grace was a mask.

The one he gave to her revealed him completely.

In three long steps he was in front of her, so close she could reach out and touch him.

“Well, well, well,” he said softly. “If it isn’t Miss Thomasina de Ballesteros. And me without my pistol.”

They couldn’t seem to stop smiling at each other.

“Do you know, Tommy, my last dancing partner asked me if I believed in destiny. What do you suppose I told her?”

“You told her to pose for your deck of cards, and that she’d find out whether she truly believed in destiny in about a month or so.”

“Mmm.” He acknowledged this little barb with a little smile.

“How did you manage to find me here?” She gestured to the empty half-dark hallway.

“Me? I saw a crimson-haired woman moving unaccountably quickly, and I followed, much like a dog who has no choice but to chase a squirrel. Blind instinct.”

She was suddenly too breathless to speak.

“It’s not crimson,” was all she said. Softly.

He just smiled at that. “Why
are
you here, Tommy? I thought surely I’d had too much of the god-awful ratafia and was hallucinating.”

“The Countess Mirabeau received one of her rare invitations, and she wanted to come, so I was enlisted as a companion. She doesn’t seem to need me hovering, however. She’s doing well all on her own.”

“Oh? Where is she?”

“Over in the corner, against the wall. If you go back the way you came and crane your head, you can just see the towering wig. She looks like Marie Antoinette tonight. I left her alone for a moment to go to the withdrawing room. She looks happy enough, doesn’t she? Several of the young ladies are practicing their French with her.”

“She looks happy,” he said, though he didn’t turn at all. It was if he thought Tommy would disappear if he blinked.

Another silence.

Boom,
Tommy thought.

She fancied the air between them had heated. She could almost feel it, like a palpable thing, like warm velvet.

Though the heat might just have been her cheeks.

You can’t stop a lit fuse,
she thought.

She waved her fan. “Jonathan Redmond in his natural habitat,” she mused. “Isn’t this something your brother Miles would write about? The way he wrote about the natives?”

“I’ll suggest it to him.”

“And so, is this is how you usually spend your evenings? Heiress shopping?”

“Or being hunted by heiresses. However you prefer to view it. At least it makes my mother happy.”

Oddly, he sounded somewhat sincere.

She clucked sympathetically. “What a sacrifice it must be to dance with the homely young Lady Grace Worthington . . . twice.”

He paused. She saw him realize what she’d just inadvertently revealed: she’d been watching him.

For quite some time.

“It’s true, you know,” he said, stepping closer. She took one step back. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such punishment. Her limpid blue eyes are
so
disfiguring.”

“And golden ringlets are such a liability in the marriage market. Her mama must
despair
of ever finding a match for her.”

He took another step closer. She took another step back.

“Your sympathy is balm, truly, Tommy. For dancing so close to a bosom so snowy and well, there’s really no other way to put it—
generous
—is well-nigh unendurable. It’s an act of pure charity, I tell you.”

They were really enjoying themselves now.

“How you must suffer!” she said passionately. “And yet, I’m certain your place in heaven is assured. For her rosebud lips are
such
an eyesore.”

“Yes. I prefer to kiss lips made of lava and silk.”

Their silence could not have been more instant, mutual, and shocked if he had slapped her.

She stepped backward until she bumped against the table. Her fingers flew to her mouth; she rested them on her bottom lip.

Jonathan’s eyes followed them there. He frowned faintly; he swiftly sought her eyes.

She dropped her fingers and her eyes quickly.

In the history of the world there
may
have been other moments more awkward. But Tommy wouldn’t have wagered on it.

She lifted her eyes, as she was no coward. He was still watching her. She was fairly certain he hadn’t blinked.

“Lava . . . and . . .
silk . . .
Jonathan?” She repeated on an incredulous hush, all trembling, tamped hilarity, and wonder. “That is . . . did you really just say, ‘lava and—’ ”

“Hush!” he said, stifling an amazed, mortified laugh, which was shot through with a peculiar torment. “I’m appalled, too. It just . . . came out that way.
Shhh
.”

Their usual complicity and pleasure in familiar contempt was now charged with something prickly and dangerous.

And thrilling.

If only she didn’t so
enjoy
that sensation.

She aimed her eyes at his cravat so she wouldn’t have to look at his eyes. Which were watching her again with that fixed gaze that panicked and excited her.

Like a wall,
she thought. He feels like a satin-covered wall, and I remember how it felt when his heart beat against mine, and how shockingly smooth his skin is, and behind those nacre buttons is a chest carved into sheets of muscle that one wants to trace with a single finger like a road leading to bliss.

She fidgeted with her fan, signaling nothing but her own discomfiture and the jagged run of her thoughts. Neither of them said anything.

Whap, whap, whap
went her fan against her palm. She stopped when he frowned at it.

Now
would be an
excellent
time to return to the ballroom.

“Sounds like it might be uncomfortable to kiss lips made of . . . lava and silk, was it?” she ventured into the silence instead.

“Oh, it wasn’t comfortable at all. It was, in fact, very, very disturbing. I fear I may never be the same.”

His usual quickness. But they were shoved over to her like a chess piece, those words.

Your move
.

There was something new in his posture, a sort of wound tension, a watchful, waiting quality. And that new expression of his . . . guarded, she would have called it. Jonathan had never before been guarded. It was cousin to the face of a gambler who had just wagered high on a hand he wasn’t sure of.

“I, on the other hand,” she said, “was entirely unaffected.”

His features went dark. As though she’d stabbed a finger into his solar plexus.

But if she’d hurt him—which seemed improbable—he certainly recovered with remarkable speed.

“Oh, Tommy. You missed your calling. You ought to have been a toreador.”

“Too dull,” she maintained, and felt it again, that swell of fierce joy in this dance they both did so brilliantly, that made colors brighter and champagne more effervescent. It drowned the useless little voice in her head warning:
Don’t bait him, don’t bait him, don’t bait him
. “Bulls charge at the slightest inducement. Just like men. Simple, predictable creatures, the lot of you.”

“Too right,” he murmured sympathetically. “Nearly as predictable and simple as you are.”

Hmm. Not what she thought he’d say next.

“I’m sure I don’t know—”

“That you’re lying when you said you were unaffected? Of course you know. That you’re trying to goad me into kissing you? We
both
know that. But color me . . . ‘induced’ . . . anyway.”

He was laughing at her softly. And first one, then the other of his arms bracketed her where she stood.
Slap, slap,
his palms landed emphatically on the table behind her.

She was quite expertly imprisoned.

They held perfectly still, in just that way, so close but not touching, long enough for the sway of their breathing to synchronize. And yet she was afraid to move because to move would be to touch him, and in the last few seconds she’d decided she wanted to do that more than she wanted to breathe. Her heart clattered away in her chest like a pair of castanets. His breath landed softly on her chin. She could count his eyelashes if she so chose.
His eyes are blue
.