She looked happy. The thought gave him a bit of a pang.
Someone was beaming down at him, hand extended.
“Major Harper,” the Reverend Jenkins said. “This is a pleasure.”
His wife, wearing a hideous headful of plumes, beamed and nodded at his side.
No London hostess would be entirely pleased, Ben thought when everyone had arrived and the orchestra members were busy tuning their instruments. The gathering could hardly be called a grand squeeze. Nevertheless, the ballroom was pleasingly crowded and everyone would have space to dance, while those who sat or stood on the sidelines would have a clear view of the dancing.
And the first set was forming.
Bevan led out Mrs. Morris, while a young man Ben did not know led out Samantha. She stood in the line of ladies, smiling across at her partner. She was to have her wish at last, then, Ben thought a little wistfully.
I want to dance, she had once told him, a world of yearning in her voice. She had been dressed in her heavy, ill-fitting blacks at the time and standing in the gloomy, darkened sitting room of Bramble Hall. A long time ago—a lifetime.
Ben watched her perform a series of lively country dances over the next hour. Meanwhile, he did not skulk in his corner. He got to his feet a few times and moved about, exchanging greetings with people he had met in Fisherman’s Bridge early in the summer and comments with his fellow guests.
He would wait until tomorrow, he decided. Or the day after. Would she be returning to her cottage? Perhaps he would call on her there. Tonight’s setting, though wondrously festive, even romantic, was quite unsuited to him. He fought a return of the old frustration with his condition.
He was laughing over a story the landlord of the inn had just told him when someone touched his sleeve. He turned, and there she was.
“Ben,” she said.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” He smiled at her and tried to look as if he was. Well, it was not difficult, was it? On a certain level he was enjoying himself. He liked this place and these people.
“Come and sit with me,” she said. “The next dance is a waltz.”
“You do not want to dance it?” he asked her.
She shook her head slightly and turned to lead the way to a deep alcove at one end of the ballroom. It was the mirror image of the orchestra alcove at the other end, though without the dais. Heavy velvet curtains had been pulled across it, though they had been looped back tonight so that anyone sitting within—there was a long velvet couch there—could watch the dancing. But no one was there.
She sat on the couch, and he seated himself beside her and propped his canes against the arm.
“Is this the first time you have danced?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you remember what you once said to me about dancing?” he asked her.
She nodded. “And I remember what you said to me.”
Ah. He had told her he wanted to dance too.
“I meant,” he said, “that I wanted to run free. Now I ride free in my chair.”
She smiled at him. “But you were talking about dancing,” she said.
The orchestra struck an opening chord, and the lilting music of the waltz filled the ballroom. Soon couples were twirling past the alcove.
“I always thought,” she told him, “that the waltz was the most romantic of dances.”
“But you do not want to dance it tonight?”
“Oh, I do,” she said. “I want to dance it with you.”
He laughed softly. “Perhaps,” he said, “we can close our eyes and imagine it. Like rising above the rain clouds in our hot air balloon.”
She wanted to waltz with him, he thought.
“Stand up, Ben.” She got to her feet.
He gathered his canes and stood. Did she imagine he could dance? She took the canes from him, just as she had done with one of them when he had stepped into the sea with her, he remembered, and set them aside.
“Put your right arm about me,” she said.
He set it about her waist and took her hand in his. She did not set her other hand on his shoulder but about his own waist to support him, and she gazed into his eyes, laughter and perhaps anxiety in her own.
Good Lord, she was serious.
And they waltzed.
They danced one whole turn about the alcove while it seemed the music became part of them and her eyes lost both the laughter and the anxiety and they simply gazed at each other and into each other.
Reality was still reality, of course. They did not, as they might have done in a fairy tale, suddenly waltz out from the alcove to twirl all about the ballroom while everyone else watched in wonder. But … they had danced. They had waltzed. Together.
Something drew Ben’s glance upward. A sprig of mistletoe hung from the ceiling at the very center of the alcove.
“Ah,” he murmured to her while he could still stand. “And for this I do not even have to beg permission. Christmas has handed me its own special permit.”
He kissed her, wrapping both arms about her waist while she twined her own about his neck. And then they smiled at each other, and for the moment he felt invincible. But only for a moment.
“If I do not sit down immediately or sooner,” he told her, “someone is going to have to scoop me up from the floor and bear me ignominiously hence.”
And then they were sitting side by side again, their shoulders touching, hand in hand, their fingers laced. And they were both laughing as she tipped her head sideways to set her cheek against his shoulder.