“Ah,” she said. “The weather is an ineligible topic, then?”
“As are one’s state of health and that of all one’s acquaintances to the third and f-fourth generation,” he added. “W-will you waltz with me?”
“I fear it immensely,” she said, “for now you have surely tied my tongue in knots. Have you left me with any topic upon which I may converse sensibly or, indeed, at all?”
He offered his wrist without replying, and she placed her hand on it and felt her knees threaten to turn to jelly as he smiled at her—a lazy, heavy-lidded smile that seemed to suggest an intimacy quite at variance with the public nature of their surroundings.
She was, she suspected, in the hands of an accomplished flirt.
“Watching Vincent waltz,” he said as they took their places facing each other, “was enough to make one w-weep. Would you not agree, Mrs. Keeping?”
Oh, dear, had he seen that tear?
“Because he danced clumsily?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Because he is in l-l-love,” he said, stumbling badly over the final word.
“You do not approve of romantic love, my lord?”
“In others it is really most affecting,” he said. “But perhaps we ought to talk about the weather after all.”
They did not do so, however, because the orchestra struck up a decisive chord at that moment. He slipped one hand behind her waist, while she set hers on his shoulder. He clasped her other hand in his and moved her immediately into a sweeping twirl that robbed her of breath and at the same time assured her that she was in the hands not just of a flirt, but of an accomplished dancer too. Even if she had not known the steps, it would not have mattered, she was convinced. It would have been quite impossible not to follow his lead.
Colors and light swirled about her. Music engulfed her, as did the sounds of voices and laughter. There were the myriad scents of flowers and candles and colognes. There was the exhilaration of twirling movement, herself a part of it and at the very heart of it.
And there was the man who twirled her about the floor and made no attempt to conduct any conversation, sensible or otherwise, but held her the correct distance from his body and gazed at her with those sleepy yet keen eyes of his, while she gazed back without ever thinking that perhaps she ought to look away or modestly lower her gaze—or find something to say.
He was gloriously handsome and so overpoweringly attractive that she was unable to muster any defensive wall against his allure. There was character in his face and cynicism and intensity and so much mystery that surely a lifetime of knowing him would not completely unmask him. There was power in him and ruthlessness and wit and charm and pain.
But all the awareness she felt was neither conscious nor verbal. She was caught up in a moment so intense that it felt like an eternity—or like the blink of an eye.
There was no further break in the music. When it ended, the set too was over. And the mocking gleam was back in his eyes, and there was the hint of mockery again too about the curl of his lip.
“Not s-sensible after all, then,” he said. “Only enchanting.”
Enchanting?
He returned her to Dora’s side, bowed gracefully, and moved off without another word.
And Agnes was in love.
Foolishly, deeply, head over heels, gloriously in love.
With a cynical, practiced, possibly dangerous flirt.
With a man she would never see again after tonight.
Which was really just as well.
Oh, yes, undoubtedly.
2
Five months later
It was a pleasant enough day for early March, a bit nippy, perhaps, but it was neither raining nor blowing, both of which it had been doing with great frequency and enthusiasm almost since Christmas, and the sun was shining. Flavian Arnott, Viscount Ponsonby, was happy not to be obliged to proceed over the English landscape in the stuffy confines of his traveling carriage, which was trundling along somewhere behind him with his valet and his baggage while he rode his horse.
It was going to feel odd to have the annual gathering of the Survivors’ Club at Middlebury Park, Vincent’s home in Gloucestershire, this year instead of at Penderris Hall, George, Duke of Stanbrook’s home in Cornwall, as usual. The seven of them had spent three years together at Penderris recovering from their various war wounds. When they left, they had agreed to meet there for a few weeks each year to renew their friendship and to share their progress. They had done just that, and only once, two years ago, had one of them been absent, Hugo’s father having died suddenly just as he was about to leave for Cornwall. Hugo had been sorely missed.
And this year they had been in danger of missing Vincent, Viscount Darleigh, who had declared all of five months ago that he would not leave Middlebury Park in March when Lady Darleigh was expecting her first confinement in late February. To be fair, the lady herself had tried to convince him not to miss something she knew meant a great deal to him. Flavian could vouch for that—he had been at Middlebury for the harvest ball at the time. When she had understood, though, that Vincent was quite adamant in his refusal to leave her, she had solved the impasse by suggesting that the Survivors come to them for their gathering instead so that Vincent would not have to miss it or leave her.
The remaining five of them had all been consulted, and they had all agreed to the change of venue, though it did feel strange. And there would be wives this year too—three of them, all acquired since their last gathering—to make things even stranger. But nothing in life ever stood still, did it? Sometimes that was regrettable.