“I trust you enjoyed it,” he said. “You have certainly had a lovely day after all the rain of the past week. Mrs. Dean has informed me that you will be at Lady Ingersoll’s ball tomorrow evening, and she has kindly granted me permission to solicit your hand for a set of dances there.”
“Oh.” Her eyes devoured him.
“Will you waltz with me?”
“Oh,” she said again, less happily. “No, not the waltz, I am afraid. I have not yet been granted permission.”
“Permission?” He frowned. “That archaic social law is still in force, is it? Would you waltz with me if you were permitted?”
“But I am not, alas,” she told him. “I have been out for only—”
He set a finger briefly over her lips and winked slowly at her. For a moment he looked like the old roguish Julian who had so attracted her when she was sixteen.
“I said if,” he reminded her. “If you were allowed to waltz, would you waltz with me?”
“For all the rest of my life,” she said.
And for a moment there was that intense look in his eyes before he smiled and bowed again with graceful formality.
“I shall avail myself of the permission of your mother, then, Miss Dean,” he said, “and the tacit permission of your father and ask for a dance tomorrow evening. I beg you to reserve a set for me.”
“I shall certainly do so, sir,” she promised him.
“Good day to you, then, Miss Dean.”
And he was gone.
Her father was coming down the stairs even as the butler closed the door behind him.
“You saw Crabbe, then, did you?” he asked as she hurried toward him to kiss his cheek. “I might have considered his visit the height of impertinence if we had not seen him at Middlebury Park. He seems to have grown into a decent young man after all. Your mama gave him permission to dance with you at the Ingersoll ball—but only if you wish to dance with him.”
“I have already said I will, Papa,” she said. “I do not mind at all—even if he did cause me two days of unutterable boredom in my room two years ago.”
He actually chuckled, and she laughed with him.
“You had a good time at the picnic?” he asked. “But I do not need to ask, do I? You have a glow on your cheeks and a sparkle in your eyes. Mendelhall, is it? Well, if he chooses to call on me, I shall listen to what he has to say and allow him to pay his addresses to you if I am satisfied with what I hear.”
He continued on his way to the library, and Philippa ran upstairs to dispose of her bonnet and parasol.
She was going to dance tomorrow night with Julian.
If only she could waltz with him.
But she must not be greedy.
“You have been in town scarcely two days, Julian,” Lady Charles Crabbe said to her son at dinner that same evening, “yet you have already conceived a tendre for a young lady making her come-out this year?”
She was looking at him in some surprise, her eyebrows raised, her knife and fork suspended above her plate.
“The tendre was conceived two years ago, Mother,” he confessed. “In Bath. When I stayed for a while with my aunt and uncle, if you remember. Miss Dean is Cousin Barbara’s friend.”
“But how old was she?” his mother asked faintly.
“Sixteen,” he said. “She is eighteen now.”
“Sixteen?” She set down her cutlery very carefully across her plate.
“I have been waiting for her to grow up,” he explained.
She contemplated her plate for a while, a slight frown between her brows.
“I do remember that time,” she said. “You were rusticating in Bath. You were a severe disappointment to me. I had hoped for a son who was different from his father. And then suddenly you were different and have remained different. Is there some connection here, Julian? Was it not the death of your father, after all, that caused the change? Was it this—girl?”
“Yes,” he said. “Philippa Dean. A young lady now. I fell in love with her when she was but a girl, and I have remained in love with her.”
“Yet I am now hearing about her for the first time,” she said, transferring her gaze to his face, “even though she has had such a startling and positive influence upon your life.”
“She was too young to be courted,” he explained to her. “But no longer. And she means everything in the world to me.”
She continued to gaze at him in some amazement.
“I am delighted, of course,” she said. “At least, I believe I am. I have feared that you were driven and lonely, Julian, that you would neglect your personal need for love and companionship. Well, I would declare myself speechless if I were not sitting here talking. And tomorrow evening I will meet this paragon who has held your heart for two years. And that brings us back to your original question. Yes, I am acquainted with more than one of the patronesses of Almack’s, though none of them are my bosom friends. Lady Jersey is probably the most amiable and the most approachable. I shall see what I can do, Julian. I’ll call on her tomorrow afternoon, though if I find her at home it will be a miracle.”
“Thank you,” he said as she picked up her knife and fork again and resumed her meal. “You will like her, Mother, I promise you.”
“Lady Jersey?” she said. “I do not like her above half, you know, but for your sake …”
He laughed, and her eyes twinkled at him.