“May I have the pleasure of this dance?” Sebastian bowed as he stared into her cleavage. Well, the pleasure was hers, really. On the ballroom floor, the women lined up on one side and the men on the other. For Chloe, one of the most elegant and joyous parts of the dance was this, the beginning, the anticipation, when the line of women faced the line of men and bowed and curtsied simultaneously.
Chloe looked forward to talking with Sebastian. Regency dancing offered a rare opportunity for a couple to speak privately.
Sebastian’s black jacket was so beautifully tailored that Chloe did all she could do to keep herself from hanging on to his coattails. But she had to keep her hands to her sides now and during most of the dance. As with all Regency dancing, touching was minimal.
The orchestra struck up the first chords of “Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot,” the very song that Mr. Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennet danced to in the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. They turned by right hands, touching for the second time, their hands low, each of their eyes locked into the other’s. They turned by left hands and she felt the heat surge between them, but then again it was a summer night, there was no air-conditioning, and there had to be sixty some dancers on the floor. Despite the heat, it was a fantasy of hers come to life. She was dancing to “Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot” in a gown, in a ballroom, in England, with the most attractive, most mysterious, and richest man in the room! She talked about the dance, but he didn’t reply. She wondered if he was in one of his brooding moods, which she found both sexy and exasperating.
She smirked. “It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Wrightman. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples.”
He smiled. They came together and they parted, and doubt crackled through her. She almost forgot to cross and cast down the line. Had he really caught the Austen reference she’d just made? She wasn’t sure.
When they met again, she watched him as if he were a science experiment about to bubble over. He seemed to be concentrating on the figures, counting his steps. He looked so preoccupied that Chloe began to doubt that he’d even heard her Austen reference.
Toward the end of the dance, at the point where they faced, met, and led up, Chloe finally broke the silence. “I want to thank you for the apology you left about our outing, but really, I’m the one that should apologize.”
He looked straight at her, and not at his feet, with his intense black eyes. “I’m so glad you brought that up. I can only say I wasn’t myself—”
“Because of laudanum I put into your lemonade,” she blurted. “It was all my fault!”
He looked incredulous. “You put what into my lemonade?”
“Laudanum. I gave it to you for your toothache.”
Now he looked confused.
“It’s some sort of a painkiller. I didn’t give you much, but it was enough to push you over the edge, I guess.”
“I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell me.”
She sighed. “It’s complicated.” There was no winning this one. She was wrong for not telling him and wrong for being alone with Henry to get the medicine in the first place. He looked deep into her eyes, and she felt herself falling down that rabbit hole again.
She didn’t want to disappoint him—but she needed to win the money. For some reason, though, she kept forgetting about the money. No doubt about it, her priorities had changed. She was actually putting Sebastian first and the prize money second.
Luckily, the dance was over. He bowed, and when she looked up from her curtsy, she finally saw Henry. He was pacing in front of a floor-to-ceiling window like a caged tiger. The rush of air behind him blew out candles as he walked and an annoyed-looking servant had to relight them in his wake.
“Can I interest you in some negus, Miss Parker?” Sebastian asked. He slid his arm in hers and guided her away from Henry, toward the top of the ballroom, where the orchestra sat behind the topiaries. The lively English reel they were currently playing grew louder as they approached, and they couldn’t hear each other talk, so there was no point in saying anything. Chloe linked her arm in his as they headed toward the refreshment tables in the conservatory, where a crush of people gathered under palm trees in huge ceramic pots.
Just as they were about to cross into the room, where the wine that Chloe was craving awaited them, Grace and her chaperone suddenly appeared, barricading the entry.
“I’ve been looking all over for you.” Lady Martha scolded Chloe like a child. “A girl is not allowed to be alone at a ball. This could be reason enough to have you sent back home.” She put an indignant hand on her hip.
“I’m not alone,” Chloe answered her coolly. “I’m with Lady Anne Wrightman.”
Grace and Lady Martha looked at each other. Lady Martha looked back at Chloe. “Lady Anne would not associate with the likes of—”
“Miss Parker is with me.” Lady Anne—aka “Cook”—appeared as if magically conjured, and linked her arm in Chloe’s.
Clearly suppressing their frustration, Grace and her chaperone curtsied.
Sebastian took Lady Anne’s hand, and he kissed it. “How nice to see you again.”
Lady Anne smiled at him, but turned to Grace’s chaperone. “I need to go back to Bridesbridge soon, and at that time I will return Miss Parker to you.”
“Very well.” Grace and Lady Martha curtsied again to Lady Anne and made their way back to the ballroom. Chloe had to laugh at the sight of their fawning behavior toward someone whom, when she was merely known as “Cook,” they wouldn’t have deigned to look at.
Sebastian brought Chloe and her companion a goblet of negus.
Just as Chloe raised the goblet to her lips, Lady Anne turned toward the ballroom. “I need to sit down. Let’s go.” She took Chloe by the arm and Chloe, who didn’t even get to taste her drink, handed it to Sebastian, who downed her glass as well as his own.
When Lady Anne found a seat, Chloe found that Sebastian had disappeared, and as she smoothed the bottom of her gown to sit, she saw both Sebastian and Henry on the dance floor. Sebastian was dancing “Upon a Summer’s Day” with Grace and Henry was paired with someone equally beautiful and intelligent looking, probably the doctor from London he’d been fixed up with.
Chloe tapped her fan in the palm of her gloved hand. She watched the red-haired London doctor, who had no doubt showered, brushed her teeth, and put on real makeup today. But more than her looks, Chloe watched the way she and Henry talked and nodded and laughed through the dance. Sebastian and Grace just stared at each other.
Chloe stood, sat again, and smiled a zigzag smile at Lady Anne, who patted Chloe on the knee.
The dancers formed a circle for “Sellenger’s Round.” They circled to the left, then to the right. Sebastian and Henry and their respective partners, like distant planets, traveled in an orbit far, far removed from Chloe’s universe.
She didn’t even belong as a guest in this ballroom. How could she have dreamed of being the mistress of an estate like this? She didn’t know how to care for two-hundred-year-old painted ceilings or gold chandeliers that hung fifty feet off the ground. How did you clean two-story floor-to-ceiling silk draperies anyway?
She felt herself shudder and tried to watch Sebastian, but her eyes kept gravitating toward Henry.
“Henry really knows these dances,” said Lady Anne.
Chloe agreed. He moved through the dances with such ease. His doctor friend kept screwing up, but somehow he corrected her and made it look like she knew what she was doing. Fascinating as it was to watch just how he did this, Chloe just couldn’t watch him arm in arm with another woman. She had to turn away.
Finally the dancers formed a circle again, and everyone’s backsides swirled in front of Chloe, including that of the blue-gowned London doctor.