The violins scratched the warning that the minuet was about to begin, and Henry threaded through the crowd a step ahead of Frances. The crush was, if anything, intensifying as the polite world pressed against the edges of the immense room to clear a large oblong for dancing. Couple after couple fought free from the crowd and took the floor, waiting for the guest of honor so they might begin the music.
At the edge of the crowd, Henry and Frances passed a tall figure that shot out an arm to arrest Henry’s progress. “Middlebrook,” said a silky voice.
Henry halted and turned his head slowly. “Lord Wadsworth. Ah, Caro. You intend to dance together?”
Caroline stood at Wadsworth’s side, wearing her favorite ballroom smile. Frances recognized the expression, useful for crowded rooms in which Caroline wished to appear friendly but not inviting.
“As you see,” Frances said to her cousin, “we are meeting on the dance floor, just as you ordered in that dictatorial way.”
“I’m delighted by your obedience,” Caroline answered. “Good girl, Frannie.”
“I hope you don’t intend to be a good girl, Caro,” Wadsworth said in the oily voice that Frances had come to mistrust. “What pleasure would there be in that?”
“I’m always a pleasure to be around, Wadsworth. Whether I behave myself or not. But in a ballroom, I rather think I shall behave myself. Don’t you?” Her fan hung from its loop at her wrist, and she shook it, setting it to swinging.
The viscount’s gray eyes widened just a bit, and Frances guessed that he was remembering a sharp rap on the hand.
“If you must, Caro,” he replied with a tight smile. “Middlebrook, congratulations on your ball. I hadn’t realized you’d be able to dance at all, considering the extent of your injury. I’m happy to be wrong. I know you’d be devastated not to be able to take part in society events anymore.”
“I’m happy when you’re wrong too,” Henry said in a disinterested voice. Through the sleeve of his coat, Frances could feel the tension in his left arm. The tendons in his forearm were corded, the muscles clenched.
Wadsworth squeezed his eyes in a feline blink. “Caro, shall we take the floor over here? We must give Middlebrook and his partner room to show us what they are capable of.”
He turned on his heel then, and Caroline shrugged and waggled her fan at Frances as they stood in formation for the minuet.
Henry stood still for an instant, then drew in a deep breath. His eyes found Frances’s. “Well. Shall we?”
He took her hand in his, warm through their gloves, and drew her into the center of the ballroom. More than ever, Frances felt conspicuous and odd, wondering whether Henry had wanted to be here with her or whether she was just a happenstance.
She pressed her mouth into the shape of a smile as he inclined his head, released her hand, and a bright string arpeggio signaled the beginning of the minuet.
And Henry showed her and Wadsworth, and everyone else, exactly what he was capable of. Though his right arm hung still at his side, not rising gracefully with the dance, his steps were as light and sure as if his feet had never left a ballroom to march heavily through a foreign country. She followed his lead, their feet crossing, their legs bending, turning in a large slow circle against the genteel pulse of the instruments.
Frances noticed every detail, as though the scene was drawn in her mind in indelible inks and colored with vivid paints. They wound through the other dancers, turning counterclockwise and catching their left hands together at the level of their eyes. Connecting with other couples, then breaking free to twirl and cross again. A tangle being combed into order. A regimented display. After Wadsworth’s veiled taunts, this seemed a new type of march to war, only instead of the punishing swiftness of the infantry’s wheeling step, they were wheeling slow about a giant circle. Sinking down in the bouree step, rising again in a half coupee, allowing everyone sitting on benches to have a look at them. That was what this ball was about—and this dance. Henry had something to prove to London society, and he was proving it.
At least, he would have with a proper partner.
A quick stab of panic tangled Frances’s feet as they slid past one another. She wasn’t suited to this extravagant dress, to a dance in the center of this ballroom. She had relinquished that right long ago. And she was definitely not suited for a dance with Henry, who wanted to court Caroline, who sought Frances only because she stood at Caroline’s side.
All of this in an unbearable instant. But the minuet was forgiving; it was old-fashioned, winding and slow and precise, and Henry had pivoted with her, hiding her stumble with smooth grace.
He would be much-desired after this night. If he stayed in Town, he could have almost anyone he wanted.
“Thank you for dancing with me,” Frances said dutifully to Henry when next she drew near him.
His eyes flicked over her face. “I am delighted to be dancing with you.”
“And I am delighted by your manners,” Frances said. “It’s kind of you to pretend you wanted this, considering Lady Tallant invited us to dance together before you got the chance.”
He tilted his head a little. “I might have asked you eventually.”
She almost missed another step. “Might have? Eventually? Any more of this praise and I shall swoon.”
His mouth pinched at the corners. “All right, I would have. I told you I needed to speak with you.” He stepped, stepped through the minuet, ever tracing a slow path with his feet. Pulling away, then turning back.
“Please do, then. The suspense is unbearable.” She spoke the truth so lightly that he was sure to assume she was teasing.
“It has to do with the letters.”
She had been correct, then. His expression looked as pained as she felt. “Frances, I haven’t received any more letters. I can only assume Caro has decided she doesn’t want…”
His head tilted to the right, just the smallest gesture toward his stiffened arm. His step flattened into a heavy tread. Anyone else watching might have thought the subtle shift only a part of the dance, but Frances hoarded his every movement with eyes long trained to be watchful.
Step carefully, Frances. Step, step, step. She caught his hand again and they twirled in a deliberate circle. She did not have much time to reply; surely the dance was almost done.
“No one would care for your injury,” she said. “That is, they would not hold it against you. It does not change who you truly are.”
His jaw clenched, and a dented smile—scarcely a decent attempt at the expression—flashed across his face. “Sometimes I think no woman will ever hold anything against me again.”
No, no, he could not think so.
But it was too late for protests; the dance was over. They stilled, facing each other, as the final notes wavered into silence. Applause was distant in Frances’s ears; the shapes of other dancers were dim shadows at the edges of her vision. The only clear thing was Henry, standing before her, looking at her with those desolate eyes. A battlefield with all the soldiers gone. No more fighting.
But he would fight again; she knew that. He could not be held back for long. He would leave her in another instant and find Caroline, or someone else, and Frances would be nothing but a fool in a borrowed gown.
She took a deep breath and took a chance.
“Come with me,” Frances said, full of a heat that had nothing to do with the press of the crowd. “There is something I must tell you.”
Nine
The bronze eagle that spread its wings across the sky-dark ceiling of the Blue Room, clutching a chandelier in its claws, had overseen many an assignation. The wink of its eye and the sardonic curve of its beak seemed to approve of such clandestine activities.