“It is,” he said. “He is quite right.”
He had never danced with her like this before. Never held her. Her slim body was warm and supple beneath his hand. Charlie was a fortunate man.
He recalled his first meeting with Mrs. Simpson in Spain, and his surprise at her youth and beauty and elegance. She was not at all the type of woman he would have expected to be married to the rough-mannered and bighearted Charlie Simpson.
And yet there could be no doubt about the fact that her world revolved about her husband. His respect for her had grown with the years. He would never forget coming upon her after one vicious skirmish in Spain when all was still confusion on the battlefield. He had suffered a flesh wound in the arm and must have looked unusually pale as he staggered back from the front toward her tent, the first familiar landmark he had seen. Her hands had gone to her mouth, her eyes had grown round with horror, and she had begun to wail so that he had forgotten his own pain for a moment.
As it turned out, she had noticed only the paleness of his set face and had assumed that he was bringing her bad news. Her manner had changed instantly when she realized her mistake, and calm, steady hands had soon been easing his coat from him and cutting away his blood-soaked shirtsleeve and cleansing and dressing his wound. But she had cried again an hour later when Charlie had appeared, tattered and incredibly dirty, but miraculously unhurt. And she had hurled herself against him and wrapped her arms around his neck and murmured his name at least a dozen times.
He could feel envious of his married friend at such moments.
“Do you think Charlie is watching and wishing he were in my place?” he asked her, looking down into her eyes and grinning. He spun her around a corner of the floor until she laughed up at him with delight.
And then another twirling couple collided with her from behind and sent her careering against him. His arms came tightly about her to steady her. Her face was still turned up to his.
Probably no more than a second passed while he became aware of her slim and shapely feminine form pressed to him, and found himself looking directly into her wide gray eyes and down to her parted lips. He was surrounded by the fragrance of her hair, of which he had been vaguely aware since they had started dancing.
She felt him with every part of her, from her shoulders to her knees. All hard masculine muscularity. She felt suffocated by his cologne, mesmerized by his green eyes, only inches from her own.
She felt herself blush hotly.
“So sorry. Clumsy of me!” a genial giant called over his shoulder as he maneuvered his partner into the throng of dancers again.
Lord Eden set firm hands on her shoulders as he stepped back from her. “How careless of me not to foresee that,” he said. “Are you hurt, ma’am?”
“Not at all,” she said, brushing her hands over her skirt and smiling at his chin. “Please forgive me.”
“For allowing yourself to be tossed by an ox?” he said. “I would be tempted to slap my glove in his face if he did not look as if he were enjoying himself so vastly. Oh, dear, it has happened again to another unfortunate couple. I shall be sure to keep half a ballroom between him and us for the rest of the set, ma’am, I do assure you.”
She laughed and placed her left hand on his shoulder again. “Perhaps instead of challenging him to a duel, you should hang bells around his neck, my lord,” she said, “so that everyone will know that he is coming.”
He felt uncomfortable. How unforgivably clumsy of him to have allowed her such embarrassment. He forced himself to laugh back. “And I thought you did not have a malicious bone in your body, Mrs. Simpson,” he said. “For shame, ma’am.”
She found it very hard to look up into his eyes. He suddenly seemed very large indeed, and very close to her. She felt more breathless than the exercise of dancing would account for. How unspeakably embarrassing!
Would the music never end?
They smiled and talked on.
THE COUNTESS OF AMBERLEY was drawing a brush absently through her hair and regarding her husband in the mirror. He was standing beside her stool, his arms folded.
“Do you think Madeline will marry Colonel Huxtable?” she asked. “He seems a very pleasant man, don’t you think, although she has known him for only a few weeks.”
“I suppose he will have to make her an offer before the question becomes relevant,” the earl said, taking one of her curls between his finger and thumb.
“Of course he will make her an offer,” she said, smiling at him. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“Then I would have to guess that she will say no,” he said. “Doesn’t she say that to everyone?”
She sighed. “Perhaps she is looking too hard for love,” she said. “Perhaps she would grow into love if she would only give herself a chance to get to know some eligible gentleman.”
“Like we did?” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed, “like we did. We had no thought of loving each other when we became betrothed, did we?”
“Oh,” he said, “I had every thought of loving you, Alex. The betrothal might have been largely forced upon me, but I had every intention when I contracted it of coming to love you. And it did not take long.”
She reached back and touched his hand with her free one. “Dominic likes Miss Simpson,” she said. “She is very sweet. I like her. But is she a little young for him, Edmund?”
“There are eight years between you and me,” he said. “Are you too young for me?”
“No,” she said. “I did not mean just in years. Oh, never mind. They have only recently met. Edmund, do you know what that horrid Maisie Hardcastle told me?”
“Can’t imagine,” he said, lowering his head and nuzzling her earlobe. “Some shocking scandal, doubtless.”
“I gave her no encouragement whatsoever,” she said, “and tried my best not even to listen. But she would insist that it was her duty to tell me so that I might protect Madeline’s reputation.”
The earl snorted. “Did she, indeed?” he said. “Are you ready for bed, Alex? If we don’t go there soon, Caroline is going to be up, hungry as a bear, ready to start the day.”
She got to her feet and turned into his arms. “She said that Mrs. Simpson is the daughter of the Countess of Harrowby,” she said. “Do you know her?”
“I know of her,” he said, undoing the top button of her nightgown and moving his hands across her shoulders beneath it. “I know poor old Harrowby, of course. An alcoholic wreck, I’m afraid.”
“Maisie made a point of saying that she did not say that Mrs. Simpson was the daughter of the Earl of Harrowby,” she said.
“Quite likely, I’m afraid,” the earl said, undoing the second and third buttons of her nightgown so that he could open it back over her shoulders. “The lady has something of a spicy reputation.”
“Poor Mrs. Simpson,” she said. “Maisie will slaughter her character if she can, you know.”
“I believe she tried with you once, my love,” he said. “But I thwarted her by marrying you.”
“Thank you,” she said crossly. “We all know that without your generosity my reputation would have been in shreds forevermore. And do take that grin off your face.”
“I love you when you are prickly,” he said. “And you know very well that you married me eventually quite of your own free will. Though Christopher might have found himself in a nasty situation if you had not.”
“Edmund,” she said, catching at his wrists, “don’t do that until we are lying down, please. You know it always makes me weak at the knees.”
“Easily remedied, my love,” he said, stooping down and swinging her up into his arms.
ELLEN WAS LYING beside her husband, his arm beneath her head, as usual.
“You would not like to come?” she asked. “Tomorrow is a free day for you, Charlie, and the forest is said to be a beautiful place.”
“I would as soon stay at home, lass,” he said, “unless you really want me to come. Is it asking too much to expect you to go about everywhere with Jennifer? I am very selfish, aren’t I? I’ll come, then. I’ll come with you, Ellen.”