“Only if I’ve danced every other dance until then,” Evie reminded, nervously fingering the blank dance card and tiny pencil attached to her wrist.
“You’ll have every man in that room clamoring for a dance,” Delia told her with a breezy assurance she could not share. “What do you think, Moore? Will the gentlemen think she’s the prettiest girl at the ball or not?”
“Well, I’m not the one to ask about gentlemen’s opinions, ma’am, really, since I’ve never had a suitor in my life until a few weeks ago. But,” she added, turning to Evie, “you do look ever so lovely.”
“Thank you, Liza. Tell me about your young man. Is he handsome?”
“Oh, yes, miss.” Liza’s round, currant-bun face lit up. “Hair like gold, he’s got, and the bluest eyes.”
“Ooh,” Delia and Evie said together, laughing when Liza blushed.
“As for your dance card, Evie, dear,” Delia said, “I’ll make a wager of my own tonight that it’ll be full before we’re even past the reception line. Speaking of which,” she added with a glance at the clock on the wall, “we’d best go down. The dancing starts in half an hour.”
With those words, a jolt of sudden panic twisted Evie’s insides, but she knew she couldn’t run away from this. It was time to face the slights and injuries of the past that had been hampering her for so long. Time to face them, conquer them, and lay them to rest. She’d known that from the moment she’d seen Arlena and Lenore smirking at her in Vivienne’s showroom.
Taking a deep breath, she turned from the mirror. “I’m ready,” she said and meant it. “No matter what happens.”
But a few minutes later, she was proved a liar, for when she stepped through the doors of the Savoy’s glittering Lancaster Ballroom, she was not the least bit ready for the mob of young men who surrounded her. And though Delia’s prediction didn’t quite come to pass, they weren’t in the reception line more than a few minutes before Evie had already penciled the names of Lord Ashvale, Edward Harbisher, Ronald Anstruther, and five other men she’d met during the past few weeks onto her dance card.
“Was I right?” Delia asked, leaning closer to peer at the list of names as they approached the front of the line where Max was greeting the arriving guests.
“Only half right,” Evie told her, laughing. “Eight dances so far. Heavens, what a relief to know I won’t be a wallflower.”
“You, a wallflower? What nonsense! As I told you before, Max knows a beautiful woman when he sees one.”
“I certainly do.”
Both she and Delia looked up to find Max standing in front of them, and at her first sight of him since that extraordinary afternoon at the house party, Evie’s heart skipped at least three beats.
He looked splendid, of course, in his white tie and tails, but that wasn’t what quickened her heartbeat. He was smiling, a knowing little smile that tipped the edges of his mouth and creased the corners of his eyes, but still, that wasn’t what made her throat go dry and her knees go wobbly. No, it was his eyes. When she looked into them, the tenderness and passion she saw in their midnight-blue depths sent the room spinning, as if she were in his arms and they were waltzing again at Westbourne House.
All I want is to kiss you and touch you.
His ardent words of two weeks ago came roaring back, so real that it was almost as if he’d said them again, here, just now.
“But then,” he went on, stepping closer to her as Delia moved past him, “I’m not sure beautiful is the way I’d describe you.”
“No?” She gave a shaky laugh. “What word would you use then?”
His lashes lowered as he looked down, then lifted as he met her gaze. “Incomparable.”
Joy rose up inside her, an exhilarating, dizzying wave of joy, and she laughed again. “Let’s hope at least eight more men share your view and ask me to dance. I dearly want to win that bet.”
“Do you, now?” he drawled. “And to think, two months ago, you laughed at me and told me I was—How did you put it? Blind as a bat?”
She had said that, she realized, remembering it. She’d scoffed at Max’s contention that she could be transformed into a beauty, but now, looking into his eyes full of longing, hearing his passionate words of two weeks ago echo in her head, her lips tingling as she remembered his kiss and his touch, she knew it didn’t matter if anyone else in this room thought she was a beauty or as homely as a mud fence. For the first time in her life, shefeltbeautiful, and that wasn’t because of clothes or jewels or a dance card full of names. No, she felt beautiful because of the yearning she saw in one man’s eyes.
***
The ball was nearly over. Many guests had already departed, and the last waltz was minutes away. Evie had danced every dance, and though the shock of Freddie and the Banforth brothers was satisfying indeed, it was nothing compared to the satisfaction Max felt knowing that Evie could put the designation of wallflower behind her for good. Even the fact that she was currently bestowing that dizzying smile of hers on Edward Harbisher rather than on him could not dampen his pleasure at her success.
“Well, Duke,” Timothy Banforth said beside him as he watched Evie on the ballroom floor with Harbisher, “only one more dance, and you’ll have won.”
That wasn’t going to be the outcome, but Max didn’t say so. He merely smiled.
“We never thought you’d do it,” Thomas Banforth said from his other side.
“I did nothing,” Max said, without taking his eyes from Evie. “Like a jewel, all she needed was the proper setting in order to shine. I tried to tell you that.”
