“Release me. He's asking her to dance.”
She grasped him more tightly. “She can survive the dance. Or she can survive rejecting his offer. Let her do it. Let her stand strong. As long as she does not leave this room with him, let her be strong.”
His hand became a fist, and she did not think he could speak. Jaw too tight, teeth gritting to sand. And just when it looked like Lady Felicity might snap her fan and give Lord Bransley the cut direct, she let the man lead her out to the dance floor.
“Now what?” the duke hissed, his body still taut and ready. Apparently onecouldspeak between gritted teeth.
“We watch. Felicity is strong enough to survive this.” She loosened her hold.
And the rogue took advantage, slipped away just enough to take her arm.
And drag her toward the dance floor.
“Clearford,” she hissed. “What are you doing?”
“I would think that obvious.”
The quartet strummed to life, a waltz in the wobbly string notes. Awaltz, which meant his hand low on her back and his other holding hers. He took those spots on her body as if he owned them, as if he’d done it already time after time, and he swept her into the dancing crowd, and into the music, and into the candlelight sparking above.
For several rotations, she did not place her hand on his shoulder where it belonged. It hoverednearhis shoulder. And he did not seem to notice because he watched his sister and Bransley waltzing circles around the ballroom, their gazes intent on one another, as if everything else had fallen away.
“What do you think he's saying?” Samuel asked. He looked at Emma, and his ferocity melted, the angles of his face softening as he chuckled. “Have you never waltzed before?” His gaze flicked to her hovering hand.
“I have. Plenty of times.”
He nodded toward his shoulder. “Then you must have forgotten this detail.”
“I—” She spoke as she let her hand fall through space and settle on the hard, warm muscle of his shoulder. After that, no words to be found, and the crushed, frantic whispering world of the ballroom fell away. For several rotations, they simply danced. Moving in sync, one two three, one two three, circling and skirts and candlelight magnified off chandeliers, sparkling over the diamonds littering women's throats.
One two three, one two three—first footsteps and then breaths and then the count of hearts beating together.
One two three, and she could not live like this, floating and free in the arms of a man not meant for her. She had a job to do.
She wrenched herself out of the air, planted her slippers firmly on the dance floor, and turned her attention away from the muscular shoulder beneath her hand and to the young lady waltzing across the room. Lady Felicity was poised and calm and said, with only the tilt of her chin, that her dance partner bothered her not.
“See,” Emma said, “Felicity is doing fine. She does not appear to be broken or even close to it.”
“She does seem strong.” His hand on her back flinched. “Perhaps she does not need me.” He shook his head. “Of courseshe does not need me. She neededyou, that much is clear. It is why I have solicited your help.Youare my one good decision.”
Emma almost stumbled right there in the middle of the other dancers as he swooped her around a turn, his gaze so sincere, so focused. His one good decision? If he did not stop saying such things, he would be her one bad decision, the decision that ended all her hard work, all her goals unraveling like his cravat from his neck yesterday.
Where had this need come from, where this desperation?
She swallowed it whole, shoved it down, locked it up, and looked anywhere but at him. There—Felicity’s suitors A much easier thing to study as they watched Lady Felicity, jaws growing firmer with determination or perhaps…
“Jealousy,” Emma said. “I think your sister is attempting to make her suitors jealous by dancing with Lord Bransley.”
“Is it possible?” Clearford’s question resonated with a tone of objective curiosity she'd begun to recognize in his voice anytime they talked about courtship. “I thought, once, jealousy was a precursor to a fine match. That it could be used to successfully encourage a lady’s affections for the fellow courting her. But as with all my former observations, I have abandoned it.”
“No. I think you were right to some extent. Jealousy can make a man, or a woman, feel desperate, as if the thing they want most is out of their reach. But you'll see it is Felicity wielding this particular weapon and not the gentleman. Her suitors might have tried the same strategy earlier this evening by dancing with other ladies. I asked her, though, if she felt anything as she watched them dance. She did not.”
“Fascinating. Which do you think is more effective—male jealousy or female jealousy? In other words, who wields this particular weapon more successfully?”
“I cannot say.”
After several moments of thought, he said, “The lady, I think, can wield it most devastatingly.”
“Why?”
