Chapter Nine
Anthony trailed along behind Charity as she meandered down the corridor, peeking into room after room, holding the lamp she’d filched from his desk aloft to see what lay within. “What in the world are you doing?” he asked, after the fourth room failed to meet with her approval and she shut the door with a decisive click.
“Seeking a suitable room,” she said as she wandered on. “Dancing requires space, you know. Your study is not quite the thing for it.”
“You might have asked if I knew of such a room.”
“I might have, but then I would have had to surrender such a perfect opportunity to be nosy about it.” She flashed a cheeky smile over her shoulder as she pushed open a new door and at last sighed, “Ah. Perfect. A music room.”
“Do you play?” he asked as she beckoned him within.
“Not a note,” she said as she placed the lamp upon a small table near the door. “I never had occasion to learn. My father did not believe much in educating women, especially with such frivolities. I remain perpetually surprised he allowed us even to learn to read.”
And yet for all that, she was clearly an intelligent woman. What she lacked in the way of any formal education, she must have made up for by becoming self-taught. “But you dance,” he said.
“Oh, yes.” Charity cast open the heavy curtains shielding the windows, and a thick stream of moonlight poured into the room, limning the floor in silver. “Of course, I am not frequently invited toTonevents—”
“But you are infrequentlyinvited?”
“Sometimes. To events held by those who are either secure enough in their positions within society to ignore whatever censure they might receive from issuing an invitation to me, or by those who simply do not care what propriety demands of them.” Carefully she edged a chair away, clearing the space left in the center of the room further. “But gentlemen do wishto show off their mistresses on occasion, and there are events designed for them to do so. Outside ofTonsociety, of course, but no less extravagant.”
“Ah,” he said. “Cyprians’ balls.”
“Just so. Would you move that chair, there, up against the wall?” She indicated the object with a tilt of her head. “We’ll need the space.”
“To dance? But there’s no music.” Nonetheless, Anthony did as she had directed, and caught up the chair by its arms, positioning it well away.
“Would you care to ask one of your sisters-in-law to play for us? Or perhaps your mother?” Charity inquired archly.
He tried to imagine for a moment summoning his mother to play the pianoforte as he danced with his courtesan wife. Or his sisters-in-law. The only image produced in his mind was the abrupt slamming of a door in his face. “Best not,” he admitted with a sigh as she came up upon his left side once more.
It occurred to Anthony rather suddenly that on the few occasions on which they had met, she had never approached him from the right. Perhaps she simply knew instinctively that a man rendered half-blind would not appreciate someone approaching from that side. God knew he’d snapped at nearly everyone who had come even into the periphery of his life for it at one time or another—but not Charity. Because she had never so offended.
“A waltz, I think,” she said as she caught up his hand and dragged him toward the center of the room. “Waltzes are simple—and by far the most important.”
“How so?”
“Difficult to have a private conversation during a quadrille. If you wish to win a lady’s heart, you’ll have to steal what scant few public moments you may to charm her. And to flirt.” The glint of those white teeth in the moonlight. Cheeky. Mischievous. Charming.
“I haven’t got the slightest idea of how to be charming,” he said, with no small amount of truculence. Charity seemed to him to be effortlessly charming, and he didn’t think she was even attempting to affect it. Could one learna charm that seemed so natural? “And dancing…” It was an activity fraught with peril for someone missing half his sight. “I’m not certain I can lead. My perception of depth, of distance—they are less than precise. I can no longer accurately judge them as once I might have done. I’m liable to bump into somebody.”
A light, tinkling laugh. “If you do, you must simply frown at the gentleman in question.Wordlessly suggest that the error is his.”
“And if I am clumsy enough to bump into a lady?”
“My answer remains the same. The fault for a misstep upon a dance floor never belongs to a lady; it is always the gentleman who is to blame. So you must direct it toward her dance partner.” Her slender, elegant fingers found his. Cool and soft, they held his hand with gentle pressure. “You’ve already learned dancing,” she said. “You’ll pick it up again quickly, I’m certain. When you’re ready.”
She thought he could do this, and so Anthony attempted to believe her. There was a rhythm to a dance, and it might’ve been a different one to what he had learned in the army, but he’d had the sound of the drums in his head for years and years already. That remembered beat resounding in his head had threatened to drive him mad long after he’d sold his commission. Perhaps, one day, he might trade it for a melody instead. Trade the groans and wheezes of the sick and the dying for a sparkle of scintillating laughter. Trade the stench of trench foot and the odor of illness for the sweet floral fragrance of perfume.
He took a step, and Charity moved with him in a perfect glide. “Good,” she said, and there was the warmth of approval in her voice. “Again. Turn when I squeeze your arm.”
Another step, and another, and if he was clumsy in the beginning, her grace accommodated his first few awkward steps. And then it grew a bit easier—another few steps, and she squeezed his arm. A turn, her skirts swishing across the floor as she moved with him. Her dark hair glowed silver with the brief touch of the moonlight spilling through the window, and in the silence of the room there was only the rustle of her skirts and the sound of their footsteps.
“There,” she said, sounding extremely pleased with herself. “You see? I told you so.”
She said it with the self-satisfaction of a woman who loved nothing better than being proved correct. “Hush,” he said. “I’m concentrating.” That gown she was wearing was a lovely red silk, no doubt expensive as sin and impossibly fragile. If he happened to make a misstep and tread upon the hem, he feared he’d rip the delicate fabric straight from her body.
Another squeeze of his arm. He led her through another turn, wondering how she had so easily judged the size of the room while dancing, when he struggled only to hold the steps in his mind and to pair them with the rhythm of the dance. It felt impossible to split his attention even so much as to avoid running them straight into a wall—much less to make conversation. But shedid it ably enough, accommodating for his lacking depth-perception whenever she judged the distance to the closest obstacle too near. Just the lightest pressure of her fingers, and he knew to turn them away.
