"It wasn't."
"The point was to encourage my dolt of a brother to get out of his comfort zone and socialise with some of the lovely ladies in our county, particularly your sister. Your sister, by the way, is sitting over there with her friends as though she hasn't a care in the world, and my brother is leaning against the wall alone, refusing to socialise."
Brody and Emelia watched as an older woman and her younger daughter walked up to Montgomery. From the look of it, his answers were curt and his body language discouraging. In a few moments, the two women had walked on.
"See?" Brody sighed. "I can only work with what I'm given."
"Then go over there and tell him to dance," Emelia said with a light laugh. "You're his brother, after all. You should just be direct with him and tell him how it’s perceived when the ballroom is full of unasked women and the men are scarce."
"I was thinking…" Brody said slowly, adopting the syrupy sweet tone he used with Emelia whenever he wanted something, "…that it might be better received coming from you."
"I can't imagine why."
"A woman is always a more sympathetic figure. And he never listens to me."
"Brody."
"Please?"
Emelia frowned, but relented. "Alright, but after all this I think you owe me something special. Maybe a prank on my worst enemy, or a trip to the seaside. Hannah was talking about that a few weeks ago."
"Salt in Michelle's tea, then," Brody said with a twinkle in his eye.
Emelia took a deep breath and made her way across the dance floor to Montgomery's side. He looked up when she approached and stood up away from the wall where he'd been leaning. She saw, now that she was closer, that he'd actually dressed nicely for this event in a fine tailored coat and trousers, with a watch hanging from the fob in his coat pocket.
"Emelia," he said simply, giving a little bow as she drew near. "Are you enjoying your evening?"
"I am," she answered with a slight smile, "but I'm more interested in whether or not you are enjoying your evening."
"Oh, you know," he said drily. "Sparkling conversation; inspiring dance partners."
She came and stood beside him. "Both of those things would be more believable, Dr. Shaw, if you had either talked to someone or danced with even a single young woman."
A smile played at the corner of his lips. "Miss Emelia, have you been watching me closely all evening?"
"I only came over to tell you that there is a bevy of young ladies who would be happy to have a chance at a dance with a handsome doctor such as yourself, and instead you are holding yourself aloof." Emelia turned and waved at a group of girls, specifically her sister. Hannah was alone, now, the other ladies in her company having all been called away to the dance floor, and she looked a pretty picture in her white gown and dark curls. "Perhaps you could go across the floor and ask one of those ladies to dance," she said. He would have to be blind to not notice Hannah.
"Why would I ask one of them to dance?" Montgomery asked coyly, in a tone that made Emelia turn and look up at him. "I have one right here who has acknowledged I am both handsome and eligible. I think you, Miss Emelia, would be the safer bet."
Emelia blinked. Was he flirting with her? It was impossible to tell with Montgomery. She thought what Brody would think and shook her head dismissively. "Ah, but I didn't come over here to solicit a partner for myself, Dr. Shaw. I am not so transparent."
"Perhaps that was not your intention," he said, turning and bending into a low bow and extending a hand to her, "but I fear that I must tell you that against your better judgment you have managed to snag my interest for this dance. Please, Miss Emelia, would you lay aside your attempts at making everyone else happy for a moment and join me on the floor for the next dance? I do believe it is a waltz."
Emelia couldn't help letting a smile slip to her lips. She'd only ever known Montgomery to be serious and careful about his decisions, but here he was with a teasing light in his eyes and a gentility in his manner that was strangely charming.
She took his hand, enjoying the way he held it like it was something to be treasured.
"I accept, good sir," she said. "But I insist upon invigorating conversation."
"All I have is endless dialogues on science, my lady."
She grinned. "Are they not one and the same?"
Chapter 14
Brody watched Montgomery lead Emelia to the floor with confusion.
"You'll never break into the world of political intrigue with blunders like that," he mumbled to himself. Somehow Emelia had gone over with the intention of directing Montgomery's attention to Hannah, and had ended up dancing with him instead. He could only imagine how Montgomery had done it—perhaps seeing through the entire façade from the start and conniving to trap Emelia where she could no longer foist him on her sister. But no, that would require a level of societal understanding that Body was unwilling to grant his brother.
The woman he'd been talking to when Emelia first walked up, Mrs. Smith, wandered back over again to stand beside him. She'd been monopolising much of his evening, but Brody didn't mind. Unlike other young men his age, he was not afraid that a few moments with a matron would ruin his chances with another lady on the floor.
He knew that the moment he detached himself from Mrs. Smith there would be a pretty face eager enough for a dance. His eyes found those of Lady Michelle Parker and her bevy of friends in the corner. She flashed her eyelashes at him from behind her fan.
"Who is your brother dancing with?" Mrs. Smith asked. "Is that Miss Emelia? A moment ago she was talking with you."
"Well, our families have been friends for many years," Brody said patiently. "Emelia's known Montgomery since they were children."
"They dance beautifully," the older woman said, pressing a hand to her chest. "They move so well together. I wouldn't have thought a man who sat by himself all evening could have such a way about him."
She moved away again, but her words lingered with Brody. He studied his brother and dearest friend in wonderment. There was something beautiful about the way they danced. Emelia had always been gifted in dancing—Brody had often danced with her before—but she seemed strangely at ease with Montgomery, though in truth the two hadn't seen each other in years.
They wove in and out of the rest of the group as though they were the only two dancers in the room, and for the slightest moment Brody wondered if he'd chosen the wrong sister to woo his brother out of grief.
Then, in the next moment, Montgomery said something and Emelia laughed—really laughed—the kind where she threw her head back and her eyes sparkled. Montgomery looked suddenly on guard; veiled, somehow, and when Emelia saw that she tempered her own response accordingly.
No, Brody concluded, they would never do as a match. They might look well together, and perhaps even at ease, but Emelia was far too lively for the dour Montgomery. Emelia belonged with someone like…like…well, like himself. It would be perfect, Brody knew it would, and yet he had never felt that much spoken of spark of love.
Perhaps that was why he didn't believe in love after all—Emelia was the most logical person in the world to love, and yet here he was watching her dance with another without a shred of regret or jealousy. If love existed, he should feel irate.
His eyes drifted away from her again towards the line of girls waiting against the wall. The waltz was drawing to a close, and the free gentlemen were walking amongst the ladies asking for a hand here and a dance there.
Brody scanned the people. He saw Michelle wait for him to ask after her, and when he didn't, she hooked her arm into the elbow of a handsome young man in an officer’s uniform and walked, head held high, to the promenade line.
That's when he saw Hannah, sitting in the corner with a cup of tea in her hands. She was partially shaded by a fern, thoroughly ignored by the gentlemen around her, and even in the half-light Brody could see that she was looking at him. It really wasn't fair, he thought, that a girl as remarkable and well-bred as Hannah should hav
e to sit by herself at an event like this. He walked over to her, and as he approached she stood nervously, setting aside the teacup with shaking fingers.
"Hannah," he said gaily. "It seems I am lucky in finding you for a brief moment unoccupied by a partner."
"If that is luck for you," she said quietly, "then you have been lucky all evening, for it seems that every woman you've approached has been quite suddenly without a partner and willing to dance."
"I have a way about me," he said, tossing his head. There was something in her quiet, dark eyes that bid him stay his teasing. He sobered a bit. "I will not rely on my charm alone, but on my courage as well, for I would like to ask you if you will dance this next quadrille with me, my lady."
Was it his imagination, or was there a tinge of pink in those fair cheeks? She smiled a bit.
"You ought to put out your hand," she said with a hint of teasing in her voice. "'Tis more gallant."
"'Tis indeed." He obliged her, holding out his hand with a little twirl of the lace at the wrist. She took it in her own, and Brody noticed at once how soft and cool her hands were. It was soothing; comforting. "I can't remember the last time we danced," he said as he led her to the promenade line.
"It was at the Christmas Eve ball last year," she said at once, taking his hands properly as they formed a line across from their partners for the beginning of the dance. "You were quite taken with the girl beside us at the time, and you insisted that Emelia and I partner with you on all the dances where the lass was elsewhere so you could be in her sphere as much as possible."
"What a foolish lad I was." He laughed at the memory. Sometimes he felt uncomfortable with his wild and winsome ways, but on a night like tonight, with a pretty girl across from him and A Midsummer Night's Dream twinkling all around him, he couldn't feel even a touch of regret. "You and Emelia have always forgiven me my ways."
"I and Emelia are your friends," Hannah answered kindly. "And we always will be."
The music began and the two went into the steps of the dance at once, with lightness and vigor. Hannah was every bit of the dancer that Emelia was, spinning around and through the moves as though her feet were made of air.
Brody noticed that her dancing and winsome ways were catching the eyes of the other gentlemen in the room and knew—in the way men are always aware of their rivals—that Hannah would not want for partners when she came away from this dance.
How sad it was that a girl with Hannah's beauty and poise could remain hidden until someone showed them off in a dance! Many other ladies had been forever forgotten in the corners of ballrooms for just such an oversight.
"Have you finished the copy of Blake yet?" he asked, by way of conversation.
She spun under the arm of a nearby partner and back to him again, her eyes bright. "Of course I have, in a sense. I read the entire thing that very night, reading until the candle burned down to a nub. But in another sense, I haven't read it at all. I think one ought to savour poetry—" she paused while they were momentarily separated by the steps, and then began speaking again when they were thrown back together anew, "—so I won't consider myself having truly read it until I've had a chance to ponder each jewel."
"When do you find time for all this pondering?" Brody asked.
"Stop it," she said, laughter in her eyes.
"Stop what?" he protested.
"You always do that, and have ever since we were children. You make the things that I love seem silly and childish. I'm not sitting out in trees thinking about poetry or running through fields wild with clover."
"Spoken like someone who knows a thing or two about clover," he teased, loving the spark of annoyance and pleasure that came into her eyes.
"I'm not!" she protested again. "I just read a poem and then I let it filter in and out of my mind through the day." She leaned close during a particularly complicated dance move and said with a note of laughter in her voice, "Brody, you really ought to try it someday—letting something come into that head of yours."
"Insolent girl!" He pretended offense and whirled her away from him, catching her at the end of the turn and bringing her back for a decorous promenade. He realised that he was enjoying himself, and not the way he usually enjoyed himself with the Wells sisters: this was something special and new.
He felt like he was looking at Hannah for the first time. Until tonight, there had always been something of the little girl about her, the vestiges of Brody's memory that weren't yet dispelled, but now she seemed entirely woman.
He couldn't help noticing her elegance and beauty; the way the slope of her creamy neck cradled the tendrils of loose brown curl, the way her eyes caught the light and tossed it back to him like an invitation, the blush on her cheek, the looks that they exchanged—it was all the sort of thing he would have expected from a romantic entanglement with a girl in the village, and yet so different. Because, after all, this wasn't a girl in the village. This was Hannah.
She went on talking about Blake, and he tried to focus, but his mind was in a state of confusion. It was not love, he knew as much from his own philosophies and reticence, but it was definite interest. He shrunk to think what Emelia would think of it all. She would scold him; probably tell him to stay away from her sister so that Hannah didn't join a long line of women wounded by Brody's debonair ways. And, for once, Brody would agree with her.
"Why so serious?" she asked as the dance drew to a close. "It's always you making the jokes, but these last few steps you've been so preoccupied. Have you found something to occupy that mind after all?"
"'In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg'd manacles I hear,'" he quoted in response.
She blinked, clearly surprised. "You've read Blake?"
"Of course I have," he said dismissively, trying to recover himself, "and if you've read that particular poem, you know that I've taken it dreadfully out of context." He gave a weak smile, shuffling around in his mind for the attitude of a dandy once again. This was a fun evening with a fun woman, nothing more. "Well, my lady," he said, bowing over her hand and kissing it ever so lightly, "I suppose I ought to release you to your many admirers. Thank you for the dance."
"I have no admirers," she answered back quietly. No sooner had the words come out of her mouth, however, than one of the gentlemen Brody had seen eyeing her during the dance came forward and gave a great bow, the kind that Brody and Emelia used to mock when they were children.
"My lady," the man said, edging ever so slightly to the side to put distance between himself and Brody, "you caught my eye a moment ago, and I'm afraid I cannot leave until I have both a dance and your name."
Brody could just hear Emelia's responses now, pouring into his mind in a stream of sarcasm. Oh really? You absolutely can't leave without those two things? Well, it's a pity for both of us then, for you'll have neither. But Hannah, lovely, soft-hearted Hannah, who'd been sitting neglected for most of the ball, was clearly charmed.
"I'm Hannah Wells," she said simply. "And you are?"
"Fredrick Martin," the man answered, clicking his heels together. "How is your Scottish reel, Hannah?"
"It's Miss Hannah," Brody said automatically. He hadn't meant to say it aloud, but now the correction hung between them like an insistent whisper: something has changed here.
"And you are?" Fredrick Martin, foppish and entitled, looked mildly annoyed.
"Brody Shaw, the host of this particular soiree." Brody would have stayed to mock this idiot, but something in Hannah's face tempered his usual bent towards the absurd and comical. She wanted this. Clearly, she felt special that this man, and others behind him, were lining up to sweep her out onto the floor. He forced a smile. "And as your host, I bid you enjoy the party to the fullest. Have a wonderful time, Miss Hannah, and you too, sir."
He turned and walked away. As he passed a group of young men awaiting the next dance, he heard one of them say, "Is that little Hannah Wells? My, she's grown up since I last laid eyes on her."
A Lady's Perfect Match: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 10
