by Kim Bowman
“Hello, Lucien,” said Harmony with a nervous titter. An odd little shiver shook her, and she pressed her fingers to her lips as though to stifle her usual giggles.
“My lady,” he wheezed, his ruddy face beaming. He graced her with a courtly bow. “How wonderful to see you again.”
****
They’d been at it for quite a while. The tinkling notes of the pianoforte had intruded into his consciousness for the past two hours while he struggled in vain with those blasted ledgers from Wyndham Green. The occasional bursts of silvery young laughter had proven distracting beyond measure and he couldn’t have said what figures filled the columns, let alone why they didn’t balance. In the end, he crept down the hall like a thief in his own house and hovered just outside the drawing room, watching the goings-on.
The heavy Grecian couch and matching chairs had been pushed to the side. Magpie — as he’d come to think of her — stood in the center of the cleared space with Lady Harmony. Lady Charity sat on the needlepoint stool before the pianoforte, but she was turned slightly, looking at her sister and niece.
“See, dear, how Harmony extends her right foot forward and then takes her weight on it?” At Charity’s words, Harmony pointed her toe and bobbed forward with surprising grace, though her bouncing bosom and out-of-date fashion from another century gave her an air of silliness. Charity gestured and continued. “Then she brings her left foot up close behind and takes her weight on that foot.”
The girl hesitated and then hopped awkwardly onto her right foot. But when she tried to snug her left behind it, she ended up kicking herself in the ankle. “I’m never going to be able to do this,” she groaned, bending to rub her foot and presenting Grey with an indecent, though very appealing, view of her backside.
Grey straightened and frowned. Appealing perhaps… but definitely troublesome. She was a houseguest at best, an interloper at worst. Such thoughts were wholly inappropriate in either case. He should retire to his office and complete the tedious work on the books. Should…
“Come on now, you’re learning it,” encouraged Harmony, touching her student on her shoulder. “No one dances perfectly on the first try.”
From her seat at the pianoforte, Charity smirked. “Gracious, I’m certain people leave these balls with bruises on their toes. Even the best dancers take a misstep now and then.”
Magpie stood and heaved a resigned sigh. “Fine. I’ll keep trying.”
“Sometimes it helps me to say it out loud.” Harmony executed a chasse step. “Step, close, step, hop.”
“Step, close, step, hop.” The girl performed the steps without mishap this time, even showing a bit of confidence, and then gave a little squeal of pleasure that twined its way through Grey’s veins and heated his blood.
“Very good, my dear.” Charity clapped her hands together. “Now do it to the music, and remember the hop at the end. Step lively now.”
Charity put her fingers on the keys and the notes spilled into the air. This time Magpie danced several steps before the music stopped.
“Now what’s the matter?” she asked, barely breathing heavily though she’d just performed a lively bit of country dancing.
“Well, nothing, I imagine, only…” Charity sighed. “You’re supposed to be dancing, not walking to a funeral. You should be happy.”
“Aunt Charity, I am happy.” The young lady fussed at the pale pink ribbon on the front of her white dress. “But I’ve been dancing for hours and I’m exhausted.”
Grey narrowed his eyes. She didn’t look particularly tired.
“Perhaps if you hop a little higher and quicker when you’re stepping,” suggested Harmony, clearly winded herself.
“Oh!” burst out the little magpie, and Grey realized just how appropriate the name could truly be at times. “Step here, kick there, close the gap, hop-hop, leap through the air.” She huffed out a breath.
Grey snickered softly. She made it sound like the schooling he gave his saddle horses. His brow knit into a frown and he rubbed his chin as he considered the similarities. Maybe she just needed a firmer hand than the aunts were able to provide.
He spared a fleeting thought for the ledgers in his office and sighed. Whatever the error in his books, it would surely still be present after an hour’s break. He stepped out of the shadows in the foyer and over the threshold into the drawing room.
“Lady Charity, Lady Harmony.” He nodded a greeting to each of them before he turned his attention to Magpie. He inclined his head and smiled. “My lady, I trust you are doing well with your lessons.”
“Actually—”
“She’s doing wonderfully,” cooed Charity.
“Is she…” He studied the slip of a girl before him. Several tendrils of golden hair had escaped from the loose arrangement on top of her head and clung to her slender neck. His fingers itched to stroke the runaway strands. Were they as silky as they looked? No! That was insane. Tamping the urge back without mercy, Grey cleared his throat and made an effort to sound stern. “So the clomping and stomping that drew me out of my office had nothing to do with her… lessons?”
Two spots of apple red colored the girl’s cheeks. “Oh—”
“That’s completely my fault, your grace.” Harmony stepped between them, blinking her dark brown eyes up at him rather like an owl, her long face and the fluttering feathers in her headdress only increasing the resemblance. “I haven’t danced in some time and I’m not as light on my feet as I used to be.”
Madam, the way you bob and bounce about on the dance floor, I find it hard to believe you were ever light on your feet. Grey inclined his head politely and offered an understanding smile.
Charity beamed. “Our niece is quite ready to learn how to dance with a proper partner.”
The vision of his ledgers lying on the desk in his office nagged at him briefly. But it paled against Magpie’s shy smile, and Grey surprised himself by returning her smile with one of his own. He held out his hand and bowed.
Her eyes widened and her lips parted as she drew in a sharp breath, retreating a step. But then she seemed to gather her wits and shored her back up straight. With an almost regal air, she slipped her hand into his and offered him a curtsey. Even as Grey bowed again, his busy mind processed that something about the way this girl carried herself, her air when she curtsied, wasn’t quite right, though it was nothing he could readily explain.
Charity began playing a lively piece. Grey led Magpie through the movements. “Higher steps,” he insisted when she faltered.
“I’m trying,” she responded through gritted teeth, but kept her eyes on her feet. “Step, close, step, hop.”
“No, you aren’t trying. You’re talking. Step more quickly. Can you not hear the rhythm of the music?”
“Yes, I hear it,” she fairly growled.
“Then why are you not following it?” He stepped up the pace to match the music, urging her to follow suit with a tug on her hand.
Finally she relaxed into the rhythm. Grey’s heart tugged like an emotional bellpull with every finishing hop. They whirled around the room. Or had the room begun to spin around them? A splash of sunlight, a dash of deep rose wallpaper, the snowy white lace framing the window… Then there was nothing but Magpie’s face. The dance commanded his feet, but she commanded his fascination. When she tossed back her head and laughed, her hair came tumbling down. She twirled and glorious dark golden waves spun across her face. With a wild laugh, she shook her head and pushed them back. Grey’s breath caught.
Then the music reached a crescendo and Magpie step-hopped with a delighted laugh. When she landed she lost her balance and lurched forward. If Grey hadn’t been in front of her, she’d have fallen headlong to the floor. His arms flew up without conscious thought, and he caught her with ease. For a moment she clung to him, her softness pressed against him. He burned where she touched.
With a sharply indrawn breath, she scrambled to find her footing. Then she stepped back, fingers pressed to her mouth,
eyes wide with an undefined emotion. “Y-your grace, I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” Her face blossomed with bright red tint that started in her neck but rapidly crept into her cheeks.
Her raw beauty captivated him.
Grey snapped himself out of his reverie. “Nonsense,” he said with a frown. “You had a misstep and fell. You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Thank you.” Magpie reached up and scraped the hair from her face. Then she lifted her gaze and took him prisoner with those luminous eyes. “For catching me.”
A smile tugged his lips upward. “‘Twas my pleasure, Magpie.” Very much so.
She crinkled her nose. “Magpie?”
His lips twitched up into another smile. “Yes, Magpie. A fitting name, if you ask me... and my still-tender ankle. I’m surprised I could stand to dance on it.”
Her gazed travelled down the length of his body to his foot and then back up. A deep pink flush spread across her cheeks. “Your grace, I-I’m so, so—”
“Oh, bravo!” Lady Charity stood and clapped her hands.
Magpie smiled, but then her face fell. “But I still cannot dance.”
“I hate to contradict a lady, but you were dancing.” Grey chuckled as a look of disbelief stole over the girl’s face. “I’m afraid you will have no excuse for not accompanying me to the ball. Unless of course, you are taken to your bed with another foul malady.” He made certain to inject just the right amount of warning into his tone without darkening the cheerful air in the room.
Magpie responded with ever-widening eyes and parted lips. So she had thought she’d gotten away with her ruse. Well, now she knew differently. Why was the thought not as satisfying as it should have been?
“I think a more sedate dance is in order.” Charity took her seat once again. She began plucking out a song, and Grey soon recognized the three-quarter time.
Had the woman gone mad? Was she seriously suggesting they indulge in… a waltz? The gliding rhythm tugged at him, and his body swayed unbidden, picking out the rhythm as he struggled to recall the steps he’d learned in Austria. Of their own accord, his arms reached for Magpie before he realized his own intent.
His intended partner gasped and stepped backward. But a quest drove him now. She’d intrigued him with her disclosure that she’d watched her parents perform the decadent waltz, and thoughts of her knowing such moves had secretly tormented him. If he were truthful, those visions had threatened to drive him to madness and forced him to leave his office earlier, when he’d heard her laughter accompanying the music.
He took her hand and, after the barest hint of hesitation, she closed her fingers around his. Grey started slowly, not quite in time with the music, and he held her at a proper arm’s length as they began gliding about the room. Stirrings of passion hummed through his veins, whispers and snatches of thought urging him to pull her more fully into his embrace.
The rhythm of Charity’s music wound around them and drew them into synchronous movement after only one circle of the room. She followed Grey’s lead with lithe steps. The whirling room fell away, lost in the swirling emotions pulsing in Magpie’s eyes. The dance worked her more intimately into his embrace, and he loosened the touch and twirled her in a circle before pulling her close again.
His body reacted with maddening predictability, but Grey found he no longer cared about propriety. All that mattered was the woman in his arms and the dance they shared. The music washed over them, her warmth when she was close set his blood on fire. Her hair spilled over her shoulders then flared outward when they twirled, mirroring the hem of her gown. And where it brushed the backs of his hands it was as soft as a kitten’s fur.
The music swelled but it was his body that led the dance now, as their steps quickened until the room behind her came into focus only to blur into whorls of color with no form. The dance was exhilarating, the woman in his arms enthralling with her warmth, her softness, the scent of her rose perfume as it filled his nostrils.
The music stopped far too soon, but perhaps just in time. Without its impulsion, Grey’s consciousness reined in his errant body. What was he doing? Slowly, yet all too quickly for his taste, he stepped backward and graced his dance partner with a somewhat shaky bow, his every breath pulling in the scent of roses.
She stood as though frozen, her chest rising and falling with her gasps for air. But it was her eyes that reminded Grey of a fawn in the wood, huge and frightened, with that golden brown color that seemed to glow in the afternoon sun streaming into the drawing room.
The beautiful young woman bent her knees in a faltering curtsey, then she straightened. Her lips trembled as she whispered, “I’m sorry.” She snatched her hand from his loose grasp, whirled in a flurry of motion that mimicked the dance they’d just shared, and fled for the doorway. Her footsteps echoed on the hardwood in the foyer and then on the staircase.
“Oh, dear!” Harmony took several steps to follow.
Grey found his voice. “Don’t!”
Harmony stopped in a swirl of her skirts. “Your grace?”
“Let her go,” he said, softening his voice. Let her go, he repeated in admonishment to himself. He stepped to the window and gazed out onto the street. A coach stood outside his neighbor’s home. One of the horses stomped, its ears twitching. Grey traced the lines of Rossington’s family crest with his eyes until he felt control returning. Only when he determined himself fit for polite company again did he turn from the window.
Harmony stood beside her sister at the pianoforte, and together they poured over sheets of music as though he’d evaporated from their thoughts.
Without a word, Grey strode across the Turkish carpet and sought the sanctuary of his office.
****
Juliet ran up the stairs to her room and shut the door. A sob escaped and she slid to the floor. No matter how hard she tried to fill her lungs with air, she could do no more than gasp for breath. But it had little to do with her recent exertion.
What is wrong with me?
Every spot Grey had touched burned… in a good way. Heat radiated through her body to locations she had never thought about before. Tender places had responded to the duke’s closeness with delicious tingles, and she trembled with the need to feel him again. She wrapped her arms around belly, trying to recreate the sensation of being engulfed against him in such an intimate embrace.
Juliet shook her head. What had she just done? She had arrived in London prepared to thoroughly dislike the duke. She had watched her friend suffer heartbreak after heartbreak at being left out of all the social outings in the country because of Markwythe, and had certainly never expected to like him after the way Annabella spoke of him.
But the man Juliet was coming to know was nothing at all as her friend had described him. It was true, he tended to be strict and a little curt at times, but he was also truly compassionate. At great inconvenience to himself, he had made it a priority to ensure the ton knew Annabella and his mother were in his good graces by opening his home to her, throwing a dinner party to celebrate Annabella’s birthday, spending money to have a ball gown made. He had even helped her practice dancing.
She had come to… admire him. More than admire him, she realized, but squashed the thought like it was a fat cabbage beetle.
Oh no! I think I might be in trouble.
She pushed to her feet. “Annabella! Where is that note?”
“Begging your pardon, m’lady?” Emily asked as she emerged from the connecting bedchamber. “Did you say something?”
A lump rose in Juliet’s throat. She clenched and unclenched her fists trying to control her violent trembling. “I fear I am becoming as absent-minded as my dear old aunts. I was trying to recall what I had done with my… er… a note Aunt Charity left for me.”
Emily stepped closer, kindness glowing from her pretty green eyes. “Perhaps I can help you look for it?”
Juliet shook her head. “That will not be necessary. I remember I… have discarded it because I thought I
would no longer need it.”
“As you wish, m’lady.” Emily cast Juliet an uncertain look as she let herself out of the room.
****
Huffing out a breath filled with exasperation, Grey tossed his pen down. It skated across the blotter and landed on the polished wooden desk, leaving a trail of dark ink. His eyes burned and he rubbed them, quite certain he’d go blind with the hours he’d spent trying to find the discrepancy in the ledgers from Wyndham. He was an educated man with a head for figures. Why, in the name of all that was holy, couldn’t he locate and correct what would surely turn out to be a simple mathematical error?
When the discreet knock sounded on his office door, he glanced up with a sigh. Petry pulled the door open and stepped aside, and Higgins melted into the room.
“Mr. Archibald Harper is here at your request, your grace.”
Grey pushed away from the desk and stood. “Thank you, Higgins. You may show him in. Mr. Petry, you may depart. This is a private matter.”
Though he trusted his secretary, until he figured out from where the discrepancy arose, Grey wasn’t going to risk a chance word among the staff spreading any hint of trouble in the affairs of his estate.
The afternoon shadows had lengthened. He should be preparing for the evening’s festivities. Instead, he would be spending the remainder of the afternoon meeting with his bookkeeper, instructing the little man on the nuances of the country estate.
Balance was crucial to Grey’s existence — he prized it above all else in every area of his life. But especially in his business affairs. His meticulous attention to financial details after his father’s death had not only kept the estate off the rocks but had left him and his brother well flush in the pockets.
The office door was pushed open again and Higgins entered, followed closely by a bookish man with thinning hair. The fat master ledger of Grey’s holdings weighed him down as he shuffled toward the desk.
“Mr. Harper, thank you for coming.” Grey ushered the accountant to the writing table close to the window where the light was best. “There seems to be an inconsistency between the statement you sent me from the audit of Wyndam’s affairs and the receipts I have from my steward out there. It’s a substantial sum and I’ll need to find where the books went off.”
