by Emily Larkin
Adam was intensely aware of her gloved hand in his, of the closeness of their bodies. There was nothing sensual about dancing in a crowded ballroom under the glare of hundreds of candles—and yet it was sensual. Abruptly, he wondered what it would be like to make love to Arabella Knightley. Heat flooded his body. It was suddenly difficult to breathe.
Adam cleared his throat. He concentrated on the waltz—but it only made him more aware of her responsiveness to each step he took, the natural grace of her body as she followed his lead.
Did Emsley think about sex when he danced with Miss Knightley?
It was disgusting to think of the man imagining Arabella Knightley in his bed—and yet Adam knew instinctively and with utmost certainty that Emsley did precisely that.
Revulsion and rage rose inside him. He glanced at Miss Knightley’s face. Did she know, too? Was that why she’d chosen him over Emsley?
His gaze rested for a moment on skin as smooth and pale as alabaster, on the dark sweep of her eyelashes, on soft lips the color of rose petals. She glanced at him. For a breathless second he stared into eyes that were almost black—and then he wrenched his gaze away from her.
Adam concentrated on breathing, on placing his feet in time with the music. It was surprisingly difficult; the sound of his heartbeat almost drowned out the strains of the waltz.
A familiar face caught his attention: Grace, dancing with Viscount Mayroyd.
Adam focused on her. Grace didn’t have Arabella Knightley’s grace as a dancer, nor her composure, but she acquitted herself well.
The sound of his heartbeat faded; he heard the music more clearly. He watched as the viscount said something to Grace, as his sister blushed and answered with a shy smile. He changed direction, leading Miss Knightley into a sweeping curve, so as to see Mayroyd’s face. The young viscount’s expression was appreciative.
Adam began to feel more cheerful. Unless he was mistaken, Grace had an admirer who wasn’t a fortune hunter.
Of course, Grace wouldn’t be on the dance floor, waltzing and smiling, capturing the interest of young viscounts, if not for Arabella Knightley. Her shrewd advice had been invaluable.
We owe her.
He risked a glance at Miss Knightley. She was watching him.
His cheerfulness evaporated—along with his awareness of the other dancers. The music was inaudible again. The only two people in the ballroom were himself and Arabella Knightley. Familiar emotions flooded through him—shame and guilt, desire—and with them was a new one: gratitude.
His steps faltered. He was out of time with the music.
Miss Knightley’s eyebrows rose fractionally. “Mr. St. Just?”
Adam wrenched his attention back to the waltz. When his steps were once more in time, he said, “I wish to thank you, Miss Knightley.”
Her expression became slightly wary, as if she suspected him of mocking her. “For what?”
“For your kindness to Grace. For your advice to her.” Advice that had been given with no motive other than a desire to help. His guilt intensified. “Because of you, Grace found the courage to remain in London.”
Miss Knightley blinked. He saw her astonishment. After a moment she said, “There’s no need to thank me, Mr. St. Just. I didn’t do it for you.”
Adam felt himself flush. “I am aware of that,” he said stiffly, and looked away from her.
They danced in an awkward silence for several minutes. Words of apology gathered on Adam’s tongue. He stole a glance at her. Miss Knightley was gazing past his shoulder. If she found their silence awkward, she gave no sign of it. She seemed perfectly at ease. A slight smile sat on her mouth, as if she observed—and was amused by—the other dancers.
She hadn’t always possessed such poise, such confidence. The first time he’d danced with her, seven years ago, there’d been shyness in her eyes, not amusement. She’d been as vulnerable as Grace. And I harmed her.
“I apologize, Miss Knightley,” he blurted.
Her attention shifted to him. He watched her eyebrows rise. “For dancing with me?”
“No, for . . . for what I said about you seven years ago.”
Her face stiffened. She looked away.
“You must believe that it wasn’t deliberate,” Adam said. “I was in my cups and . . . and I never—not for one second!—thought my words would be repeated.”
Miss Knightley’s gaze returned to his face. “It was seven years ago, Mr. St. Just.” Her voice matched her eyes: cool and distant. “Consider it forgotten.”
The reply should have assuaged his guilt. It didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Adam said quietly, holding her gaze. “It was never my intention to cause you distress.”
This time Arabella Knightley seemed to hear his sincerity. Her expression became less stiff. She observed him for several seconds in silence. “You surprise me, Mr. St. Just,” she said finally. “I never thought to hear you refer to this subject.”
“When I returned to London and discovered that everyone—” He flushed, feeling his shame anew. “So many months had passed that it seemed . . . wisest to ignore it. I thought—I hoped—that if I pretended I’d forgotten, London would forget, too.”
Miss Knightley’s lips twisted wryly. “London has a long memory.”
“Yes,” he said. “Unfortunately.”
The waltz reached its conclusion. Adam released her hand reluctantly. They had been on the brink of something—accord, an understanding—but now the moment was lost.
He glanced at the matrons and dowagers clustering the edges of the dance floor. “Where’s your grandmother?”
“In the card room.”
He frowned. “She takes her chaperoning duties far too lightly.”
His censure appeared to amuse Miss Knightley. “I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.”
“And what of Lord Emsley?”
Miss Knightley looked away. “My grandmother would be delighted to see me waltz with Lord Emsley—and even more delighted to see me marry him.” Her voice was light, but beneath the lightness was a faint undertone that Adam recognized: contempt.
Adam’s frown deepened. “She’s not encouraging Emsley to—”
“No, she knows my views on that subject.” Miss Knightley looked at him, and once again he saw her amusement. It hovered at the edges of her mouth and gleamed in the darkness of her eyes. “I don’t need rescuing, Mr. St. Just. I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.”
Adam disagreed, but he didn’t say so aloud. Instead he escorted her from the dance floor, conscious of the interest they were attracting.
It was easy to imagine his father’s outrage if he could see them now, his icy fury. The old man’s words still rang in his ears after all these years, burned into his memory: A slut from the stews? If your taste runs to the gutters, find yourself a lightskirt, not a trollop you’ll have to marry.
His father had been wrong. Arabella Knightley was neither a trollop nor a slut; there was nothing flirtatious about her manner. But the old man had been right about one thing: such a marriage was doomed to failure.
However much he was attracted to Miss Knightley, however much he admired her aplomb, her poise, her kindness to Grace, she was not a woman he could ever marry.
Adam escorted her to a seat alongside his aunt. “May I bring you something to drink? Champagne? Punch?”
“Lemonade, please.”
The refreshment room was almost as crowded as the ballroom. A queue had formed of gentlemen with wilting collar-points.
Adam glanced down at the signet ring on his finger as he waited. The gold gleamed in the candlelight. He could see the ridges of the St. Just crest, the words inscribed beneath the lion rampant: Nobilis Superbia. Noble Pride.
As a St. Just, pride was his birthright. A St. Just knows his worth, his father had been used to say. Pride had been bred into him. It was in his blood, in his bones.
The shadow of Miss Knightley’s mother hovered over her. Even if he’d
never uttered those drunken, angry words seven years ago, the whispers and the sidelong glances would still have followed her. Through no fault of her own, Arabella Knightley’s reputation was tarnished. It would always be tarnished.
If I married Arabella Knightley I would be ashamed of her—and ashamed of myself for being ashamed of her.
* * *
ARABELLA’S SECOND WALTZ with Adam St. Just came after supper, which she ate with her grandmother. Lady Westwick talked of her success at the card table while devouring buttered lobster, asparagus spears, and a serving of syllabub in a fluted glass bowl. Arabella picked at her food while her grandmother’s words flowed over her. Her thoughts were in a tumult. She couldn’t believe—simply could not believe—that Adam St. Just had apologized to her.
She speared a piece of lobster on her fork and chewed without tasting. What on earth had possessed him to do such a thing?
Arabella swallowed the lobster and reached for her glass. It was as unfathomable as his behavior seven years ago. She sipped the pink lemonade, remembering. St. Just had danced with her twice, the warm admiration in his eyes unmistakable. She’d been flustered by his attention, flattered, and at the same time alarmed by her response to him, by the dangerous stirring in her blood. She’d lain awake that night in a turmoil of indecision. Adam St. Just, wealthy and well-born, unnervingly attractive, was interested in her. Should she encourage his attentions—or stand by her decision never to marry and rebuff him?
The choice had been made for her. Adam St. Just departed London, and his words were on everyone’s lips. Marry Arabella Knightley? Certainly, if one wishes to live with the smell of the gutter. The name—Miss Smell o’ Gutters—had been coined a few days later and the Season, already a gauntlet of sidelong glances and whispered comments, had become a nightmare.
Pride had enabled her to smile and pretend to ignore the stifled laughter. She’d smiled—and planned her revenge: something that would humiliate him, that would hurt.
Revenge was very well in theory, but horrifying in practice. She’d learned her lesson from Lord Crowe: she avenged other people, not herself.
Arabella speared another piece of lobster on her fork.
“—three hands in a row!” her grandmother said. “Mrs. Davenport said she’d never seen anything like it.”
Arabella gave a murmur of agreement as her thoughts swung to Lord Crowe, to her moment of triumph—and from there, to his death.
The lobster tasted like dust in her mouth. Arabella took a mouthful of lemonade and forced herself to swallow. She looked at her plate, at the uneaten food, and laid down her fork.
She’d been right to punish Lord Crowe—she still believed that—but she would never revenge herself again. The guilt wasn’t worth it.
She sighed as she looked at the wilted asparagus on her plate, at the congealing butter. She’d hated Adam St. Just for seven years. It seemed churlish to continue hating him after his apology, but if she wasn’t to hate him, what was she to do?
Arabella sipped her lemonade and pondered the question.
She couldn’t possibly like him, could she?
No, that was impossible.
“Lady Endicott tells me that you danced the waltz with St. Just tonight.”
Arabella looked up from her contemplation of her plate. “Er . . . yes, that’s correct.”
“I was very alarmed to hear it,” her grandmother said. She touched the brooch fastened to the stiff purple satin of her bodice in a nervous gesture. “I’m certain your grandfather wouldn’t approve.”
Arabella looked away from the brooch. It was a mourning piece, her grandfather’s eye painted on ivory, surrounded by seed pearls and black jet.
“And I understand that St. Just danced with you several days ago.”
“Yes.”
Her grandmother began to pleat her napkin. “It’s very worrying,” she said. “You will remember what happened last time, won’t you?”
“I’m not likely to forget,” Arabella said dryly.
The hurt, the humiliation, the absurd sense of betrayal, weren’t easily forgotten—although why she’d felt betrayed, she had no idea. It wasn’t as if St. Just had declared an interest in her; all he’d done was dance twice with her. And smile with his eyes.
“Do be careful, won’t you my dear? I should hate to see you hurt again.”
Arabella glanced at her grandmother in surprise. She blinked, taken aback by the concern on Lady Westwick’s face. “I’ll be careful.”
Her grandmother resumed pleating the napkin. “It’s very worrying,” she said again.
No, Arabella thought, it’s not worrying—but it is certainly disconcerting.
What was worrying was St. Just’s declared interest in Tom—and his conviction that Tom was a member of the ton.
* * *
HER GRANDMOTHER WAS back in the card room and engrossed in a hand of whist when the second waltz was called. Arabella was aware of an undercurrent of whispers as Adam St. Just escorted her onto the dance floor, aware of eyes watching with bright interest behind the cover of brisé fans.
She tried not to stiffen as St. Just drew her into his hold. The touch of his hand at her waist was light, but it gave her a sense of being trapped.
Even so, it was a thousand times better than waltzing with Lord Emsley. She repressed a shiver. “I should thank you.”
St. Just’s eyebrows rose in silent query.
“Lord Emsley,” Arabella said.
A fleeting expression of distaste crossed his face. “It was my pleasure.”
Liar. Arabella couldn’t help smiling. “You enjoy being stared at, Mr. St. Just?”
He grimaced slightly. “I have to confess . . . no.” There was something in his expression as he looked at her, in his gray eyes . . .
Arabella’s smile faded. She looked away. She concentrated on the music, on the flow of notes and the harmony of the chords. Adam St. Just was a superb dancer. Their progress was an effortless glide over the dance floor. Even so, an uncomfortable awareness of him intruded: his closeness, the warmth of his hand at her waist, the strength of his fingers holding hers. There was a quiet sense of power in his movements.
Arabella repressed another shiver. Being this close to a man, his arm around her—
Waltzing with Lord Emsley was deeply unpleasant. The way his hand strayed across her back, the sly innuendos, the smell of his perspiration—not as rank as the men who’d visited her mother, but reminding her of them all the same—were distasteful.
Dancing with St. Just wasn’t distasteful—but it was disturbing. Discomfort prickled over her skin. She began to feel slightly too warm.
Arabella risked a glance at him. He was watching her. His face was expressionless, but there was something in his eyes . . .
To her horror Arabella felt herself blush. She looked hurriedly away and concentrated on her steps, feeling as flustered and nervous as if she was a débutante. She didn’t want Adam St. Just to look at her like that. The heat she felt, the frisson of awareness, were frightening.
For a long, tortuous minute she followed his lead, her mind blank with panic. Then common sense returned. It was easy to stop St. Just looking at her so warmly.
Arabella raised her gaze to him. “Miss fforbes-Brown is engaged to Sir Humphrey Holbrook.”
His face stiffened. “Yes.”
“Such a shame,” she observed. “Miss fforbes-Brown would have made you an excellent wife.”
The warmth vanished from St. Just’s eyes. His expression became disapproving.
“Have you considered Hetty Wootton? The field is relatively clear at the moment—and she does have such a tempting fortune.”
St. Just looked down his nose at her.
Arabella began to relax—and to enjoy herself. “She’s very pretty, too. Don’t you think, Mr. St. Just?”
“My opinion of Miss Wootton is none of your business, Miss Knightley.” Disdain was cold in his voice.
I know. Arabella almost grinn
ed.
St. Just’s eyes narrowed. She had the impression he nearly missed a step.
Arabella carefully stifled the grin. “Miss Wootton’s friendship with your sister must make her an attractive candidate. The approval of one’s family is so important in a marriage, don’t you think?”
St. Just made no reply. His jaw tightened, as did his grip on her hand.
Her tone became low and confiding: “May I suggest, Mr. St. Just, that as a sign of affection for your new wife, you redecorate in the style of the Prince Regent? There is something so elegant about crimson and gold.”
St. Just’s lips thinned.
“Oh! And you should have a stream flowing down the center of your dining table, with goldfish in it, as the Prince Regent once did. Such a charming idea, don’t you think?” Arabella widened her eyes. “Or were you one of those who thought it vulgar?”
She thought St. Just gritted his teeth. After a moment he said stiffly, “As I did not attend that dinner, I have no opinion on that particular style of decoration.”
Arabella almost grinned again. Of course he thought it vulgar; anyone with a modicum of taste must.
“I didn’t attend it either,” she said. The regret in her voice was unfeigned: she would have loved to have seen such an outlandish centerpiece. “But I urge you to emulate the Prince. Perhaps at your wedding breakfast? Your bride would find it charming, I’m sure!”
St. Just looked as if he’d swallowed something unpleasant.
“To have a stream running down one’s table is indicative of true elegance of mind.” Her voice quivered on the last few words and she bit her lip.
Adam St. Just’s eyes narrowed again in suspicion. Fortunately the waltz ended at that moment.
Arabella stepped back and made a pretty curtsy. “Thank you, Mr. St. Just,” she said. “That was extremely pleasant. We must do it again.”
