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The music was light and fast, the couples whirled by around us, and yet Patrick seemed in no hurry to lead me into the current. We swayed very slowly against the tide.

Looking at him became difficult. “I thought you didn’t dance?”

“I don’t,” he said. “But evidently,youdo.”

I tried to put on a frown, but I was a slave to my thundering blood. “Am I not permitted to dance with anyone else?”

He looked over my head, eyes surveying the crowd. “If you want to, you can dance with all of them. Lord knows every man in here is imaginin’ it.”

I scoffed. “You can’t know the thoughts of every—”

“Their eyes’ve been following you since you walked in. You’re gonna get them in trouble with their wives.”

I blushed fiercely. “They have not.”

“They have.”

I looked at the wall of his chest. My stomach knotted. “I can’t tell if you’re complimenting me,” I admitted. “Are you?”

“Just sayin’ how it is,” he said, as though he were describing the weather. “Are you a woman who needs to be complimented?” He ceased his surveillance to look down at me. I wished his eyes were any other color.

“Everywoman should be complimented. Especially by the men who cut in to dance with them.”

“Then, you have very pretty freckles.”

“You’re jealous,” I said boldly, though I could hardly believe it. “Why should you be jealous?”

“I can’t say, Nina. But there it is.”

“You can’t say?”

“No,” he said flatly. “I can’t. Canyousay why your heart’s beating out of your chest?”

Mortification flooded me. Deep in my belly, there was a quickening as good as an admission.

Patrick nodded, and there was no arrogance to it, just a deep, inscrutable knowing. “So then, we both have things we can’t speak on.”

We swayed back and forth, his hand diligently pressed to the middle of my back, not daring to move a single inch lower, oblivious to the crowd around us.

“We all turn back into boys when it comes to girls,” he said again, though I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me or to himself. “Perhaps we can let it just be that.”

We should let it just be that, I thought.And nothing more.“Do you intend to intercede every time another man looks my way?”

He grinned. He couldn’t seem to help it. “I intend to put the rest of these boys to shame and spoil you for anyone else.”

My breath stopped.Why should my breath stop?“Says the man who can’t dance.”

His grin turned devilish. “I said that I don’t dance, not that Ican’t.” His chest swelled beneath my hand. “Hold on, Scurry girl.”

His hand flexed at my back and pulled me against him, so that my chest pressed into his. I felt my nipples harden beneath the chiffon. The muscle of his stomach flattened against my own, and he whirled us suddenly sideways. We broke into the circle of couples, me laughing in shock, and the music, the cacophony, came swarming back in.

I hardly knew the steps to the dances, and it didn’t seem to matter. Patrick was, by contrast, proficient in all. He smiled wickedly, laughed as he caught and released me, spun me back into his arms, linked my elbow with his. His neck was hot where my hand touched it. When I mock curtsied at the end of a particularly quick song, his eyes sparked and he ran a hand over his face, as though it physically pained him.

The music slowed, became fluid and gentle, and I thought that might be the moment where he returned to his many duties, and me to my corner. But instead, he gingerly caught my waist in one hand and clasped the other around my palm, turning us both in an endless circle.

Silence ensued, and we stared at each other until I could hardly stand it.

I was the one to break first. I lowered my gaze. “Youcandance,” I accused. “Where does a miner learn how to dance like that?”