Page 25 of A Lady’s Rules for Seaside Romance (The Harp & Thistle #3)

V ictor rushed through the crowd to disappear at the edge of the room, his heart pounding hard as he did so.

He had secretly been looking forward to the ball tonight—words he’d never expected to think to himself—and for the last few days, he had prepared himself for the best way to ask Anne for a dance.

Relieved to find respite, he leaned against the wall to catch his breath.

He had spent hours debating how to handle this evening.

It would be a good opportunity to get close to Anne, to understand if his attraction to her, his feelings for her, had any substance to them.

He could finally discover if it was merely a symptom of loneliness, and she happened to be the closest woman in his life.

Victor knew social rules well enough to know one dance with her wouldn’t be considered unusual with their ages and the way their families were enmeshed.

Everyone here knew about the ties between the Winthrops and McNabs.

They knew Anne was a widow and had been out of mourning for a number of years now.

But when she’d said that blasted Ashby had asked her to dance first, he’d turned into a coward. Another man asking Anne to dance was not something he’d been expecting, which he was now realizing had been utterly daft.

Of course, other men might ask her to dance.

They probably had before, too, while he’d been in London.

But she had told him before how much she disliked balls since Winthrop’s passing.

If a gentleman had asked her to dance previously, she likely would have turned him down.

He had been banking on their friendship to get her to agree to a dance with him.

But now, she was apparently dancing again. And probably would have many suitors once the word spread.

Anne, no matter what his true feelings for her were, was a beautiful woman. She had money and a title. Her son, already a marquess, would be a duke someday. Her daughter would no doubt end up marrying someone of influence.

It shouldn’t have surprised Victor for someone to show even a modicum of interest in Anne.

But still, he did not like it. Not in the least bit.

Victor took in a deep, slow breath as he watched the large room over the heads of the people around him.

He was always in control, and he never let that control slip.

Sometimes, plans didn’t unfold as expected.

It was that way with business, and it could be that way in his personal life, too.

All he had to do was adjust to this new and unexpected obstacle.

That should have been easy enough, shouldn’t it have?

He wasn’t about to give up on Anne, or uncovering the depth of his affection for her, even though a man much younger than himself had shown obvious interest.

Pushing away from the wall, Victor then moved through the crowd invisibly.

No one took notice of him, and he liked it that way.

He was never quite sure how he did it, but it was a skill he’d developed when they’d been children living in Whitechapel.

He had learned to move about without notice, without making sound, somehow blending in to the surroundings as if transparent.

He’d used this skill as a boy to survive.

Sometimes to steal food. Sometimes to steal money.

Though he’d broken the law multiple times every day, he’d found he hadn’t cared much then.

Dantes and Ollie, who’d been a toddler at the time, had been fed and as safe as they could be in their circumstances.

Most importantly, they’d been together and not split up amongst different orphanages.

Victor would have done anything for his brothers then. And still did.

Spotting his brothers and their wives hovering near the dance floor, Victor watched as Ollie leaned down to Evelyn to whisper something to her and she smiled up at him in response. Dantes had an arm around Vivian’s waist as if he would never let go and wanted everyone to know it, too.

Pride bubbled in Victor’s chest. His brothers, against all odds, had ended up with happy lives filled with love.

It was all he had ever wanted, what he had worked for his whole life. For Dantes, for Ollie, to be safe and happy.

A pause amongst the musicians caused Victor’s attention to shift away from nostalgia and pride to his present issue at hand. The quiet meant the musicians were taking a break. Dancing was about to begin.

Victor hastily searched the room until his eyes found Anne. His attention anchored to her as if there were no one else around. She was talking to her children and, if he had to guess, reminding them that they weren’t yet adults and must not act as such.

Freddy said something and left. Victor watched the boy weave through the crowd with a sulk on his face and hunch in his shoulders, until he left the ballroom. Now that dancing was beginning, he was no longer allowed to be present.

He put his attention back to Anne and Mary.

Mary had a pout similar to Freddy’s, but she no doubt knew arguing with Anne would have been futile.

He had no idea what their disagreement was this time, but when he followed Mary’s gaze he discovered she was watching the Ashby family.

The mother of the gaggle of sons was deep in discussion with one of the other guests.

Mr. Felton Ashby, the blasted idiot, was having a private conversation with two of his four brothers, one of whom was Freddy’s friend Ralph.

The youngest Ashby would also be leaving the ball now due to his age.

But the other brother Victor wasn’t yet familiar with.

Based on the way Mary watched the trio, however, the unknown brother was likely Lucas Ashby, the one with whom she wished to dance despite Anne’s protests.

Mary let out a dramatic sigh that he had heard himself far too often in these last few years. The corners of his mouth nearly hitched at this.

Victor left his spot and grabbed a glass of champagne for himself.

Gentlemen he had met earlier, some viscount and the viscount’s younger brother, came to talk to him, though he was only paying a fraction of his attention to them, but enough to have a respectable conversation about labor strikes.

Victor, being a working-class man, would always be on the side of the workers.

But he also knew that view would not be welcome amongst the people in attendance and thought it best to keep those opinions to himself, as he would one day have to spend significant time with them.

He couldn’t change anything by making enemies, either.

As he barely listened to their chatter about labor, his attention was pulled back to Anne like the magnet she seemed to be. Music was beginning to play again, which meant the first dance of the evening was about to begin.

Frustration ground at him. It should have been him getting that first dance with her. If only he hadn’t been such a coward about it! Regret at his weakness gnawed at him.

But how would Anne have reacted if he had gotten the chance to ask? Would she have seen it as nothing more than a friendly gesture? Or would suspicion have started to poke at her mind?

The more important question was, which way did he want her to see it?

Victor continued his nearly obsessive watch of her. She was stunning tonight in a peach, satin dress. He wished he could tell her how beautiful she looked. But he wasn’t a man who expressed himself with words very well.

Mr. Felton Ashby approached Anne and as he spoke to her, held out his palm in invitation.

Victor downed his glass of champagne, excused himself to the viscount and the viscount’s brother, left the ballroom, and ran upstairs.

He had barely been able to withstand the first few hours of the ball. Now, it was simply intolerable.

The music was playing by the time he’d reached the second floor, and it echoed throughout the large, darkened home. His heart began to race faster, faster. He could watch Anne, watch Ashby, safely from up here.

Victor ran down the dim hallway, took a turn to another dim hallway, and eventually found himself at the end of it.

The end wasn’t a wall, though. It was a balcony that looked out at the ballroom below.

There was one lit gas lamp sconce nearby and he turned it down until the flame snuffed out.

Over the ballroom was one large chandelier that suspended from the ballroom’s high ceiling, but it hung lower than the second floor, and a cover over the top kept the light from reaching the exposed second floor.

In other words, the balcony he took refuge in was awash with the shadows of night.

Feeling more like himself, Victor stood at the stone railing and placed his hands atop it to watch the party below. No one looked up in his direction. No one had the faintest idea someone watched from above. It took a minute, but he found Anne again just as she entered the dance floor with Ashby.

Victor scowled and refused to take his eyes off of her.

The couples below turned together in time with the music, swirls of silk, lace, and tulle. Ashby had his undivided attention on Anne, but Anne kept swiveling her head, likely keeping an eye on her daughter.

Ashby said something to Anne and she stopped searching, her focus now fully on her dance partner. This irritated Victor, as if Ashby thought he could dare request anything from the woman he held.

But Victor’s ire flamed further when Ashby’s hand, resting properly at Anne’s upper back, began sliding down little by little—scoundrel impropriety.

Ashby knew exactly what he was doing. And with this minute movement, Victor could see right through cad.

Barely resisting the urge to dive to the floor and slam a fist into the cad’s face, Victor held himself in place by white-knuckling the railing.

With a deep inhale through his nose, he reminded himself he was in control of his reaction.

He was in control of the rising anger, of the sickening jealousy that slammed into him like an iron wrecking ball.

The raw severity of these emotions took him by complete surprise.

His heart galloped in response, though with elation or panic, he couldn’t determine, and in a fit of desperation, his eyes flew to Vivian laughing with Dantes.

Victor felt nothing.

His attention then went to Evelyn on Ollie’s arm: again, nothing.

Next, a woman whom he supposed was pretty enough dancing with a man he didn’t know—a whole lot more of nothing.

No other woman in this room affected him in any way.

Upon this discovery, questions that had haunted him over the years started to become answered.

Whatever his affection for Anne was, it wasn’t purely friendship.

He wanted her in a way he had never, ever wanted anyone before.

For another moment, Victor allowed himself to grip the railing hard as if holding on to that last thread of ignorance he’d had mere minutes ago.

But then he did what he did best: he took control.

Emotions like those he was feeling served no purpose.

He lassoed in that jealousy, that anger, like an American cowboy retaking his runaway cattle.

It wasn’t his place to be upset over another man touching Anne, a woman who had stated she was quite happy being on her own.

Victor was becoming lost in a swirl of confusion, but there was one certainty that he had: he wouldn’t be happy until Anne was out of Ashby’s arms and in his own.

Now feeling more determined than ever, he stayed in his place in the shadows, unmoving, watching Anne as another man, that blasted Ashby and not himself, led her in a dance.

And Victor began to wonder—if Anne was the first woman for whom he had felt this affection, then it clearly meant something . But what was he going to do about it?

Doing nothing sounded right on the surface.

Though Victor knew he held affection for Anne, he still wasn’t sure what kind of affection it was.

Anne had been the only true woman friend he had ever had.

For all he knew, men who befriended women as closely as he had befriended Anne felt this same burning sensation in their hearts whenever said lady friend was around.

Anne had also made it clear, to Vivian at least, that she was only interested in a brief dalliance with men this summer, not something long-lasting.

In this, Victor should do nothing. Yet doing nothing was an unsatisfactory conclusion.

Telling her he held affection for her would destroy their friendship, of that he was certain.

What could he do, then? What was a good middle ground between nothing and everything to test the waters out first?

Suddenly, Anne looked up in his direction. It was so unexpected, it caused Victor’s heart to drop to the floor. But he held back any outward reaction. He forced himself to remain still.

Just a few days ago, he had spotted Anne watching him from her window while the rest of the family had played croquet. When he’d spotted her she had run, embarrassed at being caught. He knew her well enough to know this had been the reason, and he hadn’t dared bring it up.

He understood now what she had felt in that moment. But he wouldn’t run, and he wouldn’t feel shame for watching her.

Instead, he stayed in place, daring her to make a move.

And grappling with what he had decided to do next.