Page 12 of A Touch for All Time (For All Time #3)

“D o we need music? I don’t want to disturb Harper. I could wake one of the musicians.” Gray entered the hall first and stopped running, turning to her.

“I hadn’t thought of music,” she said, catching her breath, “but maybe it would be better with a little music.”

“Very well, wait here.” He hurried back out of the dance room and ran to the main hall. He stopped the first servant he saw and told him to awaken Alexander Pepperton, the castle violinist, and tell him he should go to his lord’s dance hall at once—and bring his violin.

When he returned to Miss Darling, he was barely out of breath from running. It took more of his strength to lay his eyes on her stretching with her ankle resting on one of the high bars along the walls.

She saw him and stopped practicing.

“Please continue,” he offered and began unbuttoning his waistcoat without taking his eyes off her.

“You should stretch too,” she told him tersely, blinking her gaze at him, “since you’ll be the one dancing.”

He watched her reactions to him, no matter how subtle. It was a lesson his…his…he couldn’t remember who taught him to study people, but it was a lesson that had helped him gauge a person’s intentions. He tossed his waistcoat and coat away and rolled up his ruffled sleeves, then walked toward her. When he reached her, he lifted his left leg and rested his ankle on the barre in front of her. She smiled. He offered her a slight smile in return and then leaned down and took hold of his ankle, flattening his torso against his outstretched leg.

She followed suit and then turned her hips and curled one arm over her head, holding the barre with the other hand. They stretched together until the violinist appeared in the doorway.

Gray instructed the musician to play Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in A major and not to speak of what he saw tonight, or it would cost him his head. Of course, Gray had no intentions of taking the musician’s head, in fact, he promised to supply food for his family for an entire month for his service tonight.

“Alright,” Miss Darling said, slapping her hands together the way his childhood teacher, Philip D’var used to do before he got to teaching before he was accused of being a spy and ran for his life. “I’ll teach you the dance I taught at home. You’re dancing to the part of Shakespeare’s Romeo.”

What was this ridiculous rumbling of his bones? He had danced Romeo’s part before. Why should it make him happy that she should think him good enough to portray such a passionate character?

“I’ll have to tweak the dance a bit since there’s no Juliet and you’ll be dancing alone.”

“There’s you,” he said in a gruff voice.

“No, there isn’t.”

He didn’t respond, either to agree with her or beg her to dance. He wasn’t about to beg. If she loved dancing as much as he did, she wouldn’t be able to resist for too long. When she tried to teach him about “hinge” and “hinge variation”, he didn’t catch on until she demonstrated it for him. He watched in awe of the strength in her belly and buttocks, not to mention her thighs and perhaps mostly in her toes as she pushed up on them, tightening her other muscles all at the same time to lower herself backward to the floor, then back in one fluid movement.

“You’re starting with something physically difficult,” he pouted.

“You can try holding the barre if you need to,” she said with a little smirk. “We’ll take it in steps.”

He gave her his own succinct half-grin and folded backwards, using his stomach and inner thigh muscles to keep his torso in a straight line while descending. Tightening his abdominals, he lifted his torso in opposition of his descent. As his upper back approached the ground, he pressed his knees forward and stretched his torso and then bounded back up like a snake uncoiling and about to strike.

“Who taught you how to perform a hinge? It wasn’t even a dance move until 1930 by Lester Horton.”

“You taught me, Miss Darling.” He gave her a curious look. “Just now.”

“Just…now,” she repeated, sounding stunned. “That was the first time you tried a hinge?”

He nodded. “As long as I can see a move, I can perform it. My mother took me to many theater houses when I was a boy. The more I watched a performance, the easier it became for me to dance it.”

His pretty instructor gaped at him. “You have photogenic and movement memory! I’ve heard of people like you, but I’ve never met them. Still, it’s one thing knowing how to execute the move, it’s another to be able to do it.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Your ‘hinge’ requires great muscle strength, which I possess.” He lifted his shirt to show her his whipcord belly. Then let the shirt fall again and stepped back. “What’s next?”

She blushed and turned away from him. Madly, it made him want to smile at her for blushing over a glimpse of his belly.

“Don’t you want to practice the hinge anymore?”

He gave her an earnest look. “Do you think I need to?”

She shook her head slowly. “No, I don’t. It was perfect.”

He felt his pulse quicken through his veins as if he’d been dancing for a long period of time. “I was just doing what I saw you do.”

She set her icy blue gaze on him, but her smile was anything but cold. “Wow, talented and modest. A first.”

He stared at her for a moment while Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in A major played across his ears. Then he drew in a deep breath as if he hoped to gather his wits. He did, but only enough to keep from smiling like a fool.

She taught him moves over the next hour, such as “barrel jumping”, which was a series of turns, low jumps, and steps. When she demonstrated contorting her body in different ways like “roll downs” and “body waves”, he followed along: shoulders back, chest in, stomach and hips out, then reverse, employing muscles all along his back and in his abdomen. Hips and stomach in, chest out, shoulders straight. He loved it and smiled in delight. He took what he learned and let himself move to the beautiful sound in his ears. He couldn’t help it. The more he danced, the more at home he began to feel at home with the new style of dancing and incorporating what he already knew in classic and comic ballet into his moves. His burst of movement across the floor and in the air came to an end with him bubbling up with laughter.

“I love contemporary dancing. Teach me more.”

“I can tell you love it,” she said, a bit breathless as if she had danced with him. “You’re very expressive when you dance.”

Madly, he felt himself blush. “I haven’t felt that way dancing since before I can remember.”

“Well then, let’s practice more.”

He agreed. “Show me the dance for Romeo. Whatever moves I don’t know yet that are in the dance, I’ll learn when I see it done.”

He managed to keep his smile hidden when she quirked her brow at him, on the verge of accusing him of making an excuse to make her dance. “Miss Darling,” he continued, “I was made to learn by watching.”

She finally nodded and walked to the center of the dance hall, where she turned to face him. She aligned herself and lifted her head, lengthening her neck and her torso, then rolled down until the backs of her hands were flat against the floor.

Gray walked to the single stair where he’d often sat to rest after hours of practice. He sat now to watch her, and he found that he couldn’t look away. Her body moved with fluid grace into a hinge. Her arms gently pinwheeled like a cascading waterfall as she arched her back.

For Gray, Aria Darling became the most beautiful being he’d ever seen while she danced. Her body swayed like reeds in a summer breeze. She danced the part of Romeo and Gray imagined every sorrowful emotion she portrayed with her movements. The forbidden love, demonstrated in the skillful push and pull of her dance, the secret intimacy portrayed in her sinuous, seductive movements, and the tragic ending that, if Gray didn’t know any better, would believe she had lived through. Her dance was so moving, he forgot to breathe and could barely see out of his misty eyes.

The fact that she hadn’t performed a single jump or leap in the dance hadn’t escaped him. They were the most difficult, most satisfying moves in a performance. But she was too afraid of breaking again to be truly free.

“You seem to be good at improvising,” she said when she returned to him. “I’d like to see what jumps you’ll add.”

“Miss Darling,” he told her, trying his best to keep his heartbeat from making his voice shake, “you bring music to life. Not many can do that.”

She studied him for a moment, as if she were trying to read him. Then, she smiled. “You can.”

*

Aria lay awake in her bed an hour after leaving the marquess. For the first time in as long as she could remember, her parents’ hardships weren’t what was keeping her awake.

She’d never fawned over a guy in her life, but the Lord Grayson Barrington Marquess of Dartmouth got her blood flowing. She’d seen enough male dancers come and go to know that not all of them had what it took to be successful, much less to become famous. The handsome marquess was engaging and expressive while his body and the masterful way he moved it stirred heart and soul—hers mainly. From the instant he achieved a hinge without practice and then lifted his shirt to show her his abdomen she’d been doomed. She hadn’t had time to look away, which she would have done for her own sanity, before he let go of his shirt and let it drop again. But she’d seen enough. In fact, in that brief instant that felt like an hour, she saw too much. His abdominal muscles were cut into a tight pack of six between his well-defined obliques, which disappeared on either side beneath his breeches and made her a little dizzy. He’d stood, slightly jutting out his hips and creating a sensuous concave curve in his torso. He wasn’t overly muscular, but lean and lithe, his body honed for dancing, or… she remembered to breathe and opened her eyes.

She couldn’t allow herself to think of him in a sexual way. But honestly, from the instant his feet hit the dance floor he became a different kind of animal. Something dark and dangerous, some that used his body to communicate not only his emotions but his virility, for it flowed from him in waves.

He had a photogenic and movement memory, remembering every move he saw, enabling him to learn whatever dance his heart desired. His first dance tonight had been a masterpiece of longing and pain—a window into his wounded soul. But when he danced contemporary, mastering over a dozen new moves, it was clear that joy filled him.

With his eyes closed and his smile radiant with rapture, he remembered every step she’d demonstrated and made them better. It was the first time she’d seen him happy since she’d arrived in this century. He was truly glorious and breathtaking. When he performed a body wave, moving like a snake and wearing a half smile of scandalous intentions, her legs had nearly given out beneath her. She didn’t think she could ever be more attracted to him than in that moment on his dance floor. But when his dance had ended, he turned to her with the residue of his joy sparking his eyes, and with his lips slightly puckered and turned upward, he wrinkled his nose, making one eye close.

She knew if she didn’t find her door soon and get out of here, she would fall and fall hard for the Marquess of Dartmouth.

And that’s what was keeping her awake. She didn’t even know him. It was his dancing that was turning her heart. His deep, passionate love for the same thing she loved. He could be a terrible tyrant—and according to Harry Gable, he had been a demented soul at whose command forest animals attacked Harry and his father, killing the latter. And all while the marquess smiled. She’d seen him dance at his stepmother’s ball in his macabre style with no trace of mercy or affection in his gaze. She understood that he was harnessing his emotions because he was afraid of them. He didn’t break away from the strings that pulled him along because if he did, his emotions would break free as well, and people might die. He was a puppet and the one pulling the strings was him.

Did she want to be here when all those emotions exploded?

She decided in the dark hours of the night that there was something magical about him. He was, after all, the grandson of a woman who lived in the twenty-first century since leaving him fifteen years ago.

If this was all true, and Aria believed it was because she was living it, then Mrs. B. was a time-traveler, who possessed articles, like a gold key, and handed them out to a woman who had been forever indebted to her.

What had the marquess told her? That she could potentially bear him sons? Why was giving him sons so important? Aria hadn’t asked him. Would she stay and do what Mrs. B. wanted for her grandson? No. No loyalty came before that which she felt toward her parents and her brother.

Would she have a choice to stay or go home? Maybe all the doors were closed for good, or at least until she bore the marquess sons! She wouldn’t choose to stay here and leave her family. She would never forgive Mrs. B. for this. Even if she succeeded and found her door and went home, she wouldn’t forget that Mrs. B. had sent her back to her grandson so his memory could haunt Aria for the rest of her life.

When she finally fell asleep to the sound of birds singing somewhere outside her window, she didn’t dream of how her brother would pay for college, or if he would even attend, or how much more her mother would have to work to feed them. She didn’t dream of the handsome marquess or how he smiled at her while he danced. She didn’t dream at all—and it was wonderful. She slept like a log.

The next time she opened her eyes, sunlight brightened her room enough to make her squint when she opened her eyes. She heard someone scurrying off and disappearing outside her room.

Sarah appeared a few minutes later and with the marquess a step or two behind her.

“Miss Darling, you worried Sarah. Why are you sleeping three hours past noon?”

Aria sat up. Her loose hair tumbled about her shoulders and face. She smoothed it away and tried to think more clearly. It was three o’clock? “Sarah, I’m sorry I made you worry. I didn’t fall asleep until the morning,” she explained, rubbing her eyes.

“Why did you have trouble sleeping?” Sarah asked.

Aria couldn’t tell her that the marquess plagued her thoughts all night or that seeing him now made her dizzy. “I was thinking of my family.”

“Oh, Aria,” Sarah cooed and went to her. “You will return to them. I just know you will find the way.”

Aria nodded. Her gaze involuntarily flicked to the marquess. He was watching her with a warm glint in his eyes.

“Sarah,” he said. His voice was gentle but authoritative, “bring your lady some food. I’m certain she hungers.”

“Yes, m’lord. Right away.”

They both watched Sarah hurry off, then Aria flicked her blankets off and hung her legs over the mattress to leave the bed. She’d never had breakfast in bed, and she didn’t want to start now. It would be one of those little things that would help spoil her for her real world where her father had to be fed intravenously in his bed every day for the rest of whatever was left of his life.

She noticed that the marquess turned his face to look away from her. Was it because she was in her nightgown and her legs were exposed?

She gave the back of his head a slight smile. This was the same man who, while he was dancing, could flash a woman a look that made her snap her fan open and wave it furiously in front of her face. Even women sitting with their fathers who had been threatened by him five minutes earlier. But at the sight of Aria’s bare legs, he became shy.

There was too much to like about him. She didn’t think he was a tyrant. He might be short and dispassionate with others, but he wasn’t cruel to them. Sarah was one of Dartmouth’s servants and she was in love with its lord, despite his allegedly having something to do with her father’s death. He couldn’t be all that bad, unless, like the duke of Hamilton’s daughter, Sarah would forgive him anything.

“Are you going to stare at the wall the whole time?”

“Only if you don’t return to your bed,” he replied just as coolly.

“I have to use the…I have to—” She pointed quickly to the linen partition in the shadowy corner of the room. If she lived here, God forbid, for the rest of her life, she would never get accustomed to urinating in a metal pot.

He caught on and nodded, then without another word, he left the room.

Aria breathed. It didn’t help, she still felt faint. How could he look so good in the mor—oh, right. Never mind. She’d never slept in so late in her life. Her thoughts felt scrambled.

She was able to clean up without his face or his voice haunting her, but only because her stomach was growling with hunger.

When Sarah returned with a tray of porridge, some berries, fresh bread, butter and honey, she was alone.

“Did the marquess leave?” Aria tried to sound nonchalant and appear unfazed when Sarah informed her that he had, indeed, left. Why else would he stay? “I believe he went to the coffee house.”

“Coffee?” Aria didn’t even know there was coffee in 1795. She looked at the tray being set down on the bed by Sarah. There was no coffee.

“Yes. It is served at the coffee house. Will sometimes goes but my mother says the drink only serves to make a person quick-tempered and shaky.”

“Caffeine,” Aria said with a longing sigh.

“Hmm?”

“Sarah,” she said as she sat in the bed and picked at her food. “I’d like to go to the coffee house.” Oh, how she wanted a cup of coffee.

“Oh, Aria, you cannot go to the coffee house!”

“Why not?” She tasted her porridge. It was bland, but she was hungry and thankful.

“Women are banned from going.”

Aria stopped eating. “Hmm? What was that? Women are banned? Why?”

Sarah shook her head. “I do not know.”

Aria flung her legs over the side of the bed for the second time that day. “I’ll find out!” She looked around the room and, draped over a velvet settee, she saw a pretty, short-sleeved olive-green gown that looked to be silk, volumes of petticoats in white muslin fabric, and a matching green bodice and caraco with full-length, tight sleeves. She went to the gown and ignoring the skirts, pulled the silky fabric over her chemise and pockets. It fell loose on her, a size too big, but after Sarah cinched it below her breasts, it fit better.

“You look romantic and beautiful,” Sarah told her, backing up to have a better look at her after she combed Aria’s hair and pinned it up, leaving a single curl to dangle over her shoulder. “Will I lose him to you?”

Aria’s blood felt as if it were draining from her body. She liked Sarah, and she owed her much. She didn’t want to be having this conversation with her. “Is he yours to lose?”

She closed her eyes. Why did she ask that? Who cared? Was she being possessive toward the marquess? “I mean—”

“Perhaps he could be mine one day.”

“Yes.” Aria’s gums itched as she gritted her teeth. “Why are you helping me look ‘romantic and beautiful’ then?

“If it is you who will make him happy, even…smile that sweet crinkly smile of his again, then that is what I want for him. How could I want anything less without being a selfish wench?”

Aria didn’t know what to say. Should she tell her that she’d seen his nose-crinkling smile, and it was glorious? What did one reply to such sacrificial love? “Sarah, I’m not staying. I can’t. I have a family to take care of.”

Will’s younger sister stared at her for a moment, not looking pleased. “So, you will either leave him or take him with you?”

“What?” Aria blinked, trying to gather her wits that seemed to flee whenever the marquess was involved. “I didn’t mean—I don’t intend—look here, Sarah, I’m not chasing him and leading him on. I’m going to the coffee house for some coffee—”

“Please, Aria, you must not go!”

“I won’t sit here longing for coffee when there’s a perfectly good coffee house—where did you say it was?”

Sarah bit her lip. “You will need a horse.”

“Oh,” Aria said with a sigh. She knew nothing about riding horses. Would she risk her life for a cup of coffee? “Maybe I can ask Will to—”

“No,” Sarah said. “I do not want to involve him in this scandal. I will ask one of the drivers to take you in his carriage.”

“Will this really be a scandal?” Aria asked, fitting on her coat.

“Indeed, it will,” Sarah let her know, following her out of the room. “But if anyone likes a good scandal, it is Lord Dartmouth.”