Anthony trailed along behind Charity as she meandered down the corridor, peeking into room after room, holding the lamp she’d filched from his desk aloft to see what lay within.
“What in the world are you doing?” he asked, after the fourth room failed to meet with her approval and she shut the door with a decisive click.
“Seeking a suitable room,” she said as she wandered on.
“Dancing requires space, you know. Your study is not quite the thing for it.”
“You might have asked if I knew of such a room.”
“I might have, but then I would have had to surrender such a perfect opportunity to be nosy about it.” She flashed a cheeky smile over her shoulder as she pushed open a new door and at last sighed, “Ah. Perfect. A music room.”
“Do you play?” he asked as she beckoned him within.
“Not a note,” she said as she placed the lamp upon a small table near the door.
“I never had occasion to learn. My father did not believe much in educating women, especially with such frivolities. I remain perpetually surprised he allowed us even to learn to read.”
And yet for all that, she was clearly an intelligent woman. What she lacked in the way of any formal education, she must have made up for by becoming self-taught.
“But you dance,” he said.
“Oh, yes.” Charity cast open the heavy curtains shielding the windows, and a thick stream of moonlight poured into the room, limning the floor in silver.
“Of course, I am not frequently invited to Ton events—”
“But you are infrequently invited?”
“Sometimes. To events held by those who are either secure enough in their positions within society to ignore whatever censure they might receive from issuing an invitation to me, or by those who simply do not care what propriety demands of them.” Carefully she edged a chair away, clearing the space left in the center of the room further.
“But gentlemen do wish to show off their mistresses on occasion, and there are events designed for them to do so. Outside of Ton society, of course, but no less extravagant.”
“Ah,” he said.
“Cyprians’ balls.”
“Just so. Would you move that chair, there, up against the wall?” She indicated the object with a tilt of her head.
“We’ll need the space.”
“To dance? But there’s no music.” Nonetheless, Anthony did as she had directed, and caught up the chair by its arms, positioning it well away.
“Would you care to ask one of your sisters-in-law to play for us? Or perhaps your mother?” Charity inquired archly.
He tried to imagine for a moment summoning his mother to play the pianoforte as he danced with his courtesan wife. Or his sisters-in-law. The only image produced in his mind was the abrupt slamming of a door in his face.
“Best not,” he admitted with a sigh as she came up upon his left side once more.
It occurred to Anthony rather suddenly that on the few occasions on which they had met, she had never approached him from the right. Perhaps she simply knew instinctively that a man rendered half-blind would not appreciate someone approaching from that side. God knew he’d snapped at nearly everyone who had come even into the periphery of his life for it at one time or another—but not Charity. Because she had never so offended.
“A waltz, I think,” she said as she caught up his hand and dragged him toward the center of the room.
“Waltzes are simple—and by far the most important.”
“How so?”
“Difficult to have a private conversation during a quadrille. If you wish to win a lady’s heart, you’ll have to steal what scant few public moments you may to charm her. And to flirt.” The glint of those white teeth in the moonlight. Cheeky. Mischievous. Charming.
“I haven’t got the slightest idea of how to be charming,” he said, with no small amount of truculence. Charity seemed to him to be effortlessly charming, and he didn’t think she was even attempting to affect it. Could one learn a charm that seemed so natural? “And dancing…” It was an activity fraught with peril for someone missing half his sight.
“I’m not certain I can lead. My perception of depth, of distance—they are less than precise. I can no longer accurately judge them as once I might have done. I’m liable to bump into somebody.”
A light, tinkling laugh.
“If you do, you must simply frown at the gentleman in question. Wordlessly suggest that the error is his.”
“And if I am clumsy enough to bump into a lady?”
“My answer remains the same. The fault for a misstep upon a dance floor never belongs to a lady; it is always the gentleman who is to blame. So you must direct it toward her dance partner.” Her slender, elegant fingers found his. Cool and soft, they held his hand with gentle pressure.
“You’ve already learned dancing,” she said.
“You’ll pick it up again quickly, I’m certain. When you’re ready.”
She thought he could do this, and so Anthony attempted to believe her. There was a rhythm to a dance, and it might’ve been a different one to what he had learned in the army, but he’d had the sound of the drums in his head for years and years already. That remembered beat resounding in his head had threatened to drive him mad long after he’d sold his commission. Perhaps, one day, he might trade it for a melody instead. Trade the groans and wheezes of the sick and the dying for a sparkle of scintillating laughter. Trade the stench of trench foot and the odor of illness for the sweet floral fragrance of perfume.
He took a step, and Charity moved with him in a perfect glide.
“Good,” she said, and there was the warmth of approval in her voice.
“Again. Turn when I squeeze your arm.”
Another step, and another, and if he was clumsy in the beginning, her grace accommodated his first few awkward steps. And then it grew a bit easier—another few steps, and she squeezed his arm. A turn, her skirts swishing across the floor as she moved with him. Her dark hair glowed silver with the brief touch of the moonlight spilling through the window, and in the silence of the room there was only the rustle of her skirts and the sound of their footsteps.
“There,” she said, sounding extremely pleased with herself.
“You see? I told you so.”
She said it with the self-satisfaction of a woman who loved nothing better than being proved correct.
“Hush,” he said.
“I’m concentrating.” That gown she was wearing was a lovely red silk, no doubt expensive as sin and impossibly fragile. If he happened to make a misstep and tread upon the hem, he feared he’d rip the delicate fabric straight from her body.
Another squeeze of his arm. He led her through another turn, wondering how she had so easily judged the size of the room while dancing, when he struggled only to hold the steps in his mind and to pair them with the rhythm of the dance. It felt impossible to split his attention even so much as to avoid running them straight into a wall—much less to make conversation. But she did it ably enough, accommodating for his lacking depth-perception whenever she judged the distance to the closest obstacle too near. Just the lightest pressure of her fingers, and he knew to turn them away.
“There is such a thing as concentrating too hard,” she advised upon their next turn.
“Perhaps, if you concentrate just a little less, you’ll enjoy it more.”
Enjoy it? At what point had enjoyment entered into the picture? “If I miss a step, I might tread upon your toes. Or worse, your hem.”
“You might,” she allowed.
“But then, you might also relax enough not to squeeze my fingers straight off my hand.”
Hell. He had clamped them so hard in his that she could hardly wiggle them enough to suggest he might loosen his grip.
“Damn,” he said as he eased the pressure upon her fingers.
“I’m sorry, I—” He missed the step. Trod upon the hem of her gown. The sound of rending fabric sheared through the room, impossibly and embarrassingly loud.
And Charity laughed.
In the darkness, he could not quite tell the extent of the damage, how badly he had humiliated himself.
“I’ll pay for it,” he said.
“The gown, I mean to say. If it can’t be mended.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, still with the warmth of laughter in her voice.
“It’s only a gown, and quite an old one at that.”
“At the very least, I can beg a temporary replacement from one of my sisters-in-law.” Both were still in deep mourning; an old gown would not be missed. Possibly Helen was near enough to her size.
“You cannot be seen leaving in a torn gown.”
“Unnecessary. I brought a pelisse. No one will notice what is obscured beneath it. Here, now, again.” She took up his hand once more, repositioned herself.
“My sister designs the most beautiful fabric patterns,” she said, conversationally, as she prodded him into the dance anew.
“I can get the best of anything for a fraction of the cost.”
“Felicity?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“Felicity lives in Brighton, and she teaches at a school for young ladies. The same one, in fact,” she added, with a cheeky smile, “to which I sent her years ago.”
“Your father never discovered where she was?”
“No, thank God,” she said.
“I led him to believe I had sent her off to Scotland. He never discovered the truth, and she’s been living beneath an assumed surname all these years.” She blew out a breath.
“I don’t like to speak of my father,” she admitted.
“Then don’t. Tell me about your other sister instead. I wasn’t aware you had one.” He knew all the rest of it, besides. Every word she had spoken to him as she had held his hand and sat by his beside had been long committed to memory.
“Neither was I, until fairly recently. Mercy is my half-sister. We share a mother, not a father,” she said.
“I would not have wished mine on anyone.” Her voice had grown strained there at the end, as if her throat had tightened around the words. Another squeeze of her fingers upon his arm; another turn. He had hardly noticed how far they had made it across the room. She had been right, there. When he had stopped concentrating so intently upon the steps, it had all become easier. His feet remembered patterns he had learned long ago and sought to place themselves accordingly.
“Mercy married a baron last year,” she said.
“They have got a daughter now. Flora. She’s only a few months old. I have not yet met her, but if she grows up to be anything like her mother, she’ll be a holy terror.”
“Oh?”
“Mercy is…irrepressible,” she said.
“An idealist; a fantasist who sees the world not as it is but as it could be. I adore her for it, but just occasionally she needs the stability of her husband’s influence. Together they are—rather like a kite and a string, I think. The string keeps the kite safe from the inconstancy of the wind, and the kite flies above the trees without the threat of floating off into the ether. And little Flora will have the best of both of them.” Another squeeze, a smoother turn this time.
“And your nieces?” she pressed.
“I don’t know,” he said, in all honesty.
“I hardly see the children. I know their names and little else. They spend most of their time in the nursery.”
“Have you visited them?”
Anthony suppressed a wince.
“I don’t know that I’d care to try,” he admitted.
“They’re frightened of my face. The nursery is a space that remains safe for them. It would be cruel to take that from them, when my presence unsettles them so.” Somehow, they’d made another circuit of the room without a misstep on his part.
“Occasionally, their mother has them down with the family for dinner. Without me.”
“That hardly seems fair.”
“Perhaps not, but they have weathered so much change just lately—”
“And so have you,” she said firmly.
“They have lost their father, but they have got an uncle who might be an uncle to them, if he were given the opportunity. If he gave himself the opportunity.” The moonlight flashed across her hair, lustrous dark curls shining as they moved around the room, in smooth sweeps now instead of his once-awkward steps.
“It’s not so difficult, is it? Conversation, I mean to say.”
“Probably this one is not well-suited to a ballroom,” he said.
“But, no—it’s not quite so difficult as I had thought it would be.” Hearing her speaking of her family had soothed his nerves somewhat, given him something to focus upon other than his own clumsiness, his fear of a missed step.
If he made another—she would laugh again, no doubt. Without mockery; without contempt or disdain or ridicule. Just simple pleasure, as if it were a joke shared between them. She might well leave this room with her gown in shreds, but she would do it with a smile.
“Tell me, then,” she said, “what sort of lady you had in mind for a wife? I have got a list of names, but it would be prudent to pare it down a bit first. Start with the ladies most likely, and then branch out from there, if none of them should suit.”
“I shouldn’t like anyone too young,” he said hastily.
“I can’t imagine I could have much in common with a girl only a few years removed from the school room.” Though he could hardly imagine what he might have in common with any other lady, besides.
“Good,” she said.
“That’s good. That eliminates two right away. How do you feel about widows?”
Another misstep at the unexpected question, but at least he hadn’t stepped upon her hem this time.
“I suppose it depends. Was her prior marriage a love match? Has she got children of her own?”
“One has got five children. The other was indeed a love match,” she said.
“Five children?” Good lord, he couldn’t imagine the chaos of adding five more children to a household already in shambles. Five more little ones to cower away from him, to terrorize with his very presence.
“That’s a no?” Charity asked.
“If your purpose is to get an heir, I should think the lady has proved her value there.”
“Mother wants an heir,” he said.
“I don’t particularly care one way or another. I’ll consider her, if no one else suits. But the love match—that is a no. I’d prefer a bride who is heart-whole. I haven’t a prayer of winning a heart already engaged.” Even if its prior owner was deceased.
“I think you give yourself too little credit,” she said.
“But even so, that’s enough to begin with. Now—ballroom conversation.”
Anthony bit back a groan.
“What does one speak of on a ballroom floor? The weather?”
“To begin with,” Charity said.
“Naturally, you cannot flirt overtly with a woman you have only just met. Especially a lady. But you might remark upon the weather, if it has been fair—”
“This is London. The weather is never fair.”
“Or commiserate with her over it, if it has not,” she continued as if he had not spoken.
“You might entertain her with something of interest from the morning’s newspaper, or else recommend to her a book you have recently enjoyed.”
“Should I ask her no questions of herself?”
“Of course you should, but it is a dance, not an inquisition. Even though you are seeking a duchess, you will not want to give her the impression that she is auditioning for the role so publicly. You may, of course, remark upon your interests to ascertain whether she shares them, and inquire after her own.” Charity cleared her throat, inclined her head.
“If, at the end of the dance, the conversation has been agreeable, you will ask if you might call upon her in the future.”
“She might refuse.”
“She might. That is the risk one takes in such circumstances. If she invites you to pay a call, you must bring a small gift. Sweets, perhaps, or a book from your library. Poetry is a popular choice. Whatever you choose must not be too personal, you understand. And even if she should refuse a call, it would be prudent to send flowers the following day and a short note to thank her for the dance.” As she drew them to a halt once more, she patted his arm reassuringly.
“Fret not,” she said.
“Any visit should be limited to no more than a quarter of an hour. You can make conversation for that long.”
“Can I?”
“You have been. And any lady who has been raised properly can carry a conversation on her own.” She tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow.
“That’s enough dancing for one evening, I think,” she said.
“Back to your study, hm? I have got the name of the woman who very well may be your future duchess.”
***
Lady Cecily Wainwright. The woman he was meant to court. Anthony had her name upon a scrap of paper in his hand, rendered in Charity’s elegant script, and he felt…nothing. Not anticipation, not anxiety. Just—nothing.
“She’s a bit older that the usual woman on the marriage mart,” Charity said as she waited with him in foyer for Redding to return her pelisse.
“I’m given to understand that her father—the late Earl of Avesbury—was stricken with some illness just before she was meant to have made her come-out in society. She cared for him at their country estate for several years, and mourned for the appropriate period when he passed on.”
A woman of compassion, then, and with a healthy appreciation for family and duty. Anthony supposed he should have been pleased. It boded well for him, that caring and devoted behavior which Charity extolled. That her friends had vouched for the woman’s kindness and consideration promised better still.
But he felt nothing. Perhaps that would change when he met the woman. Would she laugh if he happened to step upon the hem of her skirt? Carry on dancing as if a tear in her gown hadn’t bothered her a whit?
“She comes with an astronomical dowry,” Charity continued, “so you may at least be certain that she has no particular need to marry well. She can well afford to marry where she pleases, and at her age, she cannot be compelled to do otherwise.”
“How old is she?” he asked.
“Thirty, or thereabouts,” Charity said.
So not too young, then. Old enough to know her own mind, to make her own choices.
“She is quite attractive,” Charity said.
“I can vouch for that myself; I’ve caught a glimpse of her a time or two. Beautiful blond hair; lovely figure.” A brief hesitation.
“You may have some competition, as she is something of an heiress. But I am assured that you won’t be competing on the basis of your appearance, nor on the prestige of your title. A woman of independent means loses much when she marries. Her choice will depend upon whether you will enrich her life rather than restrict it. She will wed the man who wins her trust and affection—or not at all. That puts you at the advantage.”
“How so?”
She gave a small, tight smile. The smile of a woman all too knowledgeable.
“Men too often convince themselves that a lady of a certain age must needs be desperate to be wed. But Lady Cecily is the furthest thing from desperate. She will be neither fooled nor impressed by gentlemen who press their suits upon her disingenuously, who might insinuate that she ought to be grateful for their attentions. Those gentlemen who approach her in such a spirit will strike themselves as suitable matches straight off.” Redding returned at last, offering the pelisse to her with a bow. Charity shrugged into it one arm at a time and began the tedious process of fastening the buttons over the ruins Anthony had made of her skirt.
“Four days hence, you’ll attend the Worthington ball. Lady Cecily will certainly be present. You’ll gain an introduction, and if you like her, we will determine how to proceed.”
“Four days?” Anthony’s stomach pitched and rolled.
“But I haven’t sent a response. It’s far too late—”
“Not for a duke,” she quipped.
“I can only manage a waltz.”
“A waltz is all I expect you’ll need. No one will expect you to dance every dance. Only make certain to arrive early enough to be introduced to Lady Cecily, and to nip in to claim a waltz with her before anyone else can.” She reached up to pat his cheek; an oddly reassuring gesture.
“But just to be perfectly safe, I’ll make certain you can manage at least a quadrille before the ball.”
She had an answer for everything, and he—well, there was now undeniably a seething mass of anxiety tumbling in his stomach, but he trusted her estimation of his situation. He trusted her to guide him appropriately. Even despite his own misgivings, he trusted her.
As if she had sensed his disquiet, she drew her fingers down his cheek in a soft, soothing stroke.
“Don’t worry,” she said.
“All you must be is personable. It is only an introduction, only a dance. Nothing more, nothing less.”
She was right. It wasn’t a proposal. It wasn’t even a courtship. It was just an introduction, a dance, a bit of conversation. There was no sense in fretting over something that hadn’t yet happened, no sense in agonizing over possibilities that might never come to pass.
Charity had a list of names. Lady Cecily was only one amongst many upon it.
Redding reached for the door handle, ostensibly to usher Charity out the front door and into the hack he’d sent for some time ago, and Anthony—didn’t want her to go. Not yet. Not now.
He wanted her to stay and talk with him. To ease his concerns. To laugh at his missteps, and to brush off his apologies for them as unnecessary. To keep those cool, soft fingers upon his cheek for just a few moments longer, to keep that dark gaze upon him as if there were something within him worth seeing.
He said in a rush, desperate to keep her for just another few moments, “We haven’t agreed upon your price yet.”
“I haven’t decided upon one.”
“But you will.”
“Eventually.” A tiny grin flirted with the corners of her mouth.
“I have no great need of money. Perhaps I shall request a favor instead.” A final, soft pat to his cheek as her fingers left it at last.
“I am not, generally, the charitable sort,” she said, as she turned at last to go, “but in this case, I shall be generous. I promise you that whatever I ask of you will be well within your ability to pay.”
And then she was gone, slipping out into the silence of the night. The door had not quite closed behind her before Anthony had begun, already, to miss her.