Free Belle of the ball by Donna Lea Simpson Page B

shied away from his touch, avoiding his gaze, and with a shake of her head, pulled her curl from his grasp. If only they were not in so very public a place, he thought, if only! He would show her she need not shy away from him, need not fear his lips and his hands. A little shocked at the direction his mind would take when he saw her innocent blush, he folded his hands together and glanced around. The temptation was strong to find out if the rose blush on her cheeks was warm to the touch, but though in a nook, they were still in the ballroom, with people parading past every few seconds. He reined in his wandering thoughts.
    "They are the very flowers I used to gather with my cousins," Miss Swinley said, her voice faint and breathless. She calmed down, took a deep breath, and spoke again. "I lived at the vicarage, their home, for much of my childhood, and we would go fishing, and swimming and gather flowers. My cousin is a great herbalist and knows the names of everything. In fact she saved her husband's life—he was not her husband then, but they married soon after—with an herbal infusion of white willow when he fell ill with the—" She stopped, her green eyes wide, and looked up in confusion. "Oh, I am babbling. I do apologize, Mr. Westhaven."
    "No, don't apologize," he said, smiling and touching her shoulder with a brief caress. He felt her shiver. He was entranced, charmed against his will, and knew why he had not been able to get her out of his mind for the two days he had spent away from London on unavoidable business. When she talked of her childhood he caught glimpses of a sweet girl, unaffected and good-natured, the girl she may have been before London society changed her into an automaton, a performing doll. What a jumble of contradictions she was, part schemer, part dreamer—or was that just his desire for her coloring her character with charming traits? "What else did you do at your cousin's?" he said, wanting to draw her out.
    It seemed he had breached some wall in her, coming upon her so suddenly as he had. He had broken through, briefly, her stiff, social façade. For a quarter hour she spoke of the vicarage down in Cornwall, a memorable trip to Polperro when she was eleven, riding the vicarage pony, visiting the poor with her cousin, a vicar's daughter. She lost her self-consciousness after a while and chattered as happily as a child, with just occasional prompting from him. She was lively and animated, green eyes flashing, her hands in use when she talked of her first riding experience, which ended with her on her bottom in a thistle patch. He roared with laughter. He was completely at his ease with her.

    And he thought he was as happy as he had ever been in his life.
    He had come back to England with every expectation of enjoyment, but so far the trip had not proved as enjoyable as he had expected. He had looked up old friends only to find them stuffy and stultifying and full of annoying and wrong-headed assumptions about Canada that they would not allow him to correct. Somehow they presumed to know more about the country he had just come from than he who had spent the last eleven years there. Galling in the extreme.
    And the business he was there in England to resolve could not be called a happy one, by any means. He was not even sure how he felt about the inevitable outcome. So altogether, the visit to his homeland had so far not been an unqualified success. This moment, in a London ballroom with the Honorable Miss Swinley, was the happiest part of his trip "home" so far. He watched her lovely, joyful face, alight with mischief as she recalled pranks she had pulled and trouble she had caused as a child, with very little evidence of remorse. He thought he would have liked her as a child much better than her cousin. True, who sounded altogether too good.
    He took her arm and guided her out of the alcove, taking her on a stroll around the ballroom. The noise and heat were overpowering, but if it was the