Free Desert Hearts by Marjorie Farrell

hadn’t been to a dance in over a year. He certainly hoped he would remember the steps, he worried as he pulled on his gloves and smoothed his jacket.
    When he arrived the music had already started and he was surprised to see Joshua Elwell with the musicians. So Elwell was a fiddler, was he, thought Michael. And a good one too. He would have to hum a few tunes to the man and see if he could teach him a couple of reels.
    Although it was a mixed dance, Michael noticed that the noncommissioned officers and their wives were clustered together and only Lieutenant Thomas Woolcott was dancing with a master sergeant’s wife. Michael offered his hand to the quartermaster’s daughter, who ducked her head and blushed, but put her hand in his nevertheless. Miss Mary Baker was only seventeen and was very aware that she had just been asked to dance by one of the handsomest men in the room. It took her halfway through the schottische to recover her composure and show Michael that she was a fine dancer.
    “Thank you very much, Miss Baker,” he said when he returned her to her parents. “I was a lucky man indeed to capture you before a stampede starts over here,” he added, smiling down at her. “But sure, with such a fine-looking mother, it will be hard to tell who they’re stampeding after.” He winked at the quartermaster and his wife.
    “Go along with ye, Sergeant Burke,” said Mrs. Baker, who was originally from Kerry. “That fine Irish tongue will not get you anywhere with me!”
    Michael heard the musicians striking up a waltz and gazed around the room. He wasn’t about to waltz with an impressionable young girl. He wasn’t full of himself, mind you, but was quite conscious of his ability to charm women and didn’t need to raise the hopes of a seventeen-year-old by dancing with her twice in a row. He realized that the commander’s wife was chatting with one of her friends while her husband was off in the corner deep in conversation with two officers. He bowed to the Bakers and strolled over.
    He would probably be made a fool of, he thought as he approached her. The dance might be mixed, but he would be willing to bet what he’d won that day that not too many sergeants asked the colonel’s wife to dance. Well, he would and be damned. She could only say no, and since she was a gracious woman from all he’d heard, she would at least say it nicely.
    “A lovely lady like yourself shouldn’t be sitting out a waltz, Mrs. Gray. May I have this dance?”
    Janet Gray looked up into Michael’s blue eyes. He said the words easily and with just the right combination of respect and charm but she knew that a refusal on her part to any noncom would hurt and humiliate. And why should she refuse, she thought as she smiled up at him. He was a good-looking young man and she was going to enjoy her waltz with him. And her Charles was off with his cronies in the corner.
    “Thank you, Sergeant Burke,” she said with a smile and offered him her hand.
    Michael moved as gracefully and expertly as she thought he would and when she saw Charles looking over at her with his eyebrows raised, she only gave him a little smile and went on chatting with Michael.
    “You rode a very exciting race today, Sergeant. I declare, you had all us ladies having palpitations at the finish-line, it was so close.”
    “Somehow I don’t think ye’re the sort of woman for palpitations, Mrs. Gray,” he said, smiling down at her. “Not the wife of Colonel Charles Gray who’s been stationed in the territory for five years.”
    “You are right, Sergeant,” she admitted. “I was making a poor attempt to flirt with you, but I suppose I am too old for that anyway,” she added with mock sadness.
    “And now ye are just trying to pull a compliment out of me, ma’am,” he replied with a twinkle in his eye. “But ye need no compliments from me, Mrs. Gray. Ye’re a very handsome woman.”
    “And you are a very bold young man, Sergeant Burke!”
    “Sure and