Free Her Ladyship's Companion by Joanna Bourne

the woods with him.
    Melissa found herself wishing enviously that she had been one of those silly pretty ladies, risking wet slippers for a walk around the island. Most of all, she wished she were in the other room, dancing.
    She turned from the window to find Giles Tarsin standing in the door of the green parlor, watching her. He was returning an unlighted cigar to his pocket. Melissa thought he must have come for a solitary smoke. She was partly correct.
    Giles was glad for a respite from the party. He took his duties as a host seriously; that meant dancing with a descending succession of the dullest women in the room. Lady Dorothy surely would not begrudge him a single dance interval to “blow a cloud” in the privacy of the green parlor. Besides, a particular pair of flashing white teeth were beginning to get on his nerves.
    So he came in and found Melissa Rivenwood framed in the window of the darkening room with the gold sunlight reflected in those remarkable eyes.
    “Are you wishing you were in the other room dancing, Miss Rivenwood?” he asked on an impulse he didn’t understand. He regretted it immediately. The answer in her eyes was yes.
    Strange that he knew so clearly what she was thinking.
    She smiled to show it didn’t matter. “Lady Dorothy hasn’t given me permission,” she said.
    Nor would she. He’d already been treated to Lady Dorothy’s pungent opinion in the matter. “Don’t ask the girl to dance,” had been her order. “Damn tabbies have nothing better to jabber about than you cavorting with my latest possession. Besides, if I let you try it, I’ll have a dozen others to fight off. And every one with a nosy mamma who wants to know the girl’s genealogy back to Adam. Leave her be. There’ll be other dances for her.”
    Excellent good sense, as always, Giles thought.
    “Would you care to dance?” he asked, looking into her somber eyes.
    “Of course not.” She faltered. “Lady Dorothy said—”
    “Do you waltz?” he demanded, walking toward her purposefully.
    Six years in a London girls’ school and he asks if I know how to waltz, she thought in amazement.
    “Yes,” she reluctantly admitted.
    “Then do so.” He took her in his arms.
    She would have stopped to argue, but by the time she marshaled her thoughts to say no she was already dancing, which made any resistance sound stupid.
    Melissa discovered immediately that waltzing with the young ladies in the music room at school bore not the least resemblance to dancing with a man. Not that it was difficult. If she hadn’t been so flustered, it would have been the most natural thing in the world to be moving with music in the circle of this man’s arms.
    It was a totally, completely impossible thing to be doing. “Mr. Tarsin. I can’t do this.”
    “You do this very well,” Giles murmured.
    He was right. It was easy, easier than she’d dreamed. After the first embarrassing minute waltzing was as natural as walking.
    The music slid smoothly across the hall and filled the parlor. The soft Aubusson carpet whispered beneath their feet. The green room was washed in gold and silver light.
    Sometimes music is magic, fire in the veins, honey in the mouth. If the august patronesses of Almack’s had not dried up to wizened husks decades before, they would have known better than to allow such a dangerous dance as the waltz within their doors.
    As Giles Tarsin whirled Melissa around the room, she discovered that the world can narrow to the distance between two people.
    His coat was blue-black. The cravat was tied in a more complicated arrangement than he usually wore. His eyes were deep gray, almost blue-black like his coat. And how full of laughter! Had he been laughing like this, with such a warm glow behind his eyes, when he danced with the heiress?
    But there was no comparison, of course. He danced with the tin mine heiress in the ballroom in front of everyone. He was dancing with her in a shabby, dim green room across the hall.