The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(69)

Clearing her throat, she pointedly tapped at her closed lips. “Angry,” she mouthed, and then she lifted her arms into position.

Adair searched about, feeling more cornered now than he had as a boy trapped against a back alley with the constables close. She was unrelenting. She’d not quit until he conceded to the set and a visit to his club.

As if she’d followed his thoughts, Cleopatra waggled her arms.

“Foine,” he snapped. All he’d end up with by the time this lesson was through was a lesson in humiliation. Particularly as she’d so elegantly glided about Lord and Lady Beaufort’s ballroom with the rakish Lord Landon. Fury whipped through Adair, and he took a lurching step toward her . . . and then stopped.

He eyed the graceful arc of her arms, lost, when as a rule a man in St. Giles didn’t ever ask the way.

“Here,” Cleopatra murmured. Stretching a hand out, she gathered his left one in her delicate but firm grip and guided it to her waist. His fingers tightened reflexively upon her. The warmth of her skin penetrated the thin scrap of fabric between them, searing his hand. His mouth went dry as lust bolted through him. “Put your other hand in mine,” she said softly, and of its own volition, his arm came up and he found her fingers with his in a grip that felt so very right.

“Now what?” Was that question for himself . . . or for her?

“All the steps are: one, two, three. One, two three. Even,” she added, as a seeming afterthought. “You’ll step forward with the heel and backward with the toe to the foot.” She squeezed his hand slightly, urging him through the box movements. “And count: one, two, three. One, two, three.”

His pacing off, Adair stepped on her right foot. He cursed. Lord Landon hadn’t missed a single bloody step. His movements had been as smooth as his rakish smile.

“Shh. Close your eyes, Adair.”

“A man who closes his eyes is asking to be stabbed in the belly,” he muttered.

“Hush,” she scolded. “If you overthink the movements, they’ll never come natural. Your eyes,” she again instructed.

Adair hesitated and then complied. It was surely a mark of her hold over him that she managed to make him abandon so many of the rules of the streets that had guided his existence.

Cleopatra led him through the movements, neatly sidestepping the handful of furniture pieces in the otherwise empty space he’d converted into an office. Adair held himself stiffly erect, training all his efforts on the soft instructions she offered up. Her husky voice washed over him, chasing off some of the tension in his frame. Mayhap he’d been wrong about this dancing business, after all, and the fancy toffs had been correct. For there was something so damned appealing in having a woman in one’s arms like this. Nay, you wouldn’t feel that way about any woman. It’s this one.

He immediately stomped her left foot.

His eyes shot open in time for him to detect Cleopatra’s wince.

“Oi’m rubbish at this,” he rasped, slipping into his Cockney.

Cleopatra squeezed his hands. “Eyes closed.”

Then she began to sing. Hers was never a voice that would be considered flawless by society’s standards. It was slightly too low, and even more discordant. But there was a sultry realness to her contralto, and it only pulled him deeper and deeper into her hold.

As I was a walking down Paradise Street

A pretty young damsel I chanced for to meet.

She was round in the counter and bluff in the bow,

So I took in all sail and cried, “Way enough now.”

I hailed her in English, she answered me clear,

“I’m from the Black Arrow bound to the Shakespeare.”

So I tailed her my flipper and took her in tow

And yardarm to yardarm away we did go.

But as we were going she said unto me

There’s a spanking full-rigger just ready for sea.

“You sing that one often,” he observed.

This time, Cleopatra faltered, missing a step. Adair quickly caught her against him. Righting her, he brought them gliding back into steps of the waltz.

“That has nothing to do with your waltz lesson,” she said gruffly, fixing all her attentions on his shirtfront.

He caught her foot again under his, but instead of drawing back in humiliation and ending the set as he’d attempted to earlier, he continued waltzing her sloppily about his makeshift office. “No,” he acknowledged. “It has to do with you.” And he wanted to know because of it.

“Not much to say.” The pain in her tone said enough for her. “Diggory had one of his wives”—it was what he’d called the women he bedded and gotten his brats on—“care for me and my sisters. She used to sing it.” There was an air of finality that discouraged further probing.

And a little more than three weeks ago, he would have contentedly left her to her secrets and her past. A person didn’t ask those personal questions, but she’d cracked the door open, and he wanted to walk through.

“What happened to her?”

Cleopatra abruptly stopped. “Doesn’t matter,” she said impatiently, taking a step out of his arms.

Settling his hands about her shoulders, Adair brought her back around. “I don’t believe that.” He passed somber eyes over her face.

Her skin white and her eyes ravaged, she wore her pain like a physical mark. “Oi don’t talk about it.”