It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers #2)(52)

“It was obvious that the countess was enjoying herself immensely. She seldom encounters young women who don’t wither in her presence.”

“If I haven’t withered in your presence, my lord, then I’m hardly going to wither in hers.”

Westcliff grinned at that and then looked away from her, a pair of small creases appearing between his brows, as if he was contemplating some weighty matter. After a pause that seemed interminably long, his attention returned to Lillian. “Miss Bowman…”

“Yes?”

“Will you do me the honor of dancing with me?”

Lillian stopped breathing, moving, and thinking. Westcliff had never asked her to dance before, despite the multitude of occasions on which he should have asked out of gentlemanly politeness. It had been one of the many reasons that she had hated him, knowing that he considered himself far too superior, and her attractions too insignificant, for it to be worth the bother. And in her more spiteful fantasies, she had imagined a moment like this when he would have asked for a dance, and she would respond with a crushing refusal. Instead, she was astonished and tongue-tied.

“Do excuse me,” she heard Daisy say brightly, “I must go to Evie…” And she sped away with all possible haste.

Lillian drew in an unsteady breath. “Is this a test that the countess has devised?” she asked. “To see if I remember my lessons?”

Westcliff chuckled. Gathering her wits, Lillian couldn’t help but notice that people were staring at them, obviously wondering what she had said to amuse him. “No,” he murmured, “I believe it’s a self-imposed test to see if I…” He seemed to forget what he was saying as he stared into her eyes. “One waltz,” he said gently.

Distrusting her own response to him, the magnitude of her desire to step into his arms, Lillian shook her head. “I think …I think that would be a mistake. Thank you, but—”

“Coward.”

Lillian remembered the moment she had leveled the same charge at him…and she was no more able to resist the challenge than he. “I can’t see why you should want to dance with me now, when you never have before.”

The statement was more revealing than she had intended it to be. She cursed her own wayward tongue, while his speculative gaze wandered over her face.

“I wanted to,” he surprised her by murmuring. “However, there always seemed to be good reasons not to.”

“Why—”

“Besides,” Westcliff interrupted, reaching out to take her gloved hand, “there was hardly a point in asking when your refusal was a foregone conclusion.” Deftly he pressed her hand to his arm and led her toward the mass of couples in the center of the room.

“It was not a foregone conclusion.”

Westcliff glanced at her skeptically. “You’re saying that you would have accepted me?”

“I might have.”

“I doubt it.”

“I did just now, didn’t I?”

“You had to. It was a debt of honor.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “For what, my lord?”

“The calf’s head,” he reminded her succinctly.

“Well, if you hadn’t served such a nasty object in the first place, I wouldn’t have needed to be rescued!”

“You wouldn’t have needed to be rescued if you didn’t have such a weak stomach.”

“You’re not supposed to mention body parts in front of a lady,” she said virtuously. “Your mother said so.”

Westcliff grinned. “I stand corrected.”

Enjoying their bickering, Lillian grinned back at him. Her smile died, however, as a slow waltz began and Westcliff turned her to face him. Her heart began to thump with unrestrained force. As she looked down at the gloved hand that he extended to her, she could not make herself take it. She could not let him hold her in public…she was afraid of what her face might reveal.

After a moment she heard his low voice. “Take my hand.”

Dazed, she found herself obeying, her trembling fingers reaching for his.

Another silence passed, and then, softly, “Put your other one on my shoulder.”

She watched her white glove settle slowly on his shoulder, the surface hard and solid beneath her palm.

“Now look at me,” he whispered.

Her lashes lifted. Her heart gave a jolt as she stared into his coffee-colored eyes, which were filled with dark warmth. Holding her gaze, Westcliff drew her into the waltz, using the momentum of the first turn to bring her closer to him. Soon they were lost in the midst of the dancers, circling with the lazy grace of a swallow’s flight. As Lillian might have expected, Westcliff established a strong lead, allowing no chance of a misstep. His hand was firm at the small of her back, the other providing explicit guidance.

It was all too easy. It was perfect as nothing else in her life had ever been, their bodies moving in harmony as if they had waltzed together a thousand times before. Good Lord, he could dance. He led her into steps that she had never tried, reverse turns and cross steps, and it was all so natural and effortless that she gave a breathless laugh at the completion of a turn. She felt weightless in his arms, gliding smoothly within the parameters of his taut and graceful movements. Her skirts brushed his legs, wrapping and falling away in rhythmic repetition.