Where Passion Leads (Berkeley-Faulkner #1)(35)

—Dante Gabriel Rossetti

It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and Annette Queneau had arrived home from school only a few minutes before. Annette was a quiet child, not given at all to her parents’ assertive pragmatism. She appeared to daydream often, especially as she played music. Rosalie did not wish to interrupt the child’s reverie, and so she enjoyed the light, rhythmic music of the polonaise and the waltz while sitting in the tiny ballroom nearby, perched on the railing of the musicians’ platform with her eyes closed as the pianoforte rang with music.

The ballroom, with its ornamental pink and gold, seemed like something out of a fairy tale to Rosalie. It had not been an unexpected find at the inn, for there were ballrooms everywhere in France, reportedly more than seven hundred in Paris alone. Dancing had never been so popular or so necessary to the morale of the public. Rosalie imagined what the room would look like filled with dancing and music. The accented strains of a romantic, bittersweet melody floated into the room, trembling in the chandeliers, falling through the air like invisible rain until Rosalie could resist its call no more.

She stood up and whirled to the center of the floor, her slender arms and filmy blue-and-white skirts wrapping around her body gracefully, her hair coming loose, the pins flying in every direction. Then amid the blur and the freedom of her private rapture, she sensed someone’s eyes upon her.

Rand stood in the doorway, his throat strangely tight. He had never seen anything so lovely as she was in that moment, pirouetting like an exuberant spirit, her dark hair tumbling down to her slender waist. She came to an immediate halt as she saw him, her eyes so bright and vivid a blue that their color shamed the sky. Her heart clenched in resistance to a great pull of longing.

“Rand!”

Rosalie picked up her light muslin skirts and rushed to him impulsively; for a moment they both thought that she would fling herself at him, but she stopped a few inches away from him, her cheeks flushed a bright pink. Rand felt curiously bereft as he looked down into her face, realizing that for a split second he had anticipated the feel of her in his arms. Faintly dismayed that the time away from her had not lessened his need of her, he gave in at last to the undeniable truth of his desire. He would want her until he lived and breathed no longer.

“Hello,” he said, his voice soft with some emotion Rosalie could not identify, and she let her eyes travel over him hungrily. His tall, powerful frame was shown to advantage in top boots, buckskin breeches, a brilliant white shirt, and well-cut coat. How impossibly vibrant he appeared, as if he were prepared to meet the relentless world with sword drawn. It was good to see him again, so good that as Rosalie looked over him she had the sensation of being nourished after a long time of fasting.

“Did everything turn out the way you wanted?” she asked, and he smiled down at her.

“For the most part. The land has been sold to the tenant farmers at a fair price. There’s still the chateau and the parcel it rests on, but there are prospective buyers for it.”

“I’m glad.”

He looked different, Rosalie decided slowly. Open, less guarded, less troubled. The magnetic quality about him had increased many times over, or perhaps it was just that she was more attracted to him than ever.

“Dancing to a waltz,” Rand said as they stared at each other, his mind sifting busily through ideas to find any excuse to hold her. “Scandalous behavior.” “I hadn’t anticipated the existence of a witness.” “What about an accomplice?”

Before she could utter a word, he caught her hand irretrievably in his and coaxed her out onto the floor. The music drifted around them, enticing, urging, drifting in a tempting pattern.

“We can’t,” Rosalie protested, laughing and pulling ineffectively at her hand.

“Why not? You can’t deny you’re in the mood to dance.”

“Because.” A nervous expectation filled her as his hand settled at the small of her back, beneath the wondrous curtain of hair. “Because it would be dangerous for your toes. I’ve never danced with a man before. I practiced with Maman, and she always let me lead.”

Rand laughed softly, amused but not dissuaded. He held her with a proper distance set between their bodies.

“If the attempt becomes too abusive on my toes, we’ll abandon it,” he said, and turned her very slowly. The waltz was circumspect and leisurely, their feet moving at an indolent pace. He was a marvelous dancer, guiding her so firmly that there was no chance of a misstep, and Rosalie dreamily followed his smooth movements while gradually relinquishing all control to him. His eyes contained the myriad hues of an autumn forest—green, gold, amber—so intense that they seemed to glow. She could not break her gaze from his.

“All right?” he questioned huskily, and Rosalie nodded mutely. Dancing with him was the most seductive experience she had ever encountered. An embrace . . . almost. An excuse for holding each other, a socially sanctioned reason to clasp hands and entwine fingers. Their bodies were close enough to brush together occasionally, and each time they drifted toward each other unconsciously, Rosalie felt as if fire had flickered over her skin.

“I’m surprised your mother let you learn how to waltz,” Rand said, one corner of his mouth lifting in a half-smile. Although the dance had become the rage in France at the end of the previous century, it had been acceptable in England for only a year or two. The intimacy it allowed between two partners had originally shocked most of English society, which had decried the waltz as vulgar and demoralizing.