Entwined(79)

As Flora’s shadow, Goldenrod never harbored much attention, and she blushed pink to her ears. She beamed. The girls begged Mr. Bradford to teach them the fashionable Delchastrian dances. He wavered, glancing at the draped windows.

“I’m not very good,” he said.

“That’s all right!” squeaked the younger girls. “Oh, please!”

“You can dance with Azalea.” Clover smiled a honey-sweet smile. Mr. Bradford’s face lit.

“May I?” he said. He bowed to Azalea, his eyes twinkling part hope, part nervousness, and part mischievousness. “If my lady isn’t engaged?”

“Take his hand!” cried Hollyhock.

Azalea took it. It dwarfed and encased her own hand, and she felt the large knobbliness of knuckles under his gloves. She resisted the impulse to stroke them with her thumb.

Her stomach fluttered as he led her to the middle of the hall, away from the glass displays and red velvet ropes. Leaning on his steady arm, she felt a touch dizzy. She caught the faint scent of fresh linen, and her heart began to beat in an Esperaldo jig stomp.

Azalea’s skirts swished as he brought her into dance position. He was tall; she straightened into the best form she could, her eyes level to his chin. The girls leaned forward, memorizing each movement as Mr. Bradford placed his hand on her back, just beneath her shoulder, and lifted her other hand, gently. He had excellent form.

“It will probably end up with Azalea leading,” said Delphinium, across the hall. “She’s so bossy.”

Azalea closed her eyes. Sisters! She could strangle them!

“A trois-temps waltz,” said Mr. Bradford, smiling crookedly. With his rumpled hair and uneven cravat, it seemed to make him symmetrical. “If that is agreeable.”


Beneath his steady form, Azalea thought she felt his fingers trembling, just a touch.

“I love the waltz,” said Azalea. She dimpled.

The girls, at the edge of the hall, held their breath as Azalea and Mr. Bradford began.

Mr. Bradford was not a perfect dancer. His steps were a bit flat, and he stumbled through the transition steps, but…

He was shockingly easy to follow. The pressure of his hand, the step of his foot, the angle of his frame…it was like reading his mind. When he leaned right, they turned in perfect unison. He swept her across the gallery in a quick three, a dizzying pace. Gilded frames and glass cases and the window blurred in her vision, and Azalea spun out, her skirts pulling and poofing around her, before he caught her and brought her back into dance position. She could almost hear music playing, swelling inside of her.

Mother had once told her about this perfect twining into one. She called it interweave, and said it was hard to do, for it took the perfect matching of the partners’ strengths to overshadow each other’s weaknesses, meshing into one glorious dance. Azalea felt the giddiness of being locked in not a pairing, but a dance. So starkly different than dancing with Keeper. Never that horrid feeling that she owed him something; no holding her breath, wishing for the dance to end. Now, spinning from Mr. Bradford’s hand, her eyes closed, spinning back and feeling him catch her, she felt the thrill of the dance, of being matched, flow through her.

“Heavens, you’re good!” said Azalea, breathless.

“You’re stupendous,” said Mr. Bradford, just as breathless. “It’s like dancing with a top!”

Azalea stumbled through the transition step.

“A top?” she said.

“Ah, a very graceful, delicate spinning top,” he said, coloring.

Azalea laughed. He brought her into a hesitation step, and time hiccupped to a stop. Azalea was so close she could smell the starch on his cravat.

“I didn’t think I would have a moment alone with you,” he said, his voice richer now it was quiet. He hesitated and touched a strand of auburn hair, brushing it away from her cheek. “Princess Azalea.”

Everything flashed to the moment she had stood at the cab door, wrapped in a lady’s old coat and shivering in the morning air, and her words, starkly painting the frosted silence with the dark, jagged letters, I’m Princess Azalea….

The internal music faded.

“Mr. Bradford, why are you here?” said Azalea. “I mean here. At the palace.”

The spark in Mr. Bradford’s eyes faded, a touch. He opened his mouth, then closed it. And kept it closed. Azalea pulled away.

“I think you ought to dance with Bramble, not me,” she said.

His dark eyebrows did not move a fraction.

“That was it?” called Bramble from the other side of the hall. In the rectangle of window light, the girls pouted and folded the arms. “That was just a waltz! And not a fancy one, either! We feel cheated.”

Mr. Bradford’s crooked smile returned to his face, and he pulled Azalea into a sudden dance position with a rustling of skirts.

“Let us show them my favorite dance!” he said. “The polka!”

Azalea had only danced the polka twice in her life, and now she relearned it at neck-breaking speed as he danced her across the floor in a galloping flourish. She hadn’t expected Mr. Bradford to be a polka sort of gentleman. Lord Teddie, yes, but Mr. Bradford? He was quite good! Azalea’s skirts billowed and bounced. The energy caught, and all the girls leaped to their feet, dancing, clapping, and singing a bright tune. When Azalea spun away, dizzy and breathless, Mr. Bradford swept up Kale and threw her into the air. She shrieked with delight. Everyone whirled, black skirts blossoming around them over the long red rug. The snow outside twirled with them.