Courting Magic (Kat, Incorrigible #4)(11)

He mumbled something under his breath.

I leaned forward, across the empty space that stretched between the two lines of dancers. “What was that?”

“I said, I’ve looked at you,” he said tightly.

Finally—finally!—he met my gaze for the first time that evening.

A long shiver ran down my back.

I swallowed hard.

“Well, then.” I drew a deep, steadying breath. Really, I didn’t even know why I had shivered. It was ridiculously overheated in this ballroom, and the dance hadn’t even begun.

Alexander still hadn’t said what I was waiting to hear, though. Clearly Mr. Gregson hadn’t run him through the expected lines of proper conversation for the evening the way my sisters had with me.

Of course, the lines they’d prepared for me to say to my dance partners had been a whole batch of ridiculous inanities about the weather and the ballroom’s decorations. Instead of wasting our time with any of that nonsense, I prompted, much more helpfully, “So, do you or don’t you like my gown?”

His gaze lowered…then snapped back up again, as if he’d been burned. “Of course I like your gown,” he muttered.

I snorted. “Well, I hope you haven’t injured yourself by admitting to it.”

Really, he would have had to be mad not to like the gown. Even I liked it, and I almost never felt anything about my clothing, apart from irritation when it tore on a bramble or got in my way during a chase. I especially liked the pale gold undergown, which was only half-hidden beneath a white net overlay. It reminded me of the Golden Hall, like a perfectly veiled reminder of my own magical secret underneath the maidenly white exterior of my gown.

The gold chenille embroidery around the bosom was really very nice, though, too—and in fact, I quite liked the fact that I actually had a proper bosom, for once, with the fashionable new corset that Madame Fontaine had provided for me.

But Alexander was looking down at me now with rather more exasperation than admiration on his face. “Has it even occurred to you yet,” he demanded, as the music finally began, “that I have no right to like the way that you look in that gown?”

“Don’t be absurd.” I let out a decidedly unladylike snort as I moved forward to take his hand in the dance. “My sister Elissa’s modiste is a genius. I know that because she told me so herself, twice. She would be violently outraged if anyone in this room failed to like my gown tonight.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw as we circled each other. “I’m not supposed to be in this room, though, remember? I wouldn’t be, if anyone else knew who I truly was.”

“Well, that’s just snobbery,” I said. “At any rate, half the people in this room have secrets. Yours is far less embarrassing than most of theirs.”

Alexander’s gaze challenged mine. “I doubt your family would agree.”

“My family?” I blinked. “What do they have to do with anything?”

But the movements of the dance parted us before he could answer. When we touched hands again a few minutes later, Alexander’s face looked as stiff as the most aristocratic of statues.

“What’s got into you?” I said. “Did someone step on your feet?”

“No,” he bit out.

“You said, about my family—”

“Shouldn’t we be thinking of our mission?” Alexander said. He set his hand on my back as we followed the figures of the dance, pressing tingling heat into my skin through all the layers of my gown, corset, and shift, but the expression on his face looked as remote as the Outer Hebrides.

I frowned up at him. “But—”

My voice cut off as his eyes met mine, blazing with an anger—or was it hurt?—that I couldn’t understand. “It’s the only reason we’re here together tonight,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

Oh.

“Of course,” I said. Suddenly the sweltering ballroom felt cold. “What else could there be?”

Obviously, Alexander hadn’t been foolish enough to spend the last five years dreaming about a single kiss on the hand. He’d probably kissed dozens of other girls’ hands by now, anyway. It had probably only been a momentary whim on his part, or a way to show his gratitude for the fact that I’d helped him out of a difficult situation. There probably hadn’t been anything romantic about it at all in his mind. Why would he want me falling all over him now?

And more importantly, why was this dance not over yet? My skin was ready to tear itself apart with the urge to escape.

I had been in training for years to be a lady, though, so I held my head high and I didn’t scowl or cry as I said, “Have you sensed any signs of him yet?”

Because that, of course, was the only reason Alexander was here: so he could identify the witch who’d cut a magical swathe through the servants’ halls of half a dozen great houses around the country and was now disguising himself as a member of high society to commit far more expensive thefts.

Of course, the problem with a master of illusions was that even Alexander didn’t know what the fellow really looked like. Every witch had a particular scent to their magic, though, like a personal signature, which another trained magic-user could recognize…and Alexander had come across that signature once before, when the rascal had slipped away just in time.