Duty Before Desire (26 page)

Arcadia drew back. “No.” He glowered and tugged her back into his grasp. “I don't want to dance,” she insisted.

Claudia slanted a look at her. “Everything all right over there?” She and Henry were in position. Mr. De Vere's fingertips, Arcadia noted, drew circles on his wife's back. Arcadia didn't want Signore Bonelli touching her like that.

The dancing master grasped her arm and turned her aside. “The Marchioness of Lothgard wants you to waltz,” he hissed so that the others could not hear. “Lord Lothgard is paying my exorbitant fee to teach you to waltz. Lord Sheridan expects his bride to waltz. Who are you to refuse?”

Who was she, indeed. Arcadia's objections to public dancing were subjective, she reminded herself, the product of being raised by her Indian ayah. Had she received more of her mother's guiding influence, or had she been sent to England at a younger age, Arcadia would have dreamed of her first London ball with starry eyes. Her apprehension shamed her, but she could not will it away.

Turning her attention to her breath for a few seconds, she attempted to distance herself from the discomfort. She raised her quaking hand to the Italian man's shoulder. He smirked. “
Bene.
” At his signal, the pianist struck the opening chord. Bonelli swept her in an arc. “
One
-two-three,
one
-two-three.”

Arcadia tried to follow the pattern of his feet with her own, but the unwelcome weight of his hand on her waist made it difficult to concentrate.

“Left-right-left, left-right-left.” The grip of his fingers tightened around her hand as he pulled her into a dizzying circle. The room was a blur of color and music and the sound of Claudia's laughter. Henry dipped his head and kissed his wife's jaw. The lady's hand slid from his shoulder to curve around the nape of his neck.

Arcadia averted her eyes from the intimate display and stumbled on yet another turn. Her heel came down, hard, on Signore Bonelli's instep. The Italian released her and threw his arms up. “It cannot be done!” he cried. “I cannot teach her to dance.”

“You know this from one lesson?” Arcadia demanded, hands moving to her hips.

“Most of my students understand to pick their feet up off the floor, instead of shuffling about like an arthritic mole as you do.”

“Please,” Henry said, raising a placating hand, “allow me to dance with Miss Parks. She's overwhelmed by your expertise, signore.”

Arcadia wasn't sure whether or not that was an insult, and the Italian couldn't seem to puzzle it out, either. After a moment, he relented on a huff. He and Claudia moved to the side to observe while Henry and Arcadia waltzed.

This was worse. Infinitely. Henry smiled and tried to tease her, but her skin crawled with the same sense of dread when he touched her. Moreover, Arcadia was standing in the arms of her friend's husband—while that same friend looked on, no less—and no one gave it a second thought!

Arcadia felt wretched. Her feet behaved a little better this time, but every step, every turn, she was acutely aware that others were watching her dance indecently with a man. A man she'd just met. A man who was not Sheri, to whom she had been promised in marriage.

“You see,” Henry said, dipping his head to meet her eyes. “You only wanted for an Englishman to show you the way of it. You're getting it now.”

Arcadia's answering smile wavered.

Henry's brows drew together. “Miss Parks? Don't give Bonelli another thought. Those Continentals can be so high-handed. I hear you met with the French dressmaker who has the ladies all in a thrall, too.”

Blinking back hot prickles, Arcadia nodded. She stomped Henry's foot.

He winced, but covered it with a grin and manfully carried on.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” she cried.

“Think nothing of it, Miss Parks. Rarely have my toes been trod by so fetching a partner.” He gave her waist a squeeze. It was probably supposed to be friendly, to reassure her. But Arcadia's heart beat double time against her ribs as another wave of distress rolled through her.

Missing the beat, she stepped on poor Henry's toes again.

And again.

And.

Again.

At last, even that stalwart gentleman had to bring the lesson to a halt. “Good progress, Miss Parks,” he managed through clenched teeth as he hobbled off, his wife rushing to attend him.

The lump that had been riding around in Arcadia's chest since the moment Madame Doucet stripped her to her chemise rose to her throat and up her nose, burning all the way, finally exiting through her eyes in the form of scalding tears that splashed onto her cheeks.

Face lowered, Arcadia ran for the door, and plowed directly into a body.

A soft, small body that let out a startled yelp as it collided with Arcadia and was knocked onto the floor in a cloud of rice powder and jewels and umbrage. The older woman hit her bottom and rocked onto her back, splayed legs shooting straight into the air, satin skirts flying over her head.

“No!” Arcadia gasped.
Do not let it be her!

Three steps away, Sheri watched the woman go down. A brow lifted over a coffee-hued eye. “Mother,” he said to the heap of indignation on the floor, “allow me to introduce you to Miss Parks.”

“Get me up this instant!” the dowager marchioness squawked.

Reaching into the tangle of aubergine satin, Sheri plucked his mother off the floor and set her back on tottering feet. He kept a steadying hand on her arm while she settled. “All right, madam?”

“An inkling of things to come, no doubt,” the dowager muttered blackly. Of Arcadia, she demanded, “Well, gel, what have you to say for yourself?”

“Oh, my lady,” Arcadia moaned. She looked utterly stricken, her lightly tanned face devoid of color except for two red splotches high on her cheekbones. Her mosaic eyes were wide and bright with tears, some of which had already been shed. The evidence was on her cheeks, where silvery tracks ran to her chin, and the tip of her nose was rather pink and soggy, now that he had a good look.

Behind her, the music room was like a reenactment of the aftermath of a battle in miniature. Henry De Vere was the walking wounded, turning in small, limping circles, while Claudia was trying to order him into a chair so she could nurse him in the field surgery. A spindly man of Mediterranean coloring, who must have been the dancing instructor, was the defeated general tearing his hair and weeping to the heavens. And through it all, the piper—or the pianist, in this case—went on playing the battle standard. A Viennese waltz was the score of this skirmish.

“My lady,” Arcadia repeated, reaching a hand toward the dowager, then drawing it back. “I beg your pardon.”

“Sheridan,” his mother said, turning her head to address him, “you will complete the introduction now, so we can cease this infernal dancing about in the doorway.”

“It would be my eternal delight. Mother, I am honored to present Miss Arcadia Parks. My dear, this ambrosial creature before you is the Dowager Marchioness of Lothgard, who is widely rumored to be my mother.”

“Wicked child!”

He ought not goad his mother. Since luncheon, she had rung a peal over his head for dueling with Tyrrel and making the Zouche name a byword. If he did not reform, the dowager warned, not only would she endorse Eli's plan to cut him for the good of the family, she would also remove him from her will.

It was difficult to mind the thin ice beneath his feet when he saw his quip had the desired effect. Arcadia did not smile, but a little of the strain eased from her features. She regained her composure well enough to execute a pretty curtsy. “My lady.”

“So you've said,” the dowager drawled. “As far as I know, I've still got my wits, if you haven't just dashed them right out of my skull. Should I come to the point of forgetting my own identity, it's a comfort to know I can rely upon you to remind me of it, Miss Parks.”

Arcadia ducked her face. “My … yes, ma'am.”

In her highest heeled slippers, Sheri's mother stood just shy of five feet tall, but she managed to fill whatever room she occupied with the force of her consequence. Brushing past Arcadia, she strode into the music room, instantly drawing all eyes. “Sir,” she said to Henry, “from your clumping gait, I deduce you, too, have had an adventurous encounter with Miss Parks. What has my son unleashed upon us?”

Sheri cupped his hand beneath Arcadia's elbow and drew her back into the room. He was surprised she permitted him the contact, but glad of it. “What the devil happened here?” he asked.

“I was learning the waltz,” she answered grimly.

“And the result was this carnage?”

Color flooded her neck and jaw, and Sheri wanted to brush his fingertips over her, to feel the warmth of her blood rushing to the surface at the bidding of her emotions. He wanted to uncover more of that skin and learn in how many places he could elicit just such a rosy response.

“I didn't mean to,” she said. “I just didn't care for, for all the …” Her voice faded. He followed the line of her gaze to where Henry was seated with Claudia perched on the arm of his chair, holding a glass of lemonade to his lips as if he was a damned invalid. And Henry, the besotted fool, lapped up the coddling without a scrap of shame.

“What didn't you care for, Arcadia?”

She cast a guilty look at him, then studied her toes. “The touching,” she whispered.

Smoke clouded his brain.
The touching?
“Who?” His right hand flexed, then curled into a fist. “Who touched you? That Italian weasel?”

“And Mr. De Vere.”

“I suppose Henry called him out on it; that explains his limp. But he'll never harm another innocent again, upon my honor. I'll snip his offensive fingers off with—wait.” His brows snapped together. “
And
Mr. De Vere? Both of them?”

She nodded miserably. “I can't dance. I'm sorry, Sheri.”

Pressing his palms together, Sheri brought his fingers to his lips and tried to puzzle his way through that one, to no avail. “I feel one statement does not naturally follow the other. What does your inability to dance have to do with the dancing master and Mr. De Vere molesting you?”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, no, nothing like that, my lord.” She cast a furtive look at his mother, who was, in return, eyeing them with undisguised curiosity.

“Enough,” Sheri said. “Everyone out, please. No, you stay,” he said, pointing to the pianist. “Miss Parks wishes to demonstrate her newfound aptitude. After we dance, we shall join you all in the drawing room for tea.”

“Signore!” cried the dancing master. “You must not attempt the minuet. And she's hopeless at the waltz.
I tried,
you must believe me.”

The worm had done something to upset his fiancée. The extent of the offense remained to be seen, so Sheri withheld declaring punishment, but something primal and bloodthirsty stirred in his bones. He wouldn't mind poking his fives at the Italian's chin.

“Demmit, man, if I wanted a minuet at my betrothal ball, I'd marry Great-aunt Minerva.”

Shooing the lot of them from the room, Sheri closed the door and went to Arcadia. She stood in the center of the room, slender and tall and graceful even in stillness.
Cannot dance, my eye.
If she couldn't dance, he was the king of Scotland.

At the pianoforte, the hired musician began a waltz, his fingers running embellishments up and down the ivories.

“I owe you an apology,” Sheri said.

Her lashes fluttered once, twice. “For the other day?”

“I shouldn't have done what I did. You wanted a kiss, not …” Not to be shoved against a dirty brick wall and treated like one of his experienced lovers who could find their pleasure in a hurried coupling. Not to be subjected to his ravenous lust. Her hand drifted up from her side. Sheri took it, cradled it in both of his. Her fingers were slim and delicate, not meant to be bruised in some back alley assignation. “We struck a bargain. One night.”

“We did.”

The knot of hair at her nape was loose. Silken chestnut drapes curved gently about her temples and ears, framing the windows of her dazzling eyes. He longed to sink his hands into those strands, to prove he could behave better than a rutting beast.

Good God, if it were known how he'd made such a muck of kissing a virgin, he'd be more of a laughingstock than he'd already become. He wouldn't have even his reputation as a skillful lover left to hang his hat upon.

The musician reached the end of the piece, the final chord hanging in the abrupt silence.

“Another,” Sheri requested. When the music began, he extended his hand, palm up. “Miss Parks, would you do me the honor?”

She eyed his hand warily.
She didn't like the touch.
Perhaps he shouldn't have asked her to dance. Perhaps he should have just gotten on with pounding the daylights out of Bonelli and De Vere and her uncle and anyone else who had caused her harm. The list was gaining length. It might be time to ask Harry to teach him to shoot. Pistols would be more efficient couriers of justice than fisticuffs.

During his brief sojourn in violent fantasy land, Arcadia slipped her hand into his. “I'm a menace,” she warned as his hand nestled neatly into the small of her back like it belonged there. “Thus far, I have crunched underfoot the toes of every gentleman who has attempted to waltz with me.” Her other hand came to his shoulder. He didn't tell her she was standing closer than strictly proper.

“You haven't danced with the right man.” Sheri's foot swept to the side as he leaned into the music, pulling Arcadia with him.

“That's what Mr. De Vere said.” Her face remained solemn. “Claudia may not forgive me for crippling her husband.”

He snorted. “It would take stouter feet than yours to do him lasting harm, peahen. Besides,” he added, closing his eyes to appreciate the sensation of her hip swaying gently as they danced, “Henry may have correctly stated the problem, but he was
not
the right man.”