Only Enchanting (3 page)

Oh, goodness gracious, she thought, and for a moment that was
all
she could think. But her sense of humor, which she was always quite prepared to turn upon herself, came to her rescue, and she smiled. What enormous fun she would have tomorrow with the memory of this half hour. The grandest triumph of her life. She would live upon it for a week. For a
fortnight
. She almost laughed aloud.

Opposite her, Viscount Ponsonby, ignoring all the bustle of activity around them, raised one satirical eyebrow as he looked directly back at her. Oh, dear. He would wonder why she was smiling quite so merrily. He would imagine that she was delighted to be dancing with him—which she
was,
of course, though it would be gauche to grin with triumph for
that
reason.

The orchestra struck a chord, and the music began.

He had, not surprisingly, completely misrepresented himself as a dancer. He performed the steps and the figures with elegant grace, yet with no sacrifice of masculinity. He drew more than his fair share of glances: envious ones from the men, admiring ones from the women. Even though the intricacies of the dance did not allow for a great deal of conversation, his attention remained focused upon Agnes, so that she felt he danced with
her
and not just for the sake of being socially agreeable.

It was what being a true gentleman was all about, she told herself when the set was over and he led her to
Dora’s side and bowed politely to both of them before moving away. There was nothing particular in the attention he had paid her. Yet she was left with the unexpected conviction that she had never, ever enjoyed any evening even half as well as she had enjoyed this.

Had
enjoyed? As though it were already over.

“I am so pleased,” Dora said, “that someone had the good taste to dance with you, Agnes. He is an extremely handsome gentleman, is he not? Though I must confess myself wary of that left eyebrow of his. It has a distinctly mocking quality.”

“It does,” Agnes agreed, cooling her cheeks with her fan while they both laughed.

But she did not feel mocked by either his eyebrow or his person. Instead she felt smug and delicious. And she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she would indeed dream of this ball and the opening set and her dancing partner for days, perhaps weeks, to come. Even years. She would be perfectly happy to return home now, though it was quite impossible to do so this early in the evening. Alas, all was going to seem anticlimactic for the rest of it.

It was not so, however.

Everyone had put aside daily cares in order to enjoy the opulent splendor of a harvest ball at Middlebury Park. And everyone had come to celebrate the happy, soon-to-be-fruitful marriage of the young viscount they had so pitied when he came here three and a half years ago, blind and reclusive, suffocated by the protective care of his mother and grandmother and sisters. Everyone had come to celebrate his marriage to the little slip of an elfin creature whose warm charm and boundless energy had won their hearts more and more completely during the seven months she had been here.

How could Agnes not enjoy herself and celebrate with them? She did just those things, in fact. She danced every set and was delighted that Dora danced a number of times too. She was led in to supper by Mr. Pendleton, one of the viscount’s brothers-in-law, an affable gentleman who engaged her in conversation from one side for much of the meal while Mrs. Pearl, the viscount’s maternal grandmother, spoke to her from the other side.

There were toasts and speeches and a wedding cake. It was just like a real and lavish wedding reception, in fact.

Oh, no, there was nothing whatsoever anticlimactic about the ball after the first set. And the dancing was to resume after supper—with a waltz. It was the first of the evening and probably the last too, and occasioned a certain interest among the guests, for though it had been danced in London and other, more fashionable centers for a number of years now, it was still considered somewhat risqué in the country and was rarely included in the program at the local assemblies. Agnes knew the steps. She had practiced them with Dora, who taught dancing to some of her music pupils, Sophia among them. It had been planned, Dora had confided to Agnes, that the viscountess would waltz with her uncle.

It was not with her uncle Sophia intended to waltz, however, as Agnes saw when she turned her head to discover the source of a heightened buzz of raised voices mingled with laughter. Someone began to clap slowly, and others were joining in.

“Waltz with her,” someone said—it was Mr. Harrison, Lord Darleigh’s particular friend.

Sophia was on the dance floor, Agnes could see, her arm stretched out, Viscount Darleigh’s hand clasped in hers. There was laughter in her flushed face. Oh, goodness, she was trying to persuade her husband to dance
with her. And by now half the guests in the ballroom were clapping rhythmically. Agnes joined them.

And everyone was repeating what Mr. Harrison had said and making a chant out of it.

“Waltz with her. Waltz with her.”

The viscount took a few steps out onto the empty floor with Sophia.

“If I make a thorough spectacle of myself,” he said as the chant and the clapping died away, “would everyone be kind enough to pretend they have not noticed?”

There was general laughter.

The orchestra did not wait for anyone else to take to the floor with them.

Agnes clasped her hands to her bosom and watched with everyone else, anxious that the viscount
not
make a spectacle of himself. He waltzed clumsily at first, though he did so with laughter in his face and such obvious enjoyment that Agnes found herself blinking back tears. And then somehow he found the rhythm of the dance, and Sophia looked at him with such radiant adoration that even furious blinking would not stop one tear from trickling down Agnes’s cheek. She wiped it away with a fingertip and glanced furtively about to assure herself that no one had noticed. No one had, but
she
noticed several other people with unnaturally bright eyes.

After a few minutes there was a break in the music, and other couples joined the viscount and viscountess on the floor. Agnes sighed with contentment and perhaps a bit of longing. Oh, how lovely it would be . . .

She turned to Dora beside her. “You taught Sophia well,” she said.

But Dora’s eyes were focused beyond her sister’s shoulder.

“I do believe,” she murmured, “you are about to be singled out for particular attention for the second time
this evening. There will be no living with you for the next week.”

Agnes had no chance either to reply or to whip her head about to see what—or whom—Dora was looking at.

“Mrs. Keeping,” the rather languid voice of Viscount Ponsonby said, “d-do tell me I have no rival for your hand for this particular s-set. I would be devastated. If I am to waltz, it really must be w-with a sensible companion.”

Agnes plied her fan and turned toward him.

“Indeed, my lord?” she said. “And what makes you believe I am sensible?” And was that a
compliment
he had paid her? That she was
sensible
?

He moved his head back an inch and let his eyes rove over her face.

“There is a c-certain light in your eye and quirk to your lip,” he said, “that proclaims you to be an observer of life as well as a d-doer. A sometimes
amused
observer, if I am not mistaken.”

Goodness gracious. She regarded him in some surprise. She hoped no one else had noticed that. She was not even sure it was true.

“But why would you wish for a sensible partner for the waltz more than for any other dance?” she asked him.

What
would
be sensible was to accept his offer without further ado, since she could think of nothing more heavenly than to waltz at a real ball. And surely the music would begin again at any moment now, even though the orchestra appeared to be waiting a little while for other couples to gather on the floor. And she had the chance to dance the waltz with
Viscount Ponsonby
.

“One waltzes face-to-face with one’s p-partner until the bitter end,” he said. “One must hope at least f-for some interesting conversation.”

“Ah,” she said. “The weather is an ineligible topic, then?”

“As are one’s state of health and that of all one’s acquaintances to the third and f-fourth generation,” he added. “W-will you waltz with me?”

“I fear it immensely,” she said, “for now you have surely tied my tongue in knots. Have you left me with any topic upon which I
may
converse sensibly or, indeed, at all?”

He offered his wrist without replying, and she placed her hand on it and felt her knees threaten to turn to jelly as he smiled at her—a lazy, heavy-lidded smile that seemed to suggest an intimacy quite at variance with the public nature of their surroundings.

She was, she suspected, in the hands of an accomplished flirt.

“Watching Vincent waltz,” he said as they took their places facing each other, “was enough to make one
w-weep
. Would you not agree, Mrs. Keeping?”

Oh, dear, had he seen that tear?

“Because he danced clumsily?” She raised her eyebrows.

“Because he is in l-l-love,” he said, stumbling badly over the final word.

“You do not approve of romantic love, my lord?”

“In others it is really most affecting,” he said. “But perhaps we ought to talk about the weather after all.”

They did not do so, however, because the orchestra struck up a decisive chord at that moment. He slipped one hand behind her waist, while she set hers on his shoulder. He clasped her other hand in his and moved her immediately into a sweeping twirl that robbed her of breath and at the same time assured her that she was in the hands not just of a flirt, but of an accomplished dancer too. Even if she had not known the steps, it would
not have mattered, she was convinced. It would have been quite impossible not to follow his lead.

Colors and light swirled about her. Music engulfed her, as did the sounds of voices and laughter. There were the myriad scents of flowers and candles and colognes. There was the exhilaration of twirling movement, herself a part of it and at the very heart of it.

And there was the man who twirled her about the floor and made no attempt to conduct any conversation, sensible or otherwise, but held her the correct distance from his body and gazed at her with those sleepy yet keen eyes of his, while she gazed back without ever thinking that perhaps she ought to look away or modestly lower her gaze—or find something to say.

He was gloriously handsome and so overpoweringly attractive that she was unable to muster any defensive wall against his allure. There was character in his face and cynicism and intensity and so much mystery that surely a lifetime of knowing him would not completely unmask him. There was power in him and ruthlessness and wit and charm and pain.

But all the awareness she felt was neither conscious nor verbal. She was caught up in a moment so intense that it felt like an eternity—or like the blink of an eye.

There was no further break in the music. When it ended, the set too was over. And the mocking gleam was back in his eyes, and there was the hint of mockery again too about the curl of his lip.

“Not s-sensible after all, then,” he said. “Only enchanting.”

Enchanting?

He returned her to Dora’s side, bowed gracefully, and moved off without another word.

And Agnes was in love.

Foolishly, deeply, head over heels, gloriously in love.

With a cynical, practiced, possibly dangerous flirt.

With a man she would never see again after tonight.

Which was really just as well.

Oh, yes, undoubtedly.

2

Five months later

I
t was a pleasant enough day for early March, a bit nippy, perhaps, but it was neither raining nor blowing, both of which it had been doing with great frequency and enthusiasm almost since Christmas, and the sun was shining. Flavian Arnott, Viscount Ponsonby, was happy not to be obliged to proceed over the English landscape in the stuffy confines of his traveling carriage, which was trundling along somewhere behind him with his valet and his baggage while he rode his horse.

It was going to feel odd to have the annual gathering of the Survivors’ Club at Middlebury Park, Vincent’s home in Gloucestershire, this year instead of at Penderris Hall, George, Duke of Stanbrook’s home in Cornwall, as usual. The seven of them had spent three years together at Penderris recovering from their various war wounds. When they left, they had agreed to meet there for a few weeks each year to renew their friendship and to share their progress. They had done just that, and only once, two years ago, had one of them been absent, Hugo’s father having died suddenly just as he was about to leave for Cornwall. Hugo had been sorely missed.

And this year they had been in danger of missing Vincent, Viscount Darleigh, who had declared all of five months ago that he would not leave Middlebury Park in March when Lady Darleigh was expecting her first confinement in late February. To be fair, the lady herself had tried to convince him not to miss something she knew meant a great deal to him. Flavian could vouch for that—he had been at Middlebury for the harvest ball at the time. When she had understood, though, that Vincent was quite adamant in his refusal to leave her, she had solved the impasse by suggesting that the Survivors come to them for their gathering instead so that Vincent would not have to miss it
or
leave her.

The remaining five of them had all been consulted, and they had all agreed to the change of venue, though it did feel strange. And there would be wives this year too—three of them, all acquired since their last gathering—to make things even stranger. But nothing in life ever stood still, did it? Sometimes that was regrettable.

He was almost at the end of his journey, Flavian realized as he rode into the village of Inglebrook and nodded to the butcher, who was sweeping the threshold of his shop, clad in a long apron he had obviously been wearing the last time he cut meat. The turn onto the driveway to Middlebury Park was just beyond the far end of the village street. He wondered whether he would be first to arrive at this gathering of the Survivors’ Club. For some strange reason, he usually was. It suggested a shocking overeagerness in him that was quite out of character. He was usually fashionably late—or even later—to social events.