Page 62 of When the Scoundrel Sins

Ferguson tapped his staff against the marble floor and announced proudly, “The first waltz of the evening!”

The orchestra struck up the opening flourishes, and each note jarred into her. She’d been so busy greeting guests and thanking them for their kind felicitations that she hadn’t realized the dancing had started.

A hand closed over her elbow from behind.

Her heart leapt into her throat. Quinton! With a bright smile, she turned—

“Sir Harold.” Her breath caught in a painful inhalation at the sight of him, her chest hollow with disappointment. But her fake smile never wavered, not even as her heart plummeted to the floor.

“The waltz is beginning.” With a smile, he gestured toward the dance floor with a sweep of his arm, as confident as everyone else in the room that she would choose him at midnight. Without a better suitor in sight, he had good reason to assume so. “Shall we?”

“Of course,” she whispered.

He led her forward. They moved into position, and the sweeping first bars of the dance sounded through the room. Belle took a deep breath as he stepped her into the waltz, struck by the realization that she’d never danced with him before and didn’t know what to expect.

What she found was boredom.

Oh, Harold was a good dancer, knowing his steps and turning through them with precision. But the waltz reminded her of sitting through the music recital of someone who didn’t want to play—technically precise but utterly lacking in engagement. And passion. At least, thankfully, he didn’t try to hold a conversation with her, so she didn’t have to fake interest as well as a smile. She didn’t think she could have endured it.

So they danced on, turning around the floor…stilted, uncomfortable, silent. A horrible, sinking feeling in her stomach told her that their marriage would be no different. Stilted. Uncomfortable. Horribly silent.

Harold came to a sudden halt in the middle of the dance floor.

She gasped in surprise, stopping quickly to keep from crashing into him. The other couples scattered around them as they continued on in their steps, yet all craning curious necks to see what was happening. Including Belle, who rose up on tiptoes to peer over his shoulder to see—

Quinton.

He grinned at her. “May I cut in?”

Her eyes widened. She’d never seen a couple interrupted like this before—oh, it simply wasn’t done! Yet there he was, a shining contradiction of gold and black, with the audacity to interrupt. And her heart soared.

“Go away, Carlisle,” Harold muttered threateningly, yet he smiled at Quinn as if they were old friends for the benefit of the curious eyes watching them. “I’m waltzing with my fiancée.”

“I haven’t agreed to that yet,” Belle reminded him as she shrank away.

“But you will.” He might have let Quinn stop them in their steps, with no other choice unless they wanted to trample over the top of him. But Harold wasn’t giving her up, his left hand holding fast to hers, his right resting possessively at the small of her back. “It will be midnight soon, and you’ll have to make an announcement if you want to keep your home.” He added, smiling down at her, “I’m the best choice, and you know it.”

He was right. She swallowed hard to keep down the nausea roiling in her stomach at the thought of being married to him. Oh, she was going to cast up her accounts right there in the ballroom!

“Then even more reason to let me dance with her.” Quinn’s charming grin only brightened as he slapped Harold good-naturedly on the shoulder, although Belle suspected that what he truly wanted to do was punch him. “If you’ll have her for the rest of your life, then the least you can do is let me have her tonight. For one last dance with an old friend.”

If.Belle’s chest squeezed so hard that she winced. Even now Quinton still held out hope that she’d refuse Sir Harold. But he might as well have been whistling in the wind for all the difference it would make.

“You don’t get her, Carlisle,” Harold half hissed. To anyone watching, the two men were simply having a convivial conversation, but tension seethed palpably between them. “Not tonight, not ever.”

Quinn’s eyes flashed dark and territorial, and her breath caught in her throat. That was the same look he’d worn six years ago in the St James garden, right before he pummeled Burton Williams. Were the two of them bold enough to come to blows right here on the dance floor?

She felt Harold’s hand draw into a clenched fist against her back. Good Lord—apparently, they wereexactlythat bold!

“Please don’t cause trouble, both of you,” she chastened, then turned to Harold. “Besides, you don’t like to dance anyway. Quinn is doing you a favor by waltzing with me.”

Quinn eyed her knowingly, the corner of his grin twisting up wryly at that.

“Fine. Finish the damned waltz, Carlisle.” Quick anger pulsed visibly through Sir Harold, although Belle wondered which he was more furious about—losing the waltz or losing it to Quinton. He released her and bowed stiffly over her hand, a wicked smile touching his lips as he kissed her fingers. “After all, we’ll have every night for the rest of our lives to dance together.”

Appalled at his innuendo, Belle snatched her hand away. Harold turned on his heels and tried not to stomp away, the current loser in the strange rivalry that had sprung up between the two men.

“Shall we?” Quinton held open his arms.