Page 31 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

He laughed. It came out before he could govern it, loud enough that the couple beside them glanced over. Louisa’s eyes widened, then crinkled at the corners. Her own laughter followed, quieter but genuine, shaking loose from whatever careful posture she had constructed for the evening.

The music shifted beneath them. A new phrase, slower, drawing the couples closer for the promenade. Oliver extended his hand. Louisa took it. Her fingers threaded through his with a naturalness that surprised them both. He saw it register in her face, a slight widening of her eyes, and he felt it register in himself, a pulse of awareness that ran from his palm up through the tendons of his wrist.

Oliver opened his mouth, an attempt to ask something once again, but the words left him. Louisa looked up at him, her eyes meeting his.

“What is it?”

A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Nothing,” he insisted. “I was just thinking that… It is quite nice to have you as a hedge.”

She laughed again, softly, and the sound rang in his ears with the musicality of a pianoforte.

The cotillion gave way to a country dance. Around them, couples broke apart, reformed, drifted toward the edges of the floor. Oliver should have released her hand. The proper protocol was to bow, return her to her companion, claim his second dance later. He did not release her hand.

“Do you know,” Louisa said, “I believe the music has changed.”

“It has.”

“We are still standing in the middle of the floor.”

“We are.”

She looked at their joined hands. He followed her gaze. His thumb rested against her knuckles, his fingers curled lightly around hers. The grip was not a clasp. It was not possessive. It was simply that neither of them had remembered to let go, the way one forgets to close a book when the chapter is too good to leave.

“We should step aside,” she said.

“We should.”

Neither moved.

The new set was forming around them. A woman in green silk brushed past Louisa’s shoulder. The orchestra’s violins sang the opening notes of the next dance, and still they stood there, fingers laced together, the air between them charged with a question neither had spoken aloud.

“Or,” Oliver said, “we could simply dance again.”

Louisa’s breath caught. He heard it. A small hitch, barely audible above the music, but it ran through her fingers into his like a current.

“That would be three dances,” she said.

“It would.”

“Three dances at a London ball with a duke. People will assume an understanding.”

“Precisely. Do we not want people to make this assumption?”

She studied him. He watched the debate play out across her features, caution wrestling with a want she had not anticipated. Her fingers tightened around his, a tiny involuntary squeeze, and he felt the warmth of it travel up his arm into his shoulder.

“Very well,” she said, and he smiled in victory.

They joined the new set. The country dance was livelier than the cotillion, the figures bringing them together and apart with a speed that left little room for self-consciousness. Louisa moved through the steps with the unselfconscious ease he had glimpsed earlier, her body responding to the music rather than fighting against it. She laughed when she turned too quickly and nearly collided with the lady beside her. She caught Oliver’s eye across the set and pulled a face of exaggerated horror that made him grin so broadly the elderly gentleman opposite him raised an eyebrow.

His hand caught hers.

“Have you noticed the ceiling?” she asked.

“The cherubs? They look as though they were painted from memory by a man who actively dislikes children.”

The set pulled them apart. She moved through the line, took the next gentleman’s hand, turned, came back.

“The one above the chandelier is the worst,” she said, slightly breathless. “He has the face of a disgruntled landlord.”