Page 36 of The Unlovable Lady

Out she went through the warm room, toward the carriage and the mother who would hear a careful version of a thing she had been right to fear. Miss Phoebe stood beneath the bough and watched her sister go. Her chin stayed up, though her eyes shone far too bright. She had paid a real price, and Dover saw it land.

Mr. Danforth murmured something to her then, which Dover did not catch and did not try to. Whatever it was, it was the right thing. She turned toward it as she had turned toward it all evening, as a cold person turns toward a fire, and the brightness in her eyes settled slowly back into warmth without falling into tears.

It had cost her something real, and she had not tried to take any of it back.

He left the corner before she could discover she had been watched, for a person who has just been brave does not want a witness. He knew that as well as anyone alive.

* * *

The next set was forming by the time Dover crossed the room.

He did not take the wall. That was the first difference.

Lady Holt stood near the fire with Rosalind and Charlotte Danforth, and the shortest way to them ran straight through the middle of the company. Dover took it. Three people spoke to him as he passed, and he answered all three without losing the line he meant to walk.

Lady Holt saw him coming and lifted one brow.

“Lord Dover. You have abandoned your wall.”

“It has become inconvenient.”

“A pity. It served you faithfully.” Her gaze moved from him to Rosalind and back again. “What do you mean to do without it?”

“I had thought to dance.”

“How alarming.”

Charlotte made a small choking sound that was plainly a laugh disguised as a cough.

Dover looked at Rosalind. “Lady Rosalind, will you stand up with me?”

Color rose at once in her cheeks, though her eyes stayed on his. “Again?”

“I survived the first occasion.”

“Only just. You were very badly used by the figure.”

“I am willing to risk a second injury.”

Lady Holt waved one hand. “Go. Both of you. If I am required to listen to this for another minute, I shall take up the fiddle myself, and then everyone will suffer.”

Rosalind laughed and put her hand on Dover’s arm.

The sound followed him all the way to the set.

They took their places. It was another country dance, brisker than the Glanvilles’ and too busy for much conversation. That suited him. He had not crossed the room to make a speech. He had crossed it because, for two years, he had built his evenings around the art of leaving no trace behind him, and tonight he wanted one thing to be plain.

The figure brought Rosalind back to him.

“You took the longest possible road from the card-room,” she said.

“I know.”

“There was a shorter way by the wall.”

“I know that too.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Then why?”