“Pardon?” Isabella inquired softly, testing her perception.
He shifted closer. She felt his presence fairly sizzle along her front. “I said, ‘Dance with me.’”
“That is what I thought you said. Well, sir…” Isabella began with true regret, for she longed to dance and for some odd reason given his inexcusable curtness, she especially longed to dance with the owner of the velvet-voiced commands. She certainly hadn’t entertained such longing when declining the four previous, courteous offers she’d received, but then each of those men had been known to her. “I fear I must decline your less-than-polite dictum.”
In direct contrast to his abrupt tone, she gave a gracious nod and then turned toward the open doors she knew to be on her left, running her corresponding hand lightly along the wall.
“What?” he snapped the same instant she felt his fingers encircle her opposite wrist, halting her progress. “You reject me?”
Had not her fan been affixed to her arm she surely would’ve dropped it at the unexpected touch—and her reaction to it.
“Reject you? Nay,” she said, trying to dismiss the nuance of hurt she detected in his remarkably haughty voice. Just as she tried to dismiss how the fingers above her glove seared her skin. Had she ever felt the touch of a man not family on her flesh before? Why certainly she had! Physicians for one—
Shaking herself free of his hold and her own disturbing thoughts, Isabella reiterated, “Nay, but I do reject your tone for I dislike intently being ordered about.”
“Ah…then it is I who must beg your pardon,” he said smoothly—too smoothly. It was a rakeshame she had the misfortune to be bantering with, Isabella feared, feeling how the subtle shift in his demeanor caused her insides to riot. “For though I have been returned from war these two years past, I fear old habits of barking commands have yet to leave my lips. Would you perchance care to dance? Perchance to dance?” he self-mocked. “From commander to pitiful poet, I fear. I only ask because you…”
“I…what?”
“You…”
Why was he still hesitating? Though his unexpected humor distracted her mightily, she heard plainly what he refused to voice. So she said it for him. “I am the only pitiable female not yet engaged?”
“No! You…you have a curl in your eye,” he accused as though she’d committed a crime and the pillory awaited.
“Mayhap I like it there.”
“Well, I do not.”
Purposefully subduing the urge to twitch her head and dislodge the curl he somehow found so offensive, Isabella wondered why, if she irritated him so, he remained. And why, a foxed pox on her sudden boldness, was conversing with him exhilarating beyond belief?
This daring side she’d released was wont to land her in trouble.
Thanks to her father, she’d learned early and well to hide her love of music and movement. A lesson she’d best not allow a domineering stranger tempt her into forgetting. “Well, sir, as much as I like my curl’s present location, mayhap I wish you gone.”
She thought he sputtered a protest but didn’t give her ears time to decide. “Because I most certainly do not care to dance, especially not with you,” she lied, for she irrationally wished it above all things. “Good evening, sir.”
Quickly, she quit the room before he could—shameless rake or gruff commander, she knew not which—blast through her common sense and have her agreeing. To dance with him of all things.
I am the only pitiable female not yet engaged?
Damn and blast! That wasn’t what he’d been about to say. Not even close.
You have a curl in your eye.
Blast and damn, that wasn’t what he’d meant to say either. She muddled his tongue, this obstinate, enchanting miss.
An uncommon beauty, at least to him, Frost thought now, recalling her wistful expression as she held up one side of the ballroom. A lone, confident figure who invited and intrigued…
I only ask because you stare so longingly at the dance floor…with just a hint of sorrow. I thought perhaps you were reliving an earlier time and we might banish our memories together, if only for a song.
But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to utter such romantic drivel.
The lack of courage had cost him. Cost the acquaintance of the most promising miss present and there certainly wasn’t a lack, Ed and Lady Redford having invited half the shire from what he could tell. “Little gathering for the holidays” indeed. Had to be close to ninety revelers in his estimation. Might as well have been five hundred for all the maggoty “cheer” such a crush harkened upon his person.
Hell, he’d only promised himself a single dance as a singular act of charity, little expecting to be captivated and then outright rebuffed, but that’s exactly what happened. Perhaps the saucy baggage did it on purpose, to snare his interest.
Intentionally or not, she’d succeeded, for though her head was topped with sable brown ringlets instead of ones reminiscent of corn silk, with that primly spoken refusal—not to mention the dreadfully alluring curl—the impudent wench who dared defy him tonight not only tripped up his tongue, she put him in mind of the last female he’d dared to love, harking him back nearly two decades to the oft-heard complaint of another…
“Nicky, you cannot order me about like one of your soldiers,” his sister, Althea, had insisted in a familiar refrain. “I will not stand for it!”
“There’s—” He’d broken off, coughing over his shoulder, that niggling tickle that’d scratched his throat for weeks coming to the fore. When it subsided, he tweaked one of the gold ringlets that was forever falling over her eye. “There’s a fierce puss!”
She tossed her head, slinging ringlets straight into his face.
He’d laughed at
