Good-natured grumbling filled the room, but Thomas did not join in. This was a perfect opening, a perfect occasion, and one in which he would not have to take a chance.
Lily waited for him, eyes innocent and bright, lips holding a small, barely-there smile.
Thomas bowed before her. “You wished to dance, Mrs. Granger?”
“Not especially,” she answered, still holding her smile in place.
“Ah.” He held his breath, fighting the urge to give into the wave of disappointment approaching.
Lily’s dark eyes flicked to the others, then stepped closer. “I’m certain I will be the worst dancer of the group. I suggested music, but the others wanted dancing, so I conceded. I suppose it will not be so bad among friends.”
Air rushed from his lungs as he managed to smile back in abject relief. It was not dancing with him that gave her pause, only dancing itself. He could live with that.
“Then may we dance a few,” he suggested, keeping his voice low, “and then volunteer to take Lady Whitlock’s place at the pianoforte? She would favor dancing, I think, and you would then be free to play at your leisure. I’ll turn your pages and call the dances.”
Lily’s smile spread, and she met his eyes. “Have you ever called dances before?”
“Never,” he told her, “but I’d prefer that over dancing itself, especially if it were to be with anyone other than yourself.”
Something shifted in her eyes then, something that deepened her smile and tinged her cheeks with more pink. “Three dances,” she whispered as she placed her hand over his to move towards the other couples. “Then I shall offer to take her place.”
He nodded, heart pounding high in his chest. “I’ll support your endeavor and do what I can to convince her.”
“I apologize in advance for treading your toes.”
“I apologize in advance for being dismal.”
Lily snickered and looked up at him. “We have not danced in ages.”
He managed a weak smile for her, longing reaching through him and wrapping about his ribs. “No, we have not. A pity, that.”
“Yes. A pity.”
Chapter Eight
“Are you going to do anything besides look at your husband tonight?”
Lily looked at Marianne in surprise, her fan moving in an absent, steady pattern in the heat of the ballroom. “I haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re talking about.”
Marianne raised a trim brow, her lips pursing. “Don’t you, then?”
Obediently, expression blank, Lily shook her head.
She was not about to tell her friend that she was absolutely right, and that Lily had every intention of staring at her husband all night. Oh, she’d be as social as she was inclined, as usual, and enjoy the music and the dancing, as she’d been doing so far this evening. But the majority of her attention would be devoted to watching her husband.
Since the evening spent with the Whitlocks and their other friends, they’d begun having more conversation, stilted though it was, and she was eager for more. He’d asked her if she wished to go for a stroll in the park with him yesterday, and it had crushed her to have to refuse him, as she had already arranged to take tea with Lady Riverton, Rosalind’s mother-in-law.
It was a well-known and well-abided tenet of London Society that one did not refuse the Rivertons, nor cancel arrangements with them. Lily had no wish to sin against such a truth, much as it might pain her.
She’d asked him if he wished to listen to her play this morning, and there had been no hiding the disappointment in his features when he’d told her that he’d accepted a request for a meeting with some partners in his business interests. The meetings had taken the whole course of the morning and into the afternoon, and she hadn’t seen him again until they’d met to attend the ball.
They’d been seated far apart during supper, and now he was surrounded by various associates of Society, deep in conversation. Lily was amid friends as well, though hardly so popular.
“Is she or is she not staring at her husband at this moment?” Gemma, Lady Blackmoor, asked Marianne in a loud whisper.
“Indeed, she is,” Marianne confirmed in an undiminished tone. “Which begs further consideration of my previous question.”
Lily did her best to ignore them, the beat of her fan steadying her.
Thomas was looking over at her. Not at this particular moment, but on occasion. Repeatedly on occasion, as it happened. His expression was not especially reflective of any particular emotion, but it seemed more open than she had known in recent years. It gave her hope yet did not encourage. It made her heart beat yet did not make her warm. It made her want to smile yet did not actually produce the thing.
It was as though she was caught between the despair of disappointment and the longing of almost. What good was feeling that her husband might not be indifferent if it changed nothing?
She was all confusion, there was no room for any other sensation, and for that reason, she would continue to look at her husband.
Blatantly.
“Would you care to tell either of us what precisely you are doing?” Marianne asked with the same imperious tone to her voice she had held only moments before.
If there was anything Lily had learned during the several years she had been friends with Marianne Gerrard, it was that when she had an idea in her head, nothing in heaven or earth could remove it from her. And when she wanted the answer to a question, she would press and press until a satisfactory one was given.
“Would it be fair to admit that I don’t know?” Lily inquired in return. She tried for a smile, knowing it shook where it sat. “I want… I’m trying… That is, I’m hoping to change the nature of my marriage.”
Gemma raised a golden brow. “The nature of it? How so?”
Lily swallowed with some difficulty. “I wish to make it a proper marriage of companionship, not
