Instead, he hung along the wall, thinking wryly that their roles had been reversed. He, the wallflower, she, the nonpareil of the dance floor. Next to him, taking advantage of his unusually fixed position, a woman sidled up. Lady Throckmartin. She was married to a much older, gout-riddled man, who was known to be cruel when he bothered to be awake. Their time together last year was enjoyable if infrequent. She was staid and remote, as was fashionable, though he knew her tastes in the bedroom to be quite different from her public mien.
“Lord Alexander,” she said, nodding simply and keeping herself facing the same direction.
“Lady Throckmartin,” he replied, wishing desperately he’d timed his garden exit more carefully. How long were songs meant to last these days?
“I heard you married while I was away.”
“I did,” he answered, unfocused on making polite conversation, his eyes trained on Harriet and his father. He couldn’t miss the end of the song. There was no telling who might claim Harriet’s attention next.
“I would express disappointment, although I can’t imagine this would alter your course.” She leaned in then, whispering in his ear, “We’ve never let a spouse get in the way of a good time.”
At that moment, Harriet looked across the room. Alexander watched in horror as her eyes slid over to his conversation partner. God, how he wished to see a flash of anger or jealousy. Her eyes didn’t even register surprise.
He turned decisively then, and with an unprecedented lack of remorse, replied, “On the contrary, Lady Throckmartin. I find myself wholly uninterested in entertaining the company of anyone who isn’t my wife, if you catch my meaning. Please excuse me.” He only hoped she’d pass the information around widely.
With that, he strode across the ballroom, hoping to finally get what he’d so fervently wished for this past month: an audience with his wife.
Chapter Thirty-One
MR.MONROE HAD FORGOTTEN TO TEACHHARRIET PERHAPS THEmost important part of dancing: how one behaved when it was over. She would have allowed instinct to guide her, except instinct would have had her fleeing the duke. Fleeing the ballroom. Fleeing theton. Instead, she kept a smile pasted on her face, curtsied politely to Alexander’s father and took his arm when it was offered as he led her off the dance floor.
“Well” was the only word the duke spoke; Harriet couldn’t tell how short she’d come up in his estimation. After all the dancing and counting in her head, she was too exhausted to care. As they made their way back to the edges of the ballroom, her eyes landed—where else?—on Alexander, standing against the wall with a gloriously handsome woman idling next to him. Harriet trained her gaze on the floor, which admittedly had a pattern so garish as to be almost diverting. Only when she was hauled to a stop by the duke did she look up again. As if by magic, Alexander appeared in front of her.
Harriet startled and dropped the duke’s arm. She wondered offhandedly what had happened to the stunning woman, although theproximity of her even-more-stunning husband wiped the inquiry from her mind.
Alexander looked so handsome in his evening finery that she felt the urge to, in front of his father, in front of the entire ballroom, run her hand down his broad chest. Her fingers twitched with the desire to trace his jaw and her eyes refused to leave his face, even as John and Miss Holmes joined their small party.
Fortunately, she was staring directly at his lips as they formed the words “Can I have this dance?” for she couldn’t seem to hear over her heart pounding in her ears. She nodded her assent, her tongue too busy fantasizing about what it would do to Alexander to be useful in speaking. The duke, however, had no problem speaking up.
“A husband dancing with his wife? Highly uncouth. Dance with Miss Holmes instead. Give your wife a reprieve; she’s clearly quite unused to so much dancing. Not entirely in shape yet, is she?” Harriet suspected the entire group heard the insult intended in his words, but she was finding the duke extraordinarily easy to ignore in favor of Alexander’s deep brown eyes, which were trained only on her.
He didn’t look away as he answered his father.
“If you ever attempt to insult my wife again, I will disembowel you and then spend the rest of my life gleefully rotting in Newgate for it. Miss Holmes, I must politely decline; however, while I have your ear, I feel compelled to warn you that my father will not marry you. Ever. He does not view you as a legitimate candidate; your hand doesn’t come with any land he might like to possess. I advise you tospend your energies elsewhere. Now then. I intend to dance with Lady Stirling; no one would begrudge me a dance with the most beautiful woman in the room, even if she is my wife. If they do hold my poor manners against me, let’s mark it up to my being a base-born bastard, shall we?”
Harriet took his proffered arm and did her best not to look back at the sputtering, cursing duke, who was no doubt even more red-faced than usual. As Alexander led them to the relative safety of the dance floor, her thrill at the display waned. She was now met with the uncomfortable reality of being alone with him. Well, as alone as one could be in a room full of hundreds of people.
As they got into position, the strains of a waltz started to play. Harriet felt certain he’d known which dance he’d asked of her.
He gathered her closely in his arms, the feeling both foreign and familiar. “Based on your distinct lack of blushing, you’ve taken my compliment to be insincere,” he whispered, leaning rather too close even for a waltz. Of course, this achieved his desired effect and Harriet’s cheeks heated madly. Her poor tongue was still useless, and Alexander was obviously delighted by having flustered her. “You don’t believe me, do you? I am your husband and thus I must insist you defer to me—at least on the topic of your beauty.”
The joke—or perhaps it was the feeling of being held by him, or how good he smelled, or how much she missed his smile—tripped her up. She couldn’t count one-two-threes in her head when she wanted to simultaneously throttle and lick the man in front of her.
Alexander was a good enough dancer to hide her stumble; he seamlessly guided them back into the rhythm of the dance and blessedly stayed silent long enough for her mind to settle.
“I didn’t think you the sort to insist on being husbandly,” she said, hoping it wasn’t too late to appear unaffected by him.
His face fell, which made her feel only a tiny bit guilty.
“Harriet,” he answered rather somberly, still guiding them effortlessly around the floor; Harriet’s counting proving to be quite unnecessary to the project. “How many more of your dances have been claimed?”
She had no idea what he was talking about. Certainly he didn’t intend for them to dance together again, was he? Or was she so dismal a dancer that he aimed to prevent another man from enduring the experience?
“None,” she admitted.
His eyes grew wide in shock. “None?! The combined brains of every man in this room wouldn’t fill a cordial glass.”
As he grew more impassioned on her behalf—which Harriet felt was sweet, if overdone—he led them deftly off to the side of the dance floor.
