“Something I said?”
“Oh, no. Just that... well, I suppose I am not ready either,” he said as the music sounded again and they began to move.
The first thing Temperance discovered was that he had not been wrong about leading. With Joseph she had felt dimly aware of where she was supposed to be going. But with Harper the direction was simply there, communicated through the pressure of his hand and the slight movement of his frame.
“You’re counting the beat,” he said.
“If I stop counting I’ll lose the beat.”
“You don’t need the beat,” he said. “You need me and the beat is my concern. You should only follow.”
He said it with such authority that Temperance was not sure if she could refuse even if she wanted to.
“Look at me,” he said. “Not the floor.”
“I’m going to step on you.”
“Possibly. Look at me anyway.”
She looked at him. He was closer than she generally allowed herself to think about, and his eyes were very dark.
They turned through the first figure. She didn’t step on him and was so surprised by this that she almost stepped on him.
“There,” he said. “You see.”
“I see that I haven’t destroyed your shoes yet,” she said. “I wouldn’t call that a permanent achievement.”
“I’m choosing to be optimistic.”
“That is unlike you.”
“You bring it out in me,” he said, with the dry, unhurried delivery he occasionally produced when he wasn’t performing anything for anyone, and she felt it land somewhere in the middle of her chest with the precision of something well-aimed.
Behind them, she heard Joseph say something quietly to Mr. Fowler and Mr. Fowler respond in the same register, and she had the sense of being observed but found, to her own surprise, that she minded it considerably less than she should have.
They moved through the second figure. Her feet found the pattern with something approaching reliability, and she stopped waiting for them to fail and began, tentatively, to trust the lead, and the difference was immediate and remarkable and she filed it away for future reference even though she was not certain when the future reference would be useful.
“You’ve done this before,” she said.
“Danced? Yes.”
“Taught someone to dance.”
He considered this for a moment. “Not in this way.”
“What way is this way?”
He looked at her. “Patiently,” he said, and she laughed before she could stop herself, the quick genuine one, and felt his handat her waist adjust slightly in a way that she chose not to interpret.
“Has anyone ever told you,” she said, “that you are very bossy with your dance partners?”
“No one has ever needed to tell me,” he said. “My previous partners followed without requiring the commentary.”
“Your previous partners were probably better dancers.”
“My previous partners were better at following instruction,” he said. “Which is not the same thing as being better dancers. You have quite good instincts when you stop arguing with them.”
She looked at him, and blinked.
