She wafted a fan against flushed cheeks but despite the sun’s demise, only warm air pelted her skin, and even her thinnest silk gown weighed like a velvet cloak upon her frame.
Great Aunt Sarah and Lowdy discussed aRoyal Cornwall Gazettereport on the merits of the waltz – scandalous or progress? Agreeable or wicked? The lone consensus was when it would be introduced to the Helston Assembly ball.
Never.
Tamsyn remained silent, twisting fingers in her grey silk skirts, too uneasy to contribute.
A ballroom had been added to The Angel some years past, and every month an assembly was held for all the local gentry. Squires, landowners and merchants mingled, business was conducted across the card table and flirtations enacted on the dance floor.
Doubtless, a marquess used to the crème de la crème of London society would sneer at their little gathering in Helston, smirk at their provincial conversation.
With an unnerving clatter, the carriage lurched and Lord Winterbourne’s knee grazed anew.
Whatever had come over her during their discourse? She’d acted brazen and rather…ill-mannered. Although she no longer wished to hide fearful in the shadows, she still strove to live a life unnoticed, gentle and tranquil, tending to the estates and blending in with the grey silk paper hangings.
So why did this marquess elicit such temper?
They’d not lit lanterns inside the coach to combat the descent of dusk, but she could sense his onyx gaze upon her as he rattled on to Father with ease about London society…and no mention whatsoever of china clay pits, she noted.
The collywobbles settled deep within and refused to leave.
“By gambers, these roads,” yelled the coachman from his perch, as the carriage pitched, throwing bodies around as though forking hay. The marquess’s leg nudged her skirts again, briefly parting her knees, and she hastily clamped them together as a tingle spread through her treacherous limbs.
Had he done that on purpose? Was he pressed back full into his seat as was gentlemanly?
“Will you be dancing, Miss Penrose?” His smooth voice rose from the shadows.
She opened her mouth, but nought emerged. She swallowed, tried afresh, but her damn affliction seized, impeding all words. “I…”
Lowdy’s soft hand enclosed her own. A reminder. And she inhaled slowly.
To give the devil his due, the marquess did not press for an answer but waited patiently.
“I dance poorly,” she finally whispered. And she’d be damned if she would twirl with this doyen of perfectness.
“Upon my word, Miss Penrose, I do not believe it,” drawled Lord Winterbourne. “One blessed with such graceful horsemanship could only dance as an angel.”
Toadying buck fitch.
The carriage swerved again but this time Tamsyn shifted her foot and lowered her heel firmly onto the tips of Lord Winterbourne’s evening slippers.
A pained grunt and she grinned.
“And I do not believe,” she rasped, her voice stronger with amusement, “that someone with so little control of their limbs could contemplate a dance at all.”
∞∞∞
“I expect he’s partnering Mrs Mankey, the widow with the loose–”
“Actually, he’s dancing the cotillion with Miss Lambrick.”
Tamsyn spun to survey the ballroom floor, and indeed Lord Winterbourne had his hand lightly laced with the pretty girl’s as they skipped in a circle with their fellow dancers. The girl was smiling shyly and Miss Lambrick never smiled, what with having to care for her curmudgeon of an aunt. This evening, however, she’d unfurled as though a daisy to the sun.
“If you’d not been hiding,” Lowdy continued, “you would have seen him dance with all the wallflowers, save you and me.”
“Even Miss Hocking?”
Surely not. The indomitable Mrs Hocking guarded her daughter’s virtue closer than a Cornishman did his fish.
