The whole line had unspooled, and Henrietta moved across from him, palms together. She smiled with her whole glittering force. “Spoken just like aman,” she said, with a level of venom that startled Peter. “Thinking you know best.”
Wasn’t that what men were supposed to do? They were busy hopping and bowing and turning, and Peter didn’t have the chance to ask what she meant.
“Come back.” Henrietta issued one command each time they met, smiling daggers. “At least to our house. Look her in the eyes. You maynotjust walk away.”
“Yes, Madame General, ma’am.” Peter saluted, and spun her in a circle as she laughed—but this time, there was a chill in it.
Peter’s eye caught an acquaintance across the room. He smiled in return, but then the man waggled his eyebrows and glanced significantly at Henrietta.
Peter was subsumed with protective rage. Already, he liked this girl. She was joyful and loyal and smarter than a whipcrack, and he wanted to shield her from the smut of the world; hold her up where she could shine like the sun.
“Will you be friends with my sister?” His question was out of the blue, out of Hughes’s character.
Henrietta just laughed. “Of course. I’m a very good friend.”
He believed it.
They turned and bowed and hopped, and Peter made a decision.
“Miss Henrietta.” He caught her just before they had an entire phrase of promenade. “Take a word of advice. You are close with the Pipperlys, but be wary of becoming too close.”
Henrietta stamped on his toe. “I told you—I am a good friend! How dare you!”
“Go ahead and be a good friend.” Peter limped with exaggeration, lurching into her shoulder and convincing her to giggle. “Just don’t become a Mrs. Pipperly.”
Henrietta raised her chin. “Charles wasn’t planning to ask, and I wasn’t planning to accept.”
“Very well. Have some fun, if that’s all it is.” Partner to the left, to the right. “They are going to need good friends.”
“Of which you are not one?” Henrietta slid him a keen glance, but Peter smiled his most charming smile and did not reply.
When they finished the dance, Henrietta slipped her glove under his elbow and steered him as though he were a recalcitrant yearling. Peter was amused…until he saw where they were headed.
“No. Miss Henrietta, no.”
“Don’t be foolish!” She giggled. “It’s just a dance. Just some fun.”
Celia was turned away from them, listening to a young woman with exuberant gestures.
Peter pulled Henrietta in a different direction. “I’ll play your game and dance with a friend, but not Miss Westhaven.”
Henrietta tugged back, laughing. “Come along! She’ll be surprised!”
Peter was irritated; despite her incisive observations, Henrietta was also very young. “You spoke about toying with her emotions. Miss, this is exactly that. I will not do it.”
Henrietta looked crestfallen, and perhaps chagrined.
Peter decided to treat her as he would Francis: to wit, with a little firmness. He removed her hand from his elbow, bowed politely, and walked away. A twinge of guilt for abandoning a lady without her chaperone, but that rule was ridiculous anyhow. A girl could most certainly walk through a ballroom completely independently. It was not like there were enemy snipers in the balconies.
The balconies.
That would be better. Peter was no longer in a dancing mood.
He ran up the stairs, and paced the square above the ballroom floor. It was the best place to hear the music; he’d been to concerts here, heard the great soprano Jones—that had been back in 1810, when he was a heart-broken country boy new in London. Peter leaned his elbows on the balustrade and let it all wash over him, half-shut his eyes to see the blur of bright colors and bright laughter.
One particular laugh. Peter’s eyes sprang open.
Celia was walking with a gentleman, smiling up into his face while he leaned slightly towards her. This was not a casual dance, these were two people who were focused on each other.
