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“So I can say that, but I can’t say I’ve sprained my ankle?”
“Here, put the earphones on. Repeat performance.” He bowed to me.
“What do I do if someone else—I mean, not you—asks me to dance or sing or something?” I sank into my curtsey.
“Exactly the same as if I do,” said Gideon, taking my hand. “But as far as that’s concerned, everything was very formal in the eighteenth century. You didn’t just ask a girl you didn’t know to dance without being officially introduced to her.”
“Unless she made some kind of obscene movement with her fan.” The dance steps were beginning to come naturally. “Whenever I flicked my fan even an inch upstairs there, Giordano had a nervous breakdown, and Charlotte shook her head like a sad spaniel flapping its ears.”
“She only wants to help you,” said Gideon.
“Yes, and the earth is flat,” I snorted, although I’m sure snorting wasn’t allowed when you were dancing a minuet.
“Anyone might think you two didn’t like each other much.”
Oh, might they indeed?
“Apart from Aunt Glenda, Lady Arista, and our teachers, I don’t think there’s anyone who likes Charlotte.”
“I don’t believe that,” said Gideon.
“Ah. Of course I was forgetting Giordano and you. Oops, now I’ve gone and rolled my eyes. I bet that’s forbidden in the eighteenth century.”
“Could you possibly be a little jealous of Charlotte?”
I had to laugh. “Take my word for it, if you knew her as well as I do, you wouldn’t ask such a silly question.”
“Oh, I know her quite well,” said Gideon quietly, taking my hand again.
Yes, but only her chocolate-coated side, I wanted to say, but then I realized what that remark of his meant, and all at once, I really was terribly jealous of Charlotte. “How well do you know each other, then … exactly?” I removed my hand from Gideon’s and gave it to his nonexistent neighbor in the set instead.
“I’d say as well as people know each other when they’ve spent a lot of time together.” As he passed, he gave me a mocking smile. “And we neither of us had very much time for other … er, friendships.”
“I see. You have to take what you can get.” I couldn’t bear it a second longer. “And what’s Charlotte like at kissing?”
Gideon took my hand, which was at least six inches too high in the air. “You’re making great progress in the art of conversation—but all the same, a gentleman doesn’t talk about such things.”
“I’d let that pass as an excuse if you were a gentleman.”
“If I’ve ever given you reason to think I don’t behave like a gentleman, then—”
“Oh, shut up! Whatever’s going on with you and Charlotte, I’m not interested one little bit. But it’s a bit much, you thinking it would be funny to go snogging me at the same time.”
“Snogging? What a crude expression. I’d be grateful if you’d tell me why you’re in such a bad temper—and think of your elbows at the same time. They ought to be pointing down in this figure.”
“It’s not funny!” I spat. “I’d never have let you kiss me if I’d known that you and Charlotte were—” Ah, Mozart was over, we were back with Linkin Park. Good. They suited my mood much better.
“That I and Charlotte were what?”
“More than just good friends.”
“Who says so?”
“You?”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh. Then you two have never … shall we say kissed?” I skipped the curtsey and glared at him instead.
