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‘I have never waltzed in public before,’ she confessed. ‘And never with a man.’
He was so silent. She had expected him to ask her how she had learned, so she told him, knowing she was beginning to chatter.
‘Lizzie Hawkins got her dancing teacher to show us, and we all danced together. But Mama did not know I could do it; I hope she is not too shocked.’
He was still silent, still guiding her through the other dancers with a skill that left her feeling there was no one else on the dance floor, that they could swoop and swirl here all night. ‘Alex?’
‘I am sorry. It is just that you look so… Circe, I never imagined… Dammit, I am stammering like a green boy!’
‘You think I look nice?’ she ventured. ‘I thought you might like this gown.’ She blushed, for it was not something one should discuss with a man. ‘I chose it because of you.’
‘Nice? No, you do not look nice, you look utterly ravishing.’ He seemed almost angry.
Hebe looked up and caught the full power of his hawk-look. She gasped: she had never seen him look like this so close and it was as though all the breath had been sucked out of her.
‘I am sorry. It is just that you make me want to—’ He broke off abruptly.
Hebe felt a tingling excitement flooding through her. Whatever it was he wanted, she wanted it too. ‘What is it you want?’ she pressed. They were both keeping their voices low and that seemed to heighten the intensity. She did not know that to those who were watching them it almost seemed as though they were quarrelling, so serious did they look, so locked were their eyes. Across the floor Sara Carlton waved her fan more rapidly and a small moan of anxiety escaped her lips.
Alex swept Hebe into a turn, then again and again until she felt dizzy and clung more tightly to his hand. His fingers seemed to burn through her gown at her waist. She knew she was far too close to him for propriety, which decreed he should hold her almost at arm’s length. As they turned she felt her thighs brush his.
Fiercely he said, ‘I want to take you out through those doors on to the terrace, down the steps, across the lawn and into the shadows and make love to you for the rest of the night.’
Hebe gasped. ‘I told you that what you had was dangerous, did I not?’ he went on. ‘Enchantment, infinitely more dangerous than even beauty.’
Hebe could hardly keep on her feet, only his hands supported her, only his will kept her eyes locked with his. Then the music came to a crescendo and the dancers swirled to a halt, clapping amid bows and curtsies.
Hebe stood still, her hand still clasped in Alex’s. ‘I did not know, I had no idea you—’
‘No, neither did I. And I should have done.’ He was breathing as though he had run a race. ‘Come, let me take you back to your seat.’
He escorted a shaking Hebe back in silence, bowed elegantly to Mrs Carlton and disappeared into the crowd. Sara looked at her stepdaughter in wide-eyed surmise. ‘What on earth? You looked as though you were quarrelling. Were you, Hebe?’
‘I have no idea,’ she said slowly, sinking down on to the gilt chair. ‘I have no idea at all.’
Chapter Seven
The rest of the evening passed like a strange dream for Hebe. Alex appeared to have vanished, for although she scanned every red coat, every black head rising above shorter men, she could see no trace of him.
Mrs Carlton was deeply concerned, convinced that Hebe had quarrelled irretrievably with the most eligible—the only eligible—man who had ever appeared to take an interest in her. Eventually Hebe’s apparent calm and the undoubted success she was having with the other young men present calmed her stepmother and she wrote the whole thing off as a lovers’ tiff. Perhaps the Major had been jealous of Hebe’s full dance card, in which case that was a very promising sign.
Meanwhile Hebe danced every dance on the card, including the ones she had set aside for Alex, smiling and chatting and giving no sign to either the watchful matrons, her friends or her admiring partners that her mind was working furiously and her body seemed to vibrate like a plucked violin string.
Her first surprise, as she smilingly joined a set for the cotillion, was that she did not feel upset at what had just passed between her and Alex and she set herself to work out why while her feet automatically went through the complex measures of the dance.
There had been nothing to quarrel about, of course, whatever it might have looked like from outside. He was angry, certainly, and some of that anger was directed at her, although she could tell he was chiefly furious with himself.
Yesterday, if someone had told her that Major Beresford was angry with her she would have been distressed and mortified. Tonight, she was not. Why not? That was the mystery. And she should have been shocked at his words: his shocking, thrilling, utterly outrageous words. But she was not.
The cotillion ended and she found her hand claimed by Sir Richard for a country dance. If he had been her stepfather she might have confided in him, asked him why he thought Alex had reacted in that way, but she knew he would not think it proper to discuss such things with her while they could claim no relationship.
She pushed the puzzle to the back of her mind as they whirled energetically through the dance, for he knew her too
well not to notice if she was abstracted, but she returned to it over a glass of lemonade with Jack Forrester and his sister and her partner. The others talked and laughed and Hebe joined in, but she was thinking furiously. Some instinct told her that she did not understand because she was innocent, and that very innocence was part of the problem. Some part of her, behind her disappointment that Alex had gone, behind her enjoyment of the ball and of her new gown, was quivering into life.
Then, with a jolt that almost made her gasp out loud, she realised what it was, and what had happened with Alex. He desired her, he wanted her not as a friend, not as an embodiment of a Greek myth, not as a girl to flirt with. He wanted her physically: it was desire, and because she was innocent and unaware, he was angry with himself for feeling like that, and angry with her for arousing those feelings.
Hebe took a long sip of lemonade and smiled at the tale Jack was telling them. Power, that was what she was feeling, growing inside her. Power over a man, power to make him feel so strongly that he had to walk out of a ball.
