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He wanted to do it. He wanted to move to New York and advance Eldovia’s interests on a global stage. It was the perfect situation for him. This past year or so, he’d been restless. He could do his current job in his sleep—even though his expanded mission meant that he got very little actual sleep. But he hadn’t imagined ever doing anything else, at least as long as the king lived. When Matteo and Cara talked, in the pools at Biel, about what it meant to serve one’s country—through military service or otherwise—he’d said that being equerry to the throne of Eldovia was a unique opportunity. He’d thought it so, in the truest sense of the word. It had felt like a once-in-a-lifetime job.
It turned out he’d been wrong. That there was at least one other job in the world that had the same characteristics.
Interestingly, though, he was fairly certain that if the king had suggested he go to New York and get a job as one of those ridiculous dress-up characters in Times Square, he might have considered it. Well, he’d have considered it if Cara wanted him.
He sighed from the corner of the ballroom where he was... well, where he was brooding, he supposed. He couldn’t leave until after the proposal, but what he really wanted to do was go home and let himself fall. Let himself reallyfeelwhat having a broken heart was like.
It was amazing to him how all these people could be dancing and drinking and laughing while he was standing here . . . ruined.
Or about to be. No ruination until he got home after delivering baskets. He had to hold it together until then.
“Is everything ready?”
Matteo turned, pasting on a smile for his old friend. “It is. Though I have to say, I’m surprised you chose a traditional waltz for your big moment.”
“Sebastien loves waltzing.”
Was Matteo mistaken or was Torkel blushing? It was difficult to hold on to his own pain when something so wonderful was about to happen. “You have the ring?” Torkel nodded. “All right, it will be the next song. The bandleader is expecting me around this time.” He laid a hand on Torkel’s shoulder. “Congratulations, my friend.”
“Thank you,” Torkel said, infusing the two syllables with a kind of fond urgency Matteo felt—and appreciated.
Though it did occur to him that he had spent a lot of time at this ball over the years arranging other people’s grand gestures and declarations of love. He didn’t begrudge any of it, but he was, suddenly, so tired.
He had felt tired a great deal lately. Cara had called it burnout. He wondered now, though, if it wasn’t tiredness he was feeling so much as loneliness. And not the generalized variety. It was focused on one particular, extraordinary person he already missed as if she’d taken part of him home with her. Well, he supposed she had: his heart. He could only hope that she was happily reunited with her parents, cozy at home in New York.
He watched as the familiar strains of Strauss’s “Blue Danube Waltz” rang out over the ballroom and Torkel approached Sebastien. He watched Sebastien express surprise at being asked towaltz. The two of them had danced together earlier, but not to one of the more traditional, formal dances that always dotted the ball’s program. He watched Torkel convince Sebastien, and Sebastien allow himself to be led out to the middle of the dance floor. He watched the two men put themselves into position and begin to move in the one-two-three step of the dance.
And then, in the distance, at the far end of the ballroom, a mirage. A woman making her way down the stairs that led to the dance floor. She was wearing a classic ball gown: capped sleeves and a fitted bodice atop a big puffy skirt. It would have looked like a Cinderella dress, except it was pure, jet black. A dress fit for an angel of destruction.
All right, enough. He had officially cracked up. His poor, tired mind was hallucinating.
Except... he gasped. She started moving, crossing the dance floor, turning her head from side to side as she surveyed the cavernous room. She was looking for someone. Did he dare hope? He started walking, too, pulled by invisible strings.
Perhaps she felt those strings, too. The moment he started moving toward her, her gaze landed on him. She smiled.
Oh, she smiled.
He was overcome.
He started dodging waltzers in earnest. Once they got close enough to talk—though they were still a ways away from each other, separated by some members of the crowd—she stopped and said, “Mr. Benz, there you are. I almost couldn’t find you in that tuxedo. It makes you look very handsome, but italsomakes you look the same as everyone else, which is funny because you’re not the same as everyone else, are you?”
He stopped, too, as his chest imploded.Everythingimploded. He hardly recognized his voice when he said, “Ms. Delaney. I thought you’d gone home.” He smiled at their use of last names. They had done that so many times in the past month, first out of formality and then, at times, in anger, or in jest. Now, it felt... tender.
“I realized I couldn’t leave yet, because I forgot something.”
He kept his cool. “Oh? What’s that?”
“I forgot to tell you that I love you, too.”
It was only then that he realized the reason they could hear each other was that the music had stopped. The waltz was over, and they were standing in the middle of the dance floor, though there was still a good six feet between them. He was having that very public moment that Torkel had wanted to avoid.
This was the opposite of the way things usually went with him. In his role as equerry—and his role as Santa—Matteo worked in the background. Quietly made things happen for other people. He preferred it that way.
Usually.
Now, though, he found he didn’t mind at all that the crowd had come to a standstill, that everyone’s attention was on him and his angel of destruction.
Another thing he didn’t do? Dance. He was always far too busy working to dance at the Cocoa Ball. And yet. “Ms. Delaney, would you care to dance with me?”
