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‘Damn it, Jo. Why can you not get angry when you ought? I know I am behaving like an ill-mannered idiot.’
‘Yes, you are, but my dress is lovely and has danced with many lovely kilts and coats and so I forgive you.’
She smiled and he wished they could just stop. Stop everything. Send everyone away. Or go back to the day before he was fool enough to step across the line in the sand. He didn’t want this.
‘I trust Beth will be pleased with your dress’s performance.’ He smiled. ‘MacGregor certainly seemed pleased, or was that his kilt?’
He had not expected her to catch the lewd import of his comment, but her eyes widened and she burst into her gurgling laughter. He was so tempted to pull her out on to the terrace, spread out his kilt on the grass and bare her beautiful body to the moon and stars and his touch and taste.
‘Jo.’
He didn’t know what she heard in his voice, but her laughter faded. For a moment everything faded but the deep grey of her eyes, the soft sweep of her lips, halfway between a smile and bemusement. Then an ache, deep inside but as sharp and stinging as a blow from Angus’s fist, spread through him.
He took her arm.
‘They are striking up a waltz. Come dance with me.’
‘Oughtn’t you rather—?’
‘No,’ he interrupted her, moving her firmly towards the dance floor. He did not want to think in shoulds and oughts. He wanted this. Her. Now. It would be over soon enough.
* * *
Jo felt the guests staring as he drew her on to the dance floor and her gaze settled on his shoes and her slippers as they moved to the lovely music. She did not recognise it—it was light and dreamlike, as if the composer had crawled inside her head and heard a long-lost dream of hers. And the more recent dreams of Benneit, smiling at her...touching her... She had seen him dance often enough six years ago—tall and handsome and perfectly matched with Bella. It made little sense that he was dancing with her now, his hand warm on hers through her glove, his fingers shifting slightly on her waist as he guided her.
‘Are you counting your steps? You don’t need to, you dance beautifully.’ There was a smile in his voice, but also something else she could not read. Was she embarrassing him?
‘I’m sorry. I was listening to the music. It is so lovely. There is something so...wistful about waltzes. Sometimes I think they should be danced with eyes closed.’
‘If everyone did that it might wreak havoc on the dance floor.’
‘That is a very practical consideration, but not at all relevant to daydreams.’
‘Ah, this is daydreaming Jo. What tale would unfold behind your lowered lids?’
She shook her head, embarrassed to have even said as much, but he continued.
‘You could do that now—close your eyes and dream away.’ His voice sank and there was heat in it, but also a raw edge that brought with it the memory of that brief, wild embrace on the cliff path; the aftermath of fear and fury and the grasping at life.
She didn’t tell him that this time she did not want to close her eyes. That there was no daydream that could outdo this moment. It was a dream come real, but with the bitter twist of all such dreams—it was still out of reach and all the more vicious for that chasm.
She did not want the moment ruined by bitterness so she kept her smile and forced herself to look up.
It was a mistake. She had been warm before, but the look she saw in his eyes seared her skin. Until this moment she was convinced the kiss on the cliff path was mostly the outcome of anger and frustration. But in this civilised setting she could not mistake the stark desire in his eyes; it reached out and grabbed her like a dog sinking its fangs into a rabbit. Then his thick black lashes lowered and he smiled as well, but it was not an easy smile.
‘You can dream of Alfred seeing you as you are now,’ he said, his hand tightening on hers and his other sliding lower on her back. She stumbled against him, her leg brushing against his, and another bolt of lightning ripped through her, as if they were two pieces of flint, incapable of contact without the threat of fire. Her ears were ringing with it, her breasts heavy and almost foreign in a bodice now too tight.
‘I’m sorry, Jo, I should not have said that. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
