Page 45 of The Reckless Love of an Heir
He smiled. ‘Susan. Would you like me to return to the refreshment table for you?’
‘No, I am not thirsty, but thank you.’ He was much older than her, yet she had known John, Henry’s eldest cousin, since she was an infant in the nursery. He had a very officious manner at times, and there were too many years between them for her to have ever called him a friend, yet she had seen the man he was within his home when he shut the world outside and she was not cowed by his title. He and Katherine and their children were charming.
The orchestra began to play the notes of a waltz. Susan turned. Her mother and father were some of the first people to enter the room, drawn in by the introduction to a dance. Alethea followed, she was speaking with another of Henry’s cousins, Mary, Aunt Ellen’s and Uncle Edward’s eldest daughter, who was already married too.
‘Drew and Mary have arrived. I was not sure they would be here, they always leave it so late to come to events,’ Aunt Ellen said, as though she had genuinely not expected them to come.
‘They prefer to be by themselves at home, Mama, that is all,and it is easy enough for them to travel up to town in a day,’ John replied.
‘Katherine, shall we join Henry and Sarah?’ John held out a hand to his wife.
Susan looked across the room. Henry stood in the middle of the floor holding Sarah’s hand. He bowed to her before he formed the frame of a waltz. There was a slight, dull applause which rippled around the room when they began dancing, as the gloved hands of the numerous friends, family and acquaintances within the room clapped.
John and Katherine began to dance too, then Aunt Ellen and Uncle Edward, and Susan saw her parents join others on the floor as the number of couples swelled. She recognised many of them as friends of her parents, and others as people she had been introduced to for the first time at her parents’ ball.
‘Hello, Susan, shall we dance?’
She turned to face Peter Sparks, the son of another of her parents’ friends. She had also known Peter since childhood. Though, she had not seen Peter for a couple of years. He looked at her expectantly and lifted his hand higher. ‘Will you dance with me, then?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, thank you, Peter.’ She was more than glad to move away from the wall and let the music flow through her.
She held his offered hand.
When they began to dance, he said, ‘Susan, you are all grown up, and very beautiful. I did not even recognise you. William told me who you were when I asked. Will you let me claim the supper dance too?’
She nodded. A strange sensation was clogging up her throat. Henry had passed behind them, his gaze fully focused on Sarah. He had not looked at her, yet the sight of his hand on Sarah’s back reminded her of the sensation of his thumb brushing thecurve of her spine. Peter’s hand did not feel the same, and his eyes were blue, when they ought to be brown.
Yet if she was to find a husband she must give herself a wide choice; it was a man’s manner that was important, not his looks or his height.
After dancing with Peter, she danced with William, then Fred, and Greg, and all of Harry’s cousins who had come. Though, Harry was not there, he had returned to his regiment. Introductions to their friends then expanded her group of dance partners, who clustered about her, as gentlemen normally clustered about Alethea.
When the supper dance began it was one after midnight, and her feet were sore from dancing. She was ready for a rest but there was one more dance. She accepted Peter’s offered arm for the country dance with a smile, and skipped through it, enjoying it despite her aching feet.
After the dance he walked her through to the dining room to collect a plate of food for their supper. Then they found a spot among his friends. She refused to look about the room for Henry, or Alethea, as she assumed they would be together. Henry had not come near her and she did not wish to be near him. It would do her no good.
She was the only woman at her table and at moments it was intimidating to be among such a group of vibrant men, as they debated with each other in loud voices and laughed. But she ignored her sense of reservation – she knew them – and if she was to find a husband…
When the supper break ended, and the music began, she walked back into the ballroom on the arm of one of Peter’s friends, for the next dance. As they passed the table where Henry and Alethea sat, she could not help but look. He was sitting beside Alethea, with Sarah too, and a man Susan assumed wasSarah’s dance partner. John and Katherine, and Mary and Drew sat with them. Couples.
Henry glanced at her, as though he sensed her watching.
She looked away.
Her heart pulsed in a steady beat while she danced the next country dance, as she fought not to recall the instant of communication she had shared with Henry before the dance began.
How could he invade her thoughts and senses so easily, and fully? Others did not.
‘Susan.’
She turned and faced Henry as the dance came to its end; she had barely stopped moving. Heat flaring in her skin, and her breath sticking in her throat, she could not reply.
There was a frown of determination marking his brow, and his lips were pursed with intent. ‘I would ask you to dance the next with me, but I would guess your feet are aching, and so instead I shall ask, would you care to sit the next dance out beside me?’
‘What of Alethea?’ she asked as her previous partner left them.
‘She has a partner. She will be dancing.’
‘Henry—’
