Page 26 of The Duke's Last Dance
He moved closer to her, and she found herself lacking the willpower to push him away. There were still no butterflies, but she felt a subtle hint of enjoyment. Perhaps Nicolas still held a place in her heart, and this was the way she was going to feel it.
“Lady Catherine, Lord Lockhart, come along. We’re in time to see the orchestra perform in the rotunda.” Miss Juliet again insisted on interrupting the moment, and for this, Lady Catherine was happy. Nicolas pulled away from her.
“Yes. Let us go watch the orchestra.” He held his arm out towards Lady Catherine again.
She took his elbow to be polite, but she could not help but wonder if he was about to kiss her under the light of the fireworks above. Fireworks. It was not exactly what she had expected of a first kiss.
As the orchestra finished setting up to perform in the rotunda, Catherine thought about the first kiss. She had always fantasized about it as a kid, sharing her first kiss with Nicolas, specifically. She had always thought he would do it in a cherry garden or an orchard of some kind. Perhaps at a ball, when they had stolen away for some fresh air, and no one else was around to see them share a moment of impropriety between friends.
Now, the fact that he may have wanted to kiss her made her feel… she didn’t know, but she knew that it was not the same that she had felt when she was a kid fantasizing about it. Too much had changed. When she was a kid, she had believed that Nicolas’s presence in her life was a given, that he would always be there when she returned from the countryside for each Season.
Three years ago, that illusion shattered.
Besides, she now had feelings for the Duke of Hestina. Or, at least, she thought she had feelings for him. She wanted to see for herself if there really was anything to come of the way he had made her feel, or if the Duke of Hestina would be another heartbreak waiting to happen.
For her own health, she hoped that it would not be another heartbreak.
Chapter Eleven
He tried to keep his eyes on the orchestra, but he found himself stealing glances sideways at Lady Catherine. The firework show would have been the perfect time to kiss her; it was something Nicolas had been fantasizing about for years. He wanted to have his first kiss with Lady Catherine under a firework show…
And he had been so sure she had felt the same desire. She had not pulled away from him, nor had she said anything about it. However, the look on her face when Miss Juliet had interrupted them worried him. She had looked relieved, as if she wasn’t sure how to take the idea that he wanted to kiss her.
Had that much changed in the time he had been away? Or was she only worried because it would have been improper to kiss her without courting first?
Both were good reasons, but the former was more worrying than the latter.
The orchestra was good, but he barely heard more than a few notes. He escorted Lady Catherine out of the gardens quietly, not sure if she would even want to talk to him now that he had almost kissed her.
Lord Radcliff seemed to pick up on it, and he sat beside Nicolas on the way back to his loft room in the carriage.
“Is something wrong, Lord Lockhart?” Lord Radcliff furrowed his brows, speaking in a low voice.
“I worry that Lady Catherine does not feel the same way that I do any longer,” Nicolas whispered. “Is that wrong of me? Is it wrong to think that she has lost feelings for me?”
“I do not believe so, but there is nothing I can do for that,” Lord Radcliff replied. “She is her own woman, and must I remind you that she was devastated when you left for the Navy? She feared for your safety, and she had no way to tell you that. When she never heard from you, she lost hope that you would be returning to Town. She gave up on it.”
“She…” Nicolas could not help but steal another glance at Catherine at that moment.
She was again looking out the window, and she did not seem to be listening. Of course, that was something she was good at. She could appear to be thinking, but really, she was listening.
“I know. You would not guess it from how civil she has been, but I fear that she is going to allow other men to court her before she gives you another chance, Lord Lockhart.” Lord Radcliff pulled away.
The rest of the carriage ride was a blur. He bade them all a good night, and then proceeded into his loft room. He dressed for bed, laid down, and was beset upon by thoughts and dreams of Lady Catherine. He tossed and turned as he dreamt of millions of ways that she could tell him that she was no longer interested, or she was interested but he could not do anything because of Miss Alexia.
The next day, he returned to Ashwood Manor to see how his father was doing. As much as he wanted to say that he did not care about the man, the man was his father. It would have been callous to not see him at all during the illness, especially after his mother had insisted he come home until he was either better or dead.
His father met him in his office, which Nicolas had expected. The office was a place where his father went to have comfort when his mother was not able to give him everything he wanted.
“Father, how good to see you again,” Nicolas said tautly. He was not sure what else to say to his controlling father, but he knew that saying anything else besides a polite – or at least a civil – greeting, his father would not have been happy with him.
“Thank you for coming, Nicolas,” his father replied. “Come. Sit.” He motioned for Nicolas to sit down.
As he did so, he got a better look at his father. His complexion was doing better, but it still worried Nicolas. There was more color to his father’s cheeks. Perhaps he would come out of this without losing his life. However, Nicolas worried there was more to the illness than what he could see. His father’s eyes were still bright and full of life and the color returning to his cheeks was a good sign, but he was still much thinner than he was when Nicolas left.
There were dark circles under his eyes, and he seemed to have been losing sleep more and more as the days went by. His first two nights here had been full of hacking coughs coming from his father’s room. After he moved to his bachelor’s pad, he had not had any problems with that kind of a noise keeping him up every night.
“How has life been at your loft room, Nicolas?” His father attempted to start a conversation, but Nicolas did not want to have a glossy conversation that only touched the mere issues that had no major consequences if they were not taken seriously.
