Page 4 of A Duke to Undo her
“In that case, he’s definitely not here,” she told Rose. “It’s rather warm, isn’t it? I can’t really even imagine shivering tonight. I don’t think even Lady Jane could manage it in this ballroom.”
“Oh well, perhaps he will arrive later,” her friend tried to comfort her. “There’s often a second wave of young gentlemen turning up after they leave their clubs.”
“Yes, the drunken ones,” commented Josephine ruefully. “The ones who get all hot and sweaty and red-faced when dancing and then tread on your dress. I do hope Benedict Emerton isn’t one of those. It would be most inconvenient.”
“He’d give up drunkenness if you were his true love though, I’m sure,” Rose assured her with an entirely earnest face.
“‘For your love, Lady Jane, I would move mountains’!” the two young women quoted in unison from the hero of their favorite book and then fell about in giggles.
“You seem very merry tonight, young ladies,” commented Norman, Lord Elmridge, Vera’s husband as he and his wife came forward to meet them. “Did you enjoy your dance?”
“Very much,” Josephine told her chaperones. “Although I can’t wait for something a little less staid. Surely there must be a reel or something like that soon. I do want to really dance tonight.”
“Hmm, perhaps I ought to put more pins in your hair now,” mused Vera, regarding her critically. “It would be a shame to lose that lovely neat style. It very much becomes you.”
“There’s no need,” Josephine said hurriedly, having been primped and fussed over by her elder sisters far too much that evening already. “Anyway, I must visit the retiring rooms.”
“I’ll come with you,” stated Vera immediately and Josephine swallowed her annoyance, really wanting only space and time alone to breathe without supervision.
Seizing an opportunity when Vera was detained by Lady Silverton as they passed out of the ballroom, the younger woman slipped around a nearby corner, away from the noise and light of the company.
The passageway in which Josephine found herself was dimly lit and clearly not intended for the general company. Not wanting to intrude further on the Silverton family’s private space, she paused there before a decorative mirror and examined herself critically.
She supposed she looked well enough to the rest of the world but the sight of her firmly pinned and braided auburn locks made Josephine pull a face. She barely even recognized herself when her sisters got her up like this. They really did think she was a little doll to play with.
Deliberately removing and discarding several pins on a side table, Josephine ruffled her hair and grinned at the partial fall ofher rusty brown waves around her face. Her green eyes gleamed mischievously and her cheeks still glowed from the warmth of the ballroom. Yes, that was better - now she recognized herself.
“Josephine?” Vera’s voice called.
“I suppose I must go back,” Josephine muttered to herself ambivalently.
She did want to dance again but she wanted to dance dances that the ton had never seen. There was something in her that strained against the leash of all prescribed measures. Josephine really wished she could dance to the rhythm of the raindrops and thunderclaps in a storm.
Believing herself entirely alone in the half-light she hopped, skipped and jumped to the end of the corridor towards Vera’s voice, twirling and waving her arms. Turning the corner there she crashed straight into a tall, dark-haired gentleman heading in the opposite direction, her hand actually striking him full across the face.
“What the devil?!” the man exclaimed indignantly, raising his own hand to his cheek.
“Oh!” Josephine reacted, jumping back from the stranger in horror.
His face was cross, his cheeks flushed and his stock awry, whether from dancing or the collision with Josephine. In eithercase, he seemed distinctly unhappy. Now she wished that Vera and Norman would come along and rescue her. The man before her certainly did not have Benedict Emerton’s easy and amiable manner.
Above average height and strongly built but plainly dressed, the stranger’s dark-blue eyes took Josephine in from head to foot without a word. His intense gaze made her heart race as though she had committed some terrible transgression rather than merely bumped into him. Surely, any minute now, he would apologize politely, she would curtsey, he would bow and then they would go their separate ways.
The stranger, unfortunately, did not act in line with any of these expectations and Josephine found herself almost trembling in reaction to his presence.
“What do you think you’re doing, young woman?!” he demanded angrily. “The ballroom is that way if you wish to dance like a civilized person. What a damned fool way to carry on!”
Josephine was shocked at such ungentlemanly behavior and language. No one ever spoke to her like that. People might whisper behind her back or make indirect comments on her mildly unseemly behavior but she was used to being feted and spoiled. Her sisters’ husbands treated her like a wayward but well-loved puppy. In fact, she could not remember a man speaking an angry word to her in her life.
“I beg your pardon, Sir,” she said, unable to keep her indignance entirely from her voice. “I thought I was alone. A gentleman would surely excuse a lady’s small oversight.”
“Alone at the Silverton ball? How absurd! Are you a child or an adult?” he returned bluntly, looking her straight in the eye. “If the former, you should go back to the schoolroom. If the latter, you ought to look where you’re going and take responsibility for your actions.”
Go back to the schoolroom?! Josephine was twenty years of age and both infuriated and baffled by this arrogant and ungenteel attitude. Why did he not simply offer an apology like any normal person?
For several long seconds they regarded one another in silence.
“I apologize. I took you for a grown woman,” he added, and her bafflement was succeeded by a real urge to slap his face.
