Chapter 3

"Might I rescue you?" a voice whispered beside Emma, startling her terribly.

She clasped a hand to her chest. "Marcus! Goodness, I did not hear you approach."

Although, her surprise was simpler than that. Of all the men in all the world, he would have been the last one she would have expected to approach her, offering rescue. Indeed, she had hoped he would not be in attendance at all that night.

"Apologies," he said softly. "If your card is not yet full, I wondered if you might do me the honor of dancing with me? Rather, I saw you standing alone, facing the wolves, and thought you might like the distraction."

Emma faltered. "Why?"

"You did me a great favor at the church," he replied quietly, no doubt aware of the entire room's eyes upon their conversation. "I owe you an immense debt of gratitude. You were… braver than me. I should have been the one to leave, but I could not do it."

Emma allowed herself a nervy breath. "I saw her, and… I had no choice."

"I should not have put the decision in your hands," he insisted, casting his gaze down.

"What is done is done," she murmured, relaxing slightly. "I am just pleased that my father is not here to see us talking to one another, or I am quite certain he would kidnap us both and throw us before the nearest vicar or reverend he could find."

Marcus gave a wry chuckle. "We are not quite safe. My mother is here somewhere and will undoubtedly be watching this exchange like a hawk."

"She must be relieved." Emma laughed stiffly. "She never did like me."

Marcus shrugged. "It is hard to say what my mother feels about the situation. I think she is relieved but does not know how to contend with the insult of her son being jilted, and is certainly wary of why I seem so gladdened by the entire ordeal."

"I am sorry if you felt slighted," Emma hurried to say. "I promise, it was not intended to be an insult against your character."

He smiled warmly. "I know. As for your character—you continue to show that you are braver than almost anyone with whom I am acquainted. It is utterly courageous of you to be here tonight and, I must say, I am thrilled that you are here. It saves me from attempting to write a hundred letters of my heartfelt thanks."

"My godmother insisted," Emma explained, her voice wavering. "But frankly, I am terrified."

"You do not look it."

"Perhaps not, but I am certain that most of these ladies can smell it on me." She managed a wan smile.

At that moment, a small band of those same young ladies shot her a filthy look, turned their noses up in the air, and left the ballroom in a bluster of outrage. Their mothers were twice as bad, announcing to anyone within earshot that they would "not share the same air as that woman of ill-repute, in case it is catching."

It seemed to spark an exodus, with many others following the dramatic, damning exit. Some men, too, dragged along by their offended companions.

Joanna will kill me… Emma's heart sank. She did not know the elder of Eliza's nieces very well, but no hostess liked to see their guests leaving because of one individual guest. Indeed, Emma was not even certain she had an official invitation; she only had Eliza's word that "of course you are invited. I say you are."

"What I am trying to say," Marcus interrupted her thoughts, "and not very eloquently, is that I thank you, Lady Emma. Thank you for doing what I could not. Thank you for freeing us both. I am just sorry that you are now bearing the burden of it, when it should be me."

Emma raised her chin as best she could, her nerves trembling from the tips of her toes to the crown of her head. "I have been heralded as a spiteful, selfish creature who holds no concern for anyone but herself, but I could not marry you while your dearest love sat watching, her heart breaking with every step I took toward you." She paused. "How is Mary?"

"Mary is—" Marcus began to say, when his eyes widened, and his mouth snapped shut.

Fearing that his mother had appeared over her shoulder, Emma did not dare to turn around, to follow Marcus's line of sight. Instead, her entire body tensed, bracing for the strike of a reticule or a few barbed words at least.

"Pardon the intrusion," a low, lilting voice rumbled.

Not Marcus's mother then, unless her voice had dropped an octave and been filtered through smoke.

Still, Emma did not turn. She felt the presence behind her instead, a tremor running down her spine, as if each word of the gentleman at her back was gently caressing each bone and nerve and stretch of skin from her nape to her tailbone.

"I thought I might ask if you would dance the next set with me, if your card is not full," the lilting voice continued, leaving Emma feeling oddly breathless. Somehow, she knew that voice, but her hazy mind could not place it.

"Not you," the man said with an almost chilling laugh that tightened the tension on Marcus's face, "though I am certain you are an excellent dancer. Still, it would not be seemly."

Marcus chuckled awkwardly. "I was just in the midst of asking Lady Emma to dance, but I would be happy to allow you to take my place if she is willing."

He gave Emma an encouraging nod, but she still could not coerce her body into turning around.

Apparently sensing her reticence, the gentleman stepped into view… and what little breath she had left abandoned her lungs in one sharp gasp. She did know him.

"It is… you," she wheezed, swaying slightly.

Marcus frowned. "You know this gentleman?"

"Fleetingly," the man said, his eyes the color of autumn, twinkling darkly. "My arm still bears a small bruise from our momentary encounter."

Heat rushed into Emma's cheeks, her hand snapping out her fan to try and cool the worst of it. "My apologies, sir. I?—"

"Your Grace," Marcus corrected, nudging Emma's arm, his eyebrows rising up with more encouragement.

Your Grace? Then, he is a duke! I barreled into a duke, looking like I had been dragged through a hedge backwards! The fiery shame could have melted her into a puddle there and then.

She gulped, mortified. "My apologies, Your Grace. I… was not… I was not watching where I was going that day. I was… um… in a rush to be somewhere and?—."

The duke offered his hand. "Agree to dance, and all will be forgiven."

She had placed her hand upon his before she knew what she was doing, while a whisper of disapproval circled the ballroom in a scraping hiss that threatened to scoop out her churning insides. This was madness. Utter madness.

She was supposed to be keeping to the periphery, causing no more fuss than she already had done, certainly not creating a spectacle of herself by dancing with the most handsome gentleman in the room.

But he was leading her toward the dance floor before she could doubt her decision to put her hand on his. And behind her, Marcus clasped his hands together like a proud mother—possibly the only person in attendance who did not think she was the lowest of the low.

Thisgentleman cannot possibly know about me, or he would not be asking me to dance. Her mind whirled, wondering if she ought to inform him before he made a fool of himself by dancing with her.

To make matters worse, the very moment they were positioned upon the dance floor, surrounded by other couples, someone shouted to the orchestra: "A waltz!"

Obediently, the orchestra changed the tone of the evening. Where before they had been playing jaunty music to accompany the lively country dances and reels, they slowed to a more dramatic rhythm, and murmurs of excitement bristled through the waiting couples.

The waltz was not exactly an accepted dance amongst polite society, but it was showing up more and more with each passing year, included more often than it was shunned, particularly at less public gatherings.

Indeed, its stubborn presence in society events had become something of a premonition of things to come—of a less restricted way of existing, at least when it came to dancing.

I should make my excuses. Emma wanted to, but her mouth would not form any words, her feet rooted to the spot.

"My favorite," the duke purred, as he swept in to take hold of her hands.

Emma froze as he twisted her arms slightly, bending them into the correct shape for the initial promenade. All she could do was obey, allowing him to move and maneuver her like a puppet, watching in horror as the guests—those who had not flounced out already—began to gather. Spectators to her spectacle.

He was so close, his side pressed to hers. Too close.

She could not breathe, could not think, her legs shaking, her hands so clammy beneath her gloves that she was waiting for him to feel the perspiration through the silk and pull a disgusted face.

"Your Grace," she began to say.

But he simply clicked his tongue. "Not now. The waltz is about to start."

He stepped forward, leading the way through the opening promenade with elegant precision. For a few jarring moments, it felt like she was being dragged—promenaded in front of all those who knew she had no right to be there, promenaded like a thief, at whom citizens could throw rotten tomatoes.

"Eyes on me," the duke growled.

Emma found that she could not disobey the command, peering up at his breathtakingly handsome face instead of at the gathering observers. And, as she did, he looked back, his intense gaze hitting her like the hot blast of a fireplace after wandering in a cold winter garden.

He did not look away once as he guided her through the slow and sultry steps of the clandestine waltz. Indeed, she had worried that she would have to stare at her feet in order to avoid tripping or making a fool of herself, but with him to guide her—his eyes fixed upon hers—she did not dare to glance down for a second.

Should his hands be there? Her heart fluttered frantically as his arm slipped around her waist, his other hand clasping hers and bringing it close to the peak of his shoulder.

She was absolutely certain he was not supposed to interlace his fingers with hers, yet there they were, so entangled that she did not know where hers began and his ended.

But no protest croaked from her throat; there was simply no opportunity for it, as he turned her in dizzying circles, each rotation snatching the breath from her lungs, making it impossible to utter a word.

Slowly but surely, the blur of the world beyond their dance smeared to the point where she no longer had to think of the gawking spectators. They did not exist; they were mere smudges, as the duke became the axis of her concentration.

She focused solely on him, on the security and strength of his too-close embrace, on the skillful glide of his graceful steps, on the thrilling spins, on the gleam that shimmered in his enchanting eyes.

The more she gazed into those eyes, the more their color evaded her, for they seemed to have been painted from an inexhaustible palette: golds and browns and greens and blues, changing shade and tone with each rotation, each way the light glanced across them.

You are… impossible. No gentleman could be so beautiful and be real.

Somehow, the impossibility of him helped her situation; it allowed her to believe that she was asleep at Eliza's country manor, dreaming in the comfort of her bed. And as she settled deeper into the pretense of the dream, she settled into the proximity of him, releasing the locked muscles that had been trying to resist his closeness.

A giddy smile even graced her lips as he whirled her around and around, spinning her outward then pulling her back in—waltzing steps that she had never studied. But she trusted in his guidance, following his lead without hesitation. For how could any gentleman so beautiful ever lead a lady astray?

She gasped softly as he brought their arms up over their heads in an arch, while his other hand rested on the small of her back and her free hand rested gingerly upon his shoulder. While she knew they were meant to be close, he took a half-step nearer to her, their bodies almost flush against each other.

A moment later, he glided into position at her side, leaving her reeling. Had they really been pressed together, or had she imagined it?

"Disgraceful harlot," someone hissed nearby, snapping her out of the trance that the duke had weaved around her.

In a panic, she realized that everyone was staring… and at least half of the couples who had taken to the floor had ceased dancing, though she did not know when. All at once, she felt like she was standing naked among them all, more exposed than she had ever felt in her life.

"And with Lord Portshire watching, too!" someone else remarked bitterly. "Does she have no shame?"

The duke must have heard, but he did not loosen his grip upon her. If anything, he held her tighter as he whispered from the corner of his beautiful, full mouth, "eyes on me. I will not tell you again."

Emma shivered, torn between the glares that burned into her and the intent focus of the duke beside her. Clearly, he did not understand what manner of woman he had chosen as a dancing partner.

If he did, she knew he would not have deigned to ask her to dance in the first place, and the longer she kept the truth from him, the more outraged he would be when he found out.

She cleared her throat, mustering the very last dregs of her bravery. "I am sorry, Your Grace. I should have informed you sooner, but you are dancing with a… scorned woman. The scandal is still too fresh," she choked out. "I should not have consented, for your sake."

"It is rude to end a dance before the music finishes," was all he said in reply, smirking.

Sure enough, though the entire ballroom was gawping, he continued to twirl and whirl with her, continued to concentrate upon her and only her, until he fell, at last, into a final promenade at her side. Nothing she had said seemed to perturb him.

Is he not in his right mind? She had to wonder if his uncompromising beauty had, in truth, come at the price of an addled brain.

As the music faded to a close, he turned to face her, pulling her a step nearer as he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it softly. His eyes still refused to leave hers, though they darkened as he peered up at her while the silk of her glove brushed against his lips.

Oh goodness… It was as if she had no fabric there at all.

"Your scandal, Lady Emma," he purred, "cannot be greater than mine."

Her eyes widened. "When did I tell you my name?"

"Your acquaintance did," he replied curtly, as he released her hand and dipped his head in place of a bow.

Emma hurried to curtsy, her legs wobbly as they bent. "Thank you for the dance, Your Grace." She paused. "Although, it occurs to me that we were not formally introduced. Who are?—"

"Silas Arnold," he interrupted, leaning forward, his breath tickling her ear as he added, "but "Your Grace" is all I wish to hear from your lips."

She blinked in astonishment, her skin tingling where his warm breath had caressed it, almost as if her neck was the silk of her glove and his mouth had truly brushed against it.

"I believe we will speak again very soon."