Chapter Eleven

"I'll find you against the wall nearest the ratafia table," he told her.

And so, her heart all but galloping, she preceded him down the stairs. They could hardly be seen strolling together from an upstairs hideaway, after all.

A few moments later, he followed her, and found her, and bowed.

Then extended his arm and raised his eyebrows.

His smile was barely that: a lift at the corners of his mouth.

She realized then that every muscle of her body had always contracted ever so slightly at the sight of him, like a heart leaping.

And it did that now, at the prospect of touching for the first time.

His arm tensed a little beneath her hand, his muscles flexing as if he was preparing to lead her out over the backs of sleeping crocodiles.

Her heart a steady bass drum in her chest, thusly they promenaded together to join the other dancers.

She was conscious even then of heads turning toward them.

She curtsied to him, as prettily as she was able when she was nearly dizzy with nerves.

He bowed again.

After the minutest hesitation, as if he sensed it was an irrevocable act, he gently closed his fingers around her hand. When his other hand came to rest on her waist, it suddenly seemed like something essential that had long been missing from her.

And they merged with other dancers, as if they had done it dozens of times before.

She'd never danced with his sort of man before. The way he moved his body, his gaze, and the way he'd touched her—everything felt like intention. As though he never put his hands on anything or anyone without the determination to possess it wholly. The gravity of whoever he was and the things he knew seemed to communicate themselves to her body through his hands.

And just like that, her skin felt as if it was made of a thousand tiny lamps, all softly blazing. As if her every cell had raised a violin to its shoulder and drawn a bow.

Judging from the temperature of her face, she was likely a shade of raspberry. Her only consolation was that this likely looked well enough with the shade of green she was wearing.

And as they moved together in the familiar, graceful rhythms of the waltz, he wore a faint frown. His eyes were fixed on her and they burned as if his entire being was marshaled to the task of seeing her.

Heat rayed through her from the places their bodies touched: her hand at his back. His at her waist. Their linked hands. His mouth seemed strangely beautiful to her, long and fine, and she knew by this dance she would be able draw it with her eyes closed, anytime she wished. What she wanted was to trace his lips with a finger. To discover the textures of him. His hair, his skin. An odd ache began in her chest, and her eyes stung with some nearly overwhelming emotion she could not quite name. It felt like yearning. Inherent in yearning, she knew, what made it so enticing, so romantic, was the notion that it would never, ever be satisfied. That it was out of reach. Perhaps even wrong.

Surely he could feel it in the rise and fall of her ribs, just above where his hand rested at her waist. Or the kick of her pulse in her hand.

Oh, look at me now, Lady Hackworth and Miss Seaver, she exulted silently.

"You do dance passably well," she said finally. Because it seemed clear he was not going to speak. "Perhaps you should do it more often."

He finally smiled faintly. "Your effusiveness is going to make me blush, and then we really will have a scandal on our hands. This waltz only has value because it's rare, Keating. I allowed it to appreciate in value, like a priceless antique."

She laughed, breathlessly. "Thank you for spending it on me."

His reply was a subtle nod.

"Are they watching?" "They" being the ballroom at large.

"If you look up you can see Lady Sedgewick's molars. Her jaw has dropped."

She didn't want to look anywhere but at him.

She almost said it aloud.

She was certain her eyes said it for her.

And yet she began to feel it: the gradual shift in the attention of the room, as if the direction of a breeze had changed. Those not dancing were watching them. Those dancing were also watching them, or at least as best they could without colliding with each other. She thought she saw Lucy's wide eyes as she turned about in the arms of Mr. Hargrove, which was where Lucy wanted to be.

She exulted, which is how she knew she'd been suffering just a little more these past few days than she'd been willing to admit to herself. How glorious to be so thoroughly seen at last. Whatever the consequences. What a strange miracle that her benefactor was such a very noticeable man.

"It was very kind of you to interrupt your unbroken record of not dancing at balls," she said.

"Kindness had nothing to do with it."

His words were almost too brusque. But the closeness of his voice, the bald, definitive statement, was thrilling, because it suggested he was keeping something leashed.

"Something you'd do for any friend, no doubt," she said softly. It was inflected almost as a question.

He didn't respond, apart from a slight indenting at the corners of his mouth. It was an ironic smile, not entirely amused, acknowledging that he knew she was testing him.

Even now she could almost sense all of the things he was—the things that she'd only ever glimpsed that undershot his charm and attention and the soft warmth she sensed hidden at the very core of him. A cold ruthlessness that made it possible for him to do what he did as a politician. A brilliance that could lacerate. A pride and ferocity that boded ill for any enemy. And a core of mystery, the part of him he revealed to no one. Nobody would toy with him without consequences. She didn't know why she would be excepted. She really shouldn't tease him at all.

But she could see no benefit to him for dancing with her. And if it was not a kindness, it was because he'd wanted an excuse to touch her. Perhaps he had thought about it for some time.

In much the same way she had wondered about him.

She didn't know why this should make her feel both frightened and protective, except that he was her friend. She was certain of it.

"Don't look now, but Lady Wisterberg has been flushed from her den. She is even now watching us. Someone must have gone to fetch her out of alarm," he said.

"What does she think you'll do to me?"

Her own daring unnerved her.

She knew this was a question to which he could not and would not reply.

But his eyes did it for him, with a flare of heat and that little unamused smile, and this time the smile was most definitely a warning. She was not going to get an answer.

The notion that she might never know suddenly panicked her. It seemed imperative to know.

She had never felt more exhilarated, or more confused.

The thing that they had been weaving between them over a series of days now was perhaps friendship, but it was also a sort of net. And down, down, down it sifted, until they were standing too close but somehow not close enough, and the music was over just in time and yet far, far too soon.

They did not step apart at once.

Mainly because neither seemed able to bring themselves to do it.

Finally, his shoulders moved when he took in a breath. He slowly led her from the floor, through a gauntlet of eyes, straight to Lady Wisterberg, who was standing on the periphery of the ballroom and not-quite-but-almost wringing her hands.

He bowed to both of them, and then without another word calmly strode off. She suspected he had gone to find some place to be alone.

On his way back to rejoin the men gathered in the library, Kirke saw the plume on Lady Wisterberg's turban rising above a little cluster of the curious, like a victor's flag planted on a battlefield. He was relieved and gratified that she appeared to be dispensing introductions to Keating with alacrity. At last.

He tensed against a flock of other emotions fluttering on the periphery of his awareness, dark as crows. One of which was something like panic, as though his pocket had been picked of something shockingly valuable. Briefly something oddly akin to sorrow clutched his throat.

The thing to do was to not look, and to walk away, thereby scattering the emotions like birds attempting to settle on a field.

So he did.

But he knew that he had already walked himself into a trap of his own making. Because beautiful women abounded in London. It was easy to want a beautiful woman.

But alchemy was different. It was about ineffable things. The way someone's head went back when they laughed, or the set of their shoulders when they walked. A voice. An essence. The way the very gravity of a room seemed to change when someone was near.

It was two people, who, when combined, would ultimately combust.

He'd had to know.

Now he knew.

His enemies would reach out with both hands and greedily scrape the news of his waltz with a young woman toward them like coins they'd won in a card game, hoping it was a vulnerability they could exploit. The gossip sheets might try to imply he was attempting to corrupt her just because he could.

He was concerned for her sake. It would bear watching. But there was almost nothing he couldn't adroitly manage or endure. He wasn't going to dance with her ever again, and he would be keeping his distance from now on, so he would not be heaping kindling onto any nascent gossip.

Of infinitely greater concern to him was the fact that he'd seen a tiny gold birthmark shaped like a heart alongside her pearl necklace, right above the shadow of her cleavage.

And that. That was going to bloody haunt him.

It would be what he saw when he closed his eyes at night and he thought he might die if he never touched his tongue to it.

Lady Wisterberg craved the rush of a wager. Nothing made her feel more alive. So when it became clear she was suddenly in custody of a horse she could back—Miss Catherine Keating—she abandoned the gaming tables and became as efficient and brisk as a general. She skillfully fielded the sudden flurry of requests to meet Catherine that resulted from her waltz with Lord Kirke, and unabashedly reveled in the reflected glory.

When Catherine's dance card was nearly filled, Lady Wisterberg pulled her aside and launched into a lecture. "Oh, my dear, no. No. NO! Lord Kirke is a good-looking devil, and I'll grant you he has pretty manners but the main word is ‘devil'—he's not looking for a wife, he's at least fifteen years older than you, and he's certainly inappropriate for a young woman to be dancing with! However did you happen to fall into his clutches?"

"I didn't ‘fall into his clutches.' He was doing a kindness. I suppose I looked disappointed not to be dancing and he took pity."

Lady Wisterberg looked almost disdainfully skeptical. "My dear, men like him don't do ‘kindnesses' for pretty young women out of charity."

This was probably meant to alarm her, but Catherine found it thrilling instead because she suspected it was true.

She also felt it would be imprudent to point out that she'd gotten into his clutches, so to speak, because Lady Wisterberg hadn't been there to put a stop to it. Lady Wisterberg knew this. Cat was also very careful not to note that she literally lived under the same roof with him, and that Lord Kirke's floor was currently her ceiling, as she suspected Lady Wisterberg would demand an end to this shocking arrangement immediately. Catherine liked the arrangement very much, indeed.

"Though I suppose it's flattering that he took notice of you at all," Lady Wisterberg added begrudgingly. "Men are conundrums at the best of times."

"What do you mean, men like him?" Because she suspected Lady Wisterberg was finally going to tell her.

"He has affairs, dear," she said bluntly. "Volatile affairs, from what I understand." This last sounded almost wistful. "This apparently suits him better than marriage, for various reasons."

This news jabbed Catherine right in the solar plexus. It jolted her heart into a sickeningly quick tempo.

"How do you know this?" Her voice had gone weak. She tried to sound more curious than demanding. Surely Lady Wisterberg wasn't Lord Kirke's confidante.

Lady Wisterberg waved a hand. "Women talk. And it's definitely not the sort of gossip a young unmarried woman ought to be hearing, but I thought it best to apprise you of your very close call."

For heaven's sake. As if he'd actually pounce upon her on the dance floor.

"Until I'm married, in which case I'll hear all of it."

"Precisely," Lady Wisterberg said without a shred of irony.

Catherine's head spun almost nauseatingly. She struggled to mold this unwanted—and what sounded like appallingly authoritative—view of Lord Kirke around the image of him to which she'd become attached: a challenging if surprisingly kind, admirable, devastatingly attractive man who had done her a good turn.

Then again... he had also said "bed" to her in a conversation.

And in the space of a waltz, he had somehow managed to set her whole being alight like a fuse.

She was breathing more swiftly now.

She might be the veriest virgin. But she wasn't entirely naive. And it seemed very clear to her that this alleged sexual adventurer found her riveting.

And as this realization solidified, her knees felt again like butter.

With whom did he have affairs, if he did? Who were these women available for carnal exploits?

And he'd admitted to being in love at least once. Was he in love now? Or was he in love every time he had one of these alleged affairs?

But he'd made that admission to her the way someone under attack might draw a sword.

"There's also some speculation about his income," Lady Wisterberg continued, relentlessly. "I have heard that he has declined to participate in a few excellent investment opportunities lately, the sort he normally would leap upon, and the whispers are that it's because he's been in some sort of financial difficulty. Perhaps because of lavishing women with gifts, who knows. Furthermore, his town house isn't even currently habitable, thanks to a fire. Though, granted, he owns it, which is no mean feat. But his fortune was never family money. Which means he must work for it." She'd lowered her voice for the word "work" as though it was an epithet worthy of the jar. "For all that he is a baron, he's a plebeian. Not far removed from peasants."

"So am I," Catherine nearly said, but refrained. Lady Wisterberg, in her zeal to lecture, had clearly forgotten.

"And..." She paused, seeming to consider whether she ought to go on. "All right. I'll say it." She cleared her throat. "There are rumors he has an illegitimate child." She said this sotto voce, though no one was listening but Catherine.

Catherine went mute with shock.

She could hardly say, "Well, yes, I've heard them. The night he called a man a bastard and was punched in the face."

But this was increasingly chilling and sobering. "Where there's smoke, there's fire" was an adage for a reason.

Catherine held herself absolutely still. As if in so doing she could prevent this unwanted new information from sinking in.

In their parish alone she knew of several girls who had "gotten in trouble." It was considered a tragedy for all when this happened. People known as "rakes" were usually involved and for the most part suffered few consequences.

Had a man who was purportedly so concerned with the welfare of children created a fatherless child?

Nevertheless, it didn't mean it was true.

But it occurred to Catherine that she had been lucky. That if another man had discovered her alone on a verandah he might have responded to her very differently.

And surely this was a mark in Lord Kirke's favor? Surely this supported her own view of him as a fundamentally decent man, regardless of rumors?

Having clearly thoroughly subdued and thoroughly chastened her charge, Lady Wisterberg's tone shifted to more sympathetic.

"He might be a skillful politician, but when a pretty girl has only a modest dowry her reputation cannot withstand even a bit of tarnish. He is nearly the last man in the world you ought to dance with if you want a successful season. If you do it again, you'll definitely wind up in the gossip sheets and not in a nice way. Your waltz with him could easily have gone the other direction, my dear, if you were any less charming or obviously innocent. We can seize this moment, and turn the ton's aroused curiosity into new friendships. But your behavior must be impeccable—impeccable!—from now on. Do you understand?"

After a moment, Catherine nodded dazedly.

"I think we can find you a nice heir," Lady Wisterberg concluded confidently, and gave her shoulder a little pat. "Lord Vaughn seems just the thing." Her eyes gleamed shrewdly.

She had learned of Lord Vaughn's interest in Catherine from Lucy.

Lucy was startled by Catherine's sudden rise in fortunes and the means by which it occurred, but in the race for Mr. Hargrove's affections, it looked as though she was ahead by at least a nose by the end of the ball. If Lucy was a little envious, she had little to complain about, given that the sudden flurry of invitations they had come away with from the ball—to picnics, to an afternoon tea, to two more private assemblies—included her, too, at Lady Wisterberg's insistence.

And the rest of the night, until they departed in order to meet The Grand Palace on the Thames's curfew, Catherine had danced every dance. Six of them.

This was exactly what she'd dreamed of when she'd come to London. What she'd hoped to be able to report to her father when she returned home.

It was truly a pleasure to dance—she loved to dance!—and to such wonderful music, among such beautiful people, for the rest of the evening. But the names and faces of the young men blurred together. Kirke had somehow flooded her senses and her thoughts. None of the others could get much of a purchase in her imagination, which seemed ironic and unfair, since this was the moment she'd been waiting for all season.

And it seemed downright ungrateful to crave a moment alone in the ballroom when she'd yearned to be anything but since she'd arrived in London. But she wanted some privacy to tuck away in her soul, like keepsakes of certain sensations before they faded: the press of Lord Kirke's hand on her waist, the heat of his fingers wrapped around hers, and his eyes on her, hot, fixed, and enigmatic. So that she could pore over them again and attempt to conjure the powerful, inadvisable longing they kindled in her body—that simultaneous rush of power and weakness. Of fear and exultation. For she sensed she might never feel that way again.