Page 62 of The Duke’s Caught Bride

She heard his footsteps in the corridor before she heard the door, the particular cadence she had memorized without meaning to. She set the card on the table and composed herself. She was almost convincing by the time he appeared.

“We’ve received an invitation,” she announced.

He came forward, read the card, and set it down.

“The Worthington ball.” He straightened. “We will go.”

“I thought we might.”

“You will dance.”

She looked at him. The statement arrived with the flat certainty of a man who had considered the matter and intended it to conclude precisely the way he said it would.

“I have not danced in some time,” she said.

“I am aware.” He held her gaze. “You will dance. First with me.”

Something curled low in her chest, warm and immediate. She repressed it with the efficiency she was still refining, pressing it down flat before it could show on her face.

“Very well,” she relented.

He held out his hand, and she let out a shuddering breath before placing her hand in it. He pulled her in, his other hand finding the curve of her waist, and she rested her hand on his shoulder.

They stood there for a moment in the empty drawing room.

“You ought to hum,” he said, and heat rose to her cheeks.

“I cannot think of a single tune,” she admitted.

“Then I shall.”

His deep voice filled the room, and he led her calmly, slowing when she hesitated and pressing the barest correction at her waist before a misstep came.

They completed the figure. She did not stumble.

“There,” he said, looking down at her. “You are, I believe, almost ready.”

“Am I?”

He nodded and adjusted her hand on his shoulder. “Your timing is good, but you look down too often.”

Heat rose to her cheeks. “I… am looking at my feet.”

He shook his head with a smile. “Look at your partner. Your feet will follow.”

She could feel the heat of his hand through the silk at her waist.

They danced the figure again and again. His hand never moved from her waist between the figures.

She realized with a shock that she did not want it to.

Chapter Nineteen

Worthington House had been lit from pavement to parapet, every window blazing, the light falling in warm columns across the street where the carriages waited in a queue that stretched along half the block.

Alice sat with her hands folded in her lap and watched the house grow larger through the carriage window and told herself that her stomach’s current behavior was nerves, nothing more, the ordinary and manageable nerves of a woman who had not danced in three years and was attending her first ball as a duchess.

The two things were, of course, not at all the same. She was fully aware of this.