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 wideeyes 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 dancingwith 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 agauntlet 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.