“I can see if they can play at the ceremony, if you’d like?”
“There will be music at our wedding? I’ve never been to one before.”
Charlie wasn’t used to being the center of attention, but there could be no doubt everyone there was eager to meet her. Jaxon was right about the women’s curiosity about living as a man. They had so many questions and many she would have preferred not to answer and when Jaxon or she could not evade the awkward questions, Jaxon or Jayne would suddenly spot someone she had to meet and pulled her away from the women.
“Do you want to dance?” Jaxon asked.
Charlie was undecided. The kind of dancing done on the ship was not the kind of dancing she now watched with fascination. These men and women glided effortlessly around the floor. On the occasions aboard ship when there was a crew member with a fiddle or a concertina, the men danced jigs or occasionally paired off and stomped around in a mock version of what she watched here.
“I’d like to, but I don’t really know how. Won’t it bother your leg?”
“Between your messages and the stretching, my leg is feeling pretty good these days,” Jaxon said slapping his thigh lightly. “Jayne lift your skirt enough that Charlie can see your feet and show her. This is a waltz. It’s easy just one, two, three, one, two, three.”
Jayne spared a quick glance around the room before complying. “One, two, three, one, two, three. Always start by stepping back with your left foot.”
“Left foot first. Got it,” Charlie said trying out the steps on her own.
“Good,” he praised. “Shall we? We’ll stick to the edges until you feel comfortable.”
Jaxon led her to the dance floor and took her into his arms and gracefully maneuvered her into outskirts of the dancers. She could barely detect his limp as they glided to the rhythm of the music.
“Stop counting and relax. Feel the music.”
He held her nearly at arms-length, afraid he might step on her feet if she misstepped. Soon, he was pulling her closer and leading her in and out of other dancers easily.
“You’re a born dancer,” he whispered into her ear.
“I was just thinking the same thing about you. You make this easy.”
“I was worried I would be really rusty, but I guess some things you just don’t forget.”
Charlie nodded realizing he probably didn’t dance much with his bad leg. “Is this the first time you’ve danced since your accident?”
Jaxon’s body tensed momentarily at her choice of words. He would have liked to have told her that what happened to him was intentional; not an accident, but this was not the place or time.
Suddenly, Charlie stopped dancing. Jaxon ran into her with enough force that he nearly knocked her over and would have fallen on top of her had he not been able to shift his weight to his good leg. It took a moment for him to right himself and Charlie with him.
“Are you all right?” they both asked in near unison as most of the others couples danced around them.
“What happened?” Jaxon asked chuckling. “Did you lose your shoe?”
“Daniel is back,” she said looking into his eyes. “And Morty is with him.”
Grayson disembarked the hermaphrodite brig with barely a glance behind him. He hated sailing and was glad to have his feet back on terra firma. It had taken two weeks to sail to Charleston and they had just had two days of weather that had left Grayson feeling sick to his stomach. With Jaxon’s wedding scheduled for a fortnight from now, he was going to be hard-pressed to get there in time to stop it. He’d have to find a faster ship for the return trip.
Grayson had his strategy well thought out before he arrived in Charleston. He was going to proceed with caution. His first stop would be to the local lawmen and explain what he was doing. The last thing he needed was to get arrested trying to steal the real Charlie Sinclair’s money. He didn’t know who this woman was, but he was convinced that she was not Charlie Sinclair.
After that, he would go to the courthouse, talk to every lawyer he could find and see if John Sinclair had a will. Surely, if John Sinclair had money for someone to inherit, there would be a will. And if there was a will, wouldn’t John Sinclair confide in his lawyer that his son, Charlie, was actually his daughter. A lawyer would keep information like that in confidence so there was no reason not to tell him.
Grayson smiled.
He was not going to leave a stone unturned and when he returned home, he was going to have her arrested. He would get affidavits from everyone who knew anything. It was going to kill Jaxon to know that he had been duped, he thought with a slight sneer, but how naïve could his brother be?