Miss Isabella Thaws a Frosty Lord(5)

But it was not to be. Not now that the other guests had arrived and she no longer had the privilege of finding herself alone in the great ballroom.

The beginnings of the third set reached her ears. Everyone not already breathless with exertion rushed onto the dance floor at Anne’s prompting. As mistress of the assembly, Anne presided over the dances and called the steps, just as they’d played and practiced when they were younger. Her friend’s happiness was evident.

More than ever, Isabella yearned to join in.

“Dance with me.”

Her head automatically jerked toward the speaker. Startled by the abrupt command, as well as by the rich voice that pronounced it, she blinked. Was he talking to her? Or someone else nearby?

Anne had dispensed with the custom of dance cards, instructing her guests to mingle and make merry as they saw fit. This wouldn’t be the first man to take pity on her and offer to escort her around the floor. But he would be the first to do so without at least introducing himself or extending a greeting.

“Pardon?” Isabella inquired softly, testing her perception.

He shifted closer. She felt his presence fairly sizzle along her front. “I said, ‘Dance with me’.”

“That is what I thought you said. Well, sir…” Isabella began with true regret, for she longed to dance and for some odd reason given his inexcusable curtness, she especially longed to dance with the owner of the velvet-voiced commands. She certainly hadn’t entertained such longing when declining the four previous, courteous offers she’d received, but then each of those men had been known to her. “I fear I must decline your less-than-polite dictum.”

In direct contrast to his abrupt tone, she gave a gracious nod then turned toward the open doors she knew to be on her left, running her corresponding hand lightly along the wall.

“What?” he snapped the same instant she felt his fingers encircle her opposite wrist, halting her progress. “You reject me?”

Had not her fan been affixed to her arm she surely would’ve dropped it at the unexpected touch—and her reaction to it.

“Reject you? Nay,” she said, trying to dismiss the nuance of hurt she detected in his remarkably haughty voice. Just as she tried to dismiss how the fingers above her glove seared her skin. Had she ever felt the touch of a man not family on her flesh before? Why certainly she had! Physicians for one—

Shaking herself free of his hold and her own disturbing thoughts, Isabella reiterated, “Nay, but I do reject your tone for I dislike intently being ordered about.”

“Ah…then it is I who must beg your pardon,” he said smoothly—too smoothly. It was a rakeshame she had the misfortune to be bantering with, Isabella feared, feeling how the subtle shift in his demeanor caused her insides to riot. “For though I have been returned from war these two years past, I fear old habits of barking commands have yet to leave my lips. Would you perchance care to dance? Perchance to dance?” he self-mocked. “From commander to pitiful poet, I fear. I only ask because you…”

“I…what?”

“You…”

Why was he still hesitating? Though his unexpected humor distracted her mightily, she heard plainly what he refused to voice. So she said it for him. “I am the only pitiable female not yet engaged?”

“No! You…you have a curl in your eye,” he accused as though she’d committed a crime and the pillory awaited.

“Mayhap I like it there.”

“Well, I do not.”

Purposefully subduing the urge to twitch her head and dislodge the curl he somehow found so offensive, Isabella wondered why, if she irritated him so, he remained. And why, a foxed pox on her sudden boldness, was conversing with him exhilarating beyond belief?

This daring side she’d released was wont to land her in trouble.

Thanks to her father, she’d learned early and well to hide her love of music and movement. A lesson she’d best not allow a domineering stranger tempt her into forgetting. “Well, sir, as much as I like my curl’s present location, mayhap I wish you gone.”

She thought he sputtered a protest but didn’t give her ears time to decide. “Because I most certainly do not care to dance, especially not with you,” she lied, for she irrationally wished it above all things. “Good evening, sir.”

Quickly, she quit the room before he could—shameless rake or gruff commander, she knew not which—blast through her common sense and have her agreeing. To dance with him of all things.





I am the only pitiable female not yet engaged?

Damn and blast! That wasn’t what he’d been about to say. Not even close.