A Christmas Waltz by Josi S. Kilpack

Author:Josi S. Kilpack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency Romance, Clean and Wholesome Romance, Historical Romance, Christmas Romance, Holiday Romance
Publisher: Mirror Press, LLC
Published: 2020-11-08T16:00:00+00:00

Sixth

David

“You look beautiful,” David said as he and Marta took their position on the ballroom floor. It had only been a year, but her hair was a bit darker, and the changes to her figure were something he’d appreciated from across the room enough that he dared not look too closely now. She was dressed in a deep-red gown, with matching ostrich feathers in her hair: the colors and styles of a grown woman, even though she was only twenty-two years old. The physical changes were second to other changes he could sense. Maturity, he supposed, was the best explanation, perhaps wisdom too. She had seemed fragile last year, sad and unsure. It was good to see her stronger now.

“Thank you, David,” she said with a smile, holding his gaze. “You look very well too.”

He chuckled, making an exaggerated look at his own costume. “I am wearing the same evening clothes I wear every year.”

She smiled a bit wider, and the truth of her contentment relaxed him. “And you look very well in them, as you always do.”

“You look happy, Marta. Motherhood has been good for you, yes?”

She fairly beamed. “Motherhood has been the very best thing I could possibly imagine, David. We named her Elizabeth Marie, but I call her Betsy. She’s absolutely perfect. I wish you could meet her.”

He hated that meeting her daughter would never happen. There was no reason for him to meet her; he was not family and was barely a friend. That he’d never met Marta’s husband and therefore certainly did not have Mr. Henderson’s permission made meeting her child a line he would never cross. “I am so glad for your happiness, Marta.” He meant it, but it also burned. He’d thought so many times of what she’d asked him last year—if he ever thought about them, together. The answer he had not said aloud was that he thought about that possibility far too often. She had become a measure he used when he met other women and considered his future. That was a dangerous game he could not stop playing. The amount of thought he’d spent on her question was why he had almost not come this year, unsure whether it was appropriate to dance with a woman he cared for this way when she was married to another man. In the end, however, he had not been able to keep his wicked self away. That she’d found happiness in her life was a very good thing, he repeated to himself.

“As I am for your happiness, David,” she said with a smile he sensed hid some thoughts of her own. So much for their pact to always be honest with one another—yet he knew that without those boundaries they would not be able to dance this one dance. And so they stayed in the appropriate corners of the box and connected in the ways that ensured they could do so again. Marta continued, “Sophie tells me you are finally courting.”

He chuckled and initiated a turn.

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