Loving Helen by Michele Paige Holmes

Author:Michele Paige Holmes [Michele Paige Holmes]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: clean romance
Publisher: Mirror Press
Published: 2015-02-14T07:00:00+00:00

“Let’s play Going to a Ball.” Beth gathered her dolls from the various rooms of the dollhouse. She held up the two girls, clothed in the finery Helen had sewn for them. “I’ll be these.” She thrust the boy doll at Helen. “And you be him.”

“Very well.” Helen leaned forward to accept the assigned doll. “But I really don’t know much about balls. I haven’t been to very many.” She sat the doll in front of her on the rug.

“You went to the Christmas Eve ball with Papa,” Beth said.

Not with him, though that would have been lovely. “And like your father, I did not stay long.”

“Did you dance?” Beth lay on her stomach, chin propped on her hands.

“I did not,” Helen said.

“Not even with Papa?”

“Not even with him,” Helen said, wistfully. “I wanted to,” she admitted, remembering the awful moment when Samuel had asked Grace to dance instead of her. “But I didn’t.”

“Why not?” Beth asked.

“Well …” Helen considered how to best explain. Beth was the sort of child who proceeded to go after whatever she wanted. Helen smiled as she imagined Beth all grown up and marching across a ballroom to request a dance from the gentleman she favored. Perhaps by then, if there were enough grown-up girls with Beth’s temperament, such a thing would be in vogue. “When a lady attends a ball, she must wait for a gentleman to ask her to dance. If he does not, then she does not get to dance with him.”

“That isn’t fair.” Beth stood one of the girl dolls on the carpet in front of her. “This lady is going to ask the gentleman with the brown hair to dance with her.” She pushed the doll toward Helen’s. “I would like you to dance with me, sir.”

Helen stifled a laugh as she stood the requested “gentleman” on the floor beside Beth’s “lady.”

“I would be honored,” Helen said. She bent the doll forward in a bow. “Now the lady must curtsy,” she whispered.

“Why?” Beth asked.

“Because it is proper and polite.” Samuel’s voice above them startled Helen.

She tilted her head back to look up at him. Never once, during all of her weeks of playing with Beth, had he appeared in the nursery. She had never considered that he might, hadn’t ever worried that anyone besides Beth would be privy to their conversation or observe their play. Helen felt foolish sitting on the floor, making dolls converse. And how much of their conversation had he heard?

“Miss Helen and I will show you how a gentleman and lady greet each other before dancing.” Samuel held his hand out to her, and nervously, Helen accepted. He pulled her up, and they stood — far too close — facing each other.

“How long have you been here watching us?” she asked, not daring to meet his gaze.

“Long enough to realize that I should have asked you to dance at Nicholas’s ball.”

Heat flooded her cheeks.

“I did not think you cared for dancing,” Samuel said.

I would care with you as my partner.

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