A Kiss in the Dark by Joan Smith

Author:Joan Smith [Smith, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency Romance
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 1995-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

In the ballroom, the piano player and fiddler were tuning up for a rowdy country dance. Dauntry looked questioningly at Cressida, who was peering at him in the same uncertain manner.

“Shall we wait for a waltz?” he said.

“If you like,” was her unhelpful reply.

“In that charming gown—and the skirt is rather narrow.”

“It is plenty wide enough. If you are too toplofty to join in the country dance, Dauntry, do not put it in my dish. I shall stand up with Mr. Brewster.”

When she turned to step away, Dauntry’s hand clasped her wrist and spun her back. She noticed his eyes wore a different expression, a gleam of slumbering fire. His lips were curved in an anticipatory way. She thought of the old adage, “Let sleeping dogs lie.” What had she awoken in Dauntry?

“Toplofty?” he asked. “I was merely trying to anticipate what would please you.”

“Like Miss Wantage,” she said with a quizzing grin.

“Wretch!” His fingers tightened on her wrist, then slid down to grip her fingers possessively as he led her to join the line of dancers.

Both country born and bred, they enjoyed the rowdy romp as much as their neighbors. In fact, Dauntry had not so enjoyed himself in a purely physical way since taking his seat in the House and setting up as a man-about-town. He felt youthful again as his body moved to the beat of the piano and the flying notes of the fiddle. He knew the cause of the pleasure was not mere physical exertion, but the letting down of barriers between himself and Cressida. They felt and behaved like adolescents. He had seen her perform in this manner before and had thought the worse of her for it, branding her a hoyden. What a priggish ass he had become! When the dance finished, their faces were flushed and their toilettes disarranged.

“We have earned a glass of wine,” Dauntry decreed.

Cressida glanced at herself in the mirror. “I should tidy myself up. I look as if I had just run a three-legged race.” The glowing eyes smiling back at her in the mirror looked as if she had not only run the race, but won it.

“A good thing your chaperon will be in bed when you return,” he replied, familiarly tucking a stray curl behind her ear. “Those pious females, always hawking after signs of lechery, put the worst possible construction on innocent doings.”

“I blame it on an overdose of Hannah More,” she said, reaching to straighten his cravat, which had worked loose.

Dauntry found no fault in her unbuttoned behavior on this occasion. In fact, he felt an unexpected thrill when she touched him in that intimate way, like a wife putting the final touch on her husband’s toilette before sending him into the world. “ ‘An old bishop in petticoats,’ Cobbett called Hannah More,” he said distractedly.

“We are being quite horrid, Dauntry. Let us not speak ill of the absent.”

“You are right, as usual. There are plenty of the present company for us to disparage.

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