Lorcan glanced about the room, and noted who had partners and who did not. But he knew instinctively who he needed to find.
Bloody hell. He looked forward to it the way he might look forward to swallowing a nail.
“I’ll fetch us some more ratafia, shall I?” He’d rather bolt a little whiskey, frankly.
“Yes, please,” she said.
He moved over to the table supporting the punch bowl, where St. John was thirstily draining his second cup of ratafia.
“Lord Vaughn,” Lorcan said. “Very moving performance. I fair soaked a handkerchief.”
St. John gave a start. He eyed him warily. “Thank you, Mr. St. Leger. I’ve calluses now.”
“Congratulations. If you’re not careful, you’ll have muscles next.”
St. John pressed his lips together.
“I’ve come to beg a favor of you.”
This rendered St. John briefly speechless. “I’m disinclined to jump off the building,” he warned.
“I’d like you to ask my wife to dance this waltz.”
St. John took this in with understandably great suspicion.
“Are you looking for an excuse to call me out because you haven’t killed enough people lately?”
Lorcan took a breath. “She would love to dance the waltz and I find myself unable to accommodate her. And I find it excruciating to deny her the things that make her happy.”
St. John absorbed this with admirable equanimity, with just a little hint of a brow furrow. He studied him thoughtfully. “And in exchange?”
“How about you do it out of the kindness of your heart and you’ll never have to worry about encountering me in a dark alley.”
“Done,” St. John said.
And so Lorcan stood against the wall, half in shadow, and watched Daphne sail about the room in young Lord Vaughn’s arms.
Granted, she’d been astonished when St. John humbly asked if she would be so kind as to dance with him. She was prepared to refuse and remain loyally by Lorcan’s side.
She’d been even more astonished when he’d nodded and told her to go ahead.
He admired her loyalty fiercely. Of course, no one understood the value of it better than he did. But it was a quality, like pride, that could either buoy or strangle a person. It was the thing that would ultimately tether Daphne to a life that could very well snuff the light out of her. And maybe that was the price she was willing to pay for certainty after upheaval and struggle.
And just look how bloody happy she was to waltz. It was the prettiest sight. Graceful as a swan, he thought. Well, both of them, really. Because they were, after all, of the same species. It was so abundantly clear from this vantage point.
And suddenly he felt as constrained and separate and alien from her as if he was a painting on the wall in the ballroom. As if it was inconceivable for the two of them to ever enter each other’s worlds.
God only knew if one could nimbly fence, and he certainly could, one could manage a few graceful steps with a beautiful woman in his arms.
But the fact that he hadn’t wanted her to teach him with anyone looking on told him a thing or two about his own pride. He hadn’t wanted anyone to bear witness to the true, vast gulf between who Daphne was and who he was.
She smiled over her shoulder at him. And he recalled what she’d said about the remoteness of stars.I think maybe that’s why we associate them with wishes. Particularly for things we think we cannot have.
He’d made it a policy not to waste time on regret. It was ballast; it could drag you under like a hungry shark.
He watched, relieved that he could bring her this moment of happiness, even as he was held fast by a sorrow so corrosive he could taste it in his throat. It was entwined with a near impotent fury that someone had finally outsmarted him. That someone was himself. He’d fooled himself into believing there was nothing he’d ever want that he could not eventually get, so clever, so invincible, was he. That there was no one or nothing he now needed in order to conquerlife, to live it on his terms. That he might be, in fact, somewhat superior to Captain Hardy in his strength, wiliness, resilience.
He knew a moment of pity for that boy in St. Giles who could never have imagined sitting in a suite in a boardinghouse by the docks while a quietly lovely woman spooned just the right amount of sugar into his cup. Or laid a hand on his brow to see if he was feverish. Or held his face as if she’d at long last found the treasure she’d been seeking.