“You make no secret of your arrogance.”
“Yes, but I prefer to see it as confidence,” he agreed. “And right. Say yes.”
She should have said no.
“Very well,” Maria said.
Stephen offered his arm, and she took it because not taking it would cause a scene she did not wish to belong to her. They walked the little distance to where couples were forming.
“If you glare at me, you will convince the room you resent being desired,” he murmured, “We are performing usefulness, Miss Havenford. Enjoy it.”
“I do not enjoy being made into a signboard.”
“You are not.” He angled so they faced one another. “Do not look at your feet.”
She jerked her gaze up because she had been doing exactly that, checking that her slippers were on the earth.
“Keep your eyes,” he said. “Count two.”
She did.
One. Two.
His hand found her through the silk and bone of her bodice, and came to rest on her waist.
“If you destroy my toes,” he added, “I shall be obliged to limp for sympathy and my enemies will dine on it for a week.”
“Then you should have chosen a partner less likely to do so,” she muttered, and promptly managed the first figure without maiming him.
“Choose your arrogance carefully,” he said. “Yours looks best on the turns.”
She would have laughed if she had not been busy not failing. He guided with the smallest suggestions of his palm and shoulder, and she only followed.
“You are counting the floorboards,” he observed as they moved through a chain.
“Are you criticizing my dancing?”
“That is exactly what I am doing,” he laughed. “But you should think of it as constructive. From now on, you will let the music do it. Set your jaw to the melody and let it pull you. One-two-three, one-two-three. Thethreeis for breathing.”
“That is not how numbers…”
“Do as you are told,” he said.
She did.
Her shoulders settled down, away from her ears; he nodded once in approval without breaking the rhythm, and she had theridiculous sense of being a pupil praised by the schoolmaster for remembering the alphabet.
“You are staring at my mouth,” he said conversationally in the next figure.
“I am not.”
He shot her a look, as if to call her out on her own bluff.
“I was only… You have a line…there…” The words tangled in her throat.
“Men are not mysteries. We are furniture until we move. Do not waste your attention on our edges. Look where you mean to go.”
They continued to dance on, and she did not step on him once. The way he smiled told her he had expected her to, which made her want to kick him simply to be contrary.