“I…”
“Humor me.”
“Very well.”
“Begin,” he said, “One…two…three…”
They moved
“Ask me something,” he said as they turned. “Conversation while moving will save you a hundred awkward sets.”
“What makes you laugh when no one is watching?” she repeated from last night, because she wanted to hear whether the answer changed.
“Dogs sneezing,” he said, a smile touching his mouth in exactly the same place as before. “And the way men try to remember which lies they’ve told.”
“You are very hard on men,” she said.
“I am very hard onmyself,” he returned. “Men receive the leftovers. Ask me something you would never ask in a ballroom.”
She did not think; she startled herself.
“Who did not keep his word?”
“We do not need to talk about that.”
“I am sorry,” she said.
“So am I,” he murmured, so lightly she might have believed he was teasing her if she had not felt the old iron there. “Close.”
She obeyed again. The room tightened around the space between them.
“Look at me,” he said.
She did. She kept it for one, two, and then three.
“You blush easily,” he said, satisfied.
“You sound smug.”
“I sound relieved.”
“Relieved?”
“It means you care,” he said. “Caring reads well.”
“That is a dreadful thing to say.”
“It is true,” he said, and guided her through a turn that would have made her stumble an hour ago and now did not. “Again.”
She had improved.
“Enough,” he said at last, drawing them to stillness. He released her and did not, quite, step back.
“If I keep you longer, the floor will begin to gossip.”
“You told me you paid it not to.”
“Even bribery fails at two in the morning,” he said, and that made her smile.