Page 5 of Souvenir of Love

Elizabeth glanced back over her shoulder; Ashton bobbed and smiled at her. “Is he a better dancer?” she asked, her voice speculative, her eyes brimming with laughter.

“Not even close.”

“You’re very sure of yourself, James Dinsmore.”

“Nearly as sure as you are reckless, Elizabeth Harcrest.”

“You’re beginning to sound like my brother.”

“He’s beginning to have my sympathies.”

“A rake with sympathies,” she said, smiling up at him as they took their places for the dance. “Isn’t that a dangerous thing?”

“You have naïve ideas about men, Elizabeth.”

“Of course I have naïve ideas. I’ve been imprisoned in the countryside for the past eighteen years.” She paused to observe the patterns danced by the first couple in the line. “In case you haven’t noticed, I am endeavoring to become educated.”

“Ashton and Lounsbury have certainly noticed.”

She cocked her head at him. “Have you?”

He thought of her lips, soft and wet against the glass. “No.”

“I don’t believe you.” She turned back to watch the dancers.

“Now who seems overly sure?” he murmured.

She smiled.

The first couple finished dancing and made their way to the end of the line.

With this one, James thought uncomfortably,my usual words of seduction seem somehow wrong, like cheating at checkers with a child. Anne had asked him to flirt with Elizabeth, lead her on. And he’d agreed. Ton affairs were tedious, overflowing with poor conversation and worse liquor.Without flirtation and the occasional sexual escapade, a man might go mad from boredom.

James and Elizabeth moved forward and the second couple began the forms.

And Lord knew, there was already far too much madness in the Dinsmore line.James cast his eyes to the ceiling, painted with a scene from a long-forgotten battle in which his ancestors had fought. Two floors above, his father, dressed in bedsheets and wearing a silver flower bowl upon his head, paced and planned the progress of his imaginary troops.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the crimson and cream of his sister’s gown. She’d made it from the silk of an old court gown of their mother’s and trimmed it with ribbons cut from a doublet she’d found in a trunk. She’d spent the mornings, when most fashionable ladies were still abed, sewing by the light of the upstairs parlor window. She said it was because she didn’t like to waste time, but he knew it was really the candles she did not want to waste.

“What are you thinking, James?”

Elizabeth’s voice intruded upon his thoughts. He glanced back at her, at the lush velvet mantelet that crossed over her full round breasts, wrapped around her slender waist, and tucked behind. She might be young and innocent, but Elizabeth Harcrest certainly wasn’t a child.

“I was thinking that amber velvet sets off the haunting colors of your eyes.”

She wrinkled her nose. “And that was why you were frowning?”

“No,” he replied smoothly. “I was frowning because this line is appallingly long and I fear this dance will never end.”

“And you wish to be rid of me?”

“No, I have no wish to be rid of you.” He gestured to the line. “But I would prefer to be shed of them.”

Her eyes danced with far more life than the couple moving ponderously around each other at the front of the line. “You could offer to show me the famed Dinsmore portrait gallery.”

“I could, but I would never resort to such an obvious cliché.”

“You might offer to fetch me some more champagne.”