Only Enchanting Read Free Page B

dance with you, Agnes. He is an extremely handsome gentleman, is he not? Though I must confess myself wary of that left eyebrow of his. It has a distinctly mocking quality.”
    “It does,” Agnes agreed, cooling her cheeks with her fan while they both laughed.
    But she did not feel mocked by either his eyebrow or his person. Instead she felt smug and delicious. And she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she would indeed dream of this ball and the opening set and her dancing partner for days, perhaps weeks, to come. Even years. She would be perfectly happy to return home now, though it was quite impossible to do so this early in the evening. Alas, all was going to seem anticlimactic for the rest of it.
    It was not so, however.
    Everyone had put aside daily cares in order to enjoy the opulent splendor of a harvest ball at Middlebury Park. And everyone had come to celebrate the happy, soon-to-be-fruitful marriage of the young viscount they had so pitied when he came here three and a half years ago, blind and reclusive, suffocated by the protective care of his mother and grandmother and sisters. Everyone had come to celebrate his marriage to the little slip of an elfin creature whose warm charm and boundless energy had won their hearts more and more completely during the seven months she had been here.
    How could Agnes not enjoy herself and celebrate with them? She did just those things, in fact. She danced every set and was delighted that Dora danced a number of times too. She was led in to supper by Mr. Pendleton, one of the viscount’s brothers-in-law, an affable gentleman who engaged her in conversation from one side for much of the meal while Mrs. Pearl, the viscount’s maternal grandmother, spoke to her from the other side.
    There were toasts and speeches and a wedding cake. It was just like a real and lavish wedding reception, in fact.
    Oh, no, there was nothing whatsoever anticlimactic about the ball after the first set. And the dancing was to resume after supper—with a waltz. It was the first of the evening and probably the last too, and occasioned a certain interest among the guests, for though it had been danced in London and other, more fashionable centers for a number of years now, it was still considered somewhat risqué in the country and was rarely included in the program at the local assemblies. Agnes knew the steps. She had practiced them with Dora, who taught dancing to some of her music pupils, Sophia among them. It had been planned, Dora had confided to Agnes, that the viscountess would waltz with her uncle.
    It was not with her uncle Sophia intended to waltz, however, as Agnes saw when she turned her head to discover the source of a heightened buzz of raised voices mingled with laughter. Someone began to clap slowly, and others were joining in.
    “Waltz with her,” someone said—it was Mr. Harrison, Lord Darleigh’s particular friend.
    Sophia was on the dance floor, Agnes could see, her arm stretched out, Viscount Darleigh’s hand clasped in hers. There was laughter in her flushed face. Oh, goodness, she was trying to persuade her husband to dancewith her. And by now half the guests in the ballroom were clapping rhythmically. Agnes joined them.
    And everyone was repeating what Mr. Harrison had said and making a chant out of it.
    “Waltz with her. Waltz with her.”
    The viscount took a few steps out onto the empty floor with Sophia.
    “If I make a thorough spectacle of myself,” he said as the chant and the clapping died away, “would everyone be kind enough to pretend they have not noticed?”
    There was general laughter.
    The orchestra did not wait for anyone else to take to the floor with them.
    Agnes clasped her hands to her bosom and watched with everyone else, anxious that the viscount not make a spectacle of himself. He waltzed clumsily at first, though he did so with laughter in his face and such obvious enjoyment that Agnes found herself blinking back tears. And then somehow he