‘Oh, I do love such a lively dance,’ Jane said. Emma saw that her sister looked towards the forming set with a wistful look on her face. ‘A mazurka was the first dance I—’
Suddenly Jane broke off with a strange little laugh and Emma wondered if she had often danced a mazurka with her husband in London. Surely even though she never mentioned her husband she had to think of him often.
‘Jane...’ Emma began.
Sir David turned to Jane with one of his gentle smiles. ‘Perhaps you would care to dance, Lady Ramsay? My skills at the mazurka are quite rusty, but I would be honoured if you would be my partner.’
For a second, Jane seemed to hesitate, a flash of what looked like temptation in her eyes, and Emma felt an unwelcome pang of jealousy. Jealousy—of Jane! Loathing herself for that feeling, she pushed it away and made herself smile.
‘Oh, no, I fear my dancing days are quite behind me,’ Jane said. ‘But books are not the only thing Emma studied at school. They also had a fine dancing master.’
A horrid dancing master. Emma didn’t like him intruding on every moment of her life like this. Would she ever forget him?
‘Then perhaps Miss Bancroft would do me the honour,’ Sir David said politely. He turned to Emma and half-held out his hand.
And she suddenly longed so much to know what it felt like to have his hand on hers. To be close to him as he led her in the turns and whirls of the dance. Surely he would be strong and steady, never letting her fall, so warm and safe. Maybe he would even smile at her again and those beautiful grey eyes would gleam with admiration as he looked at her. She wanted all those things so very much.
She hadn’t felt such romantic yearnings since—since Mr Milne first arrived at her school. And look at what disasters that led to. No, she couldn’t trust her feelings, her impulsive emotions, ever again.
Emma fell back a step, shaking her head, and Sir David’s hand dropped back to his side. His smile faded and he looked solemn and inscrutable again.
‘I—I don’t care to dance tonight,’ Emma stammered, confused by old memories and new emotions she didn’t understand. She had made a mistake with Mr Milne, a mistake in trusting him and her feelings. She needed to learn how to be cautious and calm, like Jane. Like Sir David.
‘Of course not, Miss Bancroft,’ Sir David said quietly. ‘I quite understand.’
‘David, dear,’ Miss Louisa Marton said. Emma spun around to find that Miss Marton and Miss Cole had suddenly appeared beside them from the midst of the crowd. She’d been so distracted she hadn’t even noticed them approach. Miss Cole watched them with a coolly amused smile on her beautiful face, making Emma feel even more flustered.
‘David, dear,’ Louisa said again. ‘Do you not remember that Miss Cole promised you the mazurka? You were quite adamant that she save it for you and I know how much both of you have looked forward to it.’
Sir David gave Emma one more quizzical glance before he turned away to offer his hand to Miss Cole instead. ‘Of course. Most delighted, Miss Cole.’
Emma watched him walk away, Miss Cole laughing and sparkling up at him with an easy flirtatiousness Emma knew she herself could never match. She felt suddenly cold in the crowded, overheated room and rubbed at her bare arms.
‘I know you think Sir David is rather dull, Emma,’ Jane said quietly, ‘but truly he is quite nice. You should have danced with him.’
‘I am a terrible dancer,’ Emma said, trying to sound light and uncaring. ‘No doubt I would have trod on his toes and he would have felt the need to lecture me on decorum.’
Jane shook her head, but Emma knew she couldn’t really put into words her true feelings, her fears of what might happen if she got too close to the handsome, intriguing Sir David Marton. She didn’t even know herself what those true feelings were. She only knew David Marton wasn’t the sort of man for her.
* * *
Emma Bancroft was a most unusual young lady.
David tried to catch a glimpse of her over the heads of the other dancers gathered around him, but the bright glow of her golden hair had vanished. He almost laughed at himself for the sharp pang of disappointment at her disappearance. He was too old, too responsible, to think about a flighty, pretty girl like Miss Bancroft. A girl who obviously didn’t much like him.
Yet the disappointment was there, unmistakably. When she was near, she always intrigued him. What was she thinking when she studied the world around her so closely? Her sister said she studied botany, among other interests, and David found himself most curious to know what those interests were. He wanted to know far too much about her and that couldn’t be.
He had no place for someone like Emma Bancroft in his life now and she had no room for him. She seemed to be in search of far more excitement than he could ever give her. After watching his seemingly quiet father’s secret temper tantrums when he was a boy, he had vowed to keep control over his life at all times. It had almost been a disaster for David’s family and their home when he did briefly lose control. Once, he had spent too much time in London, running with a wild crowd, gambling and drinking too much, being attracted to the wrong sort of female, thinking he could forget his life in such pursuits. Until he saw how his actions hurt other people and he knew he had to change.
As David listened to the opening bars of the dance music and waited for his turn to lead his partner down the line, he caught a glimpse of his sister watching him with an avid gleam in her eyes. Ever since their parents died and he became fully responsible for their family estate at Rose Hill and for Louisa herself, she had been determined to find him a wife. ‘A proper wife,’ she often declared, by which she meant one of her own friends. A young lady from a family they knew well, one Louisa liked spending time with and who would make few changes to their household.
Not a girl like Miss Bancroft, who Louisa had expressed disapproval of more than once. ‘I cannot fathom her,’ Louisa had mused after encountering Miss Bancroft on the road. ‘She is always running about the countryside, her hems all muddy, with that horrid dog. No propriety at all. And her sister! Where is Lady Ramsay’s husband, I should like to know? How can the earl just let the two of them ramble about at Barton Park like that? The house is hardly fit to be lived in. Though we must be nice to them, I suppose. They are our neighbours.’
David suddenly glimpsed Lady Ramsay as she moved around the edge of the dance floor, seeming to look for someone. Her sister, perhaps? Miss Bancroft was nowhere to be seen. David had to agree that the Bancroft sisters’ situation was an odd one and not one his own highly respectable parents would have understood. The two women lived alone in that ramshackle old house, seldom going out into neighbourhood society, and Lord Ramsay was never seen. Lady Ramsay often seemed sad and distant and Miss Bancroft very protective of her, which was most admirable.
David thought they also seemed brave and obviously devoted to each other. Another thing about Miss Bancroft that was unusual—and intriguing.
Suddenly he felt a nudging touch to his hand and glanced down in surprise to find he still stood on the crowded dance floor. And what was more, it was his turn in the figures as the music ran on around him.
Miss Cole smiled up at him, a quick, dazzling smile of flirtatious encouragement, and he led her down the line of dancers in the quick, leaping steps of the dance. She spun under his arm, light and quick, the jewels in her twists of red-gold hair flashing.
‘Very well done, Sir David,’ she whispered.
Miss Cole, unlike Miss Bancroft, was exactly the sort of young lady his sister wanted to see him marry. The daughter of a local, eminently respectable squire, and friends with Louisa for a long time: pretty and accomplished, sparkling in local society, well dowered. The kind of wife who would surely run her house well and fit seamlessly into his carefully built life. And she seemed to like him.
Miss Bancroft was assuredly not for him. She was too young,