She took Jonathon’s hand and shook it, meeting his warm eyes. Oh, foolish, foolish hope. She was too late. Cecilia had all but claimed him. She was setting herself up for failure and heartbreak and she couldn’t seem to stop herself from doing it. Just for a moment, she let herself believe in the impossible: He’d missed her. He had noticed she’d left the ball and then he’d left early, too. He found her intriguing. Those were words she could live on for the rest of her life.
* * *
What the hell was he doing, asking for friendship from the likes of Claire Welton when he knew better the impossibility of such a thing? Jonathon was still asking himself the question as he walked down Bond Street that afternoon.
It wasn’t just the social impossibility of such a friendship. Claire had made good points there and he felt compelled to agree with her. Men simply weren’t friends with young, unmarried women of good breeding, especially when the man in question was committed to another.
Well, that was arguable. He wasn’t technically committed to Cecilia. Even as his mind made the debate he felt guilty. He was playing with semantics now. But who could blame him? Claire had caught him entirely unprepared: the feel of her in his arms as they danced, the look in those sherry eyes, all of that intelligence, all of that innocence turned on him. It had been a heady combination on the dance floor. Hell, after a week of lessons, it was becoming a heady sensation wherever she was: the garden, the ballroom, the library. He wouldn’t for a moment suggest Claire Welton was naïve. Naiveté implied the person in question was unworldly and she was far too intelligent to ever be that. She was merely untried, her desires and dreams untested beyond the confines of her quiet life.
And she was ready to test them. The answer came to him so suddenly he nearly tripped over a crack in the pavement. The new clothes, the desire to actively pursue her erstwhile suitor. It was all there. She was ready to break out of her self-imposed exile, a butterfly emerging from the cocoon, still somewhat fragile, still learning the powerful of its wings, its beauty. After all, she’d left early for whatever reason. She had not told him why she’d left, but since it hadn’t been to sneak off to the terrace with her beau, he could only conclude that the lack of success in that regard had encouraged her flight.
Jonathon stopped outside the window of his usual florist’s on Bond Street, studying the blooms on display. He could help her with the metamorphosis and not only with dances. The bell over the door jingled as he entered the exclusive Bond Street florist. The man behind the counter looked up from where he stood arranging a bouquet of yellow and white daisies, one of a hundred he did daily for the aspiring debutantes of the ton and their hopeful suitors.
‘Ah, Mr Lashley!’ He wiped his hands on his wide apron and hustled forward with a smile. ‘Have you come for something for your lovely girl?’
‘Yes, the usual for Miss Northam, if you please.’ He always sent a bouquet of pale pink roses, her signature colour, to Cecilia on the days she and her mother hosted their at home. ‘And the irises in the window, I’d like to send them to a second address.’ He pulled out his card case from the pocket of his coat. ‘Perhaps, you could mix in something yellow to go with them?’ He wrote a short sentence carefully in French on the back of his card. ‘Send this with it.’
Phipps nodded. If he thought anything above the ordinary about two separate orders to two separate women, he gave nothing away. ‘I have some daffodils that have just arrived.’
‘I leave it to your discretion, Phipps.’ It would be a vibrant but sophisticated arrangement, not a mere debutante’s bouquet. ‘I would like them delivered this afternoon.’
Jonathon signed the bill, feeling very smug imagining Claire’s surprise when the flowers arrived, and then the surprise of her suitor when the man realised he couldn’t take her affections for granted, that there was, perhaps, another hound at the hunt. He had expected the action to leave him with a feeling of accomplishment. He’d done something to help a friend. But the feeling eluded him. Why did he feel more like a dog in a manger than that hound at the hunt?
He was prepared for her that night at the Rosedale ball. He signed not one, but two dances on the little card dangling from her wrist, making sure that the second one was late into the evening to ensure that she stayed.
The first dance was early, a lively country romp that left them breathless and laughing. ‘I haven’t danced like that in ages!’ Claire exclaimed between gasps, reclaiming her breath afterwards. It had been exhilarating. If he’d thought, or hoped, that the waltz had been an anomaly, that he couldn’t possibly feel after a country dance as he had after that waltz, he was wrong. Incredibly so. If anything, he felt even more alive. When he was with her, some of the suffocation of his life receded.
‘I need some air, would you come out with me?’ Jonathon asked, struggling to get his own breath back. The floor hadn’t been as crowded as it would be later. There’d been plenty of room to whirl and turn, and they had with his hand firm at her waist, holding her tight, her face turned up to his, laughing, and for a few minutes he stopped worrying about everything—about French, about Vienna, about Cecilia—and it seemed she had, too.
He noticed, because he missed that sense of relaxation as soon as they stepped outside. She was tense again. ‘Tu es nerveuse?’ he asked in low tones, moving them down the shallow stone steps into the Rosedale garden.
‘Perhaps. I’ve never been out on the terrace or the garden during a ball.’ She gave a little laugh, making the statement sound like a joke.
Then her suitor was either a prude or a dolt. ‘No stolen kisses?’ Jonathon teased, ‘Your suitor must be the epitome of manners.’ And her last one as well. Not a single purloined kiss between them.
‘No.’
‘He’s not the epitome of manners?’ He was completely unprepared for the shadow that crossed her face.
‘No.’ Claire laughed, a musical, magical sound when her guard was down. ‘I can claim no stolen kisses, as you’ve already divined. My life isn’t very exciting, Mr Lashley, despite your persistence in believing the contrary.’
‘Jonathon,’ he corrected. ‘I thought we’d decided to be Jonathon and Claire this afternoon.’ According to social protocol it was a bold decision. First names were definitely reserved for those of privileged standings with one another, as was this discussion. He knew it was beyond the pale to discuss kisses, but he had very little toleration for the rules these days. It suddenly mattered greatly to him that he be Jonathon to her, not mere Mr Lashley who stopped in for an hour or two a day for French lessons. What would happen when those lessons ended? They would end, whether he failed or succeeded in them. August loomed like a big red X on his mental calendar. If they were not friends, what happened then? Would ‘they’, Jonathon and Claire, simply end? The thought sat ill with him.
She turned to face him, her jaw set. ‘Listen, Jonathon. My life is hardly adventurous, as embarrassing as it is to admit.’
‘Why is that, Claire?’ he asked in soft challenge, sensing he was on to something important. It was the question he’d wanted to ask since that first day in the library. If he knew the answer, he might have the key to unlocking all the mysteries of her. What had she spent the last three years doing and why?
‘What’s the most exciting thing you’ve done in the recent past?’ he prompted when she said nothing more.
‘The truth? You’re the most exciting thing that has happened in ages.’ Giving French lessons to a desperate man was the highlight of her day. The thought made him cringe.
‘Perhaps we should change that.’ Jonathon gave her one his charming smiles, trying hard to keep his eyes from drifting to the vee of her bodice, but the dress had been designed by a witch. She’d worn peach chiffon tonight and it looked stunningly feminine and softly appealing