The girl winced. “Do they hurt?”
“No.” Her own smile caught her by surprise. “Not at all. I know they look impressive. But truthfully, sometimes I forget about them for whole days at a stretch.”
As she spoke the words, she marveled at how true they were, and how much lighter she felt for saying them. Her affair with Bram was over, it seemed. He hadn’t spoken to her in days. There’d been no further notes. Still, she would be forever changed by what they’d shared. Changed by him. He’d given her this precious, freeing gift—the courage to accept herself as she was. Scars, freckles, passions, and all.
In time, did a broken heart scar over? After a decade or so had passed, would she be able to forget about Bram for whole days at a stretch?
Somehow she doubted it.
“Miss Finch!” Violet Winterbottom appeared in the doorway. “Miss Bright needs you in the hall. She wants your opinion on the decorations.”
“I’ll be there presently.”
Susanna handed the cartridge-making supplies to Charlotte before rinsing her hands at the washbasin and leaving the breakfast room. She left her gloves behind.
She walked through the drawing room, where the militia volunteers stood like a field of scarecrows, arms outstretched, as pin-chewing ladies flitted and circled, marking final alterations to their uniforms.
When Susanna reached the hall, she found it similarly abuzz with activity. At one end of the long, narrow room, Kate Taylor was practicing on the pianoforte. Along the bay of plate-glass windows, Mr. Fosbury and two footmen were busy arranging tables for the buffet. Ladies and servants bearing flowers and furniture hurried this way and that, their footfalls clattering over the wood inlay floor. By tomorrow night, this scene would be a tableau of elegance—she hoped. But for the moment, it was the picture of chaos.
“Here,” Sally Bright said, thrusting a wriggling baby into Susanna’s arms. “Take Daisy while I climb the staircase. We have a few different choices for the swags.”
Susanna waited patiently in the center of the room, staring up at the balustrade and bouncing the youngest Bright sibling in time to Kate’s rapid scales on the pianoforte. Daisy had plumped in recent months. As the minutes passed, Susanna began to feel her arms would fall off.
“She loves you, Miss Finch!” Sally called, draping swags of fabric over the banister. “Now, this is the red. It’s striking, but maybe it will be too much, with all the uniforms in the room? And then we have this blue, but it’s a touch dark for an evening affair. Which do you think best?”
Susanna tilted her head, considering.
“I agree wholeheartedly, Miss Finch,” Mr. Keane called down, appearing next to Sally on the balcony. “Neither will do. We need something with more spark. I suggest gold.”
“I told you, vicar,” Sally said. “We don’t have enough of the gold.”
“You’re right. Unless . . .” The vicar snapped his fingers. “I know. We’ll combine it with the tulle.”
“The tulle!” Sally exclaimed. “That’s divine inspiration, that is. Just hold a moment, Miss Finch. We’ll show you what he means.”
They both disappeared, ducking to rummage in their boxes of supplies.
Susanna sighed, shifting Daisy from one arm to the other.
“There you are. I’ve been searching for you all over.” Bram was suddenly at her side.
Thrown off balance, she juggled the infant in her arms. “You have?”
Save a few glances across the green, she hadn’t seen him for the better part of three days. And of course, he would show up so dangerously attractive, wearing only an open-collared homespun shirt under his brand-new officer’s coat. She tried not to look at him, but avoiding direct eye contact was the best she could manage. Instead, her gaze lingered on the strong angle of his jaw, the sensual set of his lips. Then dropped to the exposed wedge of his bare chest, and the dark hair curling there.
Was he trying to torture her?
“What, pray tell, are these?” He displayed his newly hemmed cuff for her, pointing out the brass buttons studded there.
“Oh, those.” She bit back a smile. “Aaron Dawes made the mold and did the casting. Every proper militia needs a symbol.”
“Yes, but proper militias don’t choose a lamb.”
“As I recall it, the lamb chose you.”
His thumbnail traced the motto—a tiny crescent of Latin. “Aries eos incitabit. A sheep shall urge them onward?”
“Be careful, my lord. Your three terms at Cambridge are showing.”
His mouth softened into that subtle hint of a smile she’d come to love. “Buttons aside, you’ve done a remarkable job. You and all the ladies. The uniforms, the training . . .” He glanced around the room. “All these preparations.”
His approval warmed her inside. “We’ve all worked hard. I happened to see part of drill the other day. Very impressive, my lord. Tomorrow will doubtless be a splendid triumph.”
An awkward silence grew between them, until Daisy filled it with a wet gurgle.
“Who is this?” He nodded at the squirming infant in her arms. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
“This”—she swiveled to give him a better view—“is little Daisy Bright.”
“Should have guessed it from the hair.”
The towheaded babe stretched a chubby hand toward Bram, reaching for the shining buttons on his coat. Susanna yearned to reach for him, too. On impulse, driven by equal parts emotional distress and arm fatigue, she thrust the child at him. “Here. Why don’t you hold her?”
“Me? Wait. I don’t—”But she left him no opportunity to object, settling little Daisy in the crook of his arm. The delighted infant grasped for a button and gave it a yank.
“Someone likes the buttons, see?” Susanna looked up at Bram. The poor man was frozen to stone, positively stricken with terror. “Do try to be calm,” she teased. “She’s a baby, not a grenade.”
“I have more experience with grenades.”
“You’re doing fine.” Relinquishing the button, Daisy grasped for Bram’s thumb and squeezed it tight. “Look, she adores you already.”
A lump rose in Susanna’s throat as she watched him holding the infant so gingerly, viewed those stout little fingers wrapped secure around his thumb.
There he went again, with the torture. She’d never given it much thought before, but now . . . oh, how she wanted a child. She loved the image of her breasts and belly swollen with pregnancy. Loved the idea of staying up nights, feeling the babe kick at her from the inside. Loved dreaming about what the child would look like, wondering which of his parents he’d favor. She loved everything about the idea of carrying not just a child, but Bram’s child.
Because she loved him.
She loved him. And perhaps he was too stubborn to admit it, but he needed her love. She couldn’t let him walk away.
She did have one last hope, she supposed. There was the gown. A great ivory cloud of a gown, dripping with pearls and brilliants, currently hovering in her dressing room upstairs. She hadn’t worn it but once, a few years ago in Town. But when she’d tried it on last week for fitting, the bodice stretched over her form like a second skin. The neckline pushed her breasts high and plump, and the sewn-in boning trimmed her waist.
She’d entertained this foolish vision of herself, floating down the grand staircase in that lovely, ethereal gown tomorrow night. In her imagination, Bram stood at the bottom of the steps, regarding her with a mixture of pride and sheer lust-struck wonder. Despite every indication that he wasn’t much of a dancer in actuality, her Dream Bram claimed her hand and pulled her into a slow, romantic waltz. And there, before a crowd of admiring onlookers, he twirled her to a halt and confessed his undying adoration.
It was a lovely, silly dream.
But that was before they’d argued on the turret. Before he’d accused her of being mistrustful and afraid. Difficult to imagine simply donning a pretty dress would change his opinions on that. And if a pretty dress was all it took—she wasn’t so sure she’d retain her respect for him.
“I need to speak with you,” he said low. He turned a glance around the crowded room. “Somewhere else. Somewhere private.”
“Private?”
Kate’s piano scales suddenly ceased, and Susanna’s heartbeat kicked into a faster rhythm than ever. The wainscoted walls began to press in on her, and she felt the scrutiny of every soul in the crowded room. She cast a glance around the hall, looking around at her assembled friends, neighbors, servants. Just as she’d suspected, everyone was watching them. Noticing. Wondering.
Well . . . good.
Not just good. Excellent. The anxious weight in her stomach dissolved into bubbles of giddy joy, fizzing through her like fine champagne. Suddenly, she knew exactly what to do.
“Dance with me.”
He blinked at her. “What?”
“Dance with me,” she repeated.
“Dance with you. You mean tomorrow night, at the officers’ ball?
She shook her head. “No, I mean here. Now.”
What kind of a modern woman was she, if she didn’t reach for her own dream? Maybe it was time to sweep the man off his feet, for a change. She untied her work apron at the back and lifted it over her head, tossing it over the banister and smoothing the wrinkles from her blush-pink frock. It wasn’t a voluminous, dazzling silk cloud, but it would have to do.
“Miss Taylor,” she called, slicking back a stray lock of hair, “do play a waltz for us?”
Bram shifted his weight, eyeing her with what seemed to be genuine alarm. “I’m not much of a dancer.”
“Oh, that’s all right. Neither am I.” She lifted little Daisy from his arms and passed the babe to a nearby chambermaid. “Kindly make it a slow waltz, Miss Taylor.”
“Never had much practice at all, even before this.” He gestured toward his injured knee.
“It doesn’t matter.” She took his hands and tugged him toward the center of the hall. “We’ll manage.”
Space cleared around them as the curious onlookers pressed to the margins of the room. Kate’s talented fingers sent the first few measures of a melodic waltz lilting from the pianoforte.
Susanna stood in front of him in the center of the floor, lifting his left hand in hers and placing his other hand on her waist. “Now, let’s see. How does this go?”
“Like this.” His right hand slid, sure and confident, to the space between her shoulder blades, and a quick flex of his arm snapped her close.
Her breath caught in a gasp of delight.
He seemed to have realized that he had two options, and escaping this dance wasn’t one of them. He could either appear coerced and uncomfortable in front of all these people, or he could take control.
No surprise he chose the latter.
“Ready?” he asked.
She managed a nod.
With commanding grace and a slight, endearing limp, he waltzed her across the room.
And it was a dream come true.
They moved in perfect time to the music. Susanna suspected that was because Kate laid a syncopated pause on the third beat of each measure, to allow for their halting steps. So perhaps the music moved in time to them, but it was magical all the same.
He sent her into one turn, then another. Her flounced skirt swirled around her ankles, in little eddies of pink froth. And the sun, progressing on its slow slide toward the horizon, just then ratcheted a notch lower in the sky. So that its amber rays streamed straight through the bank of plate-glass windows lining one side of the hall. The ancient, warped glass took that day-worn light and made it precious, painting the room and all its occupants a glittering corona.
But no one caught more magnificence than Bram. Rosy fingers of light shone through the fine hairs at his brow. The melting afternoon lay like gold plate on his shoulders. Brilliant, shining armor. And he bore up under the weight of it beautifully, whirling her across the freshly waxed parquet. She heard more than one young lady’s wistful sigh.