Perhaps only he understood just how much courage it was taking her to get through the evening. Or perhaps not. His mother and Lizzie surely understood. So, he suspected, did Anna and Netherby and … well, all his family. So did Hodges. He even came to talk about it with Alexander during the break between two sets after supper.
“How can Roe be such a smashing success tonight after being a hermit for twenty years?” he asked. “Where does she find the poise and courage, Riverdale? I honestly do not feel worthy to be her brother.”
“Or I to be her husband,” Alexander said with a laugh. “Her uncle gave her the name Wren apparently because she looked like a caged bird. I think she has finally discovered that the door of the cage has been open all these years, and she has fluttered outside and found that freedom is worth fighting for.”
“Yes,” her brother agreed. “She is fighting, is she not?”
“Oh yes,” Alexander said. “This ballroom is her battleground.”
“I have engaged Miss Parmiter’s hand for the next set,” Hodges said. “I must go and claim her. It is a waltz and she has only this week been approved by one of the patronesses of Almack’s to dance it.”
Wren had been granted no such approval, though several of the patronesses were present this evening and doubtless would oblige if asked. But she was almost thirty years old and the Countess of Riverdale and did not need anyone’s approval for anything. She had already waltzed this evening with her brother, and it had pained Alexander not to partner her himself. But etiquette decreed that he dance with his wife no more than twice this evening and he had preferred to wait for the waltz later in the evening—now, in fact. He had danced every set with different partners, but this was the one for which he had waited. He had reserved it with her. It would have been disastrous to arrive at her side only to discover that someone else had claimed it.
She smiled when she saw him come. To a casual observer it would have seemed that her expression had not changed, for she had smiled all evening. But he could see a greater depth to her eyes, a warmth of regard she reserved for him alone. And it was time, surely, for both of them to acknowledge what had happened since that first ghastly meeting at Withington, since her withdrawal of her offer on Easter Sunday, since his sensible, rational offer in Hyde Park. For something had happened. Everything had happened, in fact, and he was sure it could not have happened just to him.
“Ma’am,” he said, reaching for her hand and bowing over it as he kept his eyes on hers, “this is my dance, I believe.”
Elizabeth, beside her, was fanning her face and looking amused.
“Sir,” Wren said, “I believe it is. And I can almost promise,” she added after he had led her onto the floor, “not to tread all over your feet. I did not tread on Colin’s even once earlier.”
“Wren,” he said as one of the violinists was still tuning his instrument and other dancers gathered about them, “you have done it. You have stepped out fearlessly into the world and proved that you can do anything you choose to do.”
“Ah, not fearlessly,” she said.
“Courageously, then,” he said. “No courage is needed if there is no fear, after all, and you are the most courageous woman—no, person—I have ever known.”
“And I do not believe I could swim across the English Channel to France,” she said.
“But would you choose to try?” he asked.
“No.” They both laughed.
And the music began. They waltzed tentatively at first, concentrating upon performing the correct steps and finding a shared rhythm. Then he twirled her into a spin and she raised a flushed, smiling face to his. Her spine arched inward with the pressure of his hand at her waist. Her left hand rested on his shoulder while her right hand was clasped in his. And the world was a wonderful place, and happiness was a real thing even if it welled up only occasionally into conscious moments of joy like this one. His family—and hers—and friends and peers and acquaintances danced around them with a shared pleasure in this celebration of life and friendship and laughter. And his wife was in his arms and they were at the very beginning of a marriage that would, God willing, bring them contentment and more on down the years to old age and perhaps even beyond.
Other couples twirled about them, candlelight wheeled above them, flowers gave off their heady perfumes, and the music seeped into their very bones, or so it seemed.
She smiled at him and he smiled back and really nothing else mattered, nothing else existed but her—and him. Them.
“Ah,” she said on a sigh when the music finally came to an end, “so soon?”
“Come,” he said. He did not know if she had promised the next set. He did not really care. He led her out onto the balcony beyond the French windows and down the steps to the garden below. It was lit with colored lanterns strung among the trees, though not many people strolled there. He stopped walking when they were beneath a willow tree beside a fountain, out of sight of the house. “Happy?” he asked.
“Mmm,” she said, clinging to his arm. “It is beautifully cool out here.”
“I suppose,” he said, “you are still going to insist that we wait to go home to Brambledean until after the parliamentary session is over.”
“Yes,” she said. “Because your duty here is important. To you. And therefore to me.”
“We will leave the very day after,” he said. “At the crack of dawn. I want to be home. With you.”
“It does sound heavenly, does it not?” she said.
“Wren.” He turned to face her and cupped her face in his hands. “I am guilty of a terrible deception. Of myself as much as of you. I surely suspected when you insisted upon ending things between us at Brambledean. I surely knew when I saw you again by the Serpentine. The truth must have been staring me in the face and knocking on my brow when I offered you marriage on that woodland path. It has been clamoring for my attention ever since.”
She raised both her hands and set them over the backs of his. “What?” she half whispered. Lamplight was swaying across her face in the breeze.
“I love you,” he said. “I wish there were a better word. But maybe it is the best after all, for it encompasses everything else and reaches beyond. I love you more than … Well, I am really not good with words. I love you.”
Her smile was soft and warm and radiant in the dim light. “Oh,” she said, her voice hushed with wonder. “But you have chosen the most precious word in the English language, Alexander. I love you too, you see. I think I have known my own feelings since the moment you walked into my drawing room at Withington and looked so disconcerted not to find it full of other guests. I have certainly known since Easter Sunday. It broke my heart to let you go, but it would have been worse to continue—or so I thought. After we met again I chose to settle for the hope of affection, and it has been good knowing that you do indeed care. I have tried to tell myself it is enough. I have tried not to be greedy. But now … Oh, Alexander, now …”
He touched his forehead to hers. “And it is at least a few weeks since I last noticed, you know,” he said. “Is it still there? I wonder.” He lifted his head and gazed with a frown of concentration at the left side of her face. “Indeed it is. The birthmark is still there. How could I possibly not have noticed?”