He lowered his head slightly and whispered in her ear, “Ah, a sign of affection? Or is it that you fear I shall drop you?”
“Please don’t flirt with me,” she said, leaning back to look up at his face, still maddeningly hidden by the black mask. “This is such fun. Don’t bother me with all that nonsense. Now, sir, please mind your steps, you very nearly stepped on my toes.”
He threw back his head and laughed aloud. His teeth were strong and white, his throat tanned. She very much liked that laugh of his. Who the devil was he?
She gave him a guileless smile. “There, you see? Making love is a bore, particularly when you’re dancing and having such fun.”
“So you don’t think lovemaking is fun?”
“I haven’t the foggiest notion,” she said and he tightened his hand ever so slightly about her waist.
Hetty chose to ignore it. He was a man. Men, in her short but pungent experience, were strange creatures. Sex seemed to be the primary thing on their minds. And the secondary thing, too. When the music came to a halt, she was disappointed. “Oh dear,” she said. “The dance is over already? You’re quite good, but I’m sure all the ladies tell you that.”
She saw him raise his hand in some sort of signal to the musicians. In but an instant, another waltz was struck up.
She laughed. “Well done, sir, well done.” Without any thought as to the complexities of propriety, she laid her hand on his shoulder.
It was several breathless moments before the black domino slowed their pace. He looked down into the upturned smiling face and said in a thoughtful voice, “Your Louis XIV was a stupid fellow indeed to believe you experienced in dalliance. Rather, I would say that you are a young lady enjoying her first ball.”
He was right, damn him, but had she been so obvious? Surely not. She wouldn’t let him fluster her. “I know why you said that. You think I’m inexperienced just because I don’t want you flirting with me. That’s it, isn’t it? Just a male’s conceit.” She grinned up at him shamelessly.
“I wonder,” he said, “if you would goad me so much if we were to remove your mask?”
“Touch my mask and I’ll make you very sorry.”
“As sorry as you would have made Louis XIV?”
“You don’t deserve that. Something milder.” She stepped on his toes.
He winced, but said nothing more. He whirled her about in a wide circle. When he came to a halt, he landed adroitly upon her foot.
“Ouch!” She jumped, crying out more in surprise than in pain.
“Men are sometimes clumsy. I do apologize. Perhaps if your feet weren’t quite so big, I wouldn’t have succumbed to the temptation.”
She wanted to hit him and she wanted, oddly, to laugh, just to have him join in with her. His laugh was lovely.
“Shall I return you to your brother?”
All her fun dissolved in that instant. “You know my brother?”
“Certainly I do, Miss Rolland.”
At that moment, Hetty wanted to murder Jack. What was he doing anyway telling all his friends that his sister was in the scarlet domino and mask, and in need of partners? She backed away from him, turned abruptly, and slipped into a throng of guests before he could stop her.
She heard the black domino calling her name. She ignored him, wanting now to find Jack and hit him over the head with a potted palm. Damn him. Her enjoyment of her first ball was fading rapidly. The black domino knew who she was. Others might know also. Her voice couldn’t be that different from the dowdy Miss Henrietta Rolland’s voice or, for that matter, Lord Harry’s.
A high, trilling laugh drew her up short at the perimeter of a boisterously gay group of gentlemen. In their midst stood Melissande, her lustrous red hair piled high upon her head and a daring expanse of white bosom revealed by the extreme low cut of her green velvet gown. She looked utterly delicious. Hetty felt her heart start to thump fast and hard. If Melissande was here, then Lord Oberlon was here, too. She scanned the knot of gentlemen but didn’t see him.