“You are odd, Jack.”
She rolled her eyes, but her hand gripped his tighter, as if the touch of their bodies had stolen her thoughts for a moment. Clearing her throat, she quipped, “You see, you agree with the masses.”
“For once,” he agreed, “but it is your oddity that makes you marvelous. I wouldn’t change a thing about it.”
She sighed. “It is a great pity that everyone else would, then.”
“Even your family?” he asked softly.
“They don’t say it,” she began, as he turned her under his arm, “but I know that my mother wishes I was different. Not because she dislikes me. But because she knows that my life would be easier if I was more like everyone else.”
“And is that what you wish?” he asked, spinning her again slowly, keeping her gaze. Losing himself in those crystalline depths as they turned. “For your life to be easy?”
“I don’t, because when things are easy,” she admitted as she tilted her head back, her curls spilling over her bared neck,“we never grow and we never change.”
He traced his hand from her shoulder to her waist, savoring the feel of his glove on the soft pattern embroidered into her gown, choosing to keep her close, choosing steps that would not let her leave him.
“Do you think it is easy?” she asked suddenly, her gloved fingers sliding over his. “For the flower to burst up from out of the earth? I think about that all the time. Don’t you? The way a bulb is planted into the dark ground, how it is alone there, and then it suddenly, throughout the spring, thrusts its way up out of the darkness and creates a stem, and then a flower, and all the world admires it after it went through all that trial and tribulation alone. It cannot be easy to find beauty in this life.”
He gazed down at her in wonder.
Could no one see she was the true jewel? The rest of thetonwere mere dross.
Oh, her friend Olivia was beautiful and interesting and intelligent, but she had nothing on Jack. Jack saw how people were just as he did, and he suddenly wondered about himself, applying her words to his past.
The darkness he had endured, the pain he had felt… Did Jack see him that way? As if he had survived all those years alone? And yet he had survived it. Was he special to her because of it?
No, of course not. He was simply someone to find a husband for her.
That’s all he was and should be, and he was glad of it.
The music came to a halt, and neither could break their gaze.
They stood in each other’s embrace for a moment longer than they should as her skirts swung about his legs. Their breath came in unified slow takes, and it was her brother’s voice calling to her that startled them both.
James swung his attention across the room and met Blackbrook’s gaze, which was narrowed with a touch of curiosity.
Without foolishly hesitating another moment, James led her off the floor, but did not take her to her brother.
Surely, her mother was about. After all, her mother and his mother were somewhere in the crowd tonight.
Lady Blackbrook wouldn’t question him. She was the safest person to deliver Jack to.
He did not wish to have to convince Alexander at this particular moment that nothing untoward was happening between himself and his sister.
He would ensure it. He had to.
Unable to spot her mother, he paused and turned to Jack. “Do you think we should cause a bit of trouble?”
“Oh, we should always cause trouble,” she said merrily. “What do you have in mind?”
“I’m going to go ask Olivia to dance,” he said with a slow smile. “And let’s see what your brother does.”
She beamed and clapped her hands together. “I like the sound of that very much.”
He inclined his head toward her and whispered conspiratorially, “We are allies, then?”
“Always, James,” she replied.“Always.”