Page 82 of In Need of a Duke
Ian, at the moment, would have done anything to see Charlotte look at him the way Kate looked at her husband with pure adoration, half hidden behind black fan lace.
He was aware of everyone watching. He felt their eyes on him and Charlotte almost immediately after stepping foot into the ballroom. He never cared for balls, but he had found them tolerable when first courting Charlotte. There had been a thrill then that chased through him as he eagerly moved through a room to find her. Something, if he were honest, he was chasing again tonight.
He had sent letters after that night and showered her withhothouse flowers and taken rides with her in Hyde Park. His friends had thought him a fool, but he hadn’t cared because for the first time in his life, he believed someone loved him.
“It seems my wife was onto something,” Rafe said, returning a few minutes later.
“How goes the shipping business, Mr. Davies?” Gabriel asked.
The two men carried on about whiskey and ships, and Ian remained close by as Lily and Kate laughed and chatted with Charlotte. He would give this to her every day if he made her happy, but he also knew that, in the time he had left, she had watched as her dearest friends moved on with their lives. He had selfishly believed it fine for her to just be a duchess. To think about the time they had wasted because he believed her only after his title, because he had given weight to the advice of others.
His stomach sank.
Charlotte glanced back at him, a smile wide on her lips. “Thank you,” she mouthed.
Ian nodded and winked, before turning back to his conversation. Time slipped away as the women moved about the ballroom and he found himself deep in conversation about sailing with Rafe and Gabriel.
Finally, he spotted Charlotte with Lily, before Kate was whisked away by Gabriel to dance.
When his eyes met with his wife, it was as if he were suddenly buried beneath some crushing weight while reaching for some insatiable hope. He craved the light there hiding in her eyes, urging him to soften his edges and reach out for her again as he once had.
Ian slowly wound his way through the crowds and approached Charlotte, a small smile at his lips.
“After all these years, I still find you against the ballroom wall.” He held out his hand for her, thankful she didn’t wait to slip her kid glove into his palm. “No, love.” He leaned closer, feeling her small gasp as he whispered, “You deserve for everyone to see you tonight.”
After a few glasses of champagne, her cheeks were flushed, and allher careful weapons of self-protection were cracking. She followed Ian out onto the dance floor, her eyes fixed on his. Blue eyes as bright and endless as spring in Cumbria, and heavy-lidded, urging him on.
A waltz struck up, and the ballroom nearly collapsed into a hushed horror or glee, depending of course if they were chaperones or debutantes and the young bucks eager to dance.
He placed his hand on her waist, never breaking eye contact and she smiled up at him. “Far more scandalous than our first dance,” he said.
“I’m not sure I care at the moment.”
He tugged her a little closer as her hand rested against his shoulder, and they began spinning around the ballroom.
“Do you not care or are you distracted?”
She leaned in close enough that he smelled her perfume. He had been driven mad by the mere memory of it once, now he craved it. “Bring me home, Ian.”
He pulled back, narrowing his eyes on her. “Are you not enjoying yourself?”
Charlotte laughed quietly. “I wish for this dance, and then I wish to pretend it was all those years ago when we shared a secret kiss out on the balcony.”
He remembered that kiss. How she had followed him outside, and he thought he had lost all good sense to fall all over himself so quickly upon meeting her. And then he had pressed his lips against hers, and he was ruined for every other woman. He had been hers entirely, then and now, and all the years in between even if they hadn’t been together.
“That kiss,” he whispered, desperate to press his mouth against her there, in the middle of the ballroom. Desperate to taste her as if to reassure himself this was not a dream. That he held his wife in his arms, his duchess, in the middle of a London ballroom for everyone to see, and she smiled at him as if she loved him, too.
“Tonight, I can enjoy that kiss and more. I am yours now, after all. And I wasn’t that first night.”
“You’ve always been mine, Lottie.”
Her hand curled up briefly to trace the curve of where his neck met his shoulder. It was the briefest of touches, the softest. And it felt like a promise between them.
As the music ended, she didn’t let go, drawing him through the crowd, until they were alone in the hallway. She pulled him into the alcove and placed her hand on his chest.
“Do you remember that kiss?”
“I dream of it,” he said, bending down and pressing his mouth against hers.
