Lucy grinned as she bobbed and twirled. Now there was an image. What would people say if she charged forward and grabbed him with both hands?
And never let go.
Most would say she was mad. A few that she was in love. The shrewd would say both.
“What are you thinking about?” Gregory asked. He was looking at her . . . differently.
She turned away, turned back. She felt daring, almost magical. “Wouldn’t you care to know?”
He stepped around the lady to his left and returned to his place. “I would,” he answered, smiling wolfishly at her.
But she just smiled and shook her head. Right now she wanted to pretend she was someone else. Someone a little less conventional. Someone a great deal more impulsive.
She did not want to be the same old Lucy. Not tonight. She was sick of planning, sick of placating, sick of never doing anything without first thinking through every possibility and consequence.
If I do this, then that will happen, but if I do that, then this, this, and the other thing will happen, which will yield an entirely different result, which could mean that—
It was enough to make a girl dizzy. It was enough to make her feel paralyzed, unable to take the reins of her own life.
But not tonight. Tonight, somehow, through some amazing miracle named the Duchess of Hastings—or perhaps the dowager Lady Bridgerton, Lucy was not quite certain—she was wearing a gown of the most exquisite green silk, attending the most glittering ball she could ever have imagined.
And she was dancing with the man she was quite certain she would love until the end of time.
“You look different,” he said.
“I feel different.” She touched his hand as they stepped past each other. His fingers gripped hers when they should have just brushed by. She looked up and saw that he was gazing at her. His eyes were warm and intense and he was watching her the same way—
Dear God, he was watching her the way he’d watched Hermione.
Her body began to tingle. She felt it in the tips of her toes, in places she did not dare to contemplate.
They stepped past each other again, but this time he leaned in, perhaps a bit more than he ought, and said, “I feel different as well.”
Her head snapped around, but he had already turned so that his back was to her. How was he different? Why? What did he mean?
She circled around the gentleman to her left, then moved past Gregory.
“Are you glad you attended this evening?” he murmured.
She nodded, since she had moved too far away to answer without speaking too loudly.
But then they were together again, and he whispered, “So am I.”
They moved back to their original places and held still as a different couple began to process. Lucy looked up. At him. At his eyes.
They never moved from her face.
And even in the flickering light of the night—the hundreds of candles and torches that lit the glittering ballroom—she could see the gleam there. The way he was looking at her—it was hot and possessive and proud.
It made her shiver.
It made her doubt her ability to stand.
And then the music was done, and Lucy realized that some things must truly be ingrained because she was curtsying and smiling and nodding at the woman next to her as if her entire life had not been altered in the course of the previous dance.
Gregory took her hand and led her to the side of the ballroom, back to where the chaperones milled about, watching their charges over the rims of their glasses of lemonade. But before they reached their destination, he leaned down and whispered in her ear.
“I need to speak with you.”