Fans of Eloisa James & Julia Quinn

message 1: by Susan (new)

Feb 18, 2019 03:01AM

All I do is read these days as we go from blizzard to ice storm to snow. Yesterday was another six inches. But this book warmed my heart. Yes in my reveal I will be back to horses again. Enjoy this little snippet.
Susan

“Ah this is better.” Hero said. “You laugh all to rarely, Heroine, I wonder if there was a time when you laughed more freely.”
“One would be thought either insane or immature if one went off into peals of glee at every suggestion of wit, my lord,” she said.
“I believe,” he said, ignoring her words, “there must have been such a time. Before you came “secret town” (you would know the book). In God’s name why, this place? You must have been a little more than a girl then. Let me guess. You had a strong romantic attachment to your husband and swore on his passing never to laugh again.”
Oh, dear Lord. Let the music start. She wanted no one playing guessing games with her past.
“Or else,” he said, “your marriage was such an unhappy experience that you retreated to a remote corner of the country and still have not learned to laugh freely.”
She had come here tonight to enjoy herself. Her lips compressed. “My lord,” she said, “you are impertinent.”
His eyebrows shot up. “And you, ma’am,” try my patience.”
It was not an auspicious way to begin a waltz, the dance she just called romantic. But the music began at that moment and he moved a little closer to set one hand behand her waist and take her right hand in his. She set her left on his shoulder. He twirled her into the dance.
She had waltzed before. Many times. It had always been her favorite dance. And she had always imagined that it would be wonderful almost beyond bearing to waltz with a man who meant something to her. There was something so suggestive of intimacy and romance in the dance—there, that word again.
It was not romance she felt dancing with Hero. At first it was awareness, so raw and all-encompassing that she though she might well faint from it. His hand at her waist burned into her. She felt his body heat from crown to soles, although their bodies did not touch. She could smell his cologne and something beyond that. She could smell the very essence of him.
And then she felt exhilaration. He was a superb dancer, twirling her confidently about the ballroom without missing a step and without colliding with any other dancer. She matched her steps to his and felt that she had never come so close to dancing on air before. She had never felt so wonderfully happy.
And finally, she felt self-consciousness. She caught Hostess eyes fleetingly and unintentionally as that lady danced with her husband. There was a smile on Hostess’s face and steel in her eyes. And fury.
She had been waltzing, Heroine realized, as if no other moment existed beyond this half hour and as if no one else existed but her and the man with whom she danced. She suddenly became aware that they danced in a ballroom filled with other people and that there was indeed time beyond this half hour. A whole leftover lifetime to have lived her among these very people—with the exception of Her, who would go away very soon.
She wondered what her face and the motions of her body had revealed during the past fifteen or twenty minutes.
And she looked up to see what his face revealed.
He was looking steadily down at her. “God, but I want you, Heroine,” he said. The heat of his words was quite at variance with the languor in his eyes.
This was what those people who objected to the waltz meant, she thought. It was a dance that aroused passions that had no business being aroused. And she was to waltz with him again before supper.
“I do believe my lord, “she said, “that you begin to repeat yourself. We have dealt with that matter before now. It is a closed book.”

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message 2: by Dls (new)

Feb 18, 2019 06:07AM