Season for Scandal by Theresa Romain

know how to curtsy to a countess. Fine, Edmund. That’s fine. I don’t expect anything different.”
    This was so unexpected, so suddenly vehement, that he could only stare at her. “No. I never—”
    “I never asked you to make me any promise at all. So don’t go out of your way to make one if you won’t keep it.”
    If she didn’t let him complete a sentence in the next five seconds , he would cover her mouth.
    “I get the distinct impression,” he said in a carefully restrained voice, “that you are displeased with me. I’m sorry I didn’t return at the precise moment I said I would. And I’m glad you found someone congenial to speak with.”
    “Ha.” She wrapped both gloved hands around her folded fan, holding to it like a sailor might clutch a rope.
    “I’m sorry, Jane.”
    “That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it? ‘I’m sorry.’ That doesn’t make it right.”
    “No. It doesn’t.” He had the feeling that she, like he, was talking of much more than an evening’s entertainment. But what was on her mind, he had no idea. “Come, Jane. Join me in the supper dance, won’t you?”
    All the fight went out of her. “I can’t. I don’t know how to dance.”
    He blinked at her. “Come now. Surely you—” This time, he cut himself off before Jane could. Surely she . . . what? If Lord Xavier’s country cousin, who lived alone with a widowed mother, had never learned the intricacies of social greetings, when would she have learned to dance?
    Even so, this made no sense. “You never learned to dance, yet you encouraged me to bring you to a ball.”
    She grimaced, then nodded.
    “Jane, how would attending a ball possibly be an amusing evening for you? I’d never have suggested it if I’d known.”
    She muttered something he didn’t catch, though the movements of her lips hinted at impolite terminology.
    “What was that?”
    She looked away, hands clutching her fan tight. “Since you offered to bring me to this ball, I was willing to come along. It was nice to have you suggest something you wanted to do.”
    Oh.
    She had been trying to please him, as he had tried to please her. As he’d tried to please every woman sitting on the fringes of the ballroom.
    They probably could have worked more at cross-purposes if they had tried. But for an unintentional effort, it had been most effective.
    “Let’s sit out this dance, then,” he suggested. “I’ll still take you in to supper.”
    “If you don’t care to, that’s fine. I could easily fake a sick headache or a torn flounce and disappear for a while.”
    “Nonsense. You’ll join me for supper, or I’ll fly into a towering rage.”
    Her smile looked sad. “We can’t have that.”
    They stood at the edge of the ballroom, not far from the refreshments and near a line of gilded chairs that held many of the same ladies with whom he’d stepped through dances earlier. With nods and smiles, he acknowledged them as he handed Jane into a chair.
    “Not that one,” she muttered. “Someone left a plate on it.”
    She sidled to an empty chair; Edmund seated himself next to her. Once side by side, though, she avoided his eyes. Looked at her gloved hands and her fragile little fan. Down the row of chairs. Anywhere else.
    “Something still weighs on your mind, Jane.”
    She shook her head. Jerked her chin in a nod. Then blurted: “Why do you flirt with all those women?”
    Her question surprised him as much as her hesitation, and he parried it with one of his own. “Do my attentions to them bother you?”
    “No. I just wondered why you bother paying them so much notice. They’re the women that no one else flirts with.”
    Edmund tried to settle back in the chair, but it was spindly and frail. “Just for the reason you said: no one else pays them any heed. They like knowing that someone remembers them once in a while. And really, it’s the least I can do.”
    Fortunately, she seemed too distracted to press further. She smoothed her