Never Fall for Your Fiancee

Chapter Twenty-Five

“But it is the last waltz!” His bloody mother would not be swayed. “Neither of you have danced a single dance all evening and I am sure nobody here will begrudge the pair of you one waltz.” She pushed Minerva toward him. Despite sparkling in vibrant rubies, her green eyes were hardened emeralds. Cold and hostile. “And I’m sure they will all be delighted to have something to gossip about when you two lovebirds inevitably dance it scandalously too close.” If just gazing at her made his heart weep, holding her would be pure torture.

“When you put it like that, how could I refuse?” He held out his hand and she took it, sending every one of his nerve endings spiraling out of control. But her touch, like her expression, was as detached as their now hideous relationship.

Hugh was in agony. Miserable, wretched, confused agony, and he had absolutely no clue what to do about it as he walked Minerva onto the floor. After enduring a week of her frigid avoidance, and the latent hostility he didn’t fully understand, he had been dreading this. He would have to hold her again—knowing full well he would never properly hold her again. This would be the absolute last time.

It didn’t help that she looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her, in a figure-skimming red silk gown that also, he noted with irrational jealousy, drew a great many admiring stares from the other gentlemen present. Or that she had been aloof toward him since the day he had confessed his feelings toward her despite claiming she felt the same way about him. Or that his blasted eyes had been drawn to her for every second of the never-ending two hours they had been here, enviously watching her laugh and chat with everyone who didn’t have the misfortune to be him.

With him she was coldly monosyllabic. Disinterested. Distant. Even her fingers were stiff in his as they took their positions. He spun her into his arms and she smiled. It was a smile he was paying sixty pounds for, because it didn’t touch her eyes.

He hated it. The pain felt like an anvil on his chest.

The orchestra played the first bars, and she stepped on his foot as her uncoordinated body fought the music. He could feel her frustration at herself beneath his palms and seriously considered leaving her to flounder because she had rejected him, before he remembered his part of this impersonal transaction. They had to put on a show even if he wasn’t feeling particularly inclined to do so.

“Back, side, together—forward, side, together—” He felt her body relax in his arms as she finally found the rhythm, anticipating his movements rather than listening for the beats in the music her endearingly tone-deaf ears couldn’t hear. He loved that imperfection. Almost as much as he loved holding her.

She was content to dance in silence. Probably just as well as he was out of meaningless things to say. They did a lap of the floor, managing to dance such an intimate dance like total strangers—bodies scandalously touching because she couldn’t dance the steps otherwise, eyes averted and souls in completely different counties.

“You need to tell your mother the truth.” Hugh fumbled the next step at the abruptness of her tone. “Things have gone too far. She’s given me rubies.”

Another thing to feel guilty about. “You can leave them when you go.”

“Yes … that’s exactly what I should do. Callous disregard when she has been nothing but kind to me. I hate lying to her.”

“Giles will be back any day. I’ve written to him demanding he return so we can finally end this charade. Then you can stop lying.” While he continued in her absence.

Although the heartbreak would be painfully real. After days of suffering it, the persistent pain in his chest was bordering on acute. He wanted to blame the dress, but knew it was her he missed. Them.

“It was never supposed to last this long. I agreed to stay for a few days once your mother arrived—a week at most.”

“It cannot be helped.”

“She thinks we are … lovers.” As if. “And that I might be already with child … She’s excited.”

Hugh didn’t reply, because oddly he was mourning the loss of that imaginary child now as well as Minerva. Another blasted what-if that would never come to pass.

To compound his misery, he could see Sarah and her husband had just entered the assembly room. Then behind them, Sarah’s mother. Clearly fate or the Almighty wanted to make tonight the most god-awful of his life and send every possible bane to poke his open wounds.

Typically, she spotted him and raised her hand in a wave. He pretended he didn’t see it but wasn’t quick enough to disguise his discomfort from his dancing partner, whose gaze wandered to the spot his had just vacated, and widened.

“Mrs. Peters is here…”

“Is she?”

“You know she is. Why are you ignoring her?”

“We are dancing.” It was easier to deflect than kick that hornet’s nest. “And I am well aware of the fact you have gone above and beyond what you signed up for these last few weeks, but I promise you the day Giles drags his sorry behind back will be the same day you get to leave. In the meantime, leave my mother to me.”