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I don’t know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.
~ Edith Wharton
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Knowing that he’d pushed her again as hard as he might, James let the subject drop as the pianist began a jaunty tune that brought a round of applause from the audience. He was joined by a fiddler and a trumpet player.
James listened to the band with half an ear, but his eyes were all for Prim as she watched the energetic band with wonder on her face. Delight tugged at his lips as he watched Prim absorb the experience. The elation on her face was a far cry from the prudish expressions he’d long associated with her.
Soon her toe was tapping along, her hands clapping to the beat. He wondered how often she’d read of new things but never experienced them.
More than that, he had to wonder how long it’d been since she was truly happy.
He’d done that.
Or perhaps it was the alcohol, he reconsidered, as she sipped on her second sour.
Another lively tune started and several couples moved on to the dance floor.
“Would you like to dance?” he asked.
Prim shook her head. “I wouldn’t even begin to know how.”
He toyed with the idea of offering to teach her, or simply towing her onto the floor. He opted for neither, letting her enjoy it and perhaps leave learning for another time.
Lifting a finger, he ordered another round of cocktails for them. He swallowed his down when it arrived, but Prim just set hers aside. She perched on the edge of her seat, observing the spirited dance with interest.
The upbeat song ended and after the applause subsided, the violinist stepped to the front of the stage and began playing more mournfully. A vocalist came on stage as well, adding the words to the song James recognized as Charles K. Harris’s After the Ball.
The song was the story of a man who’d witnessed a kiss between a woman he loved and his brother. He’d assumed she had taken his brother as her lover and rejected her without ever seeing her again or asking her about the incident.
He’d lived out his days in misery rather than with the woman he loved.
Again, James was bothered by the kiss he’d witnessed. He didn’t want to hear that she had another lover, but was he going to let the unknown eat at him?
The song ended and melded into another, slower rhythm.
“Come, I think you’ve seen enough to take on a dance. Let’s give it a try.”
“I couldn’t possibly.”
“Lass, we’re going to have to remove those words from your vocabulary.”
James didn’t give her the option of refusing, but tugged her onto her feet and into his arms. He led her in a sedate one-step variation as she clung to his shoulder and beamed up at him.
“Who was he?” he asked.
“Who?”
“The blond gentleman I saw you kiss at the Gould soiree.”
Prim frowned, offended. “Why, I would never!”
“You were in one of the alcoves at the end of the ballroom,” he said. “Almost out of sight, but I saw you clearly. You were certainly happy to see him.”
“Oh, that...” She giggled and stumbled a bit. “That was just my brother Dennis. I told you he’d been abroad. I was happy to see him.”
James bit back his surprise...and relief. That was where doing naught but wondering had gotten him. Not a lover at all.
“Did you think...?” She gaped at him, slack in the jaw. “You did! Is that why you pursued me? Did you think I had taken a paramour?”
“I have not pursued you, lass, but merely offered my assistance as requested.”
Prim nodded gravely. “That’s right. Why pursue me when you’ve so many other lovely ladies to chase?”
“There are none I’d rather chase but you,” he whispered in her ear, the flirtatious rejoinder holding more truth than he’d imagined. “You are worthy of dozens of suitors. None of them would be worthy of you.”
She glowed with pleasure, her hand sliding up his shoulder. Her gloved finger trailed down the side of his neck, both tickling and tantalizing.
She must be foxed to do so, he thought.
“Do you tease me, Mrs. Eames?” James slipped his hand farther around her tiny waist and pulled her closer.
Her lips twitched. “Won’t you call me Prim?” she asked again. “I don’t want you calling me by another man’s name.”
No, he didn’t either. And more and more, he longed to call her something else altogether. Mrs. MacKintosh. Wife.
Lover.
Savior.
His breath arrested beneath a crushing weight against his chest. Longing. Hope.
“I told ye, lass. Prim simply doesn’t fit ye in my mind any longer,” he choked out, trying to sound flippant. “I could call you Primrose, I suppose. Or Rose.”
“Or lass.” She sighed, resting her cheek against his chest. “Just lass.”
“Lass,” he whispered into her hair, his lips grazing her cheek. “I’ve the urge to ask you to come home with me tonight.”
“If you asked, I’d probably say yes,” she baited flirtatiously, surprising him.
From any other widow, James would have taken the offer without questioning the motivation behind it. Coming from Prim, it had him questioning her motives and her lucidity. It was too impetus a move for Prim, too impulsive. What he knew of her told him she was neither.
“Are you turning the tables on me, lass? Trying to shock me?”
“Is it working?”
James nodded. “Aye, it is.”
Prim laughed, a husky breathless chuckle. “Are you going to ask me?”
“Nay, lass.”
“Because, as you told me before, if I want something I must take it myself?”
The image of Prim taking what she wanted of him boiled James’s blood. “You must be more tipsy than I thought.”
“Or are you more prudish than I believed?” Her eyes, glowing like sun-kissed amethysts, challenged him.
He enjoyed the fire he saw there, her confidence. It was as though taking the role of aggressor sparked something in her. Still, he wouldn’t let her do anything she’d regret.
“I better see you home.”
Prim hiccupped against his chest. “I’m not so tipsy as you think, you know. Only happy. I suppose you hadn’t seen enough of one from me that you’d mistake it for the other.”
“I only want to see you happy, lass,” he swore.
“Then take me home.”
