"Let's try it," Helene said. Tom and Lina seemed to be ready. In fact, they were holding hands as if they were about to start a country dance, rather than a waltz. "Tom," Helene called. "Do you feel able to give this dance a try?"

"Of course," he said, turning to Lina so quickly that he almost tripped.

"Right!" Helene said, nodding at Rees. "There's a musical portion first.

The song doesn't begin until I've repeated this section twice. I'll count to three," she told Lina and Tom.

Lina curtsied before the vicar and then his hand settled at her waist.

"This is dangerous," Tom said, almost under his breath.

"Ready," Helene called, dropping her hands to the keyboard. The music

flowed around them sweetly, a languorous, swirling invitation to dance.

Lina knew exactly why Tom called waltzing dangerous, but she chose to

ignore his meaning. "My feet are in little danger," she told him. "You dance very well, for a man who tries these steps for the first time."

"You may regret that confidence; I'm going to attempt a turn."

"Do," she said. "We ought to move right down the room."

He misstepped and narrowly avoiding trampling on her toes. "There, Lina,"

he said, laughing down at her. "Your feet are in danger!"

She giggled.

"I think if I hold you more tightly," he said to her, "we'll move better

together. Would that be agreeable to you?"

"All right," she said, struck by an unexpected wave of shyness.

"I suspect our bodies are scandalously close," he murmured into her hair

a moment later.

But she was too taken by the realization that she was-she truly was-in danger to answer.

Rees turned the page for Helene and gave her a nod, indicating he would

begin the song. She nodded back and he launched into the first verse: "Let me, lovely girl, embrace you, As would a lover his lovable bride."

Helene could feel her cheeks growing warmer. Could it have been she who wrote of a lover embracing his bride? What was she thinking? It was her turn to sing. Her voice caroled high. She didn't have tremendous range, but she liked what she had, as the saying went.

Rees's darker growl took over again: "Face to face with burning cheeks." She could feel him watching her, so she kept her own eyes primly on her fingers.

It was time to sing together. "What has wilted once, ne'er blooms again," she sang, high and clear, and Rees's voice twined into hers, in a sweet descant, lowered to his baritone range, "Never will rosy youth bloom for us, again." And isn't that the truth, Helene thought, rather sadly.

Rees took the last verse, repeating: "Let me, darling girl, enfold you, As would a lover his lovable bride, as would a lover his lovable bride."

"It's not darling girl," she objected, as she played the final coda to the waltz. "I wrote lovely girl."

"You want an expression of affection, not a point about her looks," Rees said. Then he lowered his voice. "Did you happen to notice how much my brother is enjoying your music?"

Helene raised an eyebrow as she played the final chord. "The vicar sheds his Roman collar," she said, rather absent-mindedly. She didn't want to think about Tom.

"Let's try it again," Rees said. "This time, every other line with the male and then the female voice."

"That won't work," she objected.

"The song could echo the waltz itself, bringing a male and female body together," he said patiently.

Helene felt she must be going purple. What kind of an old maid-even if married-was she, writing lascivious songs? "I didn't think of the waltz that way!" she said.

"That's why the waltz is so improper," he said with a smile that made her uneasy. "It simulates intimacy, Helene. Surely you recognize that."

"Well, of course," she hastened to say. "I mean, the man puts his arm around the woman. That in itself is terribly unseemly."

"That's not the point," Rees said, sounding rather amused. "You knew exactly what I'm talking about when you were writing that music. Lina!"

he called.

"Yes?"

"Will you play the waltz this time? Helene needs to get a sense of it in her feet."

"Oh, I couldn't," Helene said, feeling as if the last thing she wanted to do was waltz with her husband. A moment later, she found herself curtsying to Rees's bow. "This is too odd," she whispered to him, taking his hand. His other hand went around her waist as snugly as if they danced together all the time.

Rees had only asked Lina to play, but she started to sing as well. Helene almost stumbled when she realized what a beautiful voice her husband's mistress had. It hung in the air like honey, making the words Helene had written sound infinitely better, wiser, more allusive.

Rees drew her closer to him and let the music move them across the room, his leg advancing, and hers falling back. And all the time his arm pulled her closer and closer until there was no air between their bodies at all.

"Rees!" Helene hissed.

But the glint of amusement in his eyes turned her silent. Her gown wrapped around his muscled thigh and then blew free as he turned her with just a touch, in circle after circle after circle across the floor. She felt dizzy. The music pounded in her blood and prickled between her thighs. It danced in her feet and made her press closer to his chest.

"Do you see what I mean?" he asked conversationally. "The waltz starts out with a bit of introduction, undressing, as it were. A bow here, a flourish there. Then when the preliminaries are out of the way, the two dancers begin, first rather slowly and then faster and faster-" He spun her as he spoke. "The man holds his partner more and more tightly. They are in a closed position, his arms around her body."

Helene frowned at him.

"You do know the instructions posted at Almack's regarding the waltz, don't you?" he asked her.

"No." Why would she notice such a thing?

"The man and woman must be dressed decently." His eyes had a wicked glint.

She couldn't help it: she giggled. He swept her in a great circle. "I think they may be referring to a doublet and coat."

"Undoubtedly!" Helene said severely.

"As would a lover his lovable bride," Lina sang slowly, and again: "As would a lover his lovable bride."

Rees glided Helene to a perfect halt on the last breath of the song.

"You dance very well," he said, blinking at her in an almost startled fashion. But he didn't wait for a reply. "There's one line that needs changing, Helene." He dragged her over to the piano and Lina hastily slid off the piano bench. "I don't think the line about fires of our hearts burning out is right. You should replace it with something more joyful."

"But that's what I meant," Helene insisted. "You may think the waltz is about bedroom matters, Rees." She said it in a sharp undertone so that Tom and Lina couldn't hear. "But I wrote a song about youthful love that fades and dies at the end of the song. So it starts with a great deal of enthusiasm and musical flourishes, but towards the end-"

"No, no," Rees interrupted. "That's far too disheartening. How would it be if you changed that line to something simpler and more cheerful?" He hummed the bar. "Love into air? No, that's no good."

"I don't want to," Helene said stubbornly. "I wrote the words, after all. They move from the lover's exuberance to the loss of those feelings."

He paused for a moment, suddenly struck. Then he looked at her sideways. "You wouldn't have put any of your life into this waltz, would you, Helene?"

She colored. "Of course not!" she snapped.

He stared at her for a moment and then put down the score. Of course she'd written it about their marriage, about the fire she felt in the heart-burning out. Suddenly his own heart felt like a charred, blackened cinder. "You're right. It's much better as it is."

"Shall we plan on Vauxhall tomorrow then?" Tom said, popping up at Rees's shoulder.

"Yes," Helene agreed, moving toward the door. "I'll send a note to my friends, and see whether either of them might wish to make up a party with us."

"I should be working," Rees put in.

"Nonsense!" Lina said with a laugh. "You work entirely too much."

Because there's nothing in my life but work, Rees thought. It had never bothered him before.

Chapter Twenty-seven.

Morning Calls.

Lady Esme Bonnington's Townhouse.

Number Forty, Berkeley Square.

"Darling, tell all!"

Helene grinned. "I can't. I have to wait for Gina. You know she'll be outraged to miss anything."

"You can't wait," Esme moaned. "She's always late these days. It's the devoted mother in her."

"As if you aren't one," Helene pointed out.

"I am a perfectly respectable mother," Esme protested. "I see William at proscribed times, and I do not allow him to overtake my every waking moment."

Helene forbore to point out that a set of childish fingerprints, seemingly dabbed with blackberry jelly, had made an imprint on Esme's exquisite gown. Nor did she remind her friend that only last month Esme had left a dinner attended by the Regent himself, on receiving a message from William's nanny saying that he showed signs of a cold.

"Just tell me a few details," Esme urged, her eyes shining with curiosity. "I have not been able to sleep wondering what's happening to you."

Somewhat to Helene's relief, Gina burst into the room at that moment. "I'm so sorry to be late," she cried. "I simply could not get out the door." She fell into a chair. "Don't pause for courtesies, Helene! What about the opera singer? What is it like, living in the house? Can you bear it?"

Her two friends were looking at her with expressions of identical curiosity, as if she were a calf with two heads or some other miracle of nature. "It's not so terrible," Helene said cautiously.

"I've done nothing but think about it, and I'm fairly sure that I would have to flay her," Esme said with frank blood-thirstiness. "Is she simply awful? What does she look like? Is she one of those brandy-faced women whom one sees around the Exchange, or the fancy articles who haunt Vauxhall?"

"Actually, Miss McKenna is not at all like a common lightskirt," Helene replied. "She's quite beautiful, and I have to admit that if I had the faintest particle of feeling for Rees-and of course I don't-I would be jealous of her looks."

"How can you bear it?" Gina asked wonderingly. "I know you're estranged from Rees, but he's still your husband. Even if I were separated from Cam for twenty years, I could not see him nuzzle up to some light woman in my presence without feeling murderous."

Helene shrugged. "They don't show any signs of intimacy in my presence."

"Well, that's quite considerate of her," Esme said, sounding rather surprised. "Frankly, I would think that she too would find this a difficult situation. After all, she's been living in that house for what, three years?"

"She knows which side of the bread is buttered," Gina said. "Why should she feel any distress, considering that she still lives in the house? Helene is obviously a mere visitor-to her own house!"

Esme nodded. "Have you found a moment to offer her a settlement, Helene?"

"No," Helene said slowly. "I'm not sure I would feel comfortable doing so, to be honest. She is oddly ladylike."