Chapter Six
The music was bright and lively, and even if she didn’t know the steps, Carly could barely stop herself from bouncing along with it. On the floor, a sextet of serious-faced young girls wove an intricate pattern on the dusty wooden floor with their feet, and when the music came to an end the audience burst into applause.
The band leader announced general dancing after that, and the crowd swelled and moved a little, people looking for partners and conversing with one another. Carly was content to watch, as she so often did at events like this, but then a small cup of cider was pressed into her hand.
She took it with a smile, expecting it to be one of the organizers or perhaps a member of the historical society that she was getting to know a bit, but then when she saw who it was, she scowled.
“You again,” she said, setting the cider aside. “Don’t you ever give up?”
“Well if I was going to give up, I would have had to have been trying something, wouldn’t I?” Donovan asked with a wink. Without so much as a second thought, he took a seat on the bench next to her.
“You’re always trying something,” Carly said, and it came out strangely flirtatious. She covered it with a smile, but she had a sinking feeling that he was laughing at her.
This was the way it had been going for two months now. He wasn’t stalking her, she knew that, but he had an uncanny knack for appearing at the places she wanted to go, whether it was a lecture on the history of the town or even a local sheep show. It was strange to see a man she knew to be worth as much as Donovan was in casual clothing, chatting up the people in the community.
Do they not see what he’s doing? She wondered, but she never found a place to air her suspicions about the man.
As for Donovan himself, he was the soul of kindness and congeniality. He was interested in what people had to say, he listened respectfully, and he offered solutions that were oftentimes taken. He was becoming a part of Loch Naine in a way that she never thought he would.
“I suppose I must be,” he said with a shrug.
“That was alarmingly honest of you,” she said warily, and he grinned at her. There was a slightly rueful hint to his smile, and Carly was not certain she had ever seen that before.
“I’m trying honesty,” he said. “Nothing else seemed to impress you, but I thought that this might be interesting at least.”
“Impress me?” she sputtered, and he rubbed her back gently with his warm hand.
“Yes. Money won’t do it, power won’t do it, so I thought I’d see how being honest might go.”
“All right then,” Carly said. Her mind was spinning right now, and she wasn’t sure what was going on. One thing that this man could always do was throw her off her stride, and now he was doing it again.
“All right?”
“All right then, honestly, what is it you want to do?” For a moment, there was such a powerful light in his eyes that she gasped a little, a tiny sound of surprise. There was some small part of her that knew exactly what it was that he wanted to do, and that part of her cried out for him as well. It was like being struck by lightning, it was like being stripped naked in the middle of the crowd.
She saw, clear as day, Donovan fighting back that primal urge, and what was left in its place was something that smiled at her with a reckless abandon.
“I’ll show you,” he said, taking her hand and dragging her onto the dance floor.
“Oh God, I can’t!” she yelped, but Donovan was laughing at her.
“Of course you can,” he said. “It’s dancing, it’s in your heart already.” Of course Carly had been raised in the United States, where her exposure to dancing had been a kindergarten tap class and stiff-armed swaying in eight grade. This was entirely different, and the couples on the floor whirled around her, their hands held lightly and high, their feet moving at the speed of light.
Carly’s first instinct was to draw away from Donovan, tugging hard if she had to, but then he took both hands in hers. There was a light in his gray eyes that called to her, and suddenly she was laughing as well. Her blood ran hot in her veins, and she realized she had never felt as bright as this before.
“Don’t run!” Donovan was calling to her. “Don’t run from me, pretty girl, just dance!”
“I don’t know how!” she said, but she was laughing as she said it. “Show me how!” He took her hands, one in each of his so that he was facing her.
“Simple as falling off a log. Simple as falling in love. Step to the right, bring your left foot to join, so right together, right together, left and turn...”
Despite the increasingly complicate patterns that the people around them were weaving, Carly was shocked at how easily she picked up the basics of the dance. Donovan was patient, teasing and encouraging by turns, and soon she had the sequence memorized, following Donovan and mirroring his motions.
“You’re good at this!” Donovan said.
It was a shock. She had never thought that she would be good at something like this, but there it was, and she was. She felt light and eternal on the dance floor, her steps moving quickly and twirls leaving her gasping with delight.
The music ended just as she spun towards Donovan, and instead of spinning her back out, he caught her in his arms. She was pressed against his chest, and in that moment, she would have sworn that the universe held only the two of them, only their eyes, only their breath, only the connection between them.
It was suddenly too much. She had danced in the arms of this dark and frightening man, one that she did not know or truly trust, and a part of her wanted to run away, rabbiting off into the darkness to hide under the covers.
As if Donovan could read her mind, he tightened his arms around her instinctively.
“Don’t run, pretty girl, don’t run from me,” he said roughly, and while force could not have kept her, the need in his voice did.
“What are we doing?” she asked, and she knew he had heard her even under the clatter of the other dancers.
His expression was complicated for a moment, and then the music started up again.
“We’re dancing,” he said with that crooked grin that she was growing to love. “Come on, this one’s easier.”
It was. This time, the men and the women were lined in two rows facing each other, progressing up and down the hall and then weaving between each other. All that Carly had to do was follow the women in front of her, and the older woman she was following tipped her a wink.
“This one is for courting couples,” she said. “It’s meant to show you who else might be in the hall that’s worth dancing with. Don’t let your man get too comfortable, eh?” Despite the woman’s words, as they wove through the lines, Carly’s eyes sought on Donovan over and over again. She could see that he certainly had his own admirers. There were girls barely out of school, and older women as well giving him an appreciative eye, but again and again, his gray eyes found hers.
They ended the dance facing one another, deeply bowing as the music faded, and Donovan took her hands in his. At first she thought he would pull her in for an embrace, but instead, he turned them up so that he could kiss her warm palms. His mouth was sweet, and his kisses sent a deep tremble through her body.
“What do you want?” she asked again, her words sounding foreign in her ears. There was a resonance to the question, and she knew that Donovan could feel it as well.
“To be away with you,” he said, never taking his eyes off of hers.
Something inside her broke. It was not the snapping of a branch, but instead the breaking of a wall. She could only hold back the tide of emotions she had for him for so long, and she was tired of it. So tired.
She took his large hand in her small one, and she followed him into the night.