“A trois-temps waltz,” said Mr. Bradford, smiling crookedly. With his rumpled hair and uneven cravat, it seemed to make him symmetrical. “If that is agreeable.”
Beneath his steady form, Azalea thought she felt his fingers trembling, just a touch.
“I love the waltz,” said Azalea. She dimpled.
The girls, at the edge of the hall, held their breath as Azalea and Mr. Bradford began.
Mr. Bradford was not a perfect dancer. His steps were a bit flat, and he stumbled through the transition steps, but…
He was shockingly easy to follow. The pressure of his hand, the step of his foot, the angle of his frame…it was like reading his mind. When he leaned right, they turned in perfect unison. He swept her across the gallery in a quick three, a dizzying pace. Gilded frames and glass cases and the window blurred in her vision, and Azalea spun out, her skirts pulling and poofing around her, before he caught her and brought her back into dance position. She could almost hear music playing, swelling inside of her.
Mother had once told her about this perfect twining into one. She called it interweave, and said it was hard to do, for it took the perfect matching of the partners’ strengths to overshadow each other’s weaknesses, meshing into one glorious dance. Azalea felt the giddiness of being locked in not a pairing, but a dance. So starkly different than dancing with Keeper. Never that horrid feeling that she owed him something; no holding her breath, wishing for the dance to end. Now, spinning from Mr. Bradford’s hand, her eyes closed, spinning back and feeling him catch her, she felt the thrill of the dance, of being matched, flow through her.
“Heavens, you’re good!” said Azalea, breathless.
“You’re stupendous,” said Mr. Bradford, just as breathless. “It’s like dancing with a top!”
Azalea stumbled through the transition step.
“A top?” she said.
“Ah, a very graceful, delicate spinning top,” he said, coloring.
Azalea laughed. He brought her into a hesitation step, and time hiccupped to a stop. Azalea was so close she could smell the starch on his cravat.
“I didn’t think I would have a moment alone with you,” he said, his voice richer now it was quiet. He hesitated and touched a strand of auburn hair, brushing it away from her cheek. “Princess Azalea.”
Everything flashed to the moment she had stood at the cab door, wrapped in a lady’s old coat and shivering in the morning air, and her words, starkly painting the frosted silence with the dark, jagged letters, I’m Princess Azalea….
The internal music faded.
“Mr. Bradford, why are you here?” said Azalea. “I mean here. At the palace.”
The spark in Mr. Bradford’s eyes faded, a touch. He opened his mouth, then closed it. And kept it closed. Azalea pulled away.
“I think you ought to dance with Bramble, not me,” she said.
His dark eyebrows did not move a fraction.
“That was it?” called Bramble from the other side of the hall. In the rectangle of window light, the girls pouted and folded the arms. “That was just a waltz! And not a fancy one, either! We feel cheated.”
Mr. Bradford’s crooked smile returned to his face, and he pulled Azalea into a sudden dance position with a rustling of skirts.
“Let us show them my favorite dance!” he said. “The polka!”
Azalea had only danced the polka twice in her life, and now she relearned it at neck-breaking speed as he danced her across the floor in a galloping flourish. She hadn’t expected Mr. Bradford to be a polka sort of gentleman. Lord Teddie, yes, but Mr. Bradford? He was quite good! Azalea’s skirts billowed and bounced. The energy caught, and all the girls leaped to their feet, dancing, clapping, and singing a bright tune. When Azalea spun away, dizzy and breathless, Mr. Bradford swept up Kale and threw her into the air. She shrieked with delight. Everyone whirled, black skirts blossoming around them over the long red rug. The snow outside twirled with them.
Hollyhock jumped about with such fervor that she paid little attention to where her leaps took her, and laughing, she whumpfed, hard, against the sword’s case.
Everything happened slowly, as though underwater. The entire case fell in an arc and smashed against the floor.
Glass exploded. Someone cried out. The sword skittered across the floor and came to a rest beneath one of the forbidden sofas. A sick, panicked feeling erupted throughout Azalea. Her mind shrieked. She fled to the sofa, knelt, and grasped for the sword.
Though dented, pockmarked, and mottled as always, it was unharmed. Azalea nearly fainted with relief. She placed it gently—ever so gently—on the sofa. After making certain Hollyhock wasn’t cut or bruised, she sent Flora and Goldenrod for the broom, and made the youngest girls sit on the sofas before they cut themselves. Mr. Bradford was beside himself, apologizing profusely while picking up the larger pieces. Flora and Goldenrod arrived minutes later, to everyone’s chagrin, with the King.
“He followed us,” said Flora in a tiny voice.