“Too studied.” Phin chuckled as he grabbed her around the waist and twirled her once so that she had no choice but to shriek with unladylike laughter. “There. Much better. You can tell all your friends that I swept you off your feet.”
Was it any wonder he filled her every dream? Cordelia laughed again as she tucked her arm into his. “Mama would faint dead away.”
He hummed and led her into the dappled shadow of the oak. “Luckily, she always has her smelling salts at hand.”
“Ah, but then she’d launch straight into a rant about how I hadn’t been sent to the Female Academy to learn daydreaming and childishness.” She bit her lips as she looked up at him, partly to tamp down the smile, partly so they would redden.
That mischievous light shone in his eyes, the one that had lured her into terrible scrapes when she was a girl. “No, you were sent there to learn how to catch a husband. Any success?”
Had he posed the question to Ginny, she would have demurred and recited something about how ladies never spoke of such things until a formal announcement could be made.
Utter fiddle-faddle, of course. And far too dull. “I’ll have you know that I received a proposal just this morning, Phineas Dunn, from a . . . a sultan.”
His deep laughter made the garden gleam brighter, the colors more vivid. “A sultan, is it? What happened to that emperor you told me about last month?”
Oh, that tale had been one of her favorites. She had spent an entire day in her room writing it down, which had thrown Mama into a conniption. “He was reunited with the love of his youth, so I graciously stepped aside.”
The way Phin’s hazel eyes sparkled made her wonder if perhaps all those stories she had let herself imagine about him had a hope of coming true. “That’s my Delia, as gracious as she is lovely.”
His Delia? She could scarcely catch her breath. Never in her life had she fainted, but she felt downright lightheaded now. “See there, I did learn something at finishing school.”
With another chuckle, he wove their fingers together and gazed upon them for a long moment. “I’m going to miss you.” He angled his eyes up, a half-smile tilting his mouth. “When I get back, am I going to find you married to some planter’s son who can claim more slaves and acres than anyone in four counties?”
“I . . .” Was he asking her to wait for him? No, no, she mustn’t let herself get carried away. Though that would be a dream come true—Phineas Dunn dropping to his knee and proposing. They could marry before he left, under the magnolia blossoms . . .
Cordelia drew in as deep a breath as her corset would allow and hoped her smile didn’t wobble. “I shall miss you, too.”
He used their joined hands to pull her closer. She prayed her thudding heart wasn’t audible to him. “How much?”
As if a lady could answer such a question! As if there were an answer to it, a quantity one could assign. I shall miss you two quarts and three-fourths a cup. Her gaze moved from the gleaming buttons on his coat down to the handsome gold braid at the cuff and landed on the sword strapped to his side. A shiver coursed up her spine. “Don’t go, Phin.”
He snapped upright, amusement and incredulity replacing the warmth in his gaze. “What’s this? I thought you would be happy to see me go off to war. Just think of all the stories I’ll bring home for you, Delia. All the Yankees I’ll outwit, and adventure on the high seas to boot, aboard the Sumter.”
She traced one of the loops of braid with a light fingertip. Happy? No. Proud, perhaps, but . . . “What good will that do me if your ship is blown to bits by cannonballs? Or capsized in a hurricane? Or attacked by a giant squid? Or . . . or eaten by a whale?”
“Eaten by a . . . Delia, really, that’s about as likely as me getting mauled by a tiger.”
Her eyes went wide. “Are there any of those around? I heard they are going to open a zoological park in New York. What if you end up fighting the Yankees up that way and some exotic creature escapes and stalks you?”
Phin chuckled and lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her knuckles that made them tingle. “I will be fine. And I will come home full to bursting with the most exciting tales you’ve ever heard.”
I’d rather have you. The words twisted themselves around her tongue. A lady would never set them loose, not outside the pages of a book, but neither could a more appropriate response squeeze past them. Though she probably looked like a complete ninny just staring at him, silent.
Her pulse hammered when he pulled her closer still and angled his head. His mouth remained turned up in that beautiful smile of his. “Are you going to pull away from me like you did Bacon?”
She should, to be sure. Much as she yearned to linger in his arms, it wouldn’t do to be caught, and there were far too many guests clamoring about the barbeque tables to think this bubble of privacy would last long. Besides, Phin had no intention of marrying her before he headed to war, given that he left tomorrow.
Would it be such a terrible thing, then, to give him a farewell kiss to send him on his way? She hoped not, because she couldn’t bring herself to pull away, and he drew slowly nearer.
“Delia? Are you back here? It’s time for Daddy’s announcement.” Ginny’s voice rang through the garden as light and clear as a chime. “Delia? Is that you?”
Cordelia pulled away so she could wave at her elder sister. “It’s me, Ginny. I’ll be right there.”
Ginny stopped a few steps into the garden and smiled. Her radiance came, no doubt, because in moments Daddy would let it be known that his baby girl would marry Charlie Worth within the fortnight, before Charlie joined up. “Do hurry, Delie-Darlin. I’m too excited to wait a moment longer than necessary.”
“I’m coming.”
The promise was enough to send Ginny on her way, though Cordelia wasn’t sure whether she ought to follow now or say something more to Phin.
He answered the question by catching her around the waist and pulling her against him. “Not yet, you don’t.”
That intoxicating smile of his flashed again. How would she survive without the promise of seeing it regularly? “Phin, we—”
“Shh.” He brushed a thick curl over her shoulder and then slid his hand under the locks, anchoring her head. Oh, how she hoped he couldn’t tell how he affected her. She tried to commit every detail to memory as he tilted her face up, inclined his own. The way his gaze tangled with hers and his lids half-shuttered his eyes . . .
But then their lips touched, and her mind went foggy and incoherent. She couldn’t have said how long that first gentle kiss lasted before he deepened it. All she knew was that no words in the world could have captured this magic, the feeling of a puzzle clicking into place at long last, the swell of a heart that hadn’t realized until then what it meant to truly feel.
When he pulled away, it took her a moment to realize her arms had locked around his neck. And for the life of her, she could think of nothing clever to say.
Phin’s smile looked adorably smug. “Will you save me a waltz?”
“Today?”
“Every day. Every ball. That ought to guarantee you remember me while I’m gone.”
As if she could forget the man who embodied all her dreams. “Every waltz. But you had better come back to me, Phineas Dunn.”