The waltz ended, and Lindy extricated herself from Maureen’s rather bony clutches to switch off the music, before turning to everyone with a light, friendly clap. “Wonderful effort, everyone! Now, to mix things up a bit, why don’t we change partners?”
Dutifully everyone came apart, looking around each other with the sort of shy uncertainty of a twelve-year-old being chosen for a team sport in PE. Lindy decided to take control. “Simon, why don’t you go with Maureen, and Olivia, you can go with…” She was about to say Roger when she saw his utterly stricken look, and decided quickly to change. “Ellen. I’ll take Roger.” She gave him what she hoped was a smiling, encouraging look but his expression of something close to terror had turned to a more predictable scowl. What was with this man? Lindy wondered. He was the proverbial riddle wrapped in an enigma. She couldn’t understand him at all, or why he was here.
Simon and Olivia, Maureen and Ellen all gamely took their places, and Lindy put another waltz on her phone. As the strains came through the speakers, she turned to her partner.
“So now I’m the woman, and you’re the man,” she said, and Roger gave her an incredulous look.
“I did not realise such a thing was in any doubt.”
Lindy swallowed her instinctive gurgle of laughter. “I only meant, because I was dancing as the man with Maureen.”
“But you’re not with Maureen,” he pointed out, and Lindy only just kept from rolling her eyes.
“Right. So, as you’re the man, you’re meant to lead.” She took his hand—warm, dry, strong, she couldn’t help but notice—in hers and placed her other hand on his shoulder. Also warm, dry, strong. And his aftershave, if that’s what it was, was quite a nice smell. Understated and old-fashioned, perhaps bay rum. “You put your hand on my waist,” she reminded him, and with a look on his face that made him seem as if he were reaching into a pit of wriggling snakes with his bare hand, Roger planted his palm on the dip of her waist.
“Very good,” Lindy encouraged. If she felt a little frisson of something at the feel of his hand on her waist, it had to be merely relief that he was coping okay so far. Everyone else had started shuffling around, but she and Roger still had their feet glued to the floor. At least they were in position.
“And now you lead,” Lindy continued in a tone similar to one she suspected was used when soothing a wild horse. “Right foot forward, left foot side, right to left, and back—” Somehow, with a bit of stumbling and jerky steps, they got through the basics. “And now again,” Lindy said as once more they went through the box step. “See, this is easy.”
“I would have to disagree on that point,” Roger replied dryly, so dryly that Lindy thought he was simply making a statement rather than being wry. Or was he? She looked up, scanning his face for clues and finding none.
Then Roger glanced down at her, his warm, whisky-brown gaze meeting her own for a second that felt weirdly jolting, making Lindy’s hand spasm a little on his shoulder. What was wrong with her?
She wasn’t sure who looked away first; she had a feeling they’d both jerked their gazes away as fast as they could, the same way you might yank your hand back from an open flame. And in truth it had, very oddly, felt a little bit like that. Lindy could make absolutely no sense of her reaction. It wasn’t as if…no, she couldn’t even think that. It was ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.
“You’re doing very well,” she told him and Roger moved his gaze back to hers with obvious reluctance.
“I am not. Please don’t humour me.”
“You’re not enjoying yourself?” she dared to tease, and his serious expression did not flicker in the least.
“I am not.”
“Why did you register, then?” Lindy couldn’t help but ask. “Was it just for your mum’s sake? She is your mum, isn’t she?”
A tiny pause, like a flinch, although Roger’s expression didn’t change. Lindy was starting to think it very rarely changed. “Yes, she is, and yes, that is more or less the reason,” he said, the words offered reluctantly, making Lindy wonder.
The waltz was coming to an end, and so with a quick, apologetic smile, Lindy stepped back from Roger and then hurried over to turn the music off.
“Right, everyone, that was a brilliant start,” she sang out cheerfully. “How are you all feeling?”
“Brilliant,” Ellen parroted back enthusiastically while Maureen rubbed her lower back.
“Like I’m a bit creaky,” she said in her no-nonsense, almost brusque way. “But then I am, and more than a bit.”
“Why don’t we have a tea break?” Lindy suggested. They’d only been going for half an hour, but she felt the need for a cuppa, and she thought her pupils did, as well. “And then we’ll start again.”
She glanced at Roger—she wasn’t sure why—but he wasn’t looking at her. He had gone over to his mother, and was stooping slightly to speak to her, a look of concern on his face, making Lindy wonder. Again.
As if sensing her speculative gaze on him, he looked up, right at her—and frowned. No jolt this time, unless it was of embarrassment. Lindy quickly turned away, wondering yet again just what intrigued her about Roger Wentworth, when he had to be one of the dullest, most staid people she’d ever met.
Chapter Three
The door to Tea on the Lea, Olivia James’s bakery and teashop, jangled merrily as Lindy followed her friends Ava, Harriet, Alice and Emily inside. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, nearly a week since she’d started her dancing classes, and she’d been more or less strong-armed into joining everyone for a Saturday afternoon cream tea. Lindy was game enough, although she wished Ellie had been able to make it. She’d only seen her friend once since she’d moved down south, and while she understood that Ellie was busy, it still felt a bit disappointing.
“So, Lindy,” Harriet said as she pushed two small wrought-iron tables together and then began arranging chairs, clearly a woman in charge, “you’ve got to dish all the gossip on who is dancing with whom.”
“I don’t think there’s any gossip to dish,” Lindy replied with a smile. Monday’s class had gone well enough—after practising the waltz for another half hour, she’d moved on to a basic cross step. Maureen had had to stop midway because her arthritis was playing up, and Simon and Olivia had been fairly hopeless if cheerfully willing. As for Roger and Ellen…every time Lindy thought of them she fought an urge to laugh, or at least smile.
Ellen had been so relentlessly chipper, and Roger had looked…tortured. Perhaps constipated. Actually, both. She hadn’t really had a chance to talk to him again beyond giving him instructions, and yet she had been weirdly curious about a man who seemed to be the definition of ‘what it says on the tin.’ Surely there were no hidden depths to a man like Roger Wentworth. Most people would call him a bore, if not a downright pillock. He was pedantic, sanctimonious, stuffy, and grumpy.
When Lindy had been making the tea, he’d wiped the inside of the mugs with his handkerchief. Admittedly the cups had looked a bit tea-stained and grotty, but still. Something about his prim fussiness got right up her nose, and yet he made her curious.