Fire Under Snow by Dorothy Vernon

hips.”
    â€œI didn’t realize you were such an expert.”
    â€œI’m not. I just hold the opinion that everything worth doing is worth doing well. Did you know that dancing was one of mankind’s earliest forms of expression? Dancing is older than anything except eating and drinking and ... Can you guess what else has survived the years and will continue to do so as long as people exist?” He smiled when she didn’t answer. “Of course, you know how primitive man gave his emotions an outlet when he banked up the fire and crawled under the animal skins onto his bed of twigs and dry grass next to his mate.”
    She purposely ignored the allusion to love- making and said, “I didn’t realize dancing dated back that far.”
    â€œIt came before speech. Language, as we know it, hadn’t been thought of when our Stone Age counterpart was drawing, on the walls of his cave, not only the animals he hunted with his crude flint axes – bison, wild boar, deer and elk – but also scenes depicting the rhythmic outlet of his thoughts and emotions.”
    She was mesmerized by the thought that people had been dancing before the Christian era and had danced down through the centuries ever since. It was not just a vogue; it was a form of expression intrinsic to life.
    As her mind relaxed, the slow fascination of the rhythm took over her feet and she could even speak without stumbling. She was quite disappointed when he said it was time to take her home. She realized with surprise that they were the only couple on the floor.
    â€œThank you for the dancing lesson,” she said sincerely. “I enjoyed it.”
    He looked down at her for a moment, his expression still. Then he smiled, and it was a smile of such rare charm, one she had never seen on his face until that moment, that she almost started back in amazement. “So did I,” he said. “We must do it again some time.”
    This kinder mood lasted on the journey home. He parked the car just short of the pool of light cast by the street lamp outside her apartment building.
    In the light available she could just see that his eyes were still benign as he said, “I wish I understood you, Lorraine. I might if I knew. I know you have a past – everyone has. I’m sure yours is as white as virgin snow compared with mine. The muddy patches in my past don’t bother me. Yet this thing in your past obviously bothers you.”
    It wasn’t difficult to know what had brought this on. A piece of her past had walked in on her tonight in the form of Sir William.
    â€œYes, it bothers me,” she said guardedly.
    â€œSo far you’ve only given me the headlines – the bulletin announcements, as it were – but never the details.”
    At the beginning she hadn’t told him because it had seemed pointless to put herself through the ordeal, believing as she had that nothing could come of their friendship. But perhaps now the situation had altered. He hadn’t grown tired of her and showed no signs of doing so. As things stood at present, she owed it to him to tell him.
    If only she could know for sure his motive in wanting to know. If it was to even up the score with Sir William, because in his supreme conceit he couldn’t bear to think that any man knew things about her that he didn’t, then she owed him nothing.
    What did it matter whether she owed it to him or not? Eventually she would have to tell him. Preferably before he found out, which he undoubtedly would when Jamie returned from the States.
    It was going to be tricky. She must try not to discredit Jamie too much. She didn’t want to cause bad feeling between the two men. And she must make him promise not to take up the battle for her. Not that she anticipated one. Jamie would be glad of his freedom now that he was a big star. She wondered why he hadn’t sought her out to ask her to be released from their marriage