One Night with a Rake (Regency Rakes) by Connie Mason, Mia Marlowe

untuneful attempt at humming an appropriate melody in common time, he’d settled on rhythmic encouragement to keep their steps synchronized.
    It had the added benefit of making Georgette laugh at intervals. Her nose was still a little red from her earlier tears, but her eyes were brighter now. Nathaniel had never been tempted to hit a woman before, but if he were Lord Yorkingham, he’d have taken his wife over his knee and paddled her bum before he let her crush his daughter’s spirit as Lady Yorkingham had crushed Georgette’s at the dining table.
    “One-more-turn-four,” Georgette said, giving him a bit of a break as the set of figures came to a close and she settled into a deep curtsy. “Now-we’re-done-four.”
    “Done for? Oh, I hope not.”
    She laughed and the joyful sound broke over his heart like a sunrise. Then her expression turned serious.
    “This helps tremendously. Now I’ll be able to face Mr. Gooch tomorrow. Thank you, Nathaniel.”
    “My pleasure, milady.” He swept an old-fashioned bow. “Now, enough country dances. Do you know how to waltz?”
    Her eyes went round. “Of course not. I’ve never even seen it danced, but I’ve heard it’s positively indecent.”
    He silently conceded the point. The waltz made a man and a woman move in tandem, their bodies as close as the man dared and the woman allowed. There was no doubt about it. There was something undeniably sensual about dipping and turning together to a languid three-quarter-time melody.
    “Indecent or not, the Prince Regent is mad about the waltz,” Nathaniel said. “He introduced it to his court over a year ago.”
    “I read the notices at the time.” She tucked a wayward lock of hair behind her ear. “‘Obscene’ was one of the nicer things the Times had to say about it.”
    “The press will come around so long as the dance remains a favorite at court. They always do. In the end, the royals can do no wrong.”
    As opposed to me , he thought wryly.
    “Imagine how pleased your mother will be when you surprise her and the Duke of Cambridge with a waltz,” he said.
    Her worried frown was back.
    Nate despised himself for stooping to that level of extortion, but he wanted so desperately to hold her, it was beginning to border on a sickness. She’d been skittish around him since he took those liberties in the hackney. Teaching her the waltz was the only way he could be sure she’d allow him to touch her again.
    Finally, she sighed. “Very well. Teach me.”
    ***
    Reuben knew the rich were different. It was more than the cut of their clothes or their fancy educated talk. Everything they did seemed to shimmer with elegance. Like the way Lady Georgette and Lord Nathaniel were moving together around the room, for instance. Every step in time bespoke quality.
    Even though the dance did look a bit like doin’ the unmentionable deed with their clothes on. Still, if the nobility did it, it must be all right.
    “I never seen that dance before,” he whispered to Mercy. The pair of them had sneaked up to the little balcony usually reserved for the string quartet that played when Yorkingham House hosted a ball or soirée. The curtained balcony offered a perfect spot to watch the couple below with no danger of being caught hovering near the open doorways.
    “It’s the waltz,” Mercy whispered. “But they’re doing it a good bit slower than usual.”
    With each pass around the room, the space between Lady Georgette and the gentleman shrank until Reuben could see no daylight between them at all.
    “Is he holding my lady a good bit closer than he ought as well?”
    Mercy nodded, holding a slim finger over his lips to shush him.
    “Thought so,” Reuben said, bending so he could whisper into Mercy’s little shell of an ear. He decided the need to keep quiet was a good thing if it meant she let him put his lips so close to her tender earlobe. “Should we stop them?”
    She shrugged. “It’s just a dance. Her ladyship’s not