“I didn’t think you smoked,” Ann said.
“Not anymore. Not since I moved here. These English cigarettes are awful.” Miriam frowned as she exhaled a thin plume of smoke.
“Then why bother?”
“I am not sure,” Miriam admitted with a smile. “Habit, I suppose. Why do you not smoke?”
“My mum didn’t approve. And then . . . well, I never really liked the smell of it. I still don’t. The air in here is like the top deck of a bus.”
Ann looked around the ballroom, marveling at how quickly it had filled up. The dance floor was packed, with no shortage of uniformed men among the dancers. Some people were dressed in the same clothes they’d worn to work; some, like her, were wearing a variation of their Sunday best; and some were dressed to the nines.
The group at the next table fell into the latter category. The women wore gorgeously embellished cocktail dresses, one of which Ann was fairly certain had come from Hartnell, and jewels sparkled at their wrists, necks, and ears. One even had a pearl-and-diamond-studded comb tucked into her chignon. The lone man at their table wore a dinner jacket and reminded her of Clark Gable, only with rather less chin.
The woman closest to her was young, only just out of her teens, and had a mink-lined wrap around her shoulders in spite of the sweltering weather. As Ann watched, one end came loose and slithered down to droop on the floor, but the woman didn’t seem to notice. It would be a shame for such a pretty garment to be ruined.
“Excuse me,” she said, leaning forward. The woman didn’t respond. “Excuse me,” she said again, and this time she reached out to touch the woman’s arm. “I beg your pardon, but your wrap has fallen.”
The woman looked round, a vee of annoyance creasing her brow. “What?”
“Your wrap. It’s on the floor.”
“Oh, right.” She yanked the wrap up and back across her lap. “Thanks.” Almost as an afterthought, she offered a perfunctory smile before turning back to her friends.
Ethel and Doris returned just then with glasses of lemonade for everyone. “Barman says the licensing inspector has a beef with the owners. So this is the strongest the drinks will get tonight.”
Their reassurances that they didn’t mind at all, and in fact preferred lemonade to anything else, were interrupted by a squeal of protest from the next table.
“Really? This is the best you can do? I told you I didn’t want to come to this grubby little place. Why don’t you ever listen?” It was the girl with the fur wrap.
Another man had arrived at her table, his hands laden with glasses of lemonade, and she was making no secret of her disappointment. He bent his head low, said something that made her pout, then laugh, but rather than sit down he stood behind her, a hand on the back of her chair, and surveyed the ballroom. Perhaps he was looking for other people he knew. Perhaps he was feeling annoyed at her outburst and needed a moment to collect himself.
He really was terrifically handsome. Tall but not eye-wateringly so, he had a slim build and posture that hinted at time in the military. His fair hair was cut short and swept back from his brow, and his dinner jacket was tailored so perfectly it must have been made for him.
“Do you see that fellow at the next table?” Ruthie hissed in her ear. “Do you think that’s the princess’s fiancé? Lieutenant Mountbatten?”
“No,” Ann whispered back, shaking her head. “There’s a resemblance, but it’s not him. The lieutenant is in his early twenties, but this man must be closer to thirty.”
“Too bad. Imagine if we’d been able to say we saw him on our night out!”
Just then he turned and, as if he somehow knew she’d been talking about him, fixed his gaze on Ann. She shrank in her chair, although she knew there was no way he could have heard what she and Ruthie had been saying. And it wasn’t as if being compared to Princess Elizabeth’s fiancé was an insult, after all.
He smiled at her. He smiled until a dimple appeared in his cheek and his eyes crinkled at the corners, and all the time he never looked away.
She wanted so badly to check behind her, for surely he was looking at someone at the table beyond. Someone he knew and liked, and in a moment he would brush past her and she would know, definitively, that his smile had been too good to be true.
She must have had a questioning look on her face, because he nodded, just the once, and then he walked over to her. To her, not anyone else, and he held out his hand. To her.
“I beg your pardon if I’m intruding, but I should very much like the favor of a dance,” he said, and his voice was as attractive as the rest of him.