“With me?” she asked, not even trying to hide her disbelief.
“Yes. With you. If your friends don’t object.”
“Go on,” Ruthie said, nudging her sharply. “Don’t make him wait.”
“But—”
“Leave your bag. We’ll keep an eye on it.”
Ann looked to Miriam, but her friend only shrugged in that annoying French way of hers that never gave the slightest hint of what she really thought.
What else could she do but take his hand and let him lead her to the dance floor? It was a dream, a dream she’d never have conjured on her own, this moment when he set his hand at her back, his hand that was so wide she could feel the heat of it from her shoulders to her waist, and she let her hand rest on his shoulder as he pulled them into the mass of dancers, two more fish in a rushing stream, and he was still smiling at her, his teeth so white and straight, a film star come to life in her arms.
The band was playing a fox-trot, the melody unfamiliar, and she wasn’t sure, at first, how she would manage to keep up. It had been so long since she danced. But he was a wonderful dancer, so assured in his movements that he could make even the clumsiest partner appear elegant, and after a few measures her fears melted away.
They danced across the floor and back again, and though she knew she ought to try to make conversation, even if only to talk about the infernally warm weather, her voice remained trapped in her throat. She felt the muscles of his shoulder flexing beneath her touch, marveled at the way her other hand was engulfed in his strong, warm grasp.
Their movements slowed, the music faded away, and she realized the dance had come to an end. It had been a lovely interlude, but—
“Surely you aren’t going to abandon me now?” he asked, and before she could say anything they were moving again. It was “Fools Rush In,” one of her favorites.
“I love this song,” he said, bending his head to her ear. “It must have been early ’41 when I first heard it. One of the chaps in my company unearthed a gramophone and a stack of records from God only knows where, and this was one of them. We’d sit in our smelly old tent in the middle of the desert and listen to the records, night after night after night. I remember how I wondered if I’d ever have the chance to dance with a pretty girl in a ballroom again. And here I am.”
“You were in North Africa during the war?” she ventured.
“I was. Wounded at Tobruk, but they patched me up well enough. Sicily and Italy after that.”
“Are you still in the army?”
“In a manner of speaking, though I’m not really supposed to talk about it. All rather hush-hush, I’m afraid.”
“Of course,” she agreed. “Loose lips and all that.”
“See? I knew you’d understand.”
She braced herself for him to ask her a question or two in return, but he seemed content to simply listen to the music and dance. When the band played the final bars of the song, she held her breath, hoping it would be another fox-trot, or even a waltz. She still remembered how to waltz.
But it was a jitterbug, a dance that half the ballrooms in London still banned, and even if she’d been completely certain of all the steps she wouldn’t have dared to dance it with a stranger.
“Do you mind if we leave this to the younger crowd?” he asked. “I don’t much relish making a fool out of myself in front of half of London.” Taking her near hand, he tucked it into the crook of his arm. “Why don’t we get a drink before returning to our tables? In a quiet part of the room? Somewhere we can talk?” His expression, as he gazed down at her, implied that talking with her was likely to be the highlight of his evening.
He led her around the room, to the smaller of the bars under the mezzanine, and they joined the short queue. “Do you mind lemonade? I gather that’s all they have on offer tonight.”
“That’s fine. I’m not really used to anything stronger,” she admitted.
“My mother would approve. She’s always twittering on about young women and their lack of decorum. Would you believe she insists that trousers are the real problem? That was the moment, she maintains, when our civilization turned toward disaster.”
He paid for their lemonades with a five-pound note, told the barman to keep an entire shilling from the change as his tip, and carried their glasses to a small table in a relatively dark and quiet corner. He even pulled out her chair and waited for her to sit before joining her.
She took a sip of the lemonade and tried to think of something to say. “Thank you for the lemonade,” was the best she could do. Even worse, she found herself softening her accent. Not much, not enough to sound as if she were aping her betters. But enough to shrink the distance between Mayfair and Barking by a few miles.