Peters told him with an uncomfortable glance around another glittering ballroom that told Tom he would rather be almost anywhere else, but he’d been drawn into that Farenze Connection old Trethayne had referred to so scornfully against his will and felt some sort of obligation to support the rest of them tonight. ‘Those are not my real names,’ he added as drily as if discussing some obscure point of law with his fellow lawyers.
‘An alias?’ Tom asked with raised eyebrows and tried to ignore his wife’s frown and shushing gesture as he challenged his latest brother-in-arms.
‘We all sail under false colours in some ways, don’t you agree, my lord?’ the man challenged him back, and Tom looked at himself at the beginning of his quest and decided the man was right.
‘Perhaps, but some of us not quite as deliberately as others. Are you the black sheep of the family then, cast adrift for some youthful sin I’m quite certain you won’t tell us about?’
‘I could be,’ not-Peters said tightly as they approached the head of the receiving line, and delighted whispers began to break out in another overcrowded ballroom like ripe corn chattering together on a stir of summer hot air. ‘I could be their worst nightmare,’ he added so low nobody else but Tom and Polly could hear.
‘Or their favourite dream,’ Polly argued. ‘You never know what the next three months might bring you, but I’m very glad Tom’s brought him to me. Perhaps you should go back to them and find out if they really think themselves better off without you rather than deciding for them?’
‘And perhaps I should do the decent thing and stay away,’ he replied with a bleak certainty even Tom found rather chilling for a man he’d come to respect and like, if he could get through the rigid self-control Peters used to fend off the world.
‘Whatever you should or shouldn’t do, you’re at Virginia’s mercy for the next season and I wish you joy of it,’ Luke put in with a grin after they had got through the surprised greetings and hasty congratulations of their hosts and moved out into the ballroom beyond. ‘I certainly intend to enjoy the fruits of my labours to the full,’ he added with a wicked smile at Chloe.
‘Cocksure braggart,’ she chided softly enough so only they could hear her, despite the stars in her eyes.
‘Guilty,’ he admitted brazenly and whisked her into the next dance to show the polite world he only had eyes for his wife and intended to ignore all those dreadful rumours that the Farenze curse had struck again.
Dark and dangerous Lord Farenze himself had been captured and spellbound beyond diversion and now, horror of horrors, there was a rumour going about the ballroom that the Marquis of Mantaigne had wed the magnificent creature he refused to let go long enough to even be introduced. Society, or at least the young and hopeful female part of it, let out a long sigh of disappointment and readjusted its expectations of making a brilliant marriage or taking a dazzlingly handsome lover with that particular gentleman.
‘So you see, Peters, for I don’t imagine you’re about to gift us with the use of your real name, you are in danger of being made happy despite your best intentions to be miserable,’ Tom told him and dragged his own lady onto the dance-floor in his friend’s wake before Polly could protest at leaving her brother to be guided through the avidly curious throng by Virginia’s next hero.
‘He’ll guard your eldest lamb as if he’s the only heir to a kingdom, never fear, love,’ Tom whispered as Polly watched her eldest brother grin at the neatly dressed lawyer and follow him to the groaning refreshment table.
‘I don’t. Mr Peters has a very safe pair of hands and Toby is far more grown up than any of the pampered sons and heirs these people are accustomed to. If they try to pump him for details, he’ll very likely to tell them some wild and improbable story just for the fun of it.’
‘Aye, and I can’t help liking him for it.’
‘Neither can I,’ Polly admitted with a chuckle that did something very drastic indeed to Tom’s heart and sent him into a state of complete desire between one second and the next.
‘I much prefer his big sister though,’ he admitted huskily as they came back together for the next part of the dance and even a brisk measure with a very disapproving matron hadn’t been enough to restore him to a fit state to inhabit a lady’s ballroom. ‘You couldn’t manage a bit of a stumble, or perhaps even a faint, could you, love? I want to bed you even more urgently than I did this afternoon and I don’t think there’s any way I can conceal the fact from the rest of the world for much longer.’
‘It would take half a dozen footmen to carry me out,’ she said with a wry smile and a huff of laughter as she looked down at the evidence of his rampant need for her. ‘Hmm, I do see what you mean, though,’ she added with a delighted smile that only made it worse.
‘I won’t have you traduce yourself, or me for that matter, my love. You are just as tall as you need to be and I wouldn’t have you even half an inch less and at least if I’m carrying you I can hide behind your skirts, for once.’
‘You couldn’t,’ she gasped a little less certainly as the music finally wound down, and she looked as if she felt ready to melt from the inside out as well.
‘I’m impressive, Polly, my darling, but not even I am too huge not to be able to hide what you do to me behind that delightful but highly unnecessary wisp of silk and nonsense,’ he said with a dismissive glance at the finest gown in a whole wardrobe of them that the Bond Street modiste had rushed through her workroom in time for Lady Mantaigne to make her début in polite society at the advanced age of four and twenty.
‘It is very necessary,’ she argued absent-mindedly as she flitted through scenarios for getting out of this ballroom in double-quick time and without her lord making a scandal of them both mere days into their marriage.
‘Not as far as I’m concerned it’s not,’ he argued as his intensely blue eyes met hers with a wealth of hot promises that made her shiver with anticipation. ‘I want you in it, out of it and any other way I can have you, my lovely witchy Polly. From the first moment I laid eyes on you I’ve been racked with need and I don’t intend either of us to be denied satiating that need again for much longer.’
‘We sated it all afternoon, Tom,’ she protested half-heartedly, but there was as much heat in her grey-green-blue eyes as in his, and her breath was coming so short his fascinated gaze was fixed on her décolletage as her breasts rose magnificently, begging for his attentions as soon as possible under the promise of all he’d taught her to expect these past few days since they married in haste. ‘I suppose I am very hot,’ she managed to say rather breathily.
‘You most certainly are,’ he drawled, with the Tomcat smile that had once made her hackles rise and hot shivers of desire plague her dreams and now made her long to share them with him even more than she had a second ago.
‘I love you, Tom,’ she breathed, and to the devil with anyone who might be listening.
‘And I love you, my darling, but any minute now I might have to beg you to get us out of here, because I can’t seem to string two thoughts together than aren’t of making love to you as soon and as long as I can find an excuse to.’
‘Oh, very well then,’ she said with a tight little sigh that told him more than a hundred words of how much she loved and wanted him back, because she obligingly drooped as if quite overcome by the heat and excitement of her first night amongst the ton and trusted him absolutely to catch her and get them out of here as fast as
