had been kissed before, she was sure she had, but all of those kisses paled beneath the reality of Tristan’s mouth as it curved, and slanted, and moved possessively upon hers. As his strong arms forced the very air from her lungs, he captured her breath in his mouth and breathed his own life back into her. It was so personal, so intimate an action, that she felt herself to have been actually violated. When the tip of his tongue slid along the edge of her teeth as his mouth opened more fully over hers, then brazenly penetrated, Mary instinctively fought back.
“Ouch! You hellion!” Tristan spat, jumping back to reach a finger inside his mouth to inspect his wounded tongue.
Her hands balled into fists at her sides, her firm chin out-thrust in indignation, Mary warned coldly: “Touch me again, you miserable creature—even come within a mile of me—and I’ll have you horsewhipped!”
Watching appreciatively as Mary’s indignant figure stomped back into the ballroom, his hand held to the cheek she had slapped with some force in order to punctuate her parting warning, Tristan mused aloud, “She’d probably do it too. And at the moment, by God, it almost seems worth it.”
RACHEL HAD OBSERVED Mary’s departure with Rule, and had counted the minutes until her charge had returned alone to the ballroom, looking more than a little the worse for wear. But before Rachel could cross the floor to find out just what her infuriating nephew had done this time, Mary was claimed for a dance by some violet satin-clad exquisite and disappeared into the crowd of revelers.
That left Tristan, and Rachel was determined not to let the fellow get away without an explanation of what had transpired on the balcony. She found him lounging against the doorjamb, boring a hole in Mary’s unsuspecting back like some hot-headed halfling. She looked from Tristan to Mary and then back again, hardly believing what her eyes were telling her. It couldn’t be. It was utterly impossible. The Ruthless Lord Rule pricked by Cupid’s dart? Tristan was just shy of his thirtieth birthday, and in all that time he had never once shown any signs of being the romantic sort. True, she owned to herself, he had been hopping about the Continent and God only knew where else these past seven years or more, but considering the multitude of rumors about his involvement with the military, it seemed impossible for him to have carried on any serious romantic interlude without all of London finding out about it one way or another.
Tilting her head to one side, she inspected Tristan’s expression as he stood rock still, his whole body taut with suppressed—what? Fury? Passion? Lust? “Good heavens,” she whispered, “this novel writing has made me into a hysteric. Soon I’ll be reading Byron and swooning dead away.” Still, she thought as she looked at her nephew again, more objectively this time, Rule does have a certain look about him—the same sort of look, if I recall it correctly, that he had at the age of twelve, when his father refused to allow him on that great big stallion. And when Rachel recalled that Tristan had eventually not only mounted that stallion, but broken him to saddle, her fears for her charge began anew.
“Tristan,” she said, tugging on his sleeve to get his attention, “you look like a thundercloud. Kindly smile at me as if you didn’t wish me at the farthest corners of the earth and stop casting a pall over this entire company. I swear three totally innocent gentlemen have already departed the ballroom, believing you had them in their sights.”
Distracted, Rule ignored his aunt’s sarcasm, if indeed he had understood it. After all, he wasn’t deliberately striking a pose or any such thing. He was merely being himself—his intense, determined, passionate self. He might, in his more candid moments, admit to possessing a bit of a short fuse, but he consoled himself with the knowledge that he was never purposely mean. He leveled one long, last piercing look at the scrap of female that could just be the exception to his self-imposed rule of absolute chivalry where the weaker sex was concerned, and turned to address his aunt. “You wanted something, Aunt? A cooling glass of lemonade, perhaps?”
Rachel clenched her teeth in frustration. Tristan had always had this maddening ability to turn her up sweet just when she was about to tear a wide strip off his hide. A glass of lemonade, indeed! Better to have three fingers of whiskey if she was about to try to beat some sense into the idiot’s thick head! “No, thank you, dear,” she somehow trilled, taking his arm. “But it is dreadfully close in the ballroom. Perhaps you could bear me company for a stroll around the balcony?”
Again Tristan looked to the dance floor, where Mary was busily flirting with three gentlemen who were all vying for her hand for the next set, and then back at his aunt. “A stroll, you say? On the balcony? Couldn’t you just stand here in the doorway and take a few deep, bracing breaths?”
“Tristan Montgomery Rule!” Rachel snapped, longing to do him an injury. “Come with me willingly or I’ll pull you along by the ear like I did when you were in short pants!” And with that, she sailed off through the archway—her reluctant nephew trailing along behind—and prepared to bribe, bluster, threaten, or cajole the truth out of him. She owed it to Henry!
“’ERE NOW, ARE YER GONNA EAT wit dem dabblers on?” Ben questioned Mary, who had yet to relinquish her gloves into the servant’s waiting hands. “Yer be ‘ere fer yafflin’, ain’t yer? Montague’s done up a treat, so’s yer best be clammed.”
Mary turned to her aunt. “What did he say?” she asked, prudently giving over her gloves before the little fellow stripped them from her hands. “And what’s a Montague?”
Rachel nodded to the now deeply bowing Ben and propelled her charge up the stairs to the drawing room where Jennie and Lucy waited. “Montague is Jennie’s idea of a French chef, and you’d better be hungry or there may be the devil to pay. It’s a long story,” she conceded as Mary’s mouth opened on another question. “Suffice it to say Jennie has these little projects. For the moment, my dear, just follow my lead.” They stopped before the drawing-room door so that Ben could dash by and announce them, muttering something about earning his pantler’s keys (butler’s keys, to the uninformed, which Rachel, to her own regret, had not been ever since her chaperonage of Lucy). After allowing themselves to be trumpeted into the room like minor royalty, Rachel called the three young women quickly to order.
“I know it is my custom to retire to a corner and let you girls natter as you will, but I have requested this luncheon with a definite purpose in mind,” she began, quickly taking Jennie and Lucy’s interest away from Mary’s fetching new walking dress and onto herself.
“What ho? Do I sense some deep intrigue?” Lucy asked happily, clapping her hands.
“You always sense some deep intrigue,” Jennie commented to Lucy without rancor before turning back to her aunt. “Has someone unsuitable offered for Mary?” she asked, her thoughts, as usual, running along matrimonial lines.
“Has Uncle Henry at last agreed to send me to France?” Mary chimed in, immediately crossing her fingers for luck.
“Perhaps, no, and no, definitely not,” Rachel replied, pointing to each of the trio of young hopefuls in turn. “This meeting concerns one Tristan Rule. Something has got to be done about the boy.”
“Marry him off!” Lucy and Jennie declared in unison, while Mary’s only reply was to pucker up her nose in an expression of distaste, saying, “And a more boring subject I cannot imagine.”
Rachel sat down gingerly on the edge of the satin settee and addressed her next words directly to Mary. “You won’t believe it boring when I have told you just what maggot my nephew has taken into his head about you. I don’t remember him going off on such a wild tangent since that time he decided Lucy was really a boy in disguise and her father had put her into skirts so that he wouldn’t have to spring for an education
