“Because this is where Angelica gave the necklace to Henrietta, and where Henrietta then gave it to me.” Reaching for the clasp at her nape, Mary slipped it free. “I don’t know where Heather was when she handed it to Eliza, or where Eliza was when she gave it to Angelica, but it might well have been here, too.” Gathering the necklace as it slid from her throat, Mary considered it, then held it up by the clasp so that the chain of amethyst beads and gold links hung straight and the rose quartz pendant swung. “It just seems to be sensible to follow the same pattern, given we can.”
Lucilla nodded and reached for the necklace, closing her hand around the links. “Thank you—and you’re right. With any talisman based on belief, adhering to any tradition, no matter how minor, never hurts.”
Mary released the necklace, but Lucilla didn’t immediately move her hand. When the younger girl stood there, stock still, Mary looked at her face. Lucilla’s gaze had grown unfocused, as if she was viewing something distant and far away.
Then Lucilla blinked, faintly frowned. After a few seconds, she looked at Mary. “Don’t fall into the trap of being as blind as Simon was—and never forget that Ryder . . . isn’t blind at all.”
Mary frowned. “What does that mean?”
Widening her eyes, Lucilla shifted, lightly shrugged. “I can’t truly say.” Meeting Mary’s eyes, she paused, then grimaced. “I get messages sometimes—like that—but as for their meaning, that’s more . . . nebulous.” She paused again, as if studying something only she could discern, then offered, “What I can say is that The Lady is pleased—that in her eyes you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, marrying Ryder . . .” Lucilla blinked, then added, “Being challenged by him.” She glanced at Mary. “If that makes any sense.”
Mary stared at Lucilla for several seconds, then nodded. “Yes, actually, it does.”
Lucilla’s smile flashed. “Good. In that case”—she waved the necklace she still held in one hand—“I thank you for this. I hope it will be as efficacious north of the border as it has been for all of you down here.”
“Mary?”
They turned to see Henrietta beckoning urgently from the doorway.
“You’d better run,” Lucilla said.
With a grin, Mary picked up her skirts and rushed as fast as decorum would allow for the stairs, her betrothed, and their engagement ball.
Ryder was waiting at the top of the stairs; unable to hide an appreciative smile, he offered his arm as his giddy betrothed reached him. “I’ve been instructed to bring you immediately to the receiving line.”
She rewarded him with an effervescent smile. “I’m ready—lead on!”
He laughed and they turned to cross the wide foyer. His gaze lingered on the expanse of fair skin above the neckline of her shimmering violet gown. “What happened to your necklace?” She’d been wearing a fine cameo on a purple velvet band, and that was still in place, but the necklace was gone.
“It was only mine for a time. I passed it on to Lucilla.”
He remembered when he’d first seen the curious necklace about Mary’s throat—at Henrietta’s engagement ball. As the earliest guests, just entering the hall below, had yet to climb the stairs, he slowed and asked, “Did Henrietta pass it on to you at her engagement ball?”
Mary glanced at him more sharply. “How observant of you to notice.”
He smiled one of his sleekly persuasive smiles. “So it’s what?” Recalling the conversation he’d overheard between Mary and Angelica about Mary embarking on her quest to find her hero, he guessed, “A talisman of sorts?”
She regarded him for several seconds, patently debating whether to answer, and if so, how much to tell him; eventually she said, “It’s a gift from Catriona’s Lady—The Lady—and is supposed to assist those it’s given to in locating the right gentleman for them.” She looked forward as they neared the ballroom doors. “It went to Heather first, then passed to Eliza, Angelica, and Henrietta in turn—and then to me.” She glanced at him, clearly anticipating disbelief. “Each of us believe it worked, although I don’t expect you’ll credit such a superstitious tale.”
Holding her gaze, conscious of the others in the receiving line just ahead, he wondered if he dared state that he knew for a fact the necklace had worked for her—it had steered her to him, after all. Instead, he smiled easily and looked ahead. “The Lady?” Swinging Mary into position in the receiving line, he lowered his head and murmured just for her, “Admittedly I’ve never called her that—I’ve always simply called her Fate.”
Looking up, she met his eyes, an arrested expression in hers, but then the first of the select guests invited to their engagement ball—Lord and Lady Jersey—swept up, and all conversation, all revelations, were necessarily suspended.
For the next hour, neither Ryder nor Mary had any chance to do anything beyond greet and chat with guests, but the nature of the gathering ensured neither of them had to exert themselves—they knew everyone and everyone knew them. Despite being a ball held at the height of the London Season to celebrate an unexpected betrothal linking two of the oldest and most powerful families in the ton, the atmosphere remained relaxed and genial, lacking the heightened tensions of a larger and consequently more formal event.
For Ryder, the only less than perfect note was struck by his stepmother, but his half siblings’ efforts to keep Lavinia both amused and out of his and Mary’s way warmed him and made him smile. Together, he and Mary circled the room, moving smoothly from group to group, confirming that their wedding would take place in just ten days, a week after Henrietta and James’s.
Then the musicians set bow to string, and the moment Ryder had been waiting for—the moment Mary had been so looking forward to—was upon them.
Smiling into her eyes, he bowed—with unrestricted grace now that Sanderson had removed his stitches and pronounced him fully healed. Straightening, he closed his fingers firmly about the hand she offered him—and felt something inside him tighten, lock. Her eyes were pools of blue-violet alight with expectation, with shimmering anticipation as he led her to the floor.
Without taking his eyes from hers, he swept her into his arms and stepped out, and took her with him, into their engagement waltz.
The music swelled and sent them swirling across the parquet floor as the crowd, smiling and delighted, fell back.
Leaving them whirling alone under the chandeliers, with crystal-fractured light glinting in their hair, in their eyes, as the world fell away and there was only them.
With his gaze locked with hers, with her eyes locked on his, they were caught and held captive by the moment.
He smiled intently, outwardly and inwardly. He’d heeded her words, had seen in them opportunity—the perfect moment in which to take the next step. To draw her closer yet, to stake his claim on her, on her senses, in a significantly more absolute way.
To move to the next stage and to capture her as his. As his bride-to-be, recognized and acknowledged not just by society, not just by their families, not just by him but by her. And not just by her rational mind but by the sensual, emotional, steely-tempered and iron-willed female every instinct he possessed assured him dwelled inside her.
That was his aim—to capture that fey creature—and he was highly experienced in that type of hunt.
As they whirled down the room, effortlessly revolving, his well-trained muscles without conscious direction sweeping them through the turns, as she followed his lead with even less thought, his focus never wavered. For them, for his intent and purpose, and for hers, too, they weren’t dancing in Mayfair.
They were waltzing in a world of their own.
Mary sensed the difference, not just the drawing in of her senses but their heightening. The ineluctable tension. It gripped her, and him, and resonated between them.
She’d been looking forward to this moment, to the waltz and all it meant, but when she?
??d originally imagined her first waltz with her betrothed, she’d assumed it would signal an end. That their courtship would be done, and that this dance would be an acknowledgment of their love, a love already owned to and owned by them both.
Instead, this waltz, their waltz, was a beginning. The first step down a path she’d never imagined treading—not without the confidence of love to bolster her.
Yet here she was, and here he was, whirling her about the floor in his arms, his gaze locked with hers, his awareness meshed with hers in a way that consumed all her senses, and as Lucilla had confirmed, this was where they—he and she—were supposed to be.
For them, this was the right way, the right path, even if it was so very different from the one she’d imagined. Fitting perhaps, given he was so very different from the man she’d imagined would be hers. She’d assumed her gentleman would be an easy man to tame . . . instead, trapped in his hazel eyes, she was waltzing her engagement waltz with the ton’s most untamable nobleman.
Challenge? Oh, yes.
It was there, inescapable, a subtle clash of fire in their gazes, but as they whirled again and at a distant remove she sensed others joining them on the floor, she had to wonder if he saw that challenge in the same way she did. If he recognized its basis, knew her fell intent.
Of his intent she harbored no doubt; she would have had to have been unconscious, her senses all blind, not to see, sense, feel the primal possessiveness that reached for her. To give him his due, his desire was screened by the veil of sophistication he so expertly wielded, yet immersed in the moment, so focused on him, she couldn’t miss the signs. Couldn’t miss the power and passion that burned undisguised in his eyes.
He’d chosen her, he wanted her, and soon she would be his in all ways. She suspected he thought that, via the burgeoning passion rising between them, he would then be able to manage her.
Still trapped in his gaze, she returned his smile with one carrying the same intent.
They would see.
As the musicians commenced the final reprise, she couldn’t resist murmuring, “You should perhaps remember that we’re both rather determined people, and”—tilting her head, she watched his eyes—“we’re now both committed . . . to this.”
To us. To what will be.
Ryder blinked; a faint frown in his mind if not on his face, he returned to reality as the music slowed. Spinning them to an elegant halt, he released her, stepped back, and bowed.
She curtsied—a fully court curtsy perfectly judged for his station.
As she’d no doubt intended, it made him smile and dissipated the lingering tension that had held them.
A tension he’d evoked, yet . . . it had been rather more than he’d expected.
He’d intended to capture her in the moment, not to himself be captured by it.
By it, by her, by what had swelled and welled between them.
That . . . had been more than he’d planned for, significantly more—and different in feel—than what he’d anticipated. Yet . . . as she’d said, they were both determined people, and they were now committed to this.
Raising her, he drew her to his side, tucked her hand in the crook of his arm, and smiled one of his usual, lazily charming smiles. “Shall we return to the fray?”
She met his eyes; hers glinted commiseratingly. “I fear we must.”
They did. He had only to raise his head and others gathered around, to chat, to comment, to enthuse. As the evening rolled on, courtesy of various oblique comments, he realized that their determination and commitment had been more openly on show than he, at least, had realized.
While passing between groups, he murmured to Mary, “It seems our engagement waltz made a statement more public than I’d intended.”
She blinked up at him, then glanced around. “Ah—I hadn’t realized, but now you mention it, I can see it might have.” She shrugged and looked up at him. “But perhaps that’s for the best.” Arching her brows, she faced forward. “And I can’t see that it will hurt.”
He wasn’t so sure of that—and even less sure what her words portended, of what was going through her willful mind, but as they joined the next group of guests he reflected that, Mary being Mary, he would, most likely, soon find out.
Across the ballroom, Lavinia leaned on Claude Potherby’s arm and sniffed. “Have you heard what everyone—at least all the grandes dames and the major hostesses—are saying? That after that little performance there’s no question but that those two will be future powers in the ton?”
Claude wondered if he should lie. “Well . . . yes.” He didn’t consider himself at all sensitive, yet even he had seen it, the indefinable aura of will and strength that, combined, spelled power that had cloaked the betrothed pair as they’d revolved down the room in the first waltz. “But really, my sweet, not even you can deny that being here tonight is very much like viewing history in the making. Quite aside from their stations, given who they are it’s difficult to view this alliance as anything but major.”
Lavinia all but pouted. “Perhaps. But I would much rather have seen Randolph as her partner in that dance.”
Claude forbore to point out that Randolph wouldn’t agree, nor would the resulting waltz have made the same impact. With no ready way to alleviate Lavinia’s mood, he murmured instead, “Don’t forget, my dear, that as Ryder’s stepmama you have to be delighted.”
Immediately plastering back the false smile that had slipped from her lips, she dipped her head in acknowledgment and turned to greet the next couple intent on paying her their compliments and congratulating her on her stepson’s excellent match.
In Claude’s opinion, she bore up reasonably well, which was really all he and her children—and her stepson and his fiancée—could hope for.
It was past one o’clock, and Ryder had just walked into his dressing room, tossed his evening coat on a chair, unbuttoned his waistcoat and set his fingers to unknotting his cravat when, in the distance, he heard his front doorbell peal.
Ambling back into his bedroom and out into the corridor, he wondered who the devil it was. Hearing Pemberly’s even steps, then the sound of the bolts being drawn, he halted in the corridor; continuing to unravel his cravat, he strained his ears.
Pemberly said something, then the door shut, almost drowning out the reply someone made . . . someone female.
The possibility that, having heard of his engagement, one of his previous lovers had come to call flashed through his mind. Muttering a curse, he stopped untying his cravat and strode down the corridor.
Frowning, he swung into the gallery—
Mary ran into him.
“Oof!”
Instinctively he wrapped his arms around her, preventing her from staggering back. Frowning still, he looked down at her. “What are you doing here?” He blinked. “Has something happened?”
She looked up at him. “No.” She studied his face, then pulled back; reluctantly, he made himself let go.
Before he could say anything, she waved him back.
Increasingly puzzled, rather than comply he glanced over the balustrade and saw Pemberly, door relocked, bolts in place, retreating toward his quarters, bearing away the lamp that he’d brought to light his way.
As darkness reclaimed his front hall, Ryder looked again at Mary; she’d wound a shawl about her shoulders but otherwise was dressed as she had been at the ball. “I repeat, what are you doing here?”
One part of him knew, but his mind was madly scrambling, trying to decide if this was a good idea or a bad idea—for her, and for him.
She tipped up her chin. “Coming to see you, of course.”
“You saw me, were talking to me, only half an hour ago.”
She wiggled her head impatiently. “That was there. This is here.”
An unarguable fact.
But they were standing in his darkened g
allery, lit only by the moonlight streaming through the big skylight, and in addition to being only half dressed, he was more than half aroused; even though a foot of clear space lay between them, he could still feel the warmth of her in his arms, feel the imprint of her body against his. After the last days, after the elemental desires unexpectedly spurred by that so-much-more-than-anticipated waltz . . . he wasn’t at all sure her being there was a good thing.
Certainly not if she’d come to talk.
He managed to manufacture a sigh, one laden to dripping with patronizing boredom; forcing his body to project the same emotion, he waved. “Very well. We’re here. You have my attention.” Through the gloom, he met her eyes. “So what is it?”
She narrowed her eyes at him; he felt the increased belligerence in her glare. “If you think I’m going to be the first female in my family to go to the altar a virgin, you’re mistaken.”
Shutting his eyes to hide his instant reaction, he muttered, “Did I just hear aright?”
Her small finger stabbed his chest hard. “Yes! You did.”
Sensing movement he opened his eyes, but was too late; having whisked around him, she was already marching, silk skirts shushing, down the corridor to his room.
He set off in pursuit, but, slowed by not knowing which tack he actually wanted to take, he didn’t catch her up before she reached his open door.
She swept through.
Halting on the threshold, deeming it unwise to follow her further, he forced himself to lounge in the doorway, one hand gripping the door frame.
Reaching the area before the foot of his bed, she whirled to face him. Spine straight, head high, she leveled a look of blatant challenge at him. “So now we’re officially betrothed and our alliance has been approved by all those who count, I’ve come here so you can show me what your vaunted reputation is all about.”
Several thudding heartbeats of silence followed.
Arm braced, fingers clenching on the doorjamb, he studied her. And fought to think, but his mind kept tripping over her words. What was he supposed to say? To do?