“Good evening.” Handing Leonora her glass, he nodded to Cynster, who returned the nod, his pale gaze sharpening.
One aspect that was instantly apparent was that they were very much alike, not just in height, in the width of their shoulders, in their elegance, but also in their characters, their natures—their temperaments.
An instant passed while both assimilated that fact, then Cynster held out his hand. “St. Ives. My aunt mentioned you were at Waterloo.”
Tristan nodded, shook hands. “Trentham, although I wasn’t that then.”
He mentally scrambled for the best way to answer the inevitable questions; he’d heard enough of the Cynsters’ involvement in the recent campaigns to guess that St. Ives would know enough to detect his usual sliding around the truth.
St. Ives was watching him closely, assessingly. “What regiment were you in?”
“The Guards.” Tristan met the pale green gaze, deliberately omitting any further definition. St. Ives’s gaze narrowed; he held it, murmured, “You were in the heavy cavalry, as I recall. Together with some of your cousins, you relieved Cullen’s troop on the right flank.”
St. Ives stilled, blinked, then a wry, quite genuine smile curved his lips. His gaze returned to Tristan’s; he inclined his head. “As you say.”
Only someone with a very high level of military clearance would know of that little excursion; Tristan could almost see the connections being made behind St. Ives’s clear green eyes.
He noted St. Ives’s quick, reassessing glance before, with an almost indiscernible movement they both saw and understood, he drew back.
Leonora had been looking from one to the other, sensing a communication she could not follow, irritated by it. She opened her lips—
St. Ives turned to her and smiled with devastating, purely predatory force. “I was intending to sweep you off your feet, but I believe I’ll leave you to Trentham’s tender mercies. Not the done thing to cross a fellow officer, and there seems little doubt he deserves a clear shot.”
Leonora’s chin came up; her eyes narrowed. “I am not some enemy to be captured and conquered.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.” Tristan’s dry comment brought her gaze swinging his way.
St. Ives’s smile grew, unrepentant; he sketched a bow and withdrew, saluting Tristan from behind Leonora’s back.
Tristan saw that last with relief; with luck, St. Ives would warn off his cousins, and any others of their ilk.
Leonora cast a frowning glance at St. Ives’s retreating back. “What did he mean by you ‘deserving a clear shot’?”
“Presumably because I sighted you first.”
She swung back, her frown deepening. “I am not some form of”—she gestured, glass and all—“prey.”
“As I said, that’s a matter of opinion.”
“Nonsense.” She paused, eyes on his, then continued, “I sincerely hope you’re not thinking in such terms, for I warn you I have no intention of being captured, conquered, let alone tied up.”
Her diction had grown more definite with every word; her last phrase had nearby gentlemen turning to view her.
“This”—Tristan caught her hand and wound her arm in his—“is not the place to discuss my intentions.”
“Your intentions?” She lowered her voice. “As far as I’m concerned, you have none vis à vis me. None that have any likelihood of coming to fruition.”
“I’m desolate to have to contradict you, of course. However…” He kept talking, fencing with her as he steered her to a side door. But as he reached to open it, she realized. And dug in her heels.
“No.” She narrowed her eyes at him even more. “Just dancing tonight. There’s no reason we need be private.”
He raised a brow at her. “Retreating in disarray?”
Her lips thinned; her eyes were mere slits. “Nothing of the sort, but you won’t catch me with such an obvious lure.”
He heaved an exaggerated sigh. In point of fact, it was too early—the rooms insufficiently crowded—for them to risk slipping away. “Very well.” He turned her back into the room. “That sounds like a waltz starting up.”
Lifting her glass from her fingers, he handed both glasses to a passing footman, then swept her onto the dance floor.
Leonora relaxed into the dance, let her senses free; at least here, in the presence of others, it was safe to do so. In private, she trusted neither him nor herself. Experience had taught her that once in his arms, she couldn’t rely on her intellect to guide her. Rational logical arguments never seemed to win when pitted against that warm rush of needy yearning.
Desire. She knew enough now to name it, the passion that drove them, that fired their attraction. She’d acknowledged it as such to herself, but knew better than to allow her understanding to show.
However, as she whirled through the dance in Trentham’s arms, relaxed but with her senses exhilaratingly alive, it was a different aspect of their interaction that concerned her.
An aspect Devil Cynster’s words and their ensuing discussion had brought into sharper focus.
She held her tongue until the dance ended, but then they were joined by two other couples, and conversation became general. When the musicians struck up the opening bars to a cotillion, she met Trentham’s gaze in fleeting warning, then accepted Lord Hardcastle’s hand.
Trentham—Tristan—let her go with no reaction beyond a hardening of his gaze. Heartened, she returned to his side once the dance ended, but when the next measure proved to be a country dance, she again accepted an offer from another—young Lord Belvoir, a gentleman who might one day be of Tristan’s and St. Ives’s ilk, but was now merely an entertaining companion much of her own age.
Again, Tristan—she’d started to think of him by his given name—he’d teased it from her often enough under circumstances sufficiently unique and memorable that she was unlikely to forget it—bore her defection with outwardly stoic calm. Only she was near enough to see the hardness, the possessiveness, and, more than anything else, the watchfulness in his eyes.
It was that last that underscored her thoughts of how he viewed her, and finally had her throwing caution to the wind in an attempt to reason with her wolf. Her wild wolf; she didn’t forget, but sometimes it was necessary to take risks.
She bided her time until the small group they were a part of dispersed. Before others could join them, she placed her hand on Tristan’s arm and nudged him toward the door he’d previously headed for.
He glanced at her, raised his brows. “Have you had second thoughts?”
“No. I’ve had other thoughts.” She met his eyes fleetingly, and continued toward the door. “I want to talk—just talk—to you, and I suppose it had better be in private.”
Reaching the door, she paused and met his gaze. “I presume you do know of somewhere in this mansion we can be assured of being alone?”
His lips curved in a wholly male grin; opening the door, he handed her through. “Far be it from me to disappoint you.”
He didn’t; the room he led her to was small, furnished as a sitting room in which a lady of the house could sit in comfortable privacy and look out over the manicured gardens. Reached through a maze of intersecting corridors, it was some distance from the reception rooms, a perfect venue for private conversation, verbal or otherwise.
Inwardly shaking her head—how did he do it?—she went straight to the windows, to stand and look out on the fog-shrouded garden. There was no moon, no distraction outside. She heard the door click shut, then felt Tristan approaching. Dragging in a breath, she swung to face him, put a palm to his chest to hold him back. “I want to discuss how you see me.”
He didn’t outwardly blink, but she’d obviously taken a tack he hadn’t expected. “What—”
She stopped him with an upraised hand. “It’s becoming increasingly clear that you view me as some sort of challenge. And men like you are constitutionally incapable of letting a challenge lie.” She eyed him severely. “Am I righ
t in thinking you view getting my agreement to marry you in such a light?”
Tristan returned her regard. Increasingly wary. It was difficult to think how else he would view it. “Yes.”
“Ah-ha! That, you see, is our problem.”
“Which problem is that?”
“The problem of you not being able to take my ‘no’ for an answer.”
Propping his shoulder against the window frame, he looked down at her face, at her eyes glowing with zeal at her supposed discovery. “I don’t follow.”
She made a dismissive sound. “Of course you do, you just don’t want to think about it because it doesn’t fit your stated intentions.”
“Bear with my muddled male mind and explain.”
She threw him a long-suffering look. “You can hardly deny that any number of ladies have been—and more will be once the Season proper starts—throwing themselves at your head.”
“No.” It was one of the reasons he clung to her side, one of the reasons he wanted to gain her agreement to their wedding as soon as possible. “What have they to do with us?”
“Not us so much as you. You, like most men, have little appreciation for what you can have without a fight. You equate fighting for something with its value—the harder and more difficult the struggle, the more valuable the object attained. As with wars, so with women. The more a lady resists, the more desirable she becomes.”
She fixed him with her clear, periwinkle blue gaze. “Am I right?”
He thought before nodding. “It’s a reasonable hypothesis.”
“Indeed, but you see where that leaves us?”
“No.”
She gave an exasperated hiss. “You want to marry me because I won’t marry you—not for any other reason. That”—she waved both hands—“primitive instinct of yours is what’s driving you—and it’s getting in the way of our attraction fading. It would be fading but—”
He reached out, caught one of her waving hands, and yanked her to him. She landed against his chest, gasped as his arms closed around her. He felt her body react as it always had, always did, to his. “Our mutual attraction hasn’t faded.”
She hauled in a tight breath. “That’s because you’re confusing it….” Her words faded as he lowered his head. “I said we’d only talk!”
“That’s illogical.” He brushed her lips with his, pleased when hers clung. He shifted, settling her more comfortably in his arms. Setting her hips to his, the soft curve of her stomach cradling his erection. He looked down into her eyes, wide, darkening. His lips curved, but not in a smile. “You’re right—it is a primitive instinct that’s driving me. But you picked the wrong one.”
“What—”
Her mouth was open—he filled it. Took possession in a long, slow, thorough kiss. She tried to resist, hold back, but then surrendered.
When, eventually, he lifted his head, she sighed, murmured, “What’s illogical about talking?”
“It’s not consistent with your conclusion.”
“My conclusion?” She blinked at him. “I hadn’t even got to my conclusion.”
He brushed her lips again so she wouldn’t see his wolfish grin. “Let me state it for you. If, as you hypothesize, the only reason I want to marry you—the only true reason driving our mutual attraction—is because you’re resisting, why not try not resisting and see what happens?”
She stared dazedly up at him. “Not resisting?”
He shrugged lightly, his gaze falling to her lips. “If you’re right, you’ll prove your point.” He took her lips, her mouth again, before she could consider what would happen if she was wrong.
His tongue stroked hers; she shivered delicately, then kissed him back. Stopped resisting, as she generally did when they’d reached this point; he wasn’t fool enough to believe that meant anything more than that she’d inwardly shrugged and decided to take what she might, still firmly convinced the desire between them would wane.
He knew it wouldn’t, at least on his part. What he felt for her was quite different from anything he’d felt before—not for any other woman, not for anyone at all. Protective, deeply to-his-bones possessive, and unquestionably right. It was that conviction of rightness that drove him to have her again and again, even in the teeth of her determined denials, to demonstrate the breadth and depth, the increasing power of all that was growing between them.
A stunning revelation in any circumstances, but he set himself to paint the sensual reality between them in bold and striking colors the better to impress her with its power, its potency, its undisguised truth.
She felt it, broke from the kiss, from beneath heavy lids met his eyes. Sighed. “I really did intend that tonight we would only dance.”
There was no resistance, no reluctance, only acceptance.
He closed his hands about her bottom and shifted suggestively against her. Bent his head to brush her lips. “We are going to dance—it just won’t be to a waltz.”
Her lips curved. Her hand tightened on his nape and she drew him to her. “To our own music, then.”
He took her mouth, caught their reins, and deliberately set them aside.
The daybed angled to the windows was the obvious place to lay her, to lie alongside her and feast on her breasts. Until her soft gasps were urgent and needy, until she arched and her fingers clung to his skull.
Suppressing a triumphant smile, he slid farther down the daybed, raising her skirts, pressing them high about her waist to expose her hips, and her long slender legs. Tracing her curves, fingers first trailing, then gripping to part her thighs, opening her to him.
Then he bent his head and set his lips to her softness.
She cried out, tried to catch his shoulders, but they were beyond her reach. Her fingers tangled in his hair, clenched as he laved, licked, then lightly suckled.
“Tristan! No…”
“Yes.” He held her down and pressed deeper, savoring the tart taste of her, step by step knowingly winding her tight…
She was quivering on the crest of climax when he shifted, freed his erection from the confines of his trousers, and rose over her. She gripped his forearms, nails sinking deep, her knees rising to grip his flanks. Sensual entreaty etched every line of her face; urgency drove her restless body, shifting wantonly, beckoning beneath his.
Her spine bowed as he entered her; he drove home and she climaxed, a glorious rippling release. He caught her up, drove her on. She clung, sobbed, and matched him, as committed as he as they swept up the mountain, with each forceful thrust climbed the jagged peaks, then tension splintered, fractured, fell away, and they soared into the void, into the sublime heat of their sharing.
Into that moment when all barriers fell away, and there was just him and her, joined in naked honesty, wrapped in that powerful reality.
Chests heaving, hearts thundering, heat coursing beneath their skins, they stilled, waited, locked intimately together, for the glory to wane. Their gazes touched, held—neither made any move to shift, to part.
She raised a hand, traced his cheek. Her eyes searched his, wondering…
He turned his head, pressed an openmouthed kiss to her palm.
Knew when she drew a deep breath that although her body and her senses were still sunk in the bliss, her mind had snapped free; she’d already resumed thinking.
Resigned, he looked into her eyes. Raised one brow.
“You said I’d picked the wrong primitive instinct—that it wasn’t the response to a challenge that was driving you.” She held his gaze. “If not that, then what? Why”—with one hand, she waved weakly—“are we here?”
He knew the answer, couldn’t manage a smile. “We’re here because I want you.”
She made a derisive sound. “So it’s just lust—”
“No.” He pressed into her and gained her complete attention. “Not lust—not anything like it. But you’re not hearing what I’m saying. I. Want. You. Not any other woman; no other will do. Only you.”
She frowned. r />
His lips curved, not in a smile. “That’s why we’re here. That’s why I’ll pursue you no matter what comes until you agree to be mine.”
* * *
Only you.
Sipping tea at the breakfast table the next morning, Leonora examined those words.
She wasn’t at all sure she understood the implications, understood what Tristan had meant to convey. Men, at least those of his ilk, were a species unknown to her; she felt uneasy in attributing too much meaning—or the meaning she would have intended—to his phrase.
There were further complications.
The ease with which he’d subverted her determined intentions at Huntly House—just as he had on the evenings before that—made thinking she could stand against him and his practiced seduction a frankly ludicrous hope.
No more pretending on that front; if she seriously wanted to deny him, she’d have to unearth a chastity belt. And even then…he could almost certainly pick locks.
And there was more yet to consider.
While it was perfectly obvious that testing her hypothesis by not resisting would play into his hands, if she was right in her estimation of the reason behind his passion, then not resisting the notion of marrying him would indeed see his interest wane.
But what if it didn’t?
She’d spent half the night wondering, imagining…
A gentle cough from Castor jerked her back to reality; she had no idea how long her mind had been wandering, caught by an unexpected vista, entranced by a prospect she’d long ago thought she’d turned her back on. Frowning, she pushed aside her uneaten toast and rose.
“When the footman takes Henrietta for her walk, please ask him to summon me—I’ll accompany them today.”
“Indeed, miss.” Castor bowed as she left the room.
That evening, together with Mildred and Gertie, Leonora swept into Lady Catterthwaite’s ballroom. They were neither early nor late. After greeting their hostess, they joined the fray. With every passing day, more of the fashionable returned to town and the balls grew commensurately more crowded.
Lady Catterthwaite’s ballroom was small and cramped. Accompanying her aunts to where a grouping of chairs and chaises gave the older female guests a place to sit and watch their charges, and exchange all the latest news, Leonora was surprised to find no Trentham waiting for her—waiting to step out of the crowd and waylay her. Claim her.