The Lady Chosen

He felt his face harden. His lips thinned. If he hadn’t been wary of waking her, he would have sworn.

It didn’t take much thinking to know that now there was only one way forward. No matter what options his strategist’s mind devised, his instinctive, deeply entrenched reaction never wavered.

She was his. Absolutely. In incontrovertible fact.

She was in danger, under threat.

There was only one option left.

Please…don’t leave me.

He hadn’t been able to resist that plea, knew he wouldn’t, even now, were she to make it again. There’d been some need so deep, so vulnerable in her eyes, it had been impossible for him to deny. Despite the upheaval it was going to cause, he couldn’t, didn’t, regret anything.

In reality, nothing had changed, only the relative timing.

What was required was a restructuring of his plan. On a significant scale, admittedly, but he was too much a tactician to waste time grumbling.

Reality seeped slowly into Leonora’s mind. She stirred, sighed, luxuriating in the warmth that surrounded her, enveloped her, engulfed her. Filled her.

Lashes fluttering, she opened her eyes, blinked. Realized what the source of all that comforting warmth was.

A blush—she prayed it was a blush—suffused her. She shifted enough to look up.

Trentham glanced down at her. A frown, rather vague, filled his eyes. “Just lie still.”

Beneath the covers, one large palm closed about her bottom and he shifted her, settled her more comfortably on him. About him.

“You’ll be sore. Just relax and let me think.”

She stared at him, then looked down—at her hand spread on his naked chest. Relax, he said. They were naked, limbs tangled, and he was still inside her. No longer filling her as he had, but still definitely there…

She knew men were generally unaffected by their own nakedness, yet this seemed—

Dragging in a breath, she stopped thinking about it. If she did, if she started letting herself dwell on all she’d learned, all she’d experienced, stunned amazement and wonder would keep her here for hours.

And her aunts were coming to dinner.

She’d dwell on the magic later.

Lifting her head, she looked at Trentham. He was still vaguely frowning. “What are you thinking about?”

He glanced at her. “Do you know any bishops?”

“Bishops?”

“Hmm—we need a special license. I could apply to—”

She braced her hands on his chest, pushed up, and got his immediate attention. Eyes wide, she stared down at him. “Why do we need a special license?”

“Why…” He stared, bemusedly, back at her. Eventually said, “That’s the very last thing I expected you to say.”

She frowned at him. Clambered up and off him, twisting to sit in the coverlet. “Stop teasing.” She looked around. “Where are my clothes?”

Silence reigned for a heartbeat, then he said, “I’m not teasing.”

His tone had her looking, very quickly, back at him. Their eyes locked; what she saw in his set her heart thumping. “That’s not…funny.”

“I didn’t think any of this was ‘funny.’”

She sat and looked at him; her spurt of panic receded. Her brain started to function again. “I don’t expect you to marry me.”

His brows rose; she dragged in a breath. “I’m twenty-six. Past marriageable age. You don’t have to feel that because of this”—her wave encompassed the coverlet cocoon and all it contained—“you have to make any honorable sacrifice. You don’t need to feel you seduced me and so must make amends.”

“As I recall, you seduced me.”

She blushed. “Indeed. So there’s no reason you need to find a bishop.”

It was definitely time to get dressed. She spied her chemise on the floor and turned to crawl out of the cocoon.

Steely fingers closed like a manacle about her wrist.

He didn’t tug or restrain her; he didn’t have to. She knew she couldn’t break free until he consented to let her go.

She sank back into the coverlet. He was staring up at the ceiling; she couldn’t see his eyes.

“Let’s just see if I’ve got this straight.”

His voice was even, but there was an edge to it that left her wary.

“You’re a twenty-six-year-old virgin—I beg your pardon, ex-virgin. You have no other entanglements, romantic or otherwise. Correct?”

She would have loved to tell him this was pointless, but from experience she knew humoring difficult males was the fastest way to deal with their megrims. “Yes.”

“Am I also correct in stating that you set out deliberately to seduce me?”

She pressed her lips together, then conceded, “Not immediately.”

“But today. That”—his thumb had started to draw distracting little circles on the inside of her wrist—“was intended. Deliberate. You were set on having me…what? Initiate you?”

He turned his head and looked at her. She blushed, but forced herself to nod. “Yes. Just that.”

“Hmm.” He went back to staring at the ceiling. “And now, having accomplished your goal, you expect to say: ‘Thank you, Tristan, that was very nice,’ and carry on as if it never happened.”

She hadn’t thought that far. She frowned. “I assumed, eventually, we’d go our separate ways.” She studied his profile. “There’s no consequences to this, no reason we need do anything because of it.”

The corner of his lips lifted; she couldn’t tell which of the possible moods the gesture reflected.

“Except,” he stated, his voice still even, but with the accents increasingly clipped, “you’ve miscalculated.”

She really didn’t want to ask, especially given his tone, but he simply waited, so she had to. “How?”

“You may not expect me to marry you. However, as the one who was seduced, I expect you to marry me.”

He turned his head, met her gaze—let her read in the blazing hazel of his eyes that he was absolutely serious.

She stared—read the message twice. Her jaw actually slackened, then she snapped her lips shut. “That is nonsensical! You don’t want to marry me—you know you don’t. You’re simply being difficult.” With a twist and a tug, she wrenched her wrist free, aware she managed only because he let her. She scrambled from the bed. Anger, fear, irritation, and trepidation were a heady mix. She made for her chemise.

Tristan sat up as she left the bed, his gaze locking on the bruises circling her upper arms. Then he remembered the attack, and breathed again. Mountford had marked her, not him.

Then she bent and swiped up her chemise, and he saw the smudges on her hips, the faint bluish marks his fingers had left on the alabaster skin of her bottom. She turned, struggling into the chemise, and he saw similar marks on her breasts.

Softly swore.

“What?” She yanked her chemise down and glared at him.

Lips compressed, he shook his head. “Nothing.” He stood, and reached for his trousers.

Something dark, something powerful and dangerous was churning inside him. Burgeoning, struggling to break free.

He couldn’t think.

He grabbed her dress from the bed and shook it out; there was only the slightest stain, and a small red spot. The sight rattled his control. He blocked it out, and carried the gown to her.

She took it, conveying her thanks with a haughty inclination of her head. He nearly laughed. She thought he was letting her walk free.