The Lady Chosen

He shrugged into his shirt, quickly buttoned it, tucked it into his waistband, then quickly and expertly knotted his cravat. All the while he watched her. She was used to having a maid; she couldn’t do up her gown on her own.

When he was fully dressed, he picked up her cloak. “Here. Let me.” He handed her the cloak; she glanced at him, then took it. And turned, presenting him with her back.

He quickly laced up her gown. As he tied off the laces, his fingers slowed. He hooked one finger beneath the laces, anchoring her before him. Leaning down, he spoke softly in her ear. “I haven’t changed my mind. I intend to marry you.”

She stood poker straight, looking ahead, then she turned her head and met his eyes. “I haven’t changed my mind either. I don’t want to get married.” She held his gaze, then added, “I never truly did.”

He hadn’t been able to shift her.

The argument had raged all the way down the stairs, reduced to hissed whispers as they crossed the ground floor because of Biggs, only to escalate again when they reached the relative safety of the garden.

Nothing he’d said had swayed her.

When, driven to complete and total exasperation by the notion that a lady of twenty-six whom he’d just very pleasurably initiated into the delights of intimacy should refuse to wed him, title, wealth, houses, and all, he’d threatened to march straight up her garden path and demand her hand from her uncle and her brother, revealing all if she made that necessary, she’d gasped, halted, turned to him—and nearly slain him with a look of horrified vulnerability.

“You said what was between us would remain between us.”

There’d been real fear in her eyes.

He’d backed down.

In real disgust had heard himself gruffly assuring her that of course he wouldn’t do any such thing.

Hoisted with his own petard.

Worse, hoisted with his honor.

Late that night, slumped before the fire in his library, Tristan tried to find a way through the morass that had, without warning, appeared around his feet.

Slowly sipping French brandy, he replayed all their exchanges, tried to read the thoughts, the emotions, behind her words. Some he couldn’t be certain of, some he couldn’t define, but of one thing he felt reasonably sure. She honestly didn’t think she—a twenty-six-year-old ape-leader—her words—was capable of attracting and holding the honest and honorable attentions of a man like him.

Raising his glass, eyes on the flames, he let the fine liquor slide down his throat.

Admitted, quietly, to himself, that he didn’t truly care what she thought.

He had to have her—in his house, within his walls, in his bed. Safe. Had to; he no longer had any choice. The dark, dangerous emotion she’d stirred to life and now unleashed would not permit any other outcome.

He hadn’t known he had it in him, that degree of feeling. Yet that evening, when he’d been forced to stand on the garden path and watch her—let her—walk away from him, he’d finally realized what that roiling emotion was.

Possessiveness.

He’d come very close to giving it free rein.

He’d always been a protective man, witness his erstwhile occupation, and now his tribe of old dears. He’d always understood that much of himself, but with Leonora his feelings went far beyond any protective instinct.

Given that, he didn’t have much time. There was a very definite limit to his patience; there always had been.

Rapidly he mentally scanned all the arrangements he’d put in place in pursuit of Mountford, including those he’d initiated that evening after returning from Montrose Place.

For the moment, that line would hold. He could turn his attention to the other front on which he was engaged.

He had to convince Leonora to marry him; he had to change her mind.

How?

Ten minutes later he rose and went to seek his old dears. Information, he’d always maintained, was the key to any successful campaign.

The dinner with her aunts, a not-infrequent event in the weeks leading up to the Season when her aunt Mildred, Lady Warsingham, would come to try and convince Leonora to cast her hat into the matrimonial ring, was a near disaster.

A fact directly attributable to Trentham, even in his absence.

The next morning, Leonora was still having trouble subduing her blushes, still battling to keep her mind from dwelling on those moments when, panting and heated, she’d lain beneath him and watched him above her, moving in that deep, compulsive rhythm, her body accepting the surges of his, the rolling, relentless physical fusion.

She’d watched his face, seen passion strip away all his charm and leave the harsh angles and planes etched with something far more primitive.

Fascinating. Enthralling.

And utterly distracting.

She threw herself into sorting and rearranging every scrap of paper in her escritoire.

At twelve, the doorbell pealed. She heard Castor cross the hall and open the door. The next instant Mildred’s voice rang out. “In the parlor, is she? Don’t worry—I’ll see myself in.”

Leonora pushed her piles of papers into the escritoire, closed it, and rose. Wondering what had brought her aunt back to Montrose Place so soon, she faced the door and patiently waited to find out.

Mildred swept in, stylishly turned out in black and white. “Well, my dear!” She advanced on Leonora. “Here you sit, all by yourself. I wish you would consent to come with me on my visits, but I know you won’t, so I won’t bother bemoaning that.”

Leonora dutifully kissed Mildred’s scented cheek, and murmured her gratitude.

“Dreadful child.” Mildred subsided onto the chaise and settled her skirts. “Now, I had to come because I have simply wonderful news! I have tickets for Mr. Kean’s new play for this very evening. The theater is already sold out for weeks ahead—it’s going to be the play of the Season. But by a fabulous stroke of magnanimous fate, a dear friend gave me tickets, and I have a spare. Gertie will come, of course. And you will come, too, won’t you?” Mildred looked at her beseechingly. “You know Gertie will mutter all through the performance otherwise—she always behaves when you’re there.”

Gertie was her other aunt, Mildred’s older, unmarried sister. Gertie had strong views about gentlemen, and while she refrained from voicing these in Leonora’s presence, deeming her niece still too young and impressionable to hear such caustic truths, she had never spared her sister from her blistering observations, blessedly delivered sotto voce.

Sinking into the armchair opposite Mildred, Leonora hesitated. Visiting the theater with her aunt generally meant meeting at least two gentlemen Mildred had decided were eligible partis for her hand. But such a visit also meant watching a play, during which no one would dare talk. She would be free to lose herself in the performance. With luck, it might succeed in distracting her from Trentham and his performance.

And a chance to see the inimitable Edmund Kean was not to be lightly refused.

“Very well.” She refocused on Mildred in time to see triumph fleetingly light her aunt’s eyes. She narrowed her own. “But I refuse to be paraded like a well-bred mare during the interval.”

Mildred dismissed the quibble with a wave. “If you wish, you may remain in your seat throughout the break. Now, you will wear your midnight blue silk, won’t you? I know you care nothing for your appearance, so you may do it to please me.”

The hopeful look in Mildred’s eyes was impossible to deny; Leonora felt her lips curve. “As such a sought- after opportunity comes through you, I can hardly refuse.” The midnight blue gown was one of her favorites, so appeasing her aunt cost her nothing. “But I warn you—I won’t put up with any Bond Street beau whispering sweet nothings in my ear during the performance.”

Mildred sighed. She shook her head as she rose. “When we were girls, having eligible gentlemen whisper in our ears was the highlight of the night.” She glanced at Leonora. “I’m due at Lady Henry’s, then Mrs. Arbuthnot’s, so I must away. I’ll call for you in the carriage around eight.”