“I had not known that you would be here this evening, sir.”
Tristan’s fork halted halfway to his mouth as Mary’s softly spoken words startled him. As she had made such a point of ignoring him while they waited for dinner to be announced, he had resigned himself to having his ear bent all through the meal by Dexter, who sat across from him but wasn’t about to let any silly dictate of good manners keep him from talking nineteen to the dozen across the table if he so chose. “You didn’t?” was all he responded, eyeing her smiling face closely as he sought to understand her seeming friendliness.
“No,” she answered, her voice still quite low. “I saw you striding through the drizzle the other day in the park and had figured you to have developed lung fever at the very least by now.”
Tristan decided to take her words literally. “What would make you think a bit of spring drizzle could lay me up by the heels?”
Mary shrugged delicately, almost Gallically, in Tristan’s biased opinion. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess that it’s just that you are of an age that I would have expected you to have served in the war if you weren’t afflicted with a weak chest or some other such hidden weakness. Lord Bourne served on the Peninsula, you know, and Lord Thorpe was very involved with the war effort in Parliament. But you—why, if rumors are to be believed, you spent the last several years traipsing about the Continent like some sort of sightseer. In places far removed from the fighting, that is.”
Tristan laid his fork carefully on the edge of his plate. Turning his head slowly in her direction once more, he smiled dangerously, his straight white teeth clenched. “If you were a man, I would call you out for that, you know,” he said in his low, husky voice, a voice that went well with his chiseled features, dark eyes, and darker hair.
Another woman would have fainted. Lord, any sane woman wouldn’t have taunted him so in the first place! But Mary Lawrence was made of sterner, if somewhat more foolhardy, stuff. She kept her chin high and didn’t so much as blink. “Name your seconds, sir,” she dared recklessly, ignoring her rapidly beating heart. “Although you neatly circumvented serving in the war, I have no doubt you’ve stomach enough to shoot a woman.”
Now Tristan’s smile was downright evil. “Too messy by half, madam. I prefer to impale my opponents on my sword. Now, madam, if you’re still game…?”
There was no pretending she didn’t catch the double entendre hidden in his words, and no way she could slap his face at Lucy’s table without creating a scene that would have Rachel wringing a peal over her head for a sennight. Her gaze locked with his for a few moments more, brazening it out before her eyes shifted nervously back to the fish on her plate.
She waited until Lord Rule had resumed his meal before speaking again. Just as he had deposited a medium-size bite of succulent fish in his mouth she shared a bit of unusual knowledge with the rest of the company. “Did you know that many tradesmen inflate their meat—and most especially their fish by having gin drinkers blow into the bodies? Indeed, and much of the seafood and meat that reaches our tables looking so thick and juicy has been made that way by having the poor animals heated or beaten while still alive in order to swell the meat. Isn’t that interesting?”
The meal ended shortly after that, as the rest of the diners had somehow lost their appetites (indeed, Dexter, who had fled abruptly from the table, lost even more than that), which, while the thought of ruining Lucy’s dinner party sat heavily on her mind, did at least serve one of the ends Mary had intended—getting herself shed of Tristan Rule’s embarrassing presence before he drove her into strong hysterics.
Rachel had said he was a hot-tempered sort, prone to short, violent explosions of wrath. Putting all her eggs in one basket at the dinner table in hopes of having the man lose his composure, and therefore some of the esteem in which it seemed the rest of the company held him, had been the second reason for her outburst, but Rule had failed to perform according to his reputation, so that the affair had concluded with Mary being the one who now sat in the corner of the Ruffton carriage in disgrace.
“Really, Mary, that was very poor-spirited of you,” Rachel Gladwin was saying, for at least the third time in as many minutes. It took a lot to discompose Rachel—considering she had served as Lucy’s companion during that trying time when the girl was so obviously pursuing an obviously fleeing Lord Thorpe—but Mary’s inelegant observations at the dinner party had done it.
“I know, Aunt,” Mary agreed sadly. “I promise to apologize to Lucy and Julian again when we reach the ball. I’ll even send round a written apology tomorrow. But I was sorely tried, I tell you. If you have any idea what that odious nephew of yours had the nerve to intimate to me—”
Rachel could see Mary’s blush even in the dim light cast by the flambeaux hung outside the carriage. “I’m listening,” she nudged, remembering the smug look Tristan had been wearing as he and Dexter took their leave.
Mary gave a weak chuckle. “You may listen all you want, Aunt. His words were unrepeatable. I won’t so demean myself as to quote the scoundrel.”
Now it was Rachel’s turn to smile. “Bested you, did he, little girl? I begin to scent a romance here myself. Won’t Sir Henry be pleased?”
From the corner of the carriage came the unmistakable sound of fragile ivory fan sticks being snapped neatly in two.
MARY HAD JUST BEGUN TO RELAX when Tristan Rule and his ever-present shadow, Dexter, entered the Salerton ballroom and took up positions at the edge of the dance floor. He’s playing me like a fish on a line, Mary fumed silently as she went down the dance with her latest partner. Ever since he first sank his hook into me he’s been feeding me more and more line, making me believe I’m about to gain my freedom, and then, just when I’m feeling secure, yanking hard on the pole again.
As she whirled and dipped, flirting outrageously with the hapless young swain who had nearly tripped into a potted palm at the edge of the floor when Mary flashed him her brightest smile, she kept one eye firmly on the black-clad figure who looked as if he was about to spring on her even as he relaxed one well-defined shoulder against a marble pillar.
She never remembered what she said to her partner as he escorted her back to her aunt at the conclusion of the set, but if the youth’s bemused expression was to be believed, her vague response to his parting question just might have gained Sir Henry yet another application for her hand on the morrow. Mary frowned, for she was not really heartless and had certainly not meant to lead Lord Hawlsey on, but then, as the musicians struck up the new, daring waltz, all thoughts of Lord Hawlsey fled as her spine automatically stiffened when she felt rather than heard Lord Rule’s approach.
Bowing in front of Rachel for her permission—a curiously tunnel-sighted Rachel who seemed not to see her charge’s frantic signal in the negative—Tristan availed himself of Mary’s small hand and led her firmly onto the floor.
Lord Petersham always wore brown, Mary thought spitefully, and only succeeded in looking dashed dull. Then there was that silly man who wore nothing but green, like some sort of living plant. It stood to reason that Tristan Rule, who dressed only in funereal black, should look dull, or silly, or boringly unimaginative, or, at the very least, depressing. So why did he look none of these? Why did he look like his muscular torso had been carefully poured into his formfitting coat, his, in this instance, black satin breeches lovingly painted on? Why did his black-on-black embroidered waistcoat call such unladylike attention to his flat abdomen, his snowy cravat show to such advantage against his deeply tanned features, his equally white stockings delineate muscular calves that owed nothing to the sawdust stuffing so many men felt forced to use to supplement what nature and a sybaritic life had left lacking?
“I’m waiting, Miss Lawrence.”
The sound of Lord Rule’s low, husky voice jolted