Oak being well-known as a center of excellence for masculine beauty,” Mari said.
Hester gave her a flashing smile. “I will allow you to be an expert in matters botanical, Mari, but not in matters pertaining to the opposite sex. There, I think, you must bow to my superior knowledge.”
“Your extensive knowledge,” Mari agreed.
Hester gave her a tiny kick with her slippered foot. “Here they come,” she said. “He must have asked Charles for an introduction.”
“Then he cannot take a hint,” Mari said. Her heart had started to beat a little faster now despite her outward calm. “I just cut him dead.”
“Must you do things like that?” Hester asked. “I wish to meet him even if you do not.”
“I fear I have to cut him,” Mari murmured. “He was the one I told you about earlier. The one who was watching me in the fountain.”
Hester clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh! No wonder he was staring!”
“And,” Mari continued, “I am almost certain that he is also the man I met in London.”
Hester looked at her blankly and she spelled out, “The one at the Hen and Vulture, Hes, the night that Rashleigh was killed.”
All the color fled Hester’s face, leaving her pale beneath her paint. “Damnation,” she breathed. “Can it be a coincidence?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Mari said bleakly.
Hester bit her lip. “Is it too late to run away, do you think?”
“I fear so,” Mari said. She looked thoughtfully at the purposeful figure advancing toward her. “I suspect that if I did,” she said, “he is the sort of man who would run after me. And catch me.”
“Then what are we to do?” Hester whispered. She still looked very pale. “I am hopeless at dissembling—”
“Then don’t try. Leave it to me.”
Charles Cole was bowing before them. Mari dropped a demure curtsy. She had always kept her distance from the Duke who was more, she was sure, than simply the easygoing country squire he pretended to be. Having her own secrets to keep made her more sensitive to the deceptions of others, though she was not sure exactly what Charles Cole’s secret was.
Hester offered her cousin a cheek to kiss. “Good evening, Charles,” she said. Mari could tell that despite her nervousness, she was making strenuous efforts to behave normally and she felt a rush of affection for her friend. Hester had insisted on accompanying her to London on the dreadful journey to confront Rashleigh. She had waited for her at Grillons Hotel. Mari had told her everything that had happened that night, for they always shared all their secrets. But now, for the first time, she was wishing that there were some things she had kept from Hester, too, so that her friend should not feel this terrible pressure to protect her. Mari had looked after herself before when there had been no one else to care for her. She could do it again if she had to. She did not want Hester to suffer for her past.
“Good evening, Hester,” Charles said, making sterling efforts not to look down the front of Hester’s dress where her bosom rather flaunted itself. He bowed more formally to Mari. “Mrs. Osborne.”
“Your grace.” Mari tried not to look at Charles’s companion and failed singularly. She could feel the weight of his glance on her like a physical touch, and when she raised her eyes, there was a look in his that made her heart jolt and delicious shivers run along her skin. His glance on her was hard, appraising. She felt a heat start to burn deep in her stomach and was shocked. She had thought that Rashleigh had taught her all about men, all about their baser instincts and how far they would go to indulge them. When she had run from him, she had run from the desire ever to have an intimate relationship with a man again. She had thought never to want to. Yet this man had overturned those certainties before with just one kiss and now he was doing the same with one look.
She reminded herself sternly that he must be here with a purpose and that she could not afford to drop her guard for a moment. Her attraction to him could only weaken her. It made her vulnerable to him and that she could not permit.
“May I introduce Major Nicholas Falconer,” Charles Cole was saying smoothly. “He is an old friend of mine come to spend the summer in the country. Nick, my cousin Lady Hester Berry and a friend of ours, Mrs. Osborne.”
Nicholas Falconer. He sounded safe enough and he bowed to Mari with scrupulous courtesy. But when he took her hand in his, his touch felt dangerous. It also felt shockingly familiar on the basis of just one kiss.
“How do you do, Major Falconer?” Mari made her voice as colorless as possible.
“I am very well, thank you, Mrs. Osborne,” Nick Falconer said. He took her arm and drew her a little away from Charles and Hester. He did it with supreme confidence and an absolute determination to separate her from their companions. It had happened before Mari had even realized what he was about.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Osborne,” Nick Falconer said, “but have we met before?”
Mari met his gaze. It was dark and direct. Suddenly she felt quite cut off from everyone but Nick himself, for his broad shoulders blocked out Hester and Charles and all the other guests. He had drawn a little closer to her as a group of people passed by, chattering and laughing, on their way to the refreshment room. One of his hands was holding her elbow, lightly, but with a touch that made her entire body tingle with awareness. She could smell the scent of him, a combination of summer nights, sandalwood cologne and something more personal and intimate. His clothes were creased and dusty from his journey but that did not detract one whit from his air of authority. Here was a man accustomed to taking what he wanted. She could tell. She doubted that many women would refuse him.
The awareness shivered between them, intense, compulsive. It felt as though he was conscious of every inch of her beneath the gray silk of her evening dress. Mari broke the contact only with difficulty.
“I am sure that we have never met,” she said.
He gave her the same slow smile that she remembered from that night at the tavern. “Would you have remembered me?”
Definitely. I could not forget you….
“I have a good memory,” Mari said coolly, “but you do not feature in it.”
He raised an eyebrow, completely unmoved at her set down. “Strange. You seem very familiar to me.”
Mari gave him a cold smile. “On the contrary, Major Falconer, you are the one who is overfamiliar—and not very original in your approach, either.”
He smiled again. It was devastating. “And yet for all your denials I am certain that I recognize you,” he said, “although you do look very different with your clothes on.”
Mari could feel herself clutching her reticule so tightly that the catch bit into her fingers. So he was going to be that direct. Not many men would be so blunt but she might have known that he would waste no time on courtesies. She knew he was deliberately provoking her, testing her to see what her reaction would be. No respectable woman, after all, would admit to swimming in the nude in a garden fountain. So if she did admit it, it would be tantamount to confessing that she was of easy virtue and then, well, judging by the look in his eyes, it would not be her planting schemes he would be interested in discussing…
Damn it all to hell and back. She admitted to herself that he had her trapped. What was to be done? It could be the ruin of her reputation if he spoke out about what he had seen. On the other hand, her indiscretion in the garden was not as damaging as those other, life-threatening secrets that she absolutely had to keep. She could admit to being the woman in the fountain but never, ever to being the harlot at the Hen and Vulture.
“I know it was you in the fountain,” he said softly, whilst her trapped mind ran back and forth over the possibilities. “You may protest if you wish but I believe I would