entered the room, a steaming cup of coffee balanced before him on a silver tray.
“Women!” Tristan sputtered, eyeing his man as if daring him to say something, anything, in that gender’s defense.
“Indeed, m’lord.” The servant gulped, already backing toward the door. “An’ sure Oi am that we’d all be the better fer it if we could but live widout ’em.”
“I can,” Tristan gritted before taking a large gulp of the too-hot coffee. “Damn it all anyway—I will!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
ON THE THIRTIETH OF MAY the first Peace of Paris was signed in that city, giving yet another excuse to the celebration-mad populace of London to don their finery and make absolute cakes of themselves by eating, dancing and imbibing to the top of their bent and beyond.
One of the more sedate parties, a modest Venetian breakfast for no more than six hundred of the host and hostess’s closest and dearest friends, was held near Richmond Park. That this breakfast did not commence until three in the afternoon, and was not expected to wind to a close much before the wee hours of the morning, meant little. The mood of the invited guests was jovial, even jubilant, the seemingly endless supply of strong drink notwithstanding.
Mary was in attendance, accompanied by Miss Kitty Toland, whom she and Rachel had agreed to chaperon, a circumstance that meant that Dexter Rutherford was also a member of their party. Indeed, as Mary had whispered to Rachel a few moments earlier in the carriage, it would have taken one of Congreve’s rockets being strapped to his hindquarters and the fuse lit to blast Dexter away from his ladylove.
But then it was nice to have a gentleman in their party, since it was he who took charge of matters such as securing a comfortable, shady spot under a tree and then chasing after servants to secure some nourishment before they all wilted from hunger. Not that Mary would have had too much trouble convincing one of her flirts to play fetch and carry for her, but it had become so fatiguing to have to explain her association with the dangerous Tristan Rule to her apprehensive swains that she was just as glad not to have to go to the bother.
She had hoped that Rule’s absence from her side for the past four days had scotched all those rumors she knew to be flying fast and furious about the ton, but she hadn’t counted on the lack of starch her beaux had evinced when faced with the prospect of being thought to be poaching on Ruthless Rule’s preserves. “It’s like I have a sign hanging from my back that says ‘Private Property—Trespassers Beware,’” Mary had complained to Rachel more times than that weary woman wished to remember, “and I don’t know who angers me most—that dratted man or the silly fools who act as if he were some sort of furious Greek god who just might start hurling lightning bolts at them or something if they dare to cross him.”
Even more infuriating, at least to Mary’s mind, was the fact that she actually had found herself looking for the pesky man, and wondering just where he was that he had left off spending his time making her life as miserable as possible. Sir Henry had mentioned something or other that hinted of Rule being out and about the King’s business, but no amount of prompting could nudge the older man into saying a thing more. “Probably out minding mice at crosswalks or some such important task,” Mary had said, sniffing inelegantly, causing her guardian no end of amusement.
Whatever the reason for his absence, Mary was left to punish herself with the knowledge that it had left a large hole in her life—one that she would have sworn she craved more than a personal invitation to Carleton House to meet the Czar’s sister, the Grand Duchess Catherine of Oldenburg. In fact, she thought, blushing yet again as she reclined in a studied pose beneath a leafy tree, she had been thinking altogether too much about Tristan Rule—about his dark good looks, his intense black eyes, the barely leashed power hidden beneath the stark black he chose to wear, his lips, cool and firm against hers for the length of a kiss stolen in the moonlight.
And that was the worst—that she couldn’t help remembering that kiss, that deliberate insult that had seemed to amuse him as much as it still haunted her. How could she be attracted to a man who thought she was capable of destroying Sir Henry—indeed, all of England, if she truly believed his ridiculous claims! What perverse imp of nature had so constructed a woman that she could thoroughly loathe a man and at the same time search her horizons constantly just for the sight of his disdainful, condemning face?
Mary shook her head dismissingly and determinedly set out to change the flow of her thoughts, choosing to observe Kitty Toland and Dexter Rutherford as they sat yards apart on the blanket a servant had spread and stared at each other with blissfully vacant eyes. Try as she could, Mary could not see the attraction, either Kitty’s for Dexter or his for her.
Not that Kitty wasn’t a pretty girl, for she was; all pink and blond and still carrying a bit of nursery plumpness, with china-blue eyes that had a tendency to stare unwaveringly at nothing in particular in a way Mary couldn’t force herself to believe reflected any great intelligence. Besides, the girl had a lamentable habit of saying, “Oh, Gemini!” before nearly every sentence she uttered, until Rachel had run posthaste to her rooms, inspiration for yet another character for her novel taking the form of a hare-witted debutante who spoke only in exclamations.
Dexter, for his part, wasn’t exactly the sort from which storybook heroes were made. He was neither bold, nor dashing, and his conversation certainly couldn’t rival anything written by the Bard, but when it came to portraying the sillier side of being struck with one of Cupid’s tiny darts, Dex bore off the palm. Soulful sighs, yearning looks and garbled speech may not have been designed to set Mary’s heart to pitter-pattering, but they seem to have turned the trick for Dexter when it came to winning the adoration of his Kitty. It was, Mary had informed Rachel the previous evening after the two of them had spent long, trying hours watching the two lovebirds coo at each other unintelligibly, as if some kind spirit had seen two halves of the same whole and quickly arranged for the two adorable nincompoops to find each other and become one great, amorous ninny, sure to populate the next generation with yet another set of incompetents in search of mates.
“Want an apple, Miss Toland?” Dex asked just then, if only to prove Mary’s point.
“Oh, Gemini, I would like one above all things,” Kitty simpered, her blushing cheeks looking like fine, ripe apples themselves. “But, oh, Gemini, how ever could I, when it is wearing that awful peel?”
Puffing out his thin chest just as if he had been asked to slay yon dragon to prove his love, Dex then fairly scrambled toward the large picnic hamper before the hovering servant could efficiently pare away the peel on a shiny apple he had already snatched up in preparation of being asked to perform just such a service, and wrestled both knife and apple from the poor young fellow. “It would be a pleasure, an honor, to remove this offensive covering so that you should not injure those fair lips and those delicate white teeth,” Dexter vowed fervently as Mary and the dumbstruck servant desperately tried to look anywhere but at the young swain as he proceeded to mutilate the innocent fruit, putting his left thumb in imminent danger of being peeled as well.
“No accounting for tastes, is there?” Rachel offered, having approached the scene while Mary was otherwise occupied and was just then sitting herself down on the chair another servant had secured for her. “I had to discard my idea of patterning a character after the girl, though. After I had her say hello, I found she had precious little additional to add to the conversation. I didn’t realize how difficult it is to find inconsequential things to say—do you think that means I’m a blue-stocking? Perhaps that’s why I’ve been left so firmly on the shelf all these years.”
“You’re bright blue through and through, Aunt,” Mary confirmed, then added, “but your mind is not what has kept you from the altar. It’s your foolish pride that keeps you and Sir Henry from making a match of things. Isn’t it time you forgave him for a young man’s indiscretion?”
Rachel looked at her charge, her confusion easy to read in her face. “Henry’s indiscretion? Whatever are you jabbering about? It wasn’t Henry who destroyed our engagement. It was my indis—” Rachel’s voice broke off suddenly as she realized what she