or the fact that more than one young buck has reportedly withdrawn from the lists of those seeking the lady’s favors due to the belief that you would call them out if they so much as looked in her direction.” Lord Bourne shook his head sadly. “How sorely our motives are misinterpreted. What, precisely, then are your motives, Tris, if you aren’t smitten?”
Rule answered with some questions of his own. “Who exactly is Mary Lawrence? Where does she come from? Who are her parents? What is she doing in London? Why is she living with Sir Henry Ruffton? My Aunt Rachel may be the girl’s chaperon but she’s as close as an oyster whenever I try to get a few answers out of her. I know about her botched engagement with Sir Henry all those years ago, but could loyalty to an old beau cloud her judgment to the point where she’d allow herself to be involved in…never mind, George is getting ready to leave. I really must offer my apologies to him one more time. Excuse me, gentlemen, I’ll see you later this evening.”
Before either Julian or Kit could gainsay him, Tris was off, his long strides taking him swiftly across the room, the ever-present Dexter scampering to keep up with him.
“What the devil was all that in aid of?” Julian asked his cousin-in-law, who was looking no more enlightened than he. “Rachel told me he was a strange one, alluding to some secret association with the war effort, but I do believe the years of pressure have served to unhinge his mind. Did you ever hear such ridiculousness? Anyone would think he believes Sir Henry to be harboring a lady of ill repute, or a spy, or something. No, can’t be a spy. After all the war’s over, isn’t it?”
Kit was still watching Lord Rule, taking in his naturally belligerent stance and remembering how well the fellow had looked stripped to the waist. No soft London dandy was Tristan Rule. He had the look of a fighting man, even a Peninsula man, unless Kit missed his guess. Yet, for all the rumors about the man, no one could actually say Rule had ever been within a hundred miles of a battle. Strange, moody fellow. But a man of strong convictions for all that. And now he has a bee in his bonnet about Mary Lawrence. Kit turned to look at Julian, a thoughtful twist on his lips. “The war over, you say, Julian? For some of us, maybe. But not for him, it would appear.” He took one last look at the man they called Ruthless Rule as the tall, black-clad figure strode toward the door. “I tell you, Julian, I’d give my matched bays for a glimpse inside Tristan Rule’s head.”
CHAPTER TWO
LUCY GLADWIN RUTHERFORD, Countess of Thorpe, had great hopes for this dinner party, hopes she was foolish enough to share with her beloved husband, Julian, who quickly tried to dash them.
Stopping in the midst of tying his cravat, Lord Thorpe looked in his wife’s direction as she stood fiddling with the contents of his dressing table. “Miss Lawrence and your cousin Tris?” He would have shaken his head if the knot he was tying was not just then at a very critical stage. “You’re fair and far out this time, my love. Kit and I broached the subject this afternoon at Cribb’s Parlor with the man in question, and I’d say Tris’s interest is anything but loverlike.”
A twinkle entered Lucy’s eyes. “Ah, then you noticed his partiality for her too. My cousin is definitely interested in Miss Lawrence. You just misread the signs. Tris is nearly always stupid when it comes to women—he probably said something totally negative, if I know him.”
Giving his handiwork a last satisfied look in the mirror, Julian turned to plant a kiss on his wife’s forehead—while deftly removing his favorite pearl studs from her investigating hands. “I wouldn’t say the man was stupid. Actually, thinking back on the conversation, I believe Tris is more than casually interested in the girl. But no, it is most assuredly not with an eye to setting up his nursery.”
Lucy interpreted her husband’s words in exactly the wrong way. Her small face taking on a look of horror, she gasped. “Surely you don’t think he intends to set her up as his light-o-love? I won’t believe it!”
“Such a fertile mind you have, Lucy. I fear I must begin rationing your consumption of Minerva Press novels,” Julian threatened kindly, and then his features sobered. “To be serious for a moment, love, I do believe your cousin has taken some wild idea into his head about your Mary Lawrence, something to do with her ancestry. Is Tris by chance a bigoted sort?”
“Never!” Lucy protested, flopping into a nearby chair with total disregard for the gown it had taken her maid two hours to press. “I can’t understand any of this, Julian. Surely you must be mistaken.”
“Kit too?” he nudged, selecting a plain gold signet ring for his finger. “But don’t go into a decline, dearest. Surely you and Jennie can find another young couple to work your matchmaking wiles on before the Season is over. What about Dexter?”
“That nodcock?” Lucy exclaimed, momentarily diverted. “He may be your cousin, but he’s still the silliest thing on two legs. The way he has attached himself to Tris, why a person could wonder just how much of his feeling is hero worship and how much is—”
“Lucy! You fill me with dismay! You’re not supposed to know about such things, much less talk about them.”
She smiled up at him impishly. “Not even with my beloved husband, Julian? Don’t be so stuffy.”
Julian reached down and pulled his wife to her feet and up against his chest. “I am never stuffy, madam, and I have had that reassurance from your own lips.” He looked down into her upturned face and gave a bemused smile, glad he had not yet called his valet to help him into his formfitting evening coat. “Ah, yes, my dearest, those lovely, enticing lips.”
Lucy was forced to don another gown, as her maid, once she caught sight of her mistress some half hour later, had dissolved into tears and retired to her cot, in no condition to wield a hot iron.
THEY WERE ALL ENSCONCED around the gleaming mahogany table; the Earl of Bourne and his Jennie, Rachel Gladwin alongside young Dexter Rutherford—there to make up the numbers when Sir Henry pleaded another commit-ment—Lord and Lady Thorpe at the head and foot of the table, and Tristan Rule and Mary Lawrence smack beside each other on one side, just as Lucy had cunningly engineered the thing earlier.
Jennie was still wearing a benevolent smile, as she hadn’t as yet had either the benefit of her husband’s opinion on her matchmaking scheme or been able to speak alone with Lucy, who was not looking quite so chipper. Indeed Lucy was looking almost solemn, and had been ever since Miss Lawrence, beautifully attired in pale green silk, had greeted the sight of Tristan Rule with an unenthusiastic “Oh, you’re here.”
For her part, Rachel, who had recently taken to plotting her first attempt at a novel of her own, had decided to view the barely veiled hostility her charge directed at her nephew as ink for her scribbling pen. How interesting it would be, she thought as she helped herself to a portion of stewed carp, to have a heroine who insists on ignoring her attraction for the hero. Perhaps, she mused idly, I shall have my heroine outrage her mercenary guardian by refusing to stand up with the hero at her come-out ball. Would Maria Edgeworth approve? Was it too farfetched? Rachel shrugged her shoulders and took another bite of carp.
If Mary had been privy to her companion’s thoughts, she might have added her bit to the story, a little plot twist that had the heroine surreptitiously slipping a bit of poison into the hero’s fricassee of tripe and then running off to the Continent to become the reigning toast of Paris. But then Mary’s mind was at the moment too overcrowded with thoughts of the man sitting so intrudingly close to her right side to have much heart for solving anyone’s problems but her own.
Look at him, she instructed herself as she ignored her filled plate. He even cuts his meat with a cool, meticulous care that makes my flesh crawl. And those hands—those hard, tanned hands with their long, straight fingers. Everything about him screams leashed power. Ruthless. How apt. Energy seems to flow from him like a never-ending stream. Rachel may think that he’s interested in me. My suitors may think he’s trying to cut them out for my hand. But I know better. I can feel the animosity that charges the air whenever he looks at me. Why does he dislike me so? Why is he making it his business to unnerve me with his unwanted, discomforting