corner of the balcony and lowered his head to within scant inches of hers. “What kind of woman are you?” he demanded harshly, giving her abused arm a shake. “I try to be civil to you, even flatter you by indulging in a bit of mild flirtation such as you females demand of us men, and you repay me time after time with cutting words, insults, and now threats of violence.”
“Flirt with me! You call your outrageous suggestion flirting? And what do you mean by lumping me in with a bunch of chits with more hair than wit who giggle and simper as some ridiculous fop or other compares their crossed eyes to brightly shining stars?” Mary was so angry now that she either could not or would not take notice of his lordship’s set jaw and narrowed eyes. Raising her chin just a bit more, she sniffed dismissingly. “If you are going to ape your betters, I suggest you choose your models with more care.”
She was going to drive him straight out of his mind! His short-lived idea of insinuating himself into her good graces (all the better to keep a close watch on her) died an undignified death as his quick temper overrode his seldom-exercised discretion. Tristan stepped further back into the shadows, pulling Mary along with him willy-nilly, and took the back of her neck in his firm grip. “I am done playing games with you, Miss Lawrence. You tell me I am no gentleman, yet I have only your word for it that you are a lady.”
Mary’s heart began to pound as she belatedly realized that her sharp tongue had gotten her into yet another tight spot. “Apply to my uncle if you wish a tracing of my family tree.” She brazened it out, her green eyes spitting fire in the darkness. “I am not about to justify my existence to you.”
“I have talked with Sir Henry,” Tristan informed her to her dismay, “and all he says is that you are the daughter of an old friend. You have the man so besotted he’ll say anything to protect you, but I am not so hoodwinked by your beauty that I can overlook the fact that you have somehow established yourself in the house of one of the most important men in the war effort.”
Even in the midst of her fright Mary took a small bit of satisfaction in the notion that Lord Rule thought her beautiful, but that admission did not serve to overshadow the fact that he was accusing her of—what was he accusing her of? “You think I’m Sir Henry’s mistress?” she squeaked at last, feeling something akin to relief.
Tristan’s fingers tightened on the soft, slim neck. “Mistress?” he repeated, brought up short. “No, Rachel wouldn’t stand still for being a party to that, not even for an old friend…would she?” he questioned softly, as if debating with himself.
Mary reached up and tried to remove his hand, finger by tensed finger. “Look, my lord, either throttle me or let me go. Make up your mind.” In the space of a moment she had decided that Tristan Rule was not ruthless—he was ridiculous! But if he was suffering from overexposure to battle or some such thing, he should take himself off to some spa for the waters, not run amok in London searching out nonexistent intrigues. Besides, she reminded herself as she attempted to lift his thumb from the pulse point at the base of her throat, it wasn’t as if there was no intrigue about her presence in Sir Henry’s household—even though her true identity was not all that earthshaking. The last thing her uncle would wish for was this man meddling in their affairs.
Lord Rule shook his head a time or two, bringing himself back to the matter at hand. And that matter was, to be obvious about the thing, that the matter at hand was his hand—for somehow it had found its way around Miss Lawrence’s slender throat. God! The woman had the power to drive him distracted. And the thought that she could be Sir Henry’s mistress did something evil to his insides that he was powerless to deny. Looking down into her angry face, Tristan cudgeled his brain for a way out of this latest coil into which the dratted chit had succeeded in goading him.
“Well, sir,” Mary prompted, puzzled by the slightly dazed expression in Lord Rule’s dark eyes. “Which is it to be—a quick snuffing or sweet freedom?”
What would Julian do in a situation like this? Or Kit? Tristan cursed under his breath as he realized neither of those esteemed gentlemen would have allowed themselves to be drawn into such a tangled mess in the first place. But then neither of those men had ever stood within a heartbeat of the beautiful, willful, mysterious Miss Mary Lawrence. Any man could be excused for losing his head in such circumstances, he assured himself, regaining a small bit of his consequence while fueling his flagging temper with yet another shovelful of Mary Lawrence’s supposed sins against him.
The firm clasp turned abruptly into a rough sort of caress as Tristan Rule smiled evilly, and Mary found herself wishing he were still scowling. “Wh-what are you going to do?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“What do you think I’m going to do?” Tristan returned in a soft growl. If he was already in trouble—and he knew he most assuredly would be the moment Sir Henry heard of this night’s work—he’d already decided he may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. His dark features nearly blotting out the moonlight as they descended on her, Tristan ended huskily, “I’m going to throttle you, what else?”
“No!” Mary protested swiftly, but not nearly quickly enough to keep her denial from being smothered by Lord Rule’s punishing mouth. Nor did her hands move rapidly enough to prevent his arms from capturing her slim body in his rock-hard embrace.
Mary had been kissed before, she was sure she had, but all of those kisses paled beneath the reality of Tristan’s mouth as it curved, and slanted, and moved possessively upon hers. As his strong arms forced the very air from her lungs, he captured her breath in his mouth and breathed his own life back into her. It was so personal, so intimate an action, that she felt herself to have been actually violated. When the tip of his tongue slid along the edge of her teeth as his mouth opened more fully over hers, then brazenly penetrated, Mary instinctively fought back.
“Ouch! You hellion!” Tristan spat, jumping back to reach a finger inside his mouth to inspect his wounded tongue.
Her hands balled into fists at her sides, her firm chin out-thrust in indignation, Mary warned coldly: “Touch me again, you miserable creature—even come within a mile of me—and I’ll have you horsewhipped!”
Watching appreciatively as Mary’s indignant figure stomped back into the ballroom, his hand held to the cheek she had slapped with some force in order to punctuate her parting warning, Tristan mused aloud, “She’d probably do it too. And at the moment, by God, it almost seems worth it.”
RACHEL HAD OBSERVED Mary’s departure with Rule, and had counted the minutes until her charge had returned alone to the ballroom, looking more than a little the worse for wear. But before Rachel could cross the floor to find out just what her infuriating nephew had done this time, Mary was claimed for a dance by some violet satin-clad exquisite and disappeared into the crowd of revelers.
That left Tristan, and Rachel was determined not to let the fellow get away without an explanation of what had transpired on the balcony. She found him lounging against the doorjamb, boring a hole in Mary’s unsuspecting back like some hot-headed halfling. She looked from Tristan to Mary and then back again, hardly believing what her eyes were telling her. It couldn’t be. It was utterly impossible. The Ruthless Lord Rule pricked by Cupid’s dart? Tristan was just shy of his thirtieth birthday, and in all that time he had never once shown any signs of being the romantic sort. True, she owned to herself, he had been hopping about the Continent and God only knew where else these past seven years or more, but considering the multitude of rumors about his involvement with the military, it seemed impossible for him to have carried on any serious romantic interlude without all of London finding out about it one way or another.
Tilting her head to one side, she inspected Tristan’s expression as he stood rock still, his whole body taut with suppressed—what? Fury? Passion? Lust? “Good heavens,” she whispered, “this novel writing has made me into a hysteric. Soon I’ll be reading Byron and swooning dead away.” Still, she thought as she looked at her nephew again, more objectively this time, Rule does have a certain look about him—the same sort of look, if I recall it correctly, that he had at the age of twelve, when his father refused to allow him on that great big stallion. And when Rachel recalled