The Lady Chosen (26 page)

She hauled in a tight breath. “That’s because you’re confusing it….” Her words faded as he lowered his head. “I said we’d only talk!”

“That’s illogical.” He brushed her lips with his, pleased when hers clung. He shifted, settling her more comfortably in his arms. Setting her hips to his, the soft curve of her stomach cradling his erection. He looked down into her eyes, wide, darkening. His lips curved, but not in a smile. “You’re right—it is a primitive instinct that’s driving me. But you picked the wrong one.”

“What—”

Her mouth was open—he filled it. Took possession in a long, slow, thorough kiss. She tried to resist, hold back, but then surrendered.

When, eventually, he lifted his head, she sighed, murmured, “What’s illogical about talking?”

“It’s not consistent with your conclusion.”

“My conclusion?” She blinked at him. “I hadn’t even got to my conclusion.”

He brushed her lips again so she wouldn’t see his wolfish grin. “Let me state it for you. If, as you hypothesize, the only reason I want to marry you—the only true reason driving our mutual attraction—is because you’re resisting, why not try
not
resisting and see what happens?”

She stared dazedly up at him. “Not resisting?”

He shrugged lightly, his gaze falling to her lips. “If you’re right, you’ll prove your point.” He took her lips, her mouth again, before she could consider what would happen if she was wrong.

His tongue stroked hers; she shivered delicately, then kissed him back. Stopped resisting, as she generally did when they’d reached this point; he wasn’t fool enough to believe that meant anything more than that she’d inwardly shrugged and decided to take what she might, still firmly convinced the desire between them would wane.

He knew it wouldn’t, at least on his part. What he felt for her was quite different from anything he’d felt before—not for any other woman, not for anyone at all. Protective, deeply to-his-bones possessive, and unquestionably right. It was that conviction of rightness that drove him to have her again and again, even in the teeth of her determined denials, to demonstrate the breadth and depth, the increasing power of all that was growing between them.

A stunning revelation in any circumstances, but he set himself to paint the sensual reality between them in bold and striking colors the better to impress her with its power, its potency, its undisguised truth.

She felt it, broke from the kiss, from beneath heavy
lids met his eyes. Sighed. “I really did intend that tonight we would only dance.”

There was no resistance, no reluctance, only acceptance.

He closed his hands about her bottom and shifted suggestively against her. Bent his head to brush her lips. “We are going to dance—it just won’t be to a waltz.”

Her lips curved. Her hand tightened on his nape and she drew him to her. “To our own music, then.”

He took her mouth, caught their reins, and deliberately set them aside.

The daybed angled to the windows was the obvious place to lay her, to lie alongside her and feast on her breasts. Until her soft gasps were urgent and needy, until she arched and her fingers clung to his skull.

Suppressing a triumphant smile, he slid farther down the daybed, raising her skirts, pressing them high about her waist to expose her hips, and her long slender legs. Tracing her curves, fingers first trailing, then gripping to part her thighs, opening her to him.

Then he bent his head and set his lips to her softness.

She cried out, tried to catch his shoulders, but they were beyond her reach. Her fingers tangled in his hair, clenched as he laved, licked, then lightly suckled.

“
Tristan!
No…”

“Yes.” He held her down and pressed deeper, savoring the tart taste of her, step by step knowingly winding her tight…

She was quivering on the crest of climax when he shifted, freed his erection from the confines of his trousers, and rose over her. She gripped his forearms, nails sinking deep, her knees rising to grip his flanks. Sensual entreaty etched every line of her face; urgency drove her restless body, shifting wantonly, beckoning beneath his.

Her spine bowed as he entered her; he drove home and
she climaxed, a glorious rippling release. He caught her up, drove her on. She clung, sobbed, and matched him, as committed as he as they swept up the mountain, with each forceful thrust climbed the jagged peaks, then tension splintered, fractured, fell away, and they soared into the void, into the sublime heat of their sharing.

Into that moment when all barriers fell away, and there was just him and her, joined in naked honesty, wrapped in that powerful reality.

Chests heaving, hearts thundering, heat coursing beneath their skins, they stilled, waited, locked intimately together, for the glory to wane. Their gazes touched, held—neither made any move to shift, to part.

She raised a hand, traced his cheek. Her eyes searched his, wondering…

He turned his head, pressed an openmouthed kiss to her palm.

Knew when she drew a deep breath that although her body and her senses were still sunk in the bliss, her mind had snapped free; she’d already resumed thinking.

Resigned, he looked into her eyes. Raised one brow.

“You said I’d picked the wrong primitive instinct—that it wasn’t the response to a challenge that was driving you.” She held his gaze. “If not that, then what? Why”—with one hand, she waved weakly—“are we here?”

He knew the answer, couldn’t manage a smile. “We’re here because I want you.”

She made a derisive sound. “So it’s just lust—”

“No.” He pressed into her and gained her complete attention. “Not lust—not anything like it. But you’re not hearing what I’m saying. I. Want.
You.
Not any other woman; no other will do. Only you.”

She frowned.

His lips curved, not in a smile. “That’s why we’re here. That’s why I’ll pursue you no matter what comes until you agree to be mine.”

*   *   *

Only you.

Sipping tea at the breakfast table the next morning, Leonora examined those words.

She wasn’t at all sure she understood the implications, understood what Tristan had meant to convey. Men, at least those of his ilk, were a species unknown to her; she felt uneasy in attributing too much meaning—or the meaning she would have intended—to his phrase.

There were further complications.

The ease with which he’d subverted her determined intentions at Huntly House—just as he had on the evenings before that—made thinking she could stand against him and his practiced seduction a frankly ludicrous hope.

No more pretending on that front; if she seriously wanted to deny him, she’d have to unearth a chastity belt. And even then…he could almost certainly pick locks.

And there was more yet to consider.

While it was perfectly obvious that testing her hypothesis by not resisting would play into his hands, if she was right in her estimation of the reason behind his passion, then not resisting the notion of marrying him would indeed see his interest wane.

But what if it didn’t?

She’d spent half the night wondering, imagining…

A gentle cough from Castor jerked her back to reality; she had no idea how long her mind had been wandering, caught by an unexpected vista, entranced by a prospect she’d long ago thought she’d turned her back on. Frowning, she pushed aside her uneaten toast and rose.

“When the footman takes Henrietta for her walk, please ask him to summon me—I’ll accompany them today.”

“Indeed, miss.” Castor bowed as she left the room.

That evening, together with Mildred and Gertie, Leonora swept into Lady Catterthwaite’s ballroom. They were
neither early nor late. After greeting their hostess, they joined the fray. With every passing day, more of the fashionable returned to town and the balls grew commensurately more crowded.

Lady Catterthwaite’s ballroom was small and cramped. Accompanying her aunts to where a grouping of chairs and chaises gave the older female guests a place to sit and watch their charges, and exchange all the latest news, Leonora was surprised to find no Trentham waiting for her—waiting to step out of the crowd and waylay her. Claim her.

She helped Gertie settle in an armchair, inwardly frowning at how accustomed to his attentions she’d grown. Straightening, she nodded to her aunts. “I’m going to mingle.”

Mildred was already speaking with an acquaintance; Gertie nodded, then turned to join the circle.

Leonora glided into the already considerable crowd. Attracting a gentleman, joining a group of acquaintances would be easy enough, yet she had no desire to do either. She was…not precisely concerned, but certainly wondering over Tristan’s nonappearance. Last night, after he’d so deliberately uttered the words “only you,” she’d sensed a change in him, a sudden wariness, a watchfulness she’d been unable to interpret.

He hadn’t cut himself off from her, hadn’t precisely withdrawn, but she’d sensed a self-protective recoil on his part, as if he’d gone too far, said more than was safe…or, perhaps, true.

The possibility nagged; she was already having trouble enough trying to fathom his motives—coping with the fact that his motives had, entirely beyond her wishes or her will, become important to her—that the idea he might not be open with her, honest with her…that way lay a morass of uncertainty in which she had no intention of becoming mired.

It was precisely the sort of situation that most strongly supported her inflexible stance against marriage.

She continued drifting aimlessly, stopping here and there to exchange greetings, then, entirely unexpectedly, directly ahead of her in the crowd, she saw a pair of shoulders she recognized instantly.

They were clad in scarlet, as they had been years ago. As if sensing her regard, the gentleman glanced around and saw her. And smiled.

Delighted, he turned and held out his hands. “Leonora! How lovely to see you.”

She returned his smile and gave him her hands. “Mark. I see you haven’t sold out.”

“No, no. A career soldier, that’s me.” Brown-haired, fair-skinned, he turned to include the lady standing by his side. “Allow me to present my wife, Heather.”

Leonora’s smile slipped a fraction, but Heather Whorton smiled sweetly and shook hands. If she recalled that Leonora was the lady her husband had been engaged to before he’d offered for her hand, she gave no sign. Relaxing, somewhat to her surprise Leonora found herself regaled with an account of the Whortons’ life over the past seven or so years, from the birth of their first child to the arrival of their fourth, to the rigors of following the drum or alternatively the long separations imposed on military families.

Both Mark and Heather contributed; it was impossible to miss how dependent on Mark his wife was. She hung on his arm, but even more, seemed totally immersed in him and their children—indeed, she seemed to have no identity beyond that.

That was not the norm in Leonora’s circle.

As she listened and smiled politely, commenting as appropriate, the truth of how badly she and Mark would have suited sank in. From his responses to Heather, it was patently clear that he rejoiced in her need of him—a need
Leonora would never have had, would never have allowed herself to develop.

She’d long ago realized she hadn’t loved Mark; at the time of their engagement she’d been a young and distinctly naive seventeen—she’d thought she wanted what all other young ladies wanted—lusted after—a handsome husband. Listening to him now, and remembering, she could admit that she hadn’t been in love with him but with the idea of being in love, of getting married and having her own household. Of gaining what for girls of that age had been the Holy Grail.

She listened, observed, and sent up a heartfelt prayer; she truly had had a lucky escape.

Tristan strolled nonchalantly down the stairs of Lady Catterthwaite’s ballroom. He was later than usual; a message received earlier in the day from one of his contacts had necessitated another visit to the docks—night had fallen before he’d returned to Trentham House.

Pausing two steps from the bottom, he scanned the room, but failed to find Leonora. He did, however, locate her aunts. A niggle of concern pricking his nape, he stepped down to the floor and headed their way.

Impelled by a need to find Leonora, an impulse whose strength unnerved him.

Their interlude the previous evening, the explanation he’d given her, that she and she alone could fulfill his need, had only served to underscore, to exacerbate, his growing sense of vulnerability. He felt as if he were going into battle missing part of his armor, that he was exposing himself, his emotions, in a reckless, foolish, wantonly idiotic fashion.

His intincts were to immediately and comprehensively guard against any such weakness, to cover it up, shore it up with all speed.

He couldn’t help being the type of man he was, had long ago accepted his nature. Knew there was no sense fighting his escalating need to secure Leonora, to make her unequivocally his.

To have her agree to marry him with all speed.

Reaching the gaggle of older ladies, he bowed before Mildred and shook hands with both her and Gertie. He then had to endure a round of introductions to the circle of eager, interested, matronly faces.

Mildred saved him by waving toward the crowd. “Leonora is here, somewhere in the melee.”

“About time you got here!” Grumbling under her breath, Gertie, sitting to one side of the group, drew his attention. “She’s over there.” She pointed with her cane; Tristan turned, looked, and saw Leonora chatting with an officer from some infantry regiment.

Gertie snorted. “That blackguard Whorton’s toadying up to her—can’t imagine she’s enjoying it. You’d best go and rescue her.”

He’d never been one to rush in without understanding the game. Although the trio of which Leonora was one was at some distance, they were, from this angle, clearly visible. Although he could see only Leonora’s profile, her stance and her occasional gesture assured him she was neither upset nor worried. She also showed no sign of wanting to slip away.