How the Scoundrel Seduces (35 page)

H
ER HEART ACHING,
Zoe cradled Tristan against her. She should have kept quiet. She shouldn’t have told him how she felt. And yet, he didn’t seem unhappy to hear it. Indeed, he was kissing her and nuzzling her and holding her so tenderly it made her want to cry.

The man certainly knew how to make a woman love him.

Let me do what I do best.

That, too, made her want to cry. Was that how he saw himself? “It’s not true, you know.”

He froze. “What isn’t?”

Belatedly realizing what she’d last said to him, she added hastily, “That pleasuring a woman is what you do best.”

“Ah. That.” For a moment, he relaxed against her. Then he jerked back to stare at her. “Wait, are you saying that I didn’t give you pleasure?”

His offended tone made her laugh. “No . . . I mean, yes. Oh, Lord, I am mangling this very badly.” She
caught his dear face in her hands and said, “I’m saying you have many wonderful talents. And while pleasuring a woman is certainly one, it’s not the only one by far.”

That seemed to satisfy him, for his expression turned smug. “So you
do
enjoy my lovemaking?”

She lifted an eyebrow. “If you can’t tell that, sir, you are blind and deaf and probably stupid.”

If he’d been a peacock, he would have been strutting about, displaying his feathers. Instead, a slow smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “And what are these other ‘wonderful talents’ of mine, sweetheart?”

“For one thing, you’re a very good investigator. You found out things about my past that even Papa never did.”

“That’s because he wasn’t looking,” he said dryly.

“True.” She ran her hands over the coat he filled out so very well. “But you do tend to ask the most important questions and cut right to the truth of matters. I’m not very good at that myself.”

He chuckled. “That’s because you don’t stop to think before you speak your mind. Which happens to be a quality I like.”

She dropped her gaze to his expertly tied cravat. “Even when I blurt out things I shouldn’t?”
Like utterly unwise declarations of love?

“Even then,” he said in a husky tone.

He had to know that she was referring to the words he’d practically dragged from her, but he kept silent, content just to thread his fingers through her hair and smooth it out over her shoulders.

At last he released a low breath. “And it’s not that I don’t . . . that I . . .”

“Shh.” She pressed a finger to his lips. “I know what you think about love. And it’s fine. You want me as your wife, and that’s enough.”

She ventured a look at him, shocked to find that he wasn’t eyeing her with the relief she’d expected, just an unsettling intensity she didn’t know how to read.

Lord, but she was tired of trying to figure him out.

Pasting a smile to her lips, she slid off the bureau and began arranging her clothes. “Anyway, before we got carried away, you offered to help get my box down.”

“Right,” he said, and there was definitely relief in his voice. Like Papa, he preferred having things to do over talking about how he felt.

Climbing atop the chair, he reached up for the box that was the size of a smallish pistol case. “This one here?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He climbed down and handed it to her. “What’s in it that you would risk breaking your neck for?”

“This.” She opened the box to reveal a red and gold patterned scarf with a knotted fringe. “I haven’t looked at it in years, but as I lay in my bed, the memory of it popped into my head and I had to come find it.”

Her throat tightened as she stared at it. “When I was a little girl, Mama told me that one day she would explain all about the woman it belonged to. And that until she could, it was to stay in its special place up there in the cabinet. I think she put it up so high precisely so I wouldn’t go trying to play with it.”

Carefully, she removed the scarf. “From time to time, she would take it out and let me hold it and caress it and even play with it a little. But watching me with it always seemed to make her sad, so after a while, I didn’t want to do that.” She stroked it as she used to. “I stopped asking for it when I was eight or so.”

He took the scarf from her. “You think it belonged to Drina.”

“It must have. Mama was probably waiting for Papa to let her tell me about my natural mother.” Her throat felt tight and raw. “As a girl, I loved this scarf. I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to wear it. I can’t believe I forgot about it.”

“You didn’t realize its significance, that’s all. But you’re old enough to wear it now.” He tied it about her neck tenderly. “It suits you.”

“I shall wear it in Drina’s honor.” She touched it, and tears welled in her eyes.

The sight seemed to disturb him. “We will find out what happened to her and who hurt her,” he said fiercely. “I swear we’ll avenge her.”

She shook her head. “No need for vengeance. I don’t want her sacrifice on my behalf to be in vain. Hucker mustn’t win. Or George.”

“Never,” he vowed.

Brushing away her tears, she forced a smile for his benefit. “Now, you and I both need to sleep while we can. All right?”

He nodded.

But when she headed for the door and he didn’t follow, she paused. “Are you coming?”

“In a few minutes. It wouldn’t do for us to be seen coming up the stairs with you looking like
that,
” he drawled. “Your father might make good on his threat to call me out.”

She laughed. “Yes, I daresay he might.” She gazed at the face she was growing to love so well. “But don’t be long.”

“I won’t.”

The words
I love you
were on the tip of her tongue. But his expression had closed up again, and she couldn’t bear another answering silence. Instead, she walked out of Mama’s favorite drawing room, leaving him to his dark thoughts, whatever they might be.

Still, as she headed for the stairs, she prayed that one day he might say the words back.

♦ ♦ ♦

T
HE MOMENT
Z
OE
left, Tristan dropped into a chair and stared blindly into the fire. He’d finally got the words out of her that he’d only half realized he was waiting to hear. She loved him. Zoe
loved
him.

Was she daft?

Apparently so, given that she’d looked expectantly at him, waiting for him to confess the same. And he should have, if only to make her feel more settled about the marriage. But he didn’t like to lie.

Would
it be a lie? God, he wasn’t even sure. What did he know of love?

All right, so he couldn’t stop thinking about her or wanting her. And the prospect of a future in this house, managing the estate at her side, raising children, even serving in Parliament on her behalf, was so intoxicating he could hardly contain his eagerness to begin.

The problem was, what if it didn’t last? What if he, like Father, couldn’t be the man she needed? He’d spent half his days in and out of women’s lives, never having to please one of them beyond the bedchamber . . . never
caring
enough to do so. What if that was all he knew how to do?

The thought terrified him. Give him a forger to arrest or a murderer to hunt down or a thief to follow any day, over a woman looking at him with love in her eyes and expectations for him that he wasn’t sure he could meet.

Especially if this mess with Hucker meant she lost everything. The last time he’d been in a bind over how to support his family, he’d stolen a horse and gotten them banished from England. God only knew what would happen this time.

Scowling, he rose from the chair. He was
not
going to muck her life up. No matter what it took, he would keep her out of this business with Hucker.

Which was why he’d best go check on Dom. He glanced at the clock. Surely he’d given her enough time to fall asleep. He headed out into the hall, but before he could even consider walking down to the stables to hunt up a horse, Dom entered.

He stopped short when he saw Tristan. “Thank God you’re awake,” Dom said, his face as pale as the snow he stamped off his boots. “We have to go now.”

Tristan headed for the closet to hunt up his greatcoat. “I take it you have news of Milosh?”

Dom followed him. “Almost certainly. A man was riding along the road, headed back toward York. I hailed him and he stopped, said he was coming from the coast. So I asked if he’d happened to pass a Gypsy fellow on horseback. I fully expected him to say no.”

Watching as Tristan donned his coat and hat, Dom frowned. “But he said that he
had
seen such a man about five miles back. I asked how that could be, since I’d been sitting there a while, so the Gypsy should have ridden past me before meeting him on the road.”

The two of them hurried for the door.

“Turns out,” Dom said, “there’s an alternate road that runs from York to the next town up ahead, which the Gypsies like to take to bypass Highthorpe. No one saw fit to tell us that.”

Tristan’s heart began to pound. “No one may have known. What passes for a road with the Romany can be little more than a cart track. And if their purpose is to avoid confrontation with the ignorant townspeople of Highthorpe, then they would almost certainly keep it secret.”

“Well, this fellow knew, and judging from what he said, Milosh now has an hour on us.”

“At least he’ll be struggling through the snow on a lone horse,” Tristan said. “We’ll have his lordship’s curricle
and a matched pair to plow through. It might gain us some time.”

The brothers rushed out the front door and nearly bowled over a man in his thirties. Tristan recognized him from earlier. His name was Pipkin, and his lordship had mentioned that the man had served as a rifleman under him. Now he was the undercoachman.

“Sirs, do you wish the horses stabled for the night?” Pipkin asked.

“No,” Tristan said, “but when my fiancée and his lordship awaken, tell them we’ve taken the curricle to Rathmoor Park.”

“Very good, sir.”

Pipkin didn’t so much as question Tristan’s right to order him about or run off with his master’s equipage.

“And this is most important,” Tristan added. “Tell his lordship and her ladyship
not
to follow, do you understand? They’re to remain here until our return.”

That gave Pipkin a moment’s pause. “Yes, sir,” he said at last.

As the two of them rushed down the steps to the waiting curricle, Dom asked Tristan, “Are you afraid we won’t catch up to Milosh?”

“Exactly.”

“Then perhaps we ought to rouse his lordship and take some of his soldier-servants with us.”

“Absolutely not.”

Dom caught Tristan by the arm before he could climb in. “But if you’re right, and we’re forced to go
onto the estate, we don’t know how many of George’s men we’ll end up facing.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Shrugging off Dom’s arm, Tristan leapt into the curricle. “I have to keep his lordship and Zoe out of it. I can’t risk Hucker learning about her. You know damned well he’d use the knowledge that she’s his daughter to blackmail her and Lord Olivier. Or worse yet, he’ll tell George, and George will use that knowledge to destroy us both. It’s how he works.”

“True.” Reluctantly, Dom joined him in the curricle.

As they headed off, Tristan’s mind drifted back to the last time he’d made love to Zoe. To the sweetness of it, the tenderness of it. To the words that kept singing through his heart.

“Do you think your mother loved Father?”

Instantly he cursed whatever impulse had made him broach the subject. He and Dom had never spoken of Dom’s mother, not in all their years together. It was a sore subject.

To Tristan’s surprise, Dom took the question in stride. “Honestly? I have no idea. She died giving birth to me, remember?”

Tristan persisted, though he knew he shouldn’t. “Yes, but surely you heard
something
. Surely you at least know whether they initially married for love, no matter what happened later.”

“Marrying for love wasn’t always the fashion back then. And considering that Father took a mistress only five years into their marriage . . .”

“Good point.”

They rode a bit farther before Dom spoke again. “Still, George used to talk about it. Not that you can believe a damned thing he says most of the time, but he did claim that Mother loved Father rather desperately.”

Tristan considered that. “Perhaps that’s why George resents me and Lisette so much. Because our mother stole him from your mother.”

“Perhaps.” Dom stared ahead at the road. “But if so, he’s a fool. Because I’m fairly certain that Father didn’t love Mother.”

“Why?”

“Our father was incapable of love, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

That caught Tristan off guard. Unable to be tactful, he said, “He told
my
mother that he loved her.”

“Of course he did. It was what she wanted to hear. But at heart our father was a selfish being. He never cared to be inconvenienced, and telling your mother he loved her saved him from having to show it.” Dom shot him a sidelong glance. “Think of it. Did he ever once do something for any of us at a sacrifice to himself?”

“The codicil.”

Dom snorted. “He wrote it on his deathbed. When a man is staring the Grim Reaper in the face, he sometimes makes a last-minute bid for Paradise by setting things right. It doesn’t mean much when the weight of his life has been negligence.”

That gave Tristan pause. He’d never thought of Father as selfish. He should have, for now that Dom said it, it was painfully evident. But Tristan had been
so focused on trying to figure out why Father hadn’t loved him and Lisette and Mother enough to provide for them that it hadn’t occurred to him that perhaps Father had merely been incapable of love.

“And in case this conversation was provoked by your current situation,” Dom added, “you’re not like him in the least.”

Startled by that astute perception, Tristan said, “How do
you
know? Perhaps I just said I’d marry Zoe to avoid the inconvenience of dealing with his lordship’s wrath over my . . . er . . . association with her.”