Touch of a Lady (2 page)

“My heart isn’t looking for anything. Particularly not with a mistress. That will involve another part of my anatomy entirely.” He cast her a wicked grin.

“All hearts seek whether they know it or not.”

“And what does yours seek, Madame?”

Someone to still the press of voices trying to break into my mind. Someone who fills up the empty place in my chest. Someone whose soul is the calm sea upon which I may launch my small craft without fear of squalls.

But Tristan Nash didn’t deserve that kind of naked honesty from her. In fact, now that she’d spent a little time alone with him, she didn’t like him nearly as well as she’d thought she would. Any man who could so coldly contemplate both marriage and a mistress in the same conversation was not her sort of fellow.

So she simply extended her hand, palm up.

“My heart seeks someone who’ll cross my palm with silver for the sake of the orphans.”

“Fair enough,” he said as he pulled a sovereign out of his waistcoat pocket. “For the orphans.”

Delphinia secreted the coin between her breasts, behind the stiff busk of her corset. When she looked up, she realized her actions had drawn his attention there. He smiled at her ample décolletage.

“Now I know who you are,” he said. “You’re the Preston girl. Delcie, is it?”

“Delphinia,” she corrected, her nipples tingling beneath the layer of whalebone under his intense scrutiny. Her mother had always assured her that her bosom was one of her best assets. Now the swells that confirmed her femininity had unmasked her.

“You’re related to the Earl of Meade, I think.”

“Have you a copy of DeBrett’s in your pocket, my lord?” It irritated Delphinia that she was being judged solely on her pedigree as outlined in the social register. Of course, the fact that Lord Meade was her uncle was the only reason Delphinia was still included in this sort of social gathering. She’d been born to threadbare gentility on an untitled branch of the Preston family, but her connections were good. Provided she married well, she’d still be considered part of the aristocracy. Otherwise, she’d lapse into common obscurity. Sometimes she thought that would be no bad thing. “Do you think people may be measured solely by their place among the peerage?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be spending so much time talking to you, would I?”

The man was insufferable. She rose to her feet. “We are finished here.”

“Not quite. It appears to me that we are both in possession of one another’s secrets. I know who Madame Zola is, which I gather you’d rather not become public knowledge or you wouldn’t try so hard to disguise yourself. And you know who I’m destined to wed, which I never should have confirmed. Truth to tell, I don’t know why I did. In any case, I propose we keep the information between ourselves.” He extended a hand to her. “Do we have an accord?”

She glared at him for a moment. It wouldn’t do her any favors to be known as the fortune-teller. If he wanted his match with the duke’s daughter kept private until the announcement was made, it was nothing to her. She took his hand for a firm shake.

Then the signet ring on his right forefinger sent a fiery message up her arm, smashing through her mental defenses, and screamed its secrets to her brain.

She was suffocating. There was no substance in the air she dragged over her teeth. A thick band was strapped to her chest. It seemed to tighten with each attempt at a breath.

Worse than that was the feeling of utter despair that swirled in her gut. She was trapped with no way out.

For the first time in her life, she couldn’t shut out the voices that clamored for entrance into her mind. She’d known they were powerful but she never suspected they’d swamp her like this.

Numbing hopelessness gripped her.

No, wait. These weren’t her emotions. They were someone else’s.

Tristan.

She could still see him, but as though through a thick mist, concern drawing his brows together.

With such a heavy load, why is the man still upright? By rights, he ought to be sagging like a sway-backed mule.

The weight was suddenly too much and Delphinia collapsed to the long grass, falling slowly as her limbs went boneless.

* * *

Tristan caught her head before it could hit the ground. “What the devil?”

He was on his knees beside the girl in a trice. Her grey eyes were open, but he was certain she saw nothing. Her skin had paled to the color of foolscap. Her magnificent breasts didn’t rise and fall.

He felt for a pulse at the side of her neck and was relieved to find one, but she still wasn’t breathing. It was time to see if his physician friend’s ideas about how to revive a drowning victim were worth the paper he’d had them printed on. And if they’d work for someone who’d simply stopped breathing. Tristan pulled back the veil that covered the bottom half of her face and lowered his mouth to the Preston girl’s lips.

He forced them open and blew into her mouth. Then he pulled back to let the air escape naturally. The slight exhalation feathered over his lips. He repeated the process, this time splaying his hand over her bosom so he could feel the expansion of her ribs as he filled her lungs.

If the situation weren’t so damnably serious, he’d have relished her satiny softness.

In. Out. He forced himself to go slow as he offered her his own breath.

Then, after several moments, she sighed.

It was a small sound, no louder than the flutter of a bird’s wing, but it went straight to his gut. Somehow, the act of pressing his lips to hers changed between one heartbeat and the next. He was no longer reviving Miss Preston from a swoon. He was kissing her senseless.

And she was kissing him back.

Their tongues played a game of chase and capture. Her hand found the back of his head, pulling him down lest he decide to withdraw.

No chance of that.
His fingers managed to slip beneath the stiff bodice to cup a breast and toy with a taut nipple.

Lord, she was tender. Ardent. Responsive.

The burden of his family’s expectations sloughed off him and he was suddenly only Tristan. Only a man tangled up with a woman whose kisses made him feel like a minor god.

She nipped his bottom lip and it sent his groin into pleasurable agony. He drew back in surprise.

What sort of debutant kissed like that?

Looking down at her, he could easily tumble into the stormy sea of her eyes and surrender to the grey swells without regret.

If it weren’t for his responsibilities. All the souls attached to Devonwood were depending on him. He had to make the match with Lady Florence work. He sat up to put a little distance between them.

“Are you all right?” he asked huskily as he raised Miss Preston to a sitting position.

“Better than all right,” she said, draping her arms around his neck and pressing kisses to his jaw line. One of her hands slid under his waistcoat and stroked his ribs through the thin lawn of his shirt. “I’m absolutely marvelous.”

That was the understatement of the Season. Delphinia Preston was a wonder. Something about her stood his world on its head. No one had ever made him feel as she did—both strong and weak, free and enslaved, all at once.

And he needed to stop letting her kiss and pet him or he’d forget himself and take her right there on the sweet grass, devil take the hindermost.

But he did intend to take her.

He gathered both her hands between his. “Miss Preston, . . . ” How did one proposition a mistress at the same house party where one expected to acquire a fiancée? “I don’t know how to say this, but I feel there is much more we are meant to be to each other.”

There. That should do for a start. Earnest, yet vague. He was inordinately pleased with himself over his little speech.

A smile spread over her features like a sunrise. “I feel the same,” she said. “But I thought you were set on Lady Florence.”

Tristan frowned. A true man of the world would lie charmingly about now. A few pretty words, a fulsome promise or two and Delphinia Preston would be in his bed by midnight.

He couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“I am still bound to court Lady Florence,” he admitted. “I have obligations.”

“I know,” she said simply, the smile fading only slightly.

Tristan pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Perhaps she’d agree to a long-standing arrangement. It wasn’t unheard of for a man and his mistress to stay together longer than the same man and his wife. He’d treat her well. She’d never know want so long as she was under his protection and—

“I also know I will never be your mistress,” she said with certainty as if she’d heard his thoughts.

His dreams of a clandestine love nest sizzled away with her words.

“I didn’t ask,” he said testily as he rose to his feet and helped her do the same.

“No, but you were thinking it.”

“How do you—” He tugged his waistcoat down. His friend Lord Sanders had claimed the Preston girl was half witch. Tristan was disposed to believe him now. “A man may not be held accountable for his thoughts. Only his actions.”

“I think your actions speak for themselves.” One of her pink nipples peeped above the lace at her necklace and she tucked it back behind the stiff bodice. Then she smiled up at him without a hint of maidenly shame.

He wondered suddenly if she was a maiden. She certainly didn’t kiss like one.

But if she wasn’t, why wouldn’t she agree to become his ladybird?

Delphinia Preston was a conundrum with feet.

“Are you fully recovered from your swoon?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you, my lord. Are you?”

No, devil take it. His insides were roiling like the North Sea in a gale. What had she done to him?

He made a quick leg to her and swept up his tricorne, jamming it on his head. “I wish you good day, Miss Preston, and much success in your campaign to aid the orphans.”

“And I wish you success in your campaign as well, Tristan” she said.

It was a breach of etiquette for her to call him by his Christian name, but he didn’t mind. He liked the idea of his name passing over that sweet tongue of hers.

“Though you may find your plans changing soon,” she warned.

No, they wouldn’t. If he didn’t join the House of Devonwood to the House of Seabrooke, then his father’s estate was doomed. His grandfather had lost the family fortune in the South Sea Bubble two generations ago and Devonwood still hadn’t recovered. But the family held on. The first Earl of Devonwood had been created after he sailed across the Channel and ransacked the countryside with William the Conqueror—or the Bastard, depending on which side of history one wished to come down upon. Since that time, each successive Earl of Devonwood stubbornly held onto their land. None had ever surrendered so much as a handful of earth.

By God, Tristan wouldn’t be the first.

Even though the land was the only asset left to settle the growing debts.

Except for me
, he thought ruefully. The Duke of Seabrooke had all the money he could possibly want. His connections would not be improved by a liaison with the heir to Devonwood. But the duke was determined that his eldest daughter should breed tall, well-favored sons and Tristan had the dubious honor of presenting a more than usually pleasing appearance.

Tristan wondered if this was how a prize stallion put out to stud felt.

He comforted himself with the knowledge that he was selling himself for a worthy cause—the continuance of his ancestral name and the good of the estate.

At least he’d always felt it was worthy until he looked into Delphinia Preston’s eyes.

He forced himself to turn away and flee the red silk tent. While he still had the strength of will.

* * *

Delphinia reattached her veil and lifted the curtain to watch him go. She wasn’t sure exactly what had happened. She’d always suspected an inanimate object could speak to her if she was only willing to listen. She could usually hear a humming sibilance emanating from an item that wished to communicate with her, a whisper just on the edge of sound. This was the first time she’d let the voice trapped inside a thing burst into her mind.

Tristan’s ring had plenty to tell her. Even after she lost consciousness, the ring told her about its owner’s character. The clunky bit of gold wasn’t shy about announcing his faults. They all poured into her without a filter. Tristan was vain and stubborn and proud. But he was also brave, generous and doggedly determined to protect those under his care.

And after the ring spilled all its knowledge of his past, it deluged her with his present. The tangled net of his sudden and overpowering feelings for
her
sent pleasure streaming though her limbs.

Then the ring treated her to a glimpse of his future if he wed Lady Florence.

It was joyless as a funeral.

Her friend, Miss Harmony Downing, joined Delphinia at the entrance to her tent. “Oh, Del, we’ve done wonderfully today. We raised ever so much more than at the Crofton Fair last month.”

“Oh, yes, for the orphans.” Delphinia fished Tristan’s sovereign from its resting place between her breasts. “There’s a full purse beneath the table as well.”

“What fool gave you a sovereign?” Harmony asked with a laugh.

Delphinia arched a brow and sent a pointed glance across the clipped lawn to where Tristan had joined the group of gallants surrounding Lady Florence. The duke’s daughter was never without admirers, but the smile she gave Tristan made Delphinia’s belly tense.

“Lord Edmondstone? What’s he doing throwing money around like that? I’d heard he has pockets to let.”

“Evidently not,” Del said, wanting to defend him. Giving her this coin had cost him dear, but he wouldn’t stint when it came to charity. “Tristan has a generous streak.”

“Tristan, is it?” Harmony said with a sly grin. “If you’re calling him familiar now, I have to wonder what the two of you were doing in this tent. I’ll lay odds it had nothing to do with that crystal ball of yours.”

“He kissed me.”

Harmony’s grin faded. “Oh, Del. Be careful. Flirting is one thing, but a kiss! A man like that has expectations and it doesn’t include a girl with a miniscule dowry and no title. You only need use your eyes to realize he’s aiming high.”