At least she assumed there was a beast inside. He watched her intently, all that moody turmoil and sporadic fire in his eyes hinted that the passionate temper she’d gotten a glimpse of last time she was here, was still in there.
“Did I mention how verra fetching ye look this evening?”
Her inner goddess quivered as he kissed her hand, the merest brush of his lips on her fingers.
“You’re not bad yourself, Mr. MacKintosh.”
He raised a brow at the admission, elevating his already wicked good looks. Attraction inched toward desire. Brontë delivered a stern inward scolding. Whatever relation she had with him, it was entirely irrelevant. Historically hot or not, the sexist overtone of some of his comments — appropriate to the era or not — aggravated her twenty-first century sensibilities. More importantly, he was an overall skeptic of her and her two appearances at Moray Place. Time spent with him would do nothing more productive than unravel her tenuous tales.
No matter how Aila liked to tease, he wasn’t her trickle-down man. Brontë needed to remember that and not entangle herself in the past more than she already had. She was here for one night and one night only. Hardly long enough to entertain the thought that anything might come of the attraction...very well, blistering attraction she felt for him.
He offered her his arm. An apple in the garden of Eden.
Chapter 10
TRIS DIDN’T KNOW WHAT to make of Brontë Hughes. For all the slight similarities between her and Hazel, there was a pronounced difference. While Miss Hughes appeared guileless with those big, unusually colored eyes, Hazel actually was. To be fair, Brontë’s professed intentions to ensure the wellbeing of his friend rang true. That fact notwithstanding, she fairly reeked of artifice and deceit in her refusal to answer for her well-timed appearance and precognition of the same events while reacting even more peculiarly to the introduction of normal facts of life, such as the recent declaration of war upon Germany.
There was far more to her than met the eye. A pit of lies if he wasn’t mistaken. His curiosity reached a boiling point where curbing the temptation to literally shake the answers from her had become most trying.
Then there were other temptations.
The ones he firmly chastised himself to ignore.
Their slow progression through the line of vehicles finally came to an end and it was their turn to disembark. Tris pushed open the door before the driver had a chance to come around. Donning his hat once more, he turned to offer his companion his assistance.
As she had before, she ignored his hand. “I got it. Thanks.”
And as he had before, Tris insisted.
With almost grudging acceptance, she took his hand. Then offered a look filled with the same sentiment before she took his arm when he offered it to her. Simply another aspect of Miss Hughes to confound him further. He’d never met a lady who so tenaciously refused a gentleman’s assistance.
It was as if she couldn’t bear to touch him.
Henry assisted Hazel who linked arms with Brontë and drew her away to meet some nearby friends without a hint of protest from the lass.
Perhaps it was he alone who garnered such disdain?
Hazel introduced her to ladies and gentlemen alike, each received a smile and warm greeting. Even the men who bowed and took her hand. Listening to Henry with a half an ear, he watched her make the social rounds. He didn’t spy a single tug or retreat. Indeed, she shook their hands heartily.
Americans.
After several minutes of indulgent waiting, Henry reclaimed his wife and escorted her toward the door, leaving Tris to face Brontë’s mutinous look once again as he offered his arm.
“Miss Hughes...”
“Won’t you please call me Brontë?”
It wasn’t the first time she’d asked yet the implied familiarity of addressing her by her proper name chafed, especially as they weren’t related. Nor did she seem to care for him. Quite possibly his interrogation had put her off, but he’d gotten the sense before that she shared the attraction that stirred in him.
“An unusual name.” He made no commitment to employ the appellation henceforth.
“Isn’t it?” She reached to open the theater door herself and he leapt forward to do it for her. Her jaw clenched before she continued. “My mother named my two sisters and I after her favorite authors. Since she couldn’t be swayed to choose one Brontë sister over the others, I was blessed with their surname.”
Her emphasis on the word blessed held a hint of sarcasm.
“You don’t care for your name?” he asked.
“I do now. When I was younger, I was teased quite a lot.”
The footman holding the second set of doors at the ready received a smile and genuine thanks, much as Henry had earlier at the car, leaving Tris perplexed.
Was it him alone? As she seemed far more relaxed and talkative since their arrival, Tris couldn’t imagine why.
He wanted to ask, but said instead, “I had the same issue. Who are your other sisters named for?”
“Jane for Jane Austen and my younger sister for Virginia Woolf.”
The name was unfamiliar to him. “Who is Virg —”
“Oh wow!” Her soft exclamation interrupted his question as they stepped into the lobby. “It’s hardly changed at all. I suppose I knew that, but it’s something to see it for myself. Honestly except for the lighting...”
She trailed off, catching her bottom lip between her teeth.
“I take it you’ve been here before?” he prompted as they lingered in the lobby while the Burnhams mingled with acquaintances. A few approached Tris and he greeted them politely without encouraging them to dawdle.
Brontë blinked up at him, her eyes sparkling with the reflection of the newly installed electric lights above. “Yes, though it seems like a hundred years or so since then.”
“The Earls of Burnham have had a box here since the theater opened,” he told her, enjoying the flare of interest in her gaze. It was difficult to maintain his wariness of her motivations when she radiated such enthusiasm. “My uncle has held one for more than twenty years as well.”
“Do you enjoy the theater?” Brontë asked though her gaze darted this way and that, absorbing the details.
“Perhaps unanswered questions should remain the theme of the day.”
Her expression soured and she pursed her lips.
“Very well,” he relented. “If I’m forthcoming with you, then perhaps you’ll reciprocate at some point.”
Tris wasn’t certain over the noise of hundreds of people chattering but he thought he heard the words: dream on.
“I enjoy the experience,” he admitted. “I often attend with Henry and Hazel.”
“Rather than your own family?”
Henry once again lured his wife away from her socializing, a farce of their own played out on many a night. Lady Burnham was a gregarious, well-liked lady who blossomed in these environs, and Tris was accustomed to such frequent delays. Finally, they ascended to the upper level where the boxes where located.
“I’ve so many relatives, the family box is often an unpleasant crush of bodies,” he told her as they trailed behind the other couple. “They’ll overflow in our direction in any case. In truth, I’ve attempted to withdraw my company from the Burnham box a number of times so that Henry and Hazel might enjoy a night alone. Especially when they were newlywed. They rebelled at my efforts and have managed since to consistently produce an eligible female to join us to balance the numbers.”
“Ah, my role for the evening explained,” she responded with a bonny smile that lifted her lips and lit her countenance making her more lovely, if such a thing were possible. He realized he hadn’t seen one grace her face as yet. It suited her and compelled him to see it put in place more often.
“Rest assured you were included for the most altruistic of reasons,” he assured her. “They like you already without need for subterfuge.”
“Unlike you and your dogged suspic
ion?” Per their established norm, she avoided furthering the subject by changing the topic. “They obviously care for you a great deal.”
He let the opportunity to question her further slide without argument. “To put up with my constant company?”
Her smile broadened to a grin, her chin lifting in agreement, Fingers tightening a fraction on his arm, she leaned into him with a light chuckle. “You said it. Not me.”
A bubble of humor rose and burst. Regardless of the mystery she represented or the disparity in their evident feelings for one another, he found himself liking her more with each minute that passed. Tris joined her laughter as they arrived at their box. She looked up at him and stopped mid-step. He caught her before she could stumble or trip on the train of her dress. Her breasts brushed against his chest and her breath caught with a hitch.
Or was that him?
“You have a great smile.” Her husky compliment caressed him like a whisper before she put a hand to his chest to steady herself. “You should do it more often.”
He felt not at all like smiling at the moment. There were far more serious thoughts clouding his mind. By her expression, she seemed to know each one of them. Rather than exuding any of the aversion he’d expect given her general contempt of his person, she offered a slight smile of an entirely different sort.
One that accelerated his pulse and tightened his groin.
“Come now, Tris. You mustn’t monopolize my newfound cousin. I want to introduce her around!”
GRATEFUL FOR THE INTRUSION that kept her from digging deeper into what was guaranteed to be a colossal mistake, Brontë stepped away from Tris. One night, she reminded herself yet again. There was no way she was going to act on this attraction.
This morally acceptable attraction.
This burgeoning desire.
This blood-pumping...
No. She forced the thought away as a gaggle of gorgeous young women crowded around him, all vying for his attention. To the last, they gazed up at Tris with adoration bordering on hero worship. She had no intention of becoming one of his groupies.
No. None at all. They could have him. She squelched a surprising spurt of jealousy upon realizing Hazel was introducing them all as sisters or cousins. Hazel explained that Tris was the eldest of his generation and therefore a natural leader to them all.
Envy squashed and firmly berated over, she greeted them and the slew of other MacKintoshes streaming in and out of the curtained box next door. Some were the aunts she met earlier. Others dashing, ridiculously handsome dark-haired uncles who provided solid evidence Tris was going to age damn well.
He was only going to become more gorgeous. More tempting.
Damn good thing she wasn’t sticking around long.
The lights dimmed and brightened as a warning for the audience to take their seats and the wave of relations ebbed away.
“What? No parents to add to the chaos?” she asked, head spinning from the bout of chaos.
Tris chuckled. “I did warn you of the crush.”
“You did,” she acknowledged as he steered her into the Burnham box. The chatter didn’t cease. Hazel leaned across the balcony between the two boxes, talking with a pair of the aunts while a footman poured champagne.
Over the rail, the lush red and gold of the theater glowed under the electric lights above. Brontë had been in this theater hundreds of times for work, dozens more as she grew up and attended shows with her grandmother and learned to love the glamor and originality of the costumes on stage.
Tonight, the entire auditorium was the stage. One set with hundreds of players. Jewels glittered off women and men alike. Tiaras, necklaces, bracelets and stickpins. Furs of all colors bedecked the ladies.
There was an air of formality that was absent in her time. It wasn’t the incredible gowns and formal tuxedos alone, or the clink of champagne glasses and hum of polite chit chat.
This was an occasion.
The people attended for more than the indulgence of the play. They made an event of it. It was spectacular. So engrossing she couldn’t summon a protest when Tris guided her to the front of the box and eased her into a chair as if she were a porcelain doll.
“Miss Hughes?”
She blinked up at Tris to find him once again frowning. “Sorry. I’m a little stunned by the opulence of the audience.”
“You said you’d been here before.”
“I also said it had been many years.”
A hundred years plus between now and then. Between the lavish and the ordinary.
Not that people didn’t sometimes make a big deal out of an evening at the theater in her time. Some did, but it had never been an experience like this.
Her fur stole slipped from her shoulders and she made a grab for it, playing out a brief tug-of-war with Tris.
“Let me take your wrap,” he offered.
“I’ve got it. Thanks.” She took it, thinking to drape it over the back of her chair when a uniformed footman stepped forward with a bow.
“Allow me, ma’am.”
With a nod and polite smile, Brontë handed it to him. “Thank you. Is that champagne?”
The attendant nodded. “Would you like some, madam?”
“Yes, please. Thank you.”
When she turned back to Tris, he had the look of a man biting his tongue.
“What?”
“Who are you?” The waiter returned with a tray bearing two glasses. Tris took both, handed one to her and downed the other in a single gulp before glowering down at her.
“What do you mean?”
“How did you come to be so...” He trailed off, gesturing up and down her length as if that could refine his question.
“So what?”
Tris waved the footman back imperiously and requested a dram of Scotch. “Whatever this is. Obstinance? Incivility?”
“Incivility?” Brontë’s brows probably hit her hairline. Clearly her habitual rejection of his overly solicitous mannerisms irritated him. Her ‘I’ve got it’ was automatic, not aimed at him in particular. Having pointed out that she wasn’t helpless was a twenty-first century response to a problem hundreds of years in the making. While she didn’t have to like this aspect of the time, the old adage when in Rome came to mind. She’d need to do more than capitulate to the norm in accepting his arm if she wanted to blend in. Despite how it drew her deeper into the proximity of the increasing temptation he represented.
There was more to it though beyond the obvious feminist point of view or even how his nearness overwhelmed her senses. How to explain it?
“Mr. MacKintosh, I don’t intend any rudeness.” Picking a fight wasn’t on her agenda tonight. She chose her words carefully. “I’m accustomed to doing for myself and not in the habit of having someone at hand to assist me.”
His frown didn’t relent. “Yet you let the footman serve you, the doorman open doors for you with a smile. Why is that?”
“It’s their job,” she responded with a perplexed shake of her head. That’s what was bothering him? “The whole point of what they do. Otherwise it’s instinct for me to open a door or get something I need for myself. If you’re here as my escort for the evening — or I’m yours, whatever — expecting you to do for me what I can do for myself strikes me as inequitable. Servile. Being waited on like some pampered, entitled pasha doesn’t suit me. Does that make sense?”
It must have because his disgruntled expression smoothed a fraction. The waiter delivered his whisky, and once he’d gone, Tris took a seat on the empty chair next to her and swiveled to face her. “Did I not say it was my pleasure to be of assistance?”
“You were being polite.”
“I’m not that well-mannered.”
“I bet you are,” she shot back.
He rolled his eyes. “If such courtesies are acceptable under the veil of doing one’s duties, then consider whatever overtures I make to be nothing more than the execution of my role of escort.”
Such an outlandish com
promise could only mean he wouldn’t relent, so she did. “As you wish. We’re on your stomping ground and not mine, I’ll try to be more accommodating of your accommodation.”
He sipped from his glass, taken aback by her burst of cooperation. “I might point out that Hazel is American and has always been accommodating, as you say, of gentlemanly assistance.”
“I think she’s drunk enough of the Kool-Aid to consider it her due,” she replied then berated herself immediately. Modern slang wouldn’t pass without comment for long. What was it about him that made her forget all her good intentions? Before he could question her, she added, “Besides, Henry doesn’t reel her in like a fish every time she wanders a few steps away, does he?”
Tris swallowed hard and coughed. “Is that what I do?”
The light was back in his mossy green eyes and she grinned. “Feels a bit like trolling, yes.”
There was a word that made sense in two centuries.
“Perhaps I simply enjoy being close to you?”
He didn’t move, didn’t touch her hand or arm. Yet his husky words flowed over her like a physical caress. The man was dangerous to a woman’s equilibrium.
Before she could think of something to say, Hazel joined them with a young woman in tow. Tris automatically stood and offered the chair he’d been sitting in. She sat and the woman took the remaining front row chair.
“I’m so sorry to abandon you, dear cousin.” She reached over to squeeze Brontë’s hand. “This is our first night out since Carrie was born, and it’s so lovely to see everyone especially Hannah...oh, I’d like to introduce you to my dearest friend, Hannah Merrill.”
She and Hannah both extended their hands across Hazel in greeting. Hannah was about Brontë’s age, blonde and statuesque with bright emerald eyes that danced with humor. “Dearest friend of the moment, that is.” She laughed. “The next lady Hazel introduces you to might be her dearest as well.”
Hazel gasped with mock outrage. “You know that’s quite untrue.” She turned to Brontë. “She’s jesting, of course. She’s well aware of her standing in my heart. Ah, Tris, would you mind fetching us another glass of champagne?” Hazel took a breath and beamed up at him. When he was out of ear shot, she leaned close. “Tris seems quite taken with you.”
A Scot to Remember Page 10
