Dexter Rutherford, who had been holding a towel at the ready for his idol, Lord Tristan Rule, dashed to the side of the ring, a look of slavish adoration on his young face. “What a leveler you served him, Tris!” he exclaimed, rubbing his hero’s bare shoulders with more enthusiasm than expertise. “The great man himself, dropped by a single blow. What science, what speed, what—”
“What loss of control,” Tristan ended crossly, effectively wiping the grin from Dexter’s face. “We were only sparring, you bloodthirsty infant. George wasn’t expecting that bit of home-brewed I served up to him. Thank goodness he’s a gentleman.” Taking the towel from his shoulders, Rule rubbed it briskly across his face and neck. “It’s this deuced inaction, I feel like a coiled wire ready to spring. I can see that this peace everyone is so delirious about is going to take a bit of getting used to.”
Tom Cribb, the retired “Champion Boxer of all England,” approached the pair, a nearly full glass of wine held in front of him. “With Lord Byron’s compliments, my lord. And may I say it was an honor to watch you in there. If you ever have a mind to go a few rounds, I wouldn’t say no to you. Your right hand reminds me a bit of Ikey Pigg’s, and I considered him a very worthy opponent in his day.”
“Ikey Pigg!” Dexter cried scoffingly. “Molyneaux, more like, and it took you thirty rounds or more to best him too. Ikey Pigg?” Dexter shook his head. “Damned insult if you ask me.”
“Nobody did, sprig,” came a voice from behind the young man. “I’d say my good-byes now, if I were you, before Tom here takes it into his head to squash you like a bug.”
Dexter whirled to greet his cousin. “Julian! Did you see him? It was nothing next to marvelous, I tell you. One moment Lord Byron was standing there, his fives at the ready, and the next he was rump down on the mat, with Lord Rule standing above him, breathing fire.”
“Sorry we missed it,” Julian Rutherford, Earl of Thorpe, mourned falsely as he joined the group. “Yet somehow I feel that we shall all be able to relive the moment ad nauseam over dinner this evening if Dex here has anything to say in the matter.” Julian turned to address Lord Rule as Tom Cribb drifted away to talk to some of his other patrons. “You haven’t forgotten Lucy’s invitation, have you? I’ll have the devil to pay if I tell her I’ve seen you here without reminding you that your presence is required at table.”
“Not to mention what Jennie will do to me,” Kit Wilde, Earl of Bourne, put in as he too joined the small group, barely concealing a smile as he thought of his wife. “Your cousins are both rare handfuls in their separate ways, Tris, as you must know.”
“Will your aunt Rachel and her charge also be present?” Tris asked, slipping his arms into the shirt Dexter was holding up for him.
“Mary Lawrence?” Julian asked rhetorically, winking slyly at Kit, who was hiding a grin behind his hand. “So it’s true, what Lucy and Jennie say? I warn you, they’ve as much as made a match of it between you.”
Tris looked blank, as indeed he was at a loss to understand what Lord Thorpe was talking about. “Make a match of it? With Mary Lawrence? What in blazes put a fool notion like that into their maggoty heads?”
“Not just them, Tris,” Dexter supplied with all the innocence his ignorance of the world provided him. “Saw it in the betting book at Boodle’s. At least three wagers on when the announcement will make the Morning Chronicle.”
Tris snorted. “The Morning Chronicle—as if anyone would believe anything James Perry has to say in that paper of his. Why, I read one of his ‘stories’ just the other day that told of Prinny being applauded as he passed through the streets. As if being hissed at and having your coach pelted with cabbages can be called acclamation. Give me the Times, thank you. At least John Walter could be trusted to keep the war news straight.” Then, belatedly getting down off his high ropes, he gave a bit of thought to just what Dexter had said. “Betting on me at Boodle’s, are they? Who, damn it? Give me names, boy, and I’ll call the bastards out, damned if I won’t!”
“That’s it, Tris, keep a cool head, just like you’re known to do,” Lord Bourne jibed, placing an arm around the other man’s shoulders. “Besides, you have no one to blame but yourself, the way you act whenever the chit enters a room. Can’t remember being so dashed silly about Jennie, even when she was leading me around like a puppy longing for a pat on the head.”
Rule retied his cravat with more intensity than flair, his dark eyes flashing in a way that made Dexter decidedly nervous. “I only stand up with the girl for a single dance in an evening. I don’t see where that should serve to set the world to hearing wedding bells.”
Now it was time for Kit to wink at Julian. “I see your point, Tris. How like society to jump headlong to the wrong conclusion. Just because you show up everywhere Miss Lawrence happens to be as regularly as the sun rises every morning and claim her for a dance before retiring to a pillar and staring a hole in her back for the remainder of the evening. Imagine Lucy and Jennie, for instance, being so rash as to put any credence in the silly coincidence that you always quit the room just as soon as Miss Lawrence retires, or the fact that more than one young buck has reportedly withdrawn from the lists of those seeking the lady’s favors due to the belief that you would call them out if they so much as looked in her direction.” Lord Bourne shook his head sadly. “How sorely our motives are misinterpreted. What, precisely, then are your motives, Tris, if you aren’t smitten?”
Rule answered with some questions of his own. “Who exactly is Mary Lawrence? Where does she come from? Who are her parents? What is she doing in London? Why is she living with Sir Henry Ruffton? My Aunt Rachel may be the girl’s chaperon but she’s as close as an oyster whenever I try to get a few answers out of her. I know about her botched engagement with Sir Henry all those years ago, but could loyalty to an old beau cloud her judgment to the point where she’d allow herself to be involved in…never mind, George is getting ready to leave. I really must offer my apologies to him one more time. Excuse me, gentlemen, I’ll see you later this evening.”
Before either Julian or Kit could gainsay him, Tris was off, his long strides taking him swiftly across the room, the ever-present Dexter scampering to keep up with him.
“What the devil was all that in aid of?” Julian asked his cousin-in-law, who was looking no more enlightened than he. “Rachel told me he was a strange one, alluding to some secret association with the war effort, but I do believe the years of pressure have served to unhinge his mind. Did you ever hear such ridiculousness? Anyone would think he believes Sir Henry to be harboring a lady of ill repute, or a spy, or something. No, can’t be a spy. After all the war’s over, isn’t it?”
Kit was still watching Lord Rule, taking in his naturally belligerent stance and remembering how well the fellow had looked stripped to the waist. No soft London dandy was Tristan Rule. He had the look of a fighting man, even a Peninsula man, unless Kit missed his guess. Yet, for all the rumors about the man, no one could actually say Rule had ever been within a hundred miles of a battle. Strange, moody fellow. But a man of strong convictions for all that. And now he has a bee in his bonnet about Mary Lawrence. Kit turned to look at Julian, a thoughtful twist on his lips. “The war over, you say, Julian? For some of us, maybe. But not for him, it would appear.” He took one last look at the man they called Ruthless Rule as the tall, black-clad figure strode toward the door. “I tell you, Julian, I’d give my matched bays for a glimpse inside Tristan Rule’s head.”
CHAPTER TWO
LUCY GLADWIN RUTHERFORD, Countess of Thorpe, had great hopes for this dinner party, hopes she was foolish enough to share with her beloved husband, Julian, who quickly tried to dash them.
Stopping in the midst of tying his cravat, Lord Thorpe looked in his wife’s direction as she stood fiddling with the contents of his dressing table. “Miss Lawrence and your cousin Tris?” He would have shaken his head if the knot he was tying was not just then at a very critical stage. “You’re fair and far out this time, my
love. Kit and I broached the subject this afternoon at Cribb’s Parlor with the man in question, and I’d say Tris’s interest is anything but loverlike.”
A twinkle entered Lucy’s eyes. “Ah, then you noticed his partiality for her too. My cousin is definitely interested in Miss Lawrence. You just misread the signs. Tris is nearly always stupid when it comes to women—he probably said something totally negative, if I know him.”
Giving his handiwork a last satisfied look in the mirror, Julian turned to plant a kiss on his wife’s forehead—while deftly removing his favorite pearl studs from her investigating hands. “I wouldn’t say the man was stupid. Actually, thinking back on the conversation, I believe Tris is more than casually interested in the girl. But no, it is most assuredly not with an eye to setting up his nursery.”
Lucy interpreted her husband’s words in exactly the wrong way. Her small face taking on a look of horror, she gasped. “Surely you don’t think he intends to set her up as his light-o-love? I won’t believe it!”
“Such a fertile mind you have, Lucy. I fear I must begin rationing your consumption of Minerva Press novels,” Julian threatened kindly, and then his features sobered. “To be serious for a moment, love, I do believe your cousin has taken some wild idea into his head about your Mary Lawrence, something to do with her ancestry. Is Tris by chance a bigoted sort?”
“Never!” Lucy protested, flopping into a nearby chair with total disregard for the gown it had taken her maid two hours to press. “I can’t understand any of this, Julian. Surely you must be mistaken.”
“Kit too?” he nudged, selecting a plain gold signet ring for his finger. “But don’t go into a decline, dearest. Surely you and Jennie can find another young couple to work your matchmaking wiles on before the Season is over. What about Dexter?”
“That nodcock?” Lucy exclaimed, momentarily diverted. “He may be your cousin, but he’s still the silliest thing on two legs. The way he has attached himself to Tris, why a person could wonder just how much of his feeling is hero worship and how much is—”
“Lucy! You fill me with dismay! You’re not supposed to know about such things, much less talk about them.”
She smiled up at him impishly. “Not even with my beloved husband, Julian? Don’t be so stuffy.”
Julian reached down and pulled his wife to her feet and up against his chest. “I am never stuffy, madam, and I have had that reassurance from your own lips.” He looked down into her upturned face and gave a bemused smile, glad he had not yet called his valet to help him into his formfitting evening coat. “Ah, yes, my dearest, those lovely, enticing lips.”
Lucy was forced to don another gown, as her maid, once she caught sight of her mistress some half hour later, had dissolved into tears and retired to her cot, in no condition to wield a hot iron.
THEY WERE ALL ENSCONCED around the gleaming mahogany table; the Earl of Bourne and his Jennie, Rachel Gladwin alongside young Dexter Rutherford—there to make up the numbers when Sir Henry pleaded another commitment—Lord and Lady Thorpe at the head and foot of the table, and Tristan Rule and Mary Lawrence smack beside each other on one side, just as Lucy had cunningly engineered the thing earlier.
Jennie was still wearing a benevolent smile, as she hadn’t as yet had either the benefit of her husband’s opinion on her matchmaking scheme or been able to speak alone with Lucy, who was not looking quite so chipper. Indeed Lucy was looking almost solemn, and had been ever since Miss Lawrence, beautifully attired in pale green silk, had greeted the sight of Tristan Rule with an unenthusiastic “Oh, you’re here.”
For her part, Rachel, who had recently taken to plotting her first attempt at a novel of her own, had decided to view the barely veiled hostility her charge directed at her nephew as ink for her scribbling pen. How interesting it would be, she thought as she helped herself to a portion of stewed carp, to have a heroine who insists on ignoring her attraction for the hero. Perhaps, she mused idly, I shall have my heroine outrage her mercenary guardian by refusing to stand up with the hero at her come-out ball. Would Maria Edgeworth approve? Was it too farfetched? Rachel shrugged her shoulders and took another bite of carp.
If Mary had been privy to her companion’s thoughts, she might have added her bit to the story, a little plot twist that had the heroine surreptitiously slipping a bit of poison into the hero’s fricassee of tripe and then running off to the Continent to become the reigning toast of Paris. But then Mary’s mind was at the moment too overcrowded with thoughts of the man sitting so intrudingly close to her right side to have much heart for solving anyone’s problems but her own.
Look at him, she instructed herself as she ignored her filled plate. He even cuts his meat with a cool, meticulous care that makes my flesh crawl. And those hands—those hard, tanned hands with their long, straight fingers. Everything about him screams leashed power. Ruthless. How apt. Energy seems to flow from him like a never-ending stream. Rachel may think that he’s interested in me. My suitors may think he’s trying to cut them out for my hand. But I know better. I can feel the animosity that charges the air whenever he looks at me. Why does he dislike me so? Why is he making it his business to unnerve me with his unwanted, discomforting presence? And why, dear God, why must he be so maddeningly intriguing, so damnably handsome?
While Mary sat staring at her plate, precisely as if the fish that lay there had just winked in her direction, Tristan Rule was building himself into a temper—not a new experience, granted, but he could not in his memory recall another instance when a female of the species had been able to crawl so deeply under his skin. Maybe it was that bloody black velvet ribbon she had tied tightly around her neck, just like the ladies of a generation ago had worn red ribbons in sympathy with the French nobility that had lost their heads on Madame Guillotine.
Fashion, his saner self told him. Nothing of the kind, his suspicious self contradicted. That ribbon is just one more nail in her coffin, one more revealing slip that another, less discerning man, might overlook. She was mocking those dead Frenchmen, no more, no less. But it would take more than a bit of ribbon and an inconclusive inquiry into Miss Lawrence’s background to convince Sir Henry that he had been made the victim of a Bonapartist sympathizer. It was time he made a move, time he took a more positive step than merely to observe her as she pulled the wool over society’s eyes with her portrayal of a young miss in her first Season. He was determined to unmask her for what she was. Why in the fiend’s name, he snarled inwardly, did she have to be so beautiful?
“I had not known that you would be here this evening, sir.”
Tristan’s fork halted halfway to his mouth as Mary’s softly spoken words startled him. As she had made such a point of ignoring him while they waited for dinner to be announced, he had resigned himself to having his ear bent all through the meal by Dexter, who sat across from him but wasn’t about to let any silly dictate of good manners keep him from talking nineteen to the dozen across the table if he so chose. “You didn’t?” was all he responded, eyeing her smiling face closely as he sought to understand her seeming friendliness.
“No,” she answered, her voice still quite low. “I saw you striding through the drizzle the other day in the park and had figured you to have developed lung fever at the very least by now.”
Tristan decided to take her words literally. “What would make you think a bit of spring drizzle could lay me up by the heels?”
Mary shrugged delicately, almost Gallically, in Tristan’s biased opinion. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess that it’s just that you are of an age that I would have expected you to have served in the war if you weren’t afflicted with a weak chest or some other such hidden weakness. Lord Bourne served on the Peninsula, you know, and Lord Thorpe was very involved with the war effort in Parliament. But you—why, if rumors are to be believed, you spent the last several years traipsing about the Continent like some sort of sight-seer. In places far removed from the fighting, that is.”
Tristan laid his fork carefull
y on the edge of his plate. Turning his head slowly in her direction once more, he smiled dangerously, his straight white teeth clenched. “If you were a man, I would call you out for that, you know,” he said in his low, husky voice, a voice that went well with his chiseled features, dark eyes, and darker hair.
Another woman would have fainted. Lord, any sane woman wouldn’t have taunted him so in the first place! But Mary Lawrence was made of sterner, if somewhat more foolhardy, stuff. She kept her chin high and didn’t so much as blink. “Name your seconds, sir,” she dared recklessly, ignoring her rapidly beating heart. “Although you neatly circumvented serving in the war, I have no doubt you’ve stomach enough to shoot a woman.”
Now Tristan’s smile was downright evil. “Too messy by half, madam. I prefer to impale my opponents on my sword. Now, madam, if you’re still game…?”
There was no pretending she didn’t catch the double entendre hidden in his words, and no way she could slap his face at Lucy’s table without creating a scene that would have Rachel wringing a peal over her head for a sennight. Her gaze locked with his for a few moments more, brazening it out before her eyes shifted nervously back to the fish on her plate.
She waited until Lord Rule had resumed his meal before speaking again. Just as he had deposited a medium-size bite of succulent fish in his mouth she shared a bit of unusual knowledge with the rest of the company. “Did you know that many tradesmen inflate their meat—and most especially their fish by having gin drinkers blow into the bodies? Indeed, and much of the seafood and meat that reaches our tables looking so thick and juicy has been made that way by having the poor animals heated or beaten while still alive in order to swell the meat. Isn’t that interesting?”
The meal ended shortly after that, as the rest of the diners had somehow lost their appetites (indeed, Dexter, who had fled abruptly from the table, lost even more than that), which, while the thought of ruining Lucy’s dinner party sat heavily on her mind, did at least serve one of the ends Mary had intended—getting herself shed of Tristan Rule’s embarrassing presence before he drove her into strong hysterics.
The ruthless Lord Rule Page 2
