“Ha ha.” Theresa dug the pearl ear bobs out of her reticule. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
“If she hasn’t selected a dress yet,” her brother drawled after her, “send down a shout and I’ll go out to White’s for dinner while we wait.”
“I think I’m going to tell Amelia how many cravats you and Mooney ruined tonight attempting that ridiculous knot around your neck.”
“It’s the new fashion, Troll.”
Laughing, Theresa climbed the stairs and turned down the hallway leading along the north-facing wing of the house. She went slowly; she’d only been in James House a handful of times, and she would feel foolish if she became lost.
Stopping outside the closed doors of the master bedchamber, she hesitated. Her cousin was a married lady now. Heavens, her husband might be in there, as well. Tess certainly didn’t wish to interrupt them. They’d only been married for six months, after all.
“So you do have common sense.”
She jumped. Immediately she recognized the deep voice across the hallway behind her, but it was too late to pretend she hadn’t been startled. Blast it all. “Common sense and the good manners to make my presence known so I don’t frighten anyone half to death.”
When she turned around Colonel James stood in the doorway of the room opposite. As usual he had a cane gripped in one hand, his long, lean body canted slightly to one side as he attempted to keep weight off his bad leg.
“You startled me,” he returned, regarding her evenly. “For the second time today, I might add.”
“You didn’t sound startled,” she retorted defensively. “Either time.”
He ignored that. “You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen you hesitate at anything.” Golden eyes trailed from her face down to her toes and back again.
Warmth crept up her cheeks. “Well?” she demanded, when he didn’t say anything. She was accustomed to men scrutinizing her, but a compliment on her appearance generally followed.
“The color of the gown makes your eyes look more gray than green,” he said, still studying her face.
“Is that your idea of a compliment?” She scowled to cover the fact that both his gaze and his direct words continued to unsettle her. It was almost as if he didn’t see the gown or the hair ribbons, but rather noticed only…her.
“It was an observation.” Swinging the cane forward, he limped into the hallway, directly up to her.
Theresa lifted her chin to keep her gaze on his. “Are you visiting?” she asked, attempting to keep her attention away from his wickedly sensual mouth and the thoughts of the kiss in the Haramund garden.
“I’ve moved back in. For the moment.” His gaze momentarily broke from hers, letting her breathe again. “My former host didn’t appreciate the frequency with which I lost my footing.”
“That’s rude of him.”
“I didn’t say it was a him,” the colonel replied. Leaning toward her a little, he knocked the end of his cane against the closed master bedchamber door beyond her. Then, with the first grin she’d seen him wear, a wicked, humorous expression that made him look younger than his twenty-eight years, he turned and headed toward the back of the house and the narrow servants’ stairs there.
She opened her mouth to retort that no one residing with a woman—not in the way he implied—would have kissed her the way he did. Before she could utter a sound, though, the door in front of her opened.
“Tess!” Amelia exclaimed, her faced flushed and a smile on her face. “I—we were—”
“Here,” Theresa said, handing over the ear bobs. “I’ll be downstairs.” Without a backward glance she strode off in the direction Colonel James had taken.
She found him four steps down from the top, his hands braced against either side of the narrow walls and his cane hooked over one thumb as he swore under his breath.
Arguing with him or not, she didn’t like seeing him in such obvious pain. Grimacing, she caught up to him and pulled the cane out of his fingers. “You are n—”
With a breath-freezing hiss he whipped around. Before she could react he had a forearm across her chest shoving her against the wall, the other hand fisted and headed for her face. Gasping, she squeezed her eyes closed.
The blow never came. She opened one eye to see his fist lowered, his mouth inches from hers, breath warm on her lips. “Apologies,” he said roughly. “I don’t like anyone coming up behind me.”
Theresa nodded. “I can see that. Would you please release my bosom?”
He stayed where he was, his hard body pressing her against the wall, close enough to kiss but not doing so. “I don’t want to,” he murmured.
Her heart skittered. “Do so anyway, Colonel,” she ordered.
“Call me Tolly.”
“You are…not behaving,” she bit out, realizing both that she could fairly easily push him down the stairs and that she had no intention of doing so. He might act like a wild creature who went about grabbing women by the bosom, but she would not misbehave in turn.
“I’ve never found much benefit in following the rules.” He raised his free hand again, this time to brush his fingers against her hair. “I haven’t heard a woman say my name in a long time, Theresa. Say my name.”
She pulled in a hard breath, pretending to be annoyed rather than unsettled and excited by the intimacy. “Very well. Tolly. Better?”
“Infinitely.” Slowly he ran his fingertips along her cheek, making her shiver. “So many handsome gentlemen courting you, Tess,” he whispered, “and yet here you are.” Finally he brushed his mouth against hers, lightly at first, making her ache, then hotter and more insistently. He shifted his confining hand to join the other at her shoulders.
The cane clattered onto the step and then down to the small landing below. She noted the sound distantly, every ounce of her immediate attention on where Tolly touched her. Mouth first, expert and delicious and breathless, then his hands tugging her hips forward against his. The immediate, insane desire to put her hands on his bare, warm skin seized her, making her moan.
“Tess? Where the devil are you?” Amelia’s voice echoed from the hallway just above them.
With another hot, openmouthed kiss, Tolly broke the embrace. “I can’t run,” he murmured, brushing a fingertip down the front of her throat. “You should.”
For a heartbeat she didn’t want to move. She wanted more kisses, more touches. His cynical gaze, though, brought her back to herself. He expected her to flee. She could even guess what he was thinking. Why would she want anyone to know that she’d been compromised at all—much less by him?
Theresa narrowed her eyes. No one had seen them, and she refused to be intimidated. Not by some aggravating man who thought none of the rules applied to him. “I’m on the stairs, Leelee,” she called. “With Tolly.”
He blanched as she lifted an eyebrow at him. “You little…” With a curse he grabbed her hand and placed it around his waist, sliding his free arm across her shoulders and turning back down the stairs as Amelia came into view above them. “I lost my balance,” he grumbled, his eyes glinting.
Amelia made a sympathetic sound. “Oh, dear. Shall I call for Stephen?”
Even through his clothes Theresa felt Tolly’s spine tense. “Oh, no,” she said aloud, waving her free hand up at her cousin. “We can manage. We’ll meet you around front, shall we?”
“Of course. Thank you for the ear bobs. I’ll see you in a moment.”
As soon as Amelia’s footsteps faded from hearing, Tolly jerked halfway around to face her. “I’m not meeting anyone around front. Go to your own damned party.”
With him down a step, they were eye to eye. His expression could likely melt glass, but she didn’t feel in the mood to be trifled with, either. “You’re dressed for it,” she noted, meeting his furious, frustrated gaze squarely. “And I think we’ve established that you have a thought for at least your own reputation. So yes, you are going with us to the Ridgemont soiree.”
Whatever t
he condition of his leg, she knew without a doubt that Tolly James was not a man to be bullied into something he didn’t wish to do. When he uttered another curse and continued down the stairs, she felt both relieved and thrilled. He wanted to go. With her.
“I don’t need your damned help,” he growled, shrugging out of her grip.
“You’re the one who put my hand there.”
“Only because I was in error about you having common sense. You don’t have the sense God gave a kitten.”
She frowned again, brushing past him as they reached the landing and retrieving his cane before he could regret his short-sighted rejection of her assistance. Clutching it, she proceeded down the remainder of the stairs to wait at the bottom.
“What, no response to that?” he jibed, a little out of breath as he hitched himself down toward her.
“Is it my lack of sense or the grayness of my eyes this evening that compelled you to kiss me, then? Or was it perhaps your parting from the imaginary woman with whom you claimed to be living?” she retorted, glaring up at him.
That compelling mouth of his twitched before it dove back into a scowl. “The eye color.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. I’m partial to gray.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
She didn’t believe that, of course. It was entirely possible, however, that he was as mystified by his attraction to her as she was by the effect he had on her. No good would come of it; Colonel Tolly James was an angry, defensive man who’d in three seconds gone from nearly striking her to kissing her. But something had kept her thinking about him for the past two days, even while she danced and drove and rode and chatted with a half dozen other gentlemen who’d already made their intentions toward her very clear, and who knew how to behave themselves.
When he finally reached the level floor just outside the kitchen, she held out his cane to him. “Thank you,” he said, not sounding grateful at all. “And don’t ask me to dance with you tonight. We both know that that’s an impossibility. Nor is it particularly amusing.”
“I have no intention of asking you to dance,” she said, falling in beside him as they left the house through the servants’ entrance and slowly made their way up the carriage drive to the front of the house. “From now on you will have to ask me to dance.”
“I will not do that.”
With a quick smile she left his side and climbed into her brother’s carriage. “Yes, you will,” she returned, leaning out again. “I’ll save you a place on my dance card.”
Chapter Six
“A young lady should be sensible and serene, and if lucky will find herself attended by a man of similar temperament. If she is very lucky, he will also be possessed of passion and wealth. But of the three, I must rank passion last. Passion does not pay the bills.”
A LADY’S GUIDE TO PROPER BEHAVIOR
I’m so pleased you’re living at James House again,” Violet gushed, taking the chair beside Tolly’s and grabbing his right hand in both of hers. “I’ve missed you terribly, you know.”
“You’ve only seen me for two months or so every two or three years as it is, Vi,” he returned, freeing his hand as swiftly as he could do so without dumping her off the chair in the middle of the damned Ridgemont ballroom.
“Yes, but you always stayed with us the entire time you were on leave. This time we had to come to London just to find you, and then you still wouldn’t come near us.”
What could he tell her about that? That he’d become more comfortable among strangers he could watch with suspicion than with friends and family he was expected to trust? Trust. That word had certainly taken on new significance in the past year.
Of course his obsession with that word in no way explained his immediate fascination with Theresa Weller. Even with his gaze on his sister he knew precisely where Tess was in the large ballroom, and with whom she was dancing—currently stocky, round Francis Henning. Apparently she enjoyed dancing so much that she would partner with anyone.
Except him. He shifted a little, though it had been months since he’d found something close to a comfortable position. Bartholomew glanced at the dance floor again, catching a glimpse of violet gown and hair the color of morning sunshine.
“Stephen’s letter said he met Amelia at the Hutchings recital last year,” he commented, making a final attempt at distracting himself.
Violet snuggled in against his shoulder as she used to do, and he steeled himself as both her arms wrapped around his. “Yes. He complained about going, you know, but my good friend Celia was going to play the pianoforte, and so I forced him to escort me.”
“Love at first sight?”
His sister chuckled. “Most definitely. We only realized later that Tess had forced Amelia to go because she reckoned Stephen might be there. She thought they would suit.”
With a slight scowl he looked again at the lavender butterfly floating elegantly across the dance floor. “Amelia and her cousins do seem very close.”
“They were all raised together by their grand-mother. That’s her,” Violet said, gesturing with one forefinger. “The Dowager Viscountess Weller. She’s very nice, too. And quite funny. She’s obsessed with cats. She asked us all to call her Grandmama Agnes.”
Bartholomew glanced over at her—and blinked. Grandmama Agnes wore a hat topped with three brightly colored ostrich plumes, the thing so enormous he was somewhat surprised she didn’t topple over. Despite her advanced age she looked bright-eyed enough, with an open, friendly countenance very like all three of her grandchildren.
But his curiosity had little to do with grandmothers. “What’s your opinion of Amelia’s family?” he pursued. “The cousins, I mean.”
“Well, I think Michael is excessively handsome,” she said, and sighed. “Extremely excessively handsome.”
“Mmm-hmm.” He wondered whether Stephen knew of their sister’s infatuation, but then Violet had had a new beau for every letter she’d written him since she’d turned fifteen. “And the sister?”
“Tess is wonderful. And very witty. And she knows a great deal about how to encourage or deflect the attentions of a gentleman. So I hope you don’t hate her simply because she spoke a bit harshly to you the other night.”
Hate wasn’t the word. “Confounded by” fit much better. And “infatuated with.” He shook himself, realizing that his sister expected a response. “I spoke harshly first,” he decided. Then he blinked. “What does she know about encouraging the attentions of a gentleman?”
“Oh, a great deal. She’s already published a booklet on proper behavior. Anonymously, of course, but Amelia told me it was Tess after she saw me reading it.”
“Really?” He doubted some of the things she’d said to him were in that booklet.
“Truly.” The cotillion ended, and Violet bounced to her feet as a young man approached. “Hello, Andrew,” she chirped, and took his arm without a backward glance at her brother.
Tolly stopped her with his cane. “Introductions, Vi,” he said. This fellow might be known to Stephen, but as Violet had already noted, he’d been away. And he was not a damned sack of potatoes, for God’s sake.
“What? Oh. Apologies, Tolly. Andrew, this is my brother, Colonel Bartholomew James. Tolly, Mr. Andrew Carroway, Lord Dare’s third brother.”
With a nod, Tolly dismissed the pair of them. He couldn’t very well tell Andrew that he’d met his older brother, Captain Bradshaw Carroway, at the Adventurers’ Club, unless he wanted to be asked to leave it.
“How’s the leg?”
Alexander Rable, the Marquis of Montrose, sank onto the chair beside him. Alarm bells immediately began ringing in Tolly’s skull; the two of them hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words together over the past five years, and there was a quadrille being played thirty feet away. “I still have two of them,” he returned.
“I heard you lost everyone under your command. And by ‘lost’ I mean they died.”
The hostility didn’t surprise him; they’d ne
ver been on friendly terms even at Oxford. He did not, however, appreciate the path this little conversation was taking. “They were murdered,” he corrected, keeping his voice level.
“But you weren’t.”
“Are we playing a game of state the obvious? You should have told me, so I could mention that you’re acquiring that hanging jowl that runs on your father’s side of the family.” He gestured at the base of Montrose’s jaw.
“If you weren’t a cripple, I would flatten you for that.”
Bartholomew sent a quick look toward the dance floor. Theresa was on the far side of the room, well out of earshot. For some reason that was important. “Don’t talk to me about India, and I won’t mention your wobbling jowls.”
“I actually only came over here to tell you to stop staring at Tess Weller. You’re embarrassing yourself, and if you keep it up, you’ll embarrass her.”
He could explain his attention away, he supposed, mention that her cousin had recently married his brother and that he was attempting to become acquainted with the family. It would be a lie, though.
“Thank you for the advice,” Tolly said coolly. “Have you warned away everyone who looks in her direction, or is it just the cripple you feel threatened by?”
“I’m not threatened by you,” Montrose shot back. “I told you, you’re an embarrassment. You carry damned rumors with you, and she won’t want them touching her.”
“I suppose I’ll wait for her to tell me that.”
“If you want to appear that pitiful, then by all means.” The marquis stood. “I was only trying to be kind.”
“Ah. Then you’ve changed.”
With a cold smile, Montrose nodded and vanished into the large, festive crowd. Tolly curled his fingers around the brass handle of his cane so hard his knuckles turned white. He should be gratified, he supposed, that anyone had taken enough notice of his presence to warn him away, but mostly he was angry because Montrose was correct. He didn’t have much to offer, and he’d heard the rumors, too. Both the ones about his cowardice and the ones that he’d manufactured the entire incident with the Thuggee. They couldn’t possibly help his reputation, or his standing with Tess Weller.
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