Tom glanced back over his shoulder at his father’s striking image. Even if it hadn’t been the largest framed portrait in the gallery that surrounded the balcony overlooking the entry hallway, it still would have commanded attention. The pose, the expression of the man rendered in oils demanded it. “He was a handsome devil,” Tom admitted.
She laughed. “Like father, like son.”
“God, I hope not.”
Her laughter abruptly died as she recognized the burden of his father’s legacy mirrored in Tom’s somber eyes. He stepped away from the wall, crossed his arms over his powerful chest, and leaned back against the balcony railing. He’d removed his duster when they’d arrived, and she could easily see the bulge in his arms that came by way of hard, honest work. While most of the gentlemen had their clothes custom tailored, she suspected Tom’s tailor would find himself challenged, because he’d probably seldom been required to make clothing for such a fine physical specimen.
“I’ve been in London only a few days,” Tom said, snatching her attention away from his muscles to the seriousness of his expression. “I’ve visited a gentleman’s club, my solicitor, a business manager, the bank, and your family.” Holding her gaze, he shook his head slowly. “Not a single person I’ve met regretted my father’s passing. No kind words are ever associated with his name. The same held true while I was at my ancestral home. Everyone looks at me as though they’re waiting for a fatal blow to be delivered. This afternoon in your drawing room was the first time that I’ve felt any sort of welcome from anyone I wasn’t related to. The only family I’ve met is Archibald Warner. He’s a fine gentleman, but his blood is far enough removed from my father’s that his every action wasn’t scrutinized with suspicion.”
“Tom, I’m sure you’re misreading people’s reactions.”
“Do you know why I’m so wealthy?”
The question was asked matter-of-factly, without any boasting, as though the extent of his wealth was simply something achieved without fanfare. Still, she couldn’t help but think it an odd question. What in the world did one have to do with the other? She shook her head, raised a shoulder in helplessness, and stated the obvious truth, “Because you raised and sold cattle.” What was the price on beef these days?
He gave her a small smile that indicated he thought she was innocent and naive. “If it was that easy, everyone in Texas would be wealthy.”
“Then what was your secret?”
“I can look at a man and accurately judge his honesty, his trustworthiness, his dependability. I can close a deal with a businessman with nothing more than a handshake, knowing he’ll do right by me and leaving him knowing I’ll do right by him. I can look straight in a man’s eyes and know his opinion of me. When I meet the gazes of people here, I see them wondering how close the acorn fell from the tree.”
She couldn’t help herself. Her gaze went back to the portrait, and she shivered. Something about the man was chilling. It was more than arrogance. An air of entitlement wreathed him, as though he thought he stood well above anyone else.
“I’ve got two things going against me—my father and my upbringing.”
She looked back at Tom, waiting. Obviously, he’d given considerable thought to everything he was telling her. She remembered the ladies in her drawing room, referring to his barbaric ways—
“I know they consider me a savage, Lauren,” Tom said, as though reading her thoughts. “I look enough like my father that people can’t overlook my roots. They expect me to behave like him. People know I was raised in a fairly untamed land, and they’re looking at me like I’m some trick pony, and they’re waiting for me to perform. The way I see it, I’ve got only one thing going in my favor.”
She waited for him to reveal what he thought his advantage might be, but he did nothing more than hold her gaze. Finally, she asked, “And what is that, Tom?”
“You.”
She felt as though the balcony had crumbled beneath her feet. “How do you figure that?”
“Because you know these people, you know how to meet their expectations, and while you may not have liked it, as Ravenleigh said this afternoon, you adapted. I’ve attended meetings, had dinner, and engaged in business dealings with cattle barons. Hell, I’m a cattle baron, if you want the truth of it. I want—I need—to show these people that I can hold my own here.” He lowered his gaze, studied his boots, then lifted his gaze back up to hers, and for the first time she saw his vulnerabilities. “Maybe I need to show myself, too.”
Her heart tightened painfully at his quietly delivered confession. She saw the pride in his stance, and what it had cost him to reveal his insecurities. She remembered the confident way he’d strode into the drawing room. She remembered how uncomfortable he’d appeared in the library explaining his change of fortune. He was a complex man, and she barely knew him. In spite of the fact that no one expected him to know how important everything was, he did comprehend the extent of all he’d inherited.
She didn’t know how to respond, didn’t know exactly what he was asking.
“But to accomplish what I need to do, I need some help, darlin’. You want to go back to Texas? I have four thousand acres of good Texas ranch land, house and cattle included. It’s yours. Just help me be the lord that my father wasn’t.”
When he delivered such a heartfelt plea, gazed at her with such earnestness, without bravado, without daring or challenging her, but simply asking…Had Thomas Warner ever asked for help in his entire life?
“Tom, there is so much—”
“I’m not asking for forever, Lauren. Just the Season.” He gave a quick nod. “And yep, I know what the Season is.”
“Lords don’t say ‘yep.’”
One side of his mustache twitched. “Some habits are going to be hard to break. Will you help me break them?”
Break them and in the process possibly break him? He’d had years to let the wildness in him run free, but English society would seek to hold him to its rules, mores, and etiquette. It would slowly destroy everything about him that had once appealed to her. Make a civilized man out of one who had never known restraint. Perhaps that was the reason she’d refused earlier to teach him. She didn’t want to be responsible for turning him into the type of man that she could never love. Didn’t want to see him change, because he would change. It was inevitable.
She knew what it was to resist, and she knew what it was finally to accept a new life, even though she abhorred it. It was the reason she’d decided to leave, the reason she couldn’t stay now that he was here. Because he had no choice in the matter. He had to stay. He was a lord.
And in the staying, he would cease to be her Tom.
“I know I’m asking a lot—”
She held up her hands; he fell silent. Asking a lot? He had no idea. She felt the last remnants of hope that she might have meant something powerful to him wither away. If he’d ever considered that they might again have what they’d had in their youth, surely he wouldn’t have offered to provide her with the means to leave, to support herself, to be an independent woman away from him. Swallowing hard, she nodded. “Passage back to Texas. That’s all I want, Tom.”
So she wouldn’t have to stay and witness what she was about to create.
He gave a brusque nod, again without arrogance, as though he’d feared she’d turn his offer aside, and was greatly relieved that she hadn’t.
“I’ll have my lawyers draw up the paperwork.”
“No need. You said you handled deals with a handshake.” She took a deep breath, stepped forward, and extended her hand.
He wrapped his long fingers around hers, but instead of shaking her hand, he drew her closer. “I do it a little differently when I close a business deal with a woman,” he said, using his free hand to cup her cheek, his thumb stroking the corner of her mouth. Even though it seemed innocent enough, it burned right into the heart of her womanhood.
“Do you?” she asked, sounding as though she had no breath in her body, possibly because she
didn’t. How could he steal away her breath with nothing more than a light touch?
He lowered his mouth to hers, and as inappropriate as it was, she welcomed the kiss, parting her lips slightly when his tongue insisted she do so. With a deep groan that shivered between them, he deepened the kiss, the hunger there but restrained as he leisurely took his fill. She didn’t remember moving forward, but she was suddenly aware of her breasts flattened against his chest, the fingers of her free hand tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck as heat and desire swirled through her.
He’d taken her to the river so they could get reacquainted, to remember happier times. He’d brought her here, so she could understand what it was he was facing. And now he was giving her a sampling of what she’d be facing: day in, day out, in the presence of a man who could turn her knees into porridge. Ah, Lord, she didn’t know whether to be afraid or giddy.
He drew back, desire evident in his gaze as it swept over her face. The weakness in her knees spread through her entire body, and she wondered how in the world she was going to manage to walk down the stairs. “So how many women have you closed business deals with?” she asked, needing anger, jealousy, disappointment—something, anything—to get her body to quit reacting as though his lips were still pressed to hers.
A slow, sensual smile flashed across his darkly handsome face. “This was the first, darlin’.”
She couldn’t help herself. She laughed at his audacity, laughed because if she didn’t, she might weep for what they could possibly have had. “We might need to establish rules—”
“Darlin’, I have enough rules to learn. I don’t need you adding to them. I’ll behave.” His grin broadened. “Within reason.”
Keeping his earlier promise, he delivered her home long before the sun came up. After they arrived, he helped her out of the carriage and walked with her up the steps to the door.
“I’ve started taking an early-morning ride in Hyde Park,” he said.
“So I’ve heard. Lady Priscilla apparently saw you there.”
“I’m probably doing it all wrong. Go with me in the morning and teach me how to do it proper.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re riding a horse, Tom. I’m sure you know how to do it properly.”
“Riding isn’t the problem. It’s knowing which people I can talk to and which I can’t.”
“All right. I’ll meet you along Rotten Row at the fashionable hour of eleven.”
“Good night, Lauren.”
He turned to go and she called out to him. “Tom?”
When he faced her, she smiled. “In the morning? Leave your gun at home.”
Chapter 9
“T om is the Earl of Sachse.”
Sitting within her cousin’s parlor, Lauren let the words she’d just announced expand to fill the space separating them. She’d awoken early, following only a few hours of sleep, after a fitful night of dreams in which the ship she was traveling on was continually tossed back onto English shores by incredibly large waves. At one point, she’d tried swimming the Atlantic, only once again to find herself back where she started. Upon awakening, she’d actually been exhausted by her tribulations.
She’d needed to talk with someone she trusted, someone who would understand. So as soon as her maid, Molly, had helped her dress for the day, Lauren had sent for a carriage, even though the hour was unfashionably early. Thankfully, her relationship with Lydia went beyond mere blood to include devoted friendship, and it wasn’t governed by the movement of the hands on a clock.
“Your Tom?” Lydia asked, yawning, sitting in a nearby chair, her bare feet tucked beneath her. She tugged on the sash of her emerald green satin robe as though she needed to do something to prevent herself from falling back to sleep.
Resisting the urge to crack her knuckles—because ladies did not allow their bodies to make unseemly noises—Lauren glared at Lydia for being so blasé about this whole situation. Of course, the fact that she was barely awake might have some bearing on her reaction.
“He’s not my Tom. But, yes, that Tom, the one we both knew in Texas.”
“That’s incredible. How did this come about?”
“He’s the son—”
“I understand that part, and I’ve heard all the stories about the lost lord, but my word, Lauren, he’s a man we know. I danced with him in Texas at my birthday party when I turned eighteen.”
She was surprised by the flare of jealousy that remark ignited. “You never mentioned that.”
“I knew you were pining for him—”
“I wasn’t pining for him.”
“Yes, you were, but that’s neither here nor there now. Tom is Lord Sachse.” Lydia shook her head. “I’m not sure London is ready for a lord accustomed to doing things his way.”
“I can pretty much assure you that it’s not, which brings me to my visit. I need your help.”
“Of course. What ever do you need?”
Lauren came to her feet and began pacing in front of the fireplace where a low fire worked to ward off the chill of the morning. She was grateful that Lydia’s husband, Rhys Rhodes, the Duke of Harrington, had possessed the decency to make a tactful retreat after Lauren assured them that nothing was horribly wrong.
“My help,” Lydia prodded.
“I’ve agreed to teach Tom what he needs to know to survive here.” She stopped pacing and faced her cousin. “I know it’s rather short notice, but I thought my first lesson would involve dining, and I was hoping you might see your way clear to host a small dinner party this evening.”
“How small?”
“The four of us, plus Gina and Devon.”
“Consider it done.”
Lauren returned to the gold brocade chair. “Thank you. I thought if we kept the dinner intimate it might help Tom feel not quite so self-conscious if he makes a mistake.”
“I can’t imagine the Tom I knew in Texas being self-conscious about anything.”
“There’s a lot to learn.”
Lydia studied her for a moment. “But that’s not what’s troubling you. What else did you want to tell me?”
Lauren felt the tears sting her eyes. “All these years Tom wrote me. Mother destroyed his letters before I had a chance to see them, destroyed the ones I wrote him before they were mailed.”
“I can’t believe Aunt Elizabeth would do something so underhanded. Why would she do such a thing?”
“She thought it would make it easier for me to adjust to life over here if I didn’t have reminders of life back there.”
“But she gave you my letters.”
“Exactly. I think she was more afraid that I’d run away to be with Tom.”
Lydia smiled softly. “Are you going to do that now that he’s here?”
“I sneaked out of the house to be with him last night.”
Lydia raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“We rode through the streets of London in his carriage, watched the stars for a bit, and struck a bargain for me to teach him. At the end of the Season, he’ll provide me with passage to Texas.”
“Who’s idea was that?”
“He made the offer, and I accepted.”
“Your acceptance surprises me. You’ve always wanted to go back to Texas, but I suspected Tom was the reason—if not in whole, then at least in part. Now that he’s in England, I assumed—”
“That I would give up my dream of returning to Texas? No, Lydia. I’ve never felt comfortable here. I’ve never felt as though I belonged.”
“You hid it well, Lauren. My goodness, you guided me through the maze of English etiquette. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t held my hand.”
“You would have done just fine. You published a blasted book on the subject.”
“Etiquette that I gleaned from all the letters you wrote me over the years.”
Lauren sighed. “Don’t you ever feel like you’re living in a little box over here? That if you try to break out of it, they’ll just nai
l it shut?”
Lydia visibly shuddered. “You’re describing a coffin. Don’t be so maudlin.”
“I don’t mean to be. I just never really expected to spend the remainder of my life over here.”
“I don’t understand why you find such fault with it.”
A servant appeared in the doorway, quietly entered the room, and set a tea ser vice on the table beside Lydia. “Thank you,” Lydia said.
Lauren held her silence while the servant left, and Lydia began preparing a cup of tea for her guest. Despite the early hour and the fact that she’d been roused from slumber, her cousin looked incredibly content.
“You truly do love it here, don’t you?” Lauren asked.
Lydia peered over at her and smiled softly. “I truly do. If you’ll forgive my boldness, I think the difference between us is that I have someone here whom I love with all my heart. I think you’ve had a difficult time of it because you left your heart in Texas.”
“You think I left my heart with Tom?”
Lydia gave her a pointed look. “Didn’t you?”
“That was so long ago, we were such different people. I came to understand that more clearly when I was with Tom last night. When he kissed me, it wasn’t the kiss of his youth.”
The teacup rattled as Lydia set it on the tray, scooted up in the chair, and leaned toward Lauren. “What? You completely overlooked revealing that juicy tidbit. When did he kiss you?”
“In the garden, then later to seal our bargain. And I owe him a debt that I feel certain he’s going to expect me to pay before I leave for Texas.”
“What debt?”
Only to Lydia could she dare confess the not-quite-proper behaviors of her youth and Tom’s daring proposition. “Before I left Texas, Tom paid me a quarter to unbutton my bodice, and I never carried through on my part of the bargain.”
“Are you telling me that he’s expecting you to unbutton your bodice?” Lydia was smiling brightly.
“It’s not amusing,” Lauren said pointedly.
“I’m not saying that it is, but you were fourteen. I’ve always thought Tom was an intelligent man, but this is downright silly.”
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