Lords of Notoriety: The Ruthless Lord Rule / The Toplofty Lord Thorpe

Rule barely stifled an appreciative smile, which only served to incense Mary all the more, and bowed deeply from his waist. “And here I thought we were getting along so well,” he said, making a poor attempt at looking crushed by her words. “I stand corrected, madam.”

“Only until I knock you down, sirrah!” Mary retorted, trying to disengage her elbow, which he had maddeningly taken in his grasp. “Which I promise you I shall do shortly, if you do not release me.”

Any lingering trace of humor left Lord Rule’s face as he, by the simple means of closing his strong fingers around Mary’s tender elbow, steered her over to a secluded corner of the balcony and lowered his head to within scant inches of hers. “What kind of woman are you?” he demanded harshly, giving her abused arm a shake. “I try to be civil to you, even flatter you by indulging in a bit of mild flirtation such as you females demand of us men, and you repay me time after time with cutting words, insults, and now threats of violence.”

“Flirt with me! You call your outrageous suggestion flirting? And what do you mean by lumping me in with a bunch of chits with more hair than wit who giggle and simper as some ridiculous fop or other compares their crossed eyes to brightly shining stars?” Mary was so angry now that she either could not or would not take notice of his lordship’s set jaw and narrowed eyes. Raising her chin just a bit more, she sniffed dismissingly. “If you are going to ape your betters, I suggest you choose your models with more care.”

She was going to drive him straight out of his mind! His short-lived idea of insinuating himself into her good graces (all the better to keep a close watch on her) died an undignified death as his quick temper overrode his seldom-exercised discretion. Tristan stepped further back into the shadows, pulling Mary along with him willy-nilly, and took the back of her neck in his firm grip. “I am done playing games with you, Miss Lawrence. You tell me I am no gentleman, yet I have only your word for it that you are a lady.”

Mary’s heart began to pound as she belatedly realized that her sharp tongue had gotten her into yet another tight spot. “Apply to my uncle if you wish a tracing of my family tree.” She brazened it out, her green eyes spitting fire in the darkness. “I am not about to justify my existence to you.”

“I have talked with Sir Henry,” Tristan informed her to her dismay, “and all he says is that you are the daughter of an old friend. You have the man so besotted he’ll say anything to protect you, but I am not so hoodwinked by your beauty that I can overlook the fact that you have somehow established yourself in the house of one of the most important men in the war effort.”

Even in the midst of her fright Mary took a small bit of satisfaction in the notion that Lord Rule thought her beautiful, but that admission did not serve to overshadow the fact that he was accusing her of—what was he accusing her of? “You think I’m Sir Henry’s mistress?” she squeaked at last, feeling something akin to relief.

Tristan’s fingers tightened on the soft, slim neck. “Mistress?” he repeated, brought up short. “No, Rachel wouldn’t stand still for being a party to that, not even for an old friend…would she?” he questioned softly, as if debating with himself.

Mary reached up and tried to remove his hand, finger by tensed finger. “Look, my lord, either throttle me or let me go. Make up your mind.” In the space of a moment she had decided that Tristan Rule was not ruthless—he was ridiculous! But if he was suffering from overexposure to battle or some such thing, he should take himself off to some spa for the waters, not run amok in London searching out nonexistent intrigues. Besides, she reminded herself as she attempted to lift his thumb from the pulse point at the base of her throat, it wasn’t as if there was no intrigue about her presence in Sir Henry’s household—even though her true identity was not all that earthshaking. The last thing her uncle would wish for was this man meddling in their affairs.

Lord Rule shook his head a time or two, bringing himself back to the matter at hand. And that matter was, to be obvious about the thing, that the matter at hand was his hand—for somehow it had found its way around Miss Lawrence’s slender throat. God! The woman had the power to drive him distracted. And the thought that she could be Sir Henry’s mistress did something evil to his insides that he was powerless to deny. Looking down into her angry face, Tristan cudgeled his brain for a way out of this latest coil into which the dratted chit had succeeded in goading him.

“Well, sir,” Mary prompted, puzzled by the slightly dazed expression in Lord Rule’s dark eyes. “Which is it to be—a quick snuffing or sweet freedom?”

What would Julian do in a situation like this? Or Kit? Tristan cursed under his breath as he realized neither of those esteemed gentlemen would have allowed themselves to be drawn into such a tangled mess in the first place. But then neither of those men had ever stood within a heartbeat of the beautiful, willful, mysterious Miss Mary Lawrence. Any man could be excused for losing his head in such circumstances, he assured himself, regaining a small bit of his consequence while fueling his flagging temper with yet another shovelful of Mary Lawrence’s supposed sins against him.

The firm clasp turned abruptly into a rough sort of caress as Tristan Rule smiled evilly, and Mary found herself wishing he were still scowling. “Wh-what are you going to do?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“What do you think I’m going to do?” Tristan returned in a soft growl. If he was already in trouble—and he knew he most assuredly would be the moment Sir Henry heard of this night’s work—he’d already decided he may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. His dark features nearly blotting out the moonlight as they descended on her, Tristan ended huskily, “I’m going to throttle you, what else?”

“No!” Mary protested swiftly, but not nearly quickly enough to keep her denial from being smothered by Lord Rule’s punishing mouth. Nor did her hands move rapidly enough to prevent his arms from capturing her slim body in his rock-hard embrace.

Mary had been kissed before, she was sure she had, but all of those kisses paled beneath the reality of Tristan’s mouth as it curved, and slanted, and moved possessively upon hers. As his strong arms forced the very air from her lungs, he captured her breath in his mouth and breathed his own life back into her. It was so personal, so intimate an action, that she felt herself to have been actually violated. When the tip of his tongue slid along the edge of her teeth as his mouth opened more fully over hers, then brazenly penetrated, Mary instinctively fought back.

“Ouch! You hellion!” Tristan spat, jumping back to reach a finger inside his mouth to inspect his wounded tongue.

Her hands balled into fists at her sides, her firm chin out-thrust in indignation, Mary warned coldly: “Touch me again, you miserable creature—even come within a mile of me—and I’ll have you horsewhipped!”

Watching appreciatively as Mary’s indignant figure stomped back into the ballroom, his hand held to the cheek she had slapped with some force in order to punctuate her parting warning, Tristan mused aloud, “She’d probably do it too. And at the moment, by God, it almost seems worth it.”

RACHEL HAD OBSERVED Mary’s departure with Rule, and had counted the minutes until her charge had returned alone to the ballroom, looking more than a little the worse for wear. But before Rachel could cross the floor to find out just what her infuriating nephew had done this time, Mary was claimed for a dance by some violet satin-clad exquisite and disappeared into the crowd of revelers.

That left Tristan, and Rachel was determined not to let the fellow get away without an explanation of what had transpired on the balcony. She found him lounging against the doorjamb, boring a hole in Mary’s unsuspecting back like some hot-headed halfling. She looked from Tristan to Mary and then back again, hardly believing what her eyes were telling her. It couldn’t be. It was utterly impossible. The Ruthless Lord Rule pricked by Cupid’s dart? Tristan was just shy of his thirtieth birthday, and in all that time he had never once shown any signs of being the romantic sort. True, she owned to herself, he had been hopping about the Continent and God only knew where else these past seven years or more, but considering the multitude of rumors about his involvement with the military, it seemed impossible for him to have carried on any serious romantic interlude without all of London finding out about it one way or another.

Tilting her head to one side, she inspected Tristan’s expression as he stood rock still, his whole body taut with suppressed—what? Fury? Passion? Lust? “Good heavens,” she whispered, “this novel writing has made me into a hysteric. Soon I’ll be reading Byron and swooning dead away.” Still, she thought as she looked at her nephew again, more objectively this time, Rule does have a certain look about him—the same sort of look, if I recall it correctly, that he had at the age of twelve, when his father refused to allow him on that great big stallion. And when Rachel recalled that Tristan had eventually not only mounted that stallion, but broken him to saddle, her fears for her charge began anew.

“Tristan,” she said, tugging on his sleeve to get his attention, “you look like a thundercloud. Kindly smile at me as if you didn’t wish me at the farthest corners of the earth and stop casting a pall over this entire company. I swear three totally innocent gentlemen have already departed the ballroom, believing you had them in their sights.”

Distracted, Rule ignored his aunt’s sarcasm, if indeed he had understood it. After all, he wasn’t deliberately striking a pose or any such thing. He was merely being himself—his intense, determined, passionate self. He might, in his more candid moments, admit to possessing a bit of a short fuse, but he consoled himself with the knowledge that he was never purposely mean. He leveled one long, last piercing look at the scrap of female that could just be the exception to his self-imposed rule of absolute chivalry where the weaker sex was concerned, and turned to address his aunt. “You wanted something, Aunt? A cooling glass of lemonade, perhaps?”

Rachel clenched her teeth in frustration. Tristan had always had this maddening ability to turn her up sweet just when she was about to tear a wide strip off his hide. A glass of lemonade, indeed! Better to have three fingers of whiskey if she was about to try to beat some sense into the idiot’s thick head! “No, thank you, dear,” she somehow trilled, taking his arm. “But it is dreadfully close in the ballroom. Perhaps you could bear me company for a stroll around the balcony?”

Again Tristan looked to the dance floor, where Mary was busily flirting with three gentlemen who were all vying for her hand for the next set, and then back at his aunt. “A stroll, you say? On the balcony? Couldn’t you just stand here in the doorway and take a few deep, bracing breaths?”

“Tristan Montgomery Rule!” Rachel snapped, longing to do him an injury. “Come with me willingly or I’ll pull you along by the ear like I did when you were in short pants!” And with that, she sailed off through the archway—her reluctant nephew trailing along behind—and prepared to bribe, bluster, threaten, or cajole the truth out of him. She owed it to Henry!

“’ERE NOW, ARE YER GONNA EAT wit dem dabblers on?” Ben questioned Mary, who had yet to relinquish her gloves into the servant’s waiting hands. “Yer be ‘ere fer yafflin’, ain’t yer? Montague’s done up a treat, so’s yer best be clammed.”

Mary turned to her aunt. “What did he say?” she asked, prudently giving over her gloves before the little fellow stripped them from her hands. “And what’s a Montague?”

Rachel nodded to the now deeply bowing Ben and propelled her charge up the stairs to the drawing room where Jennie and Lucy waited. “Montague is Jennie’s idea of a French chef, and you’d better be hungry or there may be the devil to pay. It’s a long story,” she conceded as Mary’s mouth opened on another question. “Suffice it to say Jennie has these little projects. For the moment, my dear, just follow my lead.” They stopped before the drawing-room door so that Ben could dash by and announce them, muttering something about earning his pantler’s keys (butler’s keys, to the uninformed, which Rachel, to her own regret, had not been ever since her chaperonage of Lucy). After allowing themselves to be trumpeted into the room like minor royalty, Rachel called the three young women quickly to order.

“I know it is my custom to retire to a corner and let you girls natter as you will, but I have requested this luncheon with a definite purpose in mind,” she began, quickly taking Jennie and Lucy’s interest away from Mary’s fetching new walking dress and onto herself.

“What ho? Do I sense some deep intrigue?” Lucy asked happily, clapping her hands.

“You always sense some deep intrigue,” Jennie commented to Lucy without rancor before turning back to her aunt. “Has someone unsuitable offered for Mary?” she asked, her thoughts, as usual, running along matrimonial lines.

“Has Uncle Henry at last agreed to send me to France?” Mary chimed in, immediately crossing her fingers for luck.

“Perhaps, no, and no, definitely not,” Rachel replied, pointing to each of the trio of young hopefuls in turn. “This meeting concerns one Tristan Rule. Something has got to be done about the boy.”

“Marry him off!” Lucy and Jennie declared in unison, while Mary’s only reply was to pucker up her nose in an expression of distaste, saying, “And a more boring subject I cannot imagine.”

Rachel sat down gingerly on the edge of the satin settee and addressed her next words directly to Mary. “You won’t believe it boring when I have told you just what maggot my nephew has taken into his head about you. I don’t remember him going off on such a wild tangent since that time he decided Lucy was really a boy in disguise and her father had put her into skirts so that he wouldn’t have to spring for an education at Eton.”

Jennie whirled on Lucy, who was laughing uproariously. “Lucy!” she exclaimed. “He never did! How old was Tristan when this happened?”

Lucy had to take refuge in her handkerchief as tears of mirth streamed from her eyes. “T-ten!” she chortled. “I was just a little past three myself. Oh dear, you would perish on the spot if I told you how Tristan was at last proved wrong. Thank goodness I have little but a hazy remembrance of his triumphant unveiling of my ‘masculine’ form in front of the vicar and his sister. I swear, Tristan couldn’t sit down for a week after my father got through with him!”

Mary found herself laughing in spite of herself, and in spite of the deep animosity she felt for Tristan Rule—especially after the events of the previous evening. The fact that she knew she couldn’t confide in either Rachel or Sir Henry without somewhat incriminating herself for her own less than ladylike behavior did not detract from the poor opinion of the man. Trying to keep her mind on the subject at hand, she put in, “I gather, Aunt, that your nephew’s latest incorrect assumption is even worse?”

There was no way to dress the thing up in fine linen, and Rachel was not about to try. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she announced baldly: “Tristan believes Mary might be a spy in the pay of Napoleon.”

Looking quite clearly puzzled, Jennie murmured, “But Napoleon is imprisoned on Elba. The war is over. Surely Kit would have told me if there was any danger. We plan to travel there next spring with Christopher and my father. And Montague was so looking forward to it too—he’s French, you know.”

Rachel shook her head. “We consider the war to be over, pet, but even Sir Henry is uneasy about the laxity of Bonaparte’s imprisonment. There has been more than one rumor about forces being at work to reinstate the man in Paris. He still carries the title of emperor, you know, even if he is in exile.”

While Rachel was explaining all this to Jennie, Lucy was observing Mary shrewdly out of the corners of her eyes. The girl was sitting as stiff and still as a ramrod, looking as if steam would commence pouring from her ears at any moment. Obviously Mary did not share Rachel’s apprehension, Jennie’s confusion, or her own hilarity—no, Miss Mary Lawrence was, in a word, incensed!

“How dare he,” Mary whispered nearly under her breath, and then more loudly. “How dare he!”

Immediately Jennie set out to placate her guest. “Now, Mary, don’t be so out-of-reason cross. Tristan has simply made an error in judgment. Surely Aunt Rachel has already set him straight.”

“It’s not for myself that I’m angry, Jennie,” Mary explained, rising to her feet to begin pacing up and down the length of the carpet. “It’s the insult to Sir Henry that I cannot and will not abide! How dare that ridiculous man cast such aspersions on the intelligence and discretion of one of the nation’s greatest patriots? For myself I care nothing, for Tristan Rule’s opinion of me is not something I would lose any sleep over, I assure you, but if Sir Henry were to catch wind of this—why, I cannot imagine the consequences.”

Rachel could. Rachel had. Which was why she was sitting here amid a group of painfully young ladies instead of pouring out her fears to the one man who she felt could settle the matter once and for all. Oh yes, she had thought of confiding in Julian or Kit, but since it was so pleasant to have her two nieces so happily married, she should hate having to start over from scratch finding replacements once that hot-headed Tristan had made them both into widows. Especially Lucy—dear Lord, getting that one bracketed had cost Rachel more than a few gray hairs!

“I have, unlike you, had a full night to ponder our problem, so I have entertained a few ideas…” Rachel slid in before Mary could snatch up her reticule and go off searching for Lord Rule in order to bash him soundly about the head and shoulders. All three pairs of young eyes immediately concentrated in her direction.

Agreeing with Mary that Sir Henry was best left ignorant of Rule’s assumption, Rachel admitted that the only concrete idea she could come up with was that Tristan Rule needed to be taught a lesson—a very strong lesson. She was now, she told them sincerely, applying to three of the most agile, devious, determined minds she knew for ways to render to her nephew the trimming he so obviously deserved.

“We could have him impressed in His Majesty’s service on a ship bound for deepest Africa,” Mary offered most evilly.

Rachel declined that option, warning, “Mary, my dear, if you would please try for a little more elegance of mind? Besides, knowing Tristan, he would incite a mutiny within three days of leaving port and return here with a full crew of faithful sailors bound to help him expose your dastardly purpose. No, much as I wish it, we shall have to deal with Tristan, not merely transport him.”

Mary just shrugged, then suggested a second option—something vaguely connected with boiling his lordship in oil.

“Oh, I do like this girl!” Lucy said, giggling. “No simpering miss, this.”

Slowly it dawned on the company that Jennie had not spoken for some time. Lucy looked over at her cousin to find the girl wiping away a tear, and promptly asked her what was amiss. “I’ve been thinking about poor Mary, and how she must feel to be supposed guilty of such a grievous crime,” Jennie supplied before daintily blowing her nose. “It is horrid, simply horrid! I wonder how Tristan would feel to be placed in such a position. Perhaps if the slipper were on the other foot for a change, it might show him how unfair his assumptions can be.”

Mary immediately stopped her pacing, an unholy grin lighting her beautiful face. Racing over to swoop the still-sniffling Jennie into her arms, she gave that girl a resounding kiss on the cheek. “Jennie, you dearest thing, you have hit upon it exactly. Lord Rule is long overdue for a lesson. For too long has he been allowed to make hare-witted assumptions about his fellow man and then set about proving how right he is, no matter what the cost to his victim. For Lucy’s injured sensibilities as a child, for his insult to Sir Henry, and for all the other people he has persecuted with his single-minded, not to mention simpleminded determination—we shall teach him a lesson!”

Lucy tipped her head to one side. “I agree about the rest of it, but I don’t know if you can truthfully say I was a victim,” she corrected impishly. “After all, I have it from my old nurse that I quite enjoyed showing off for the vicar, and repeated the practice every time an adult came into range for the next few months—until Papa finally broke me of the habit.”

“How did he do that?” Jennie was the only person interested enough to inquire.

“By the simple expedient of basting her drawers to her shift until she got the message,” Rachel supplied, smiling a bit to herself. “It was my idea, actually. Hale wrote to me in desperation.”

Ben entered the room and announced luncheon with all the pomp and ceremony Montague’s creations deserved, and Jennie quickly ushered her guests into the dining room, where Mary once again commanded everyone’s attention by unveiling the plan that had already grown to major proportions within her agile brain. If Tristan Rule had thought he could prove Mary to be a spy, she was going to be extremely helpful in convincing him of her guilt! In other words, if he wished her to act like a traitor, she would accommodate him—in spades.

“Oh, for a humdrum existence,” Rachel said to no one in particular, envying every bored on-the-shelf spinster in all England.

Lucy was all for Mary’s idea. Indeed, she even volunteered her every assistance, but she couldn’t help but ask: “Just how is this going to provide Tris with his overdue lesson in minding his own business? I mean, skulking about leaving messages and acting suspicious sounds like whacking great fun, but surely it will only work to make Tristan more sure of his convictions.”

“Not if I—with a little help from you, my dear friends—also behave, as if Tristan is the real French spy in our midst, and return his treatment of me twofold!” Mary told him confidently.

Lifting her glass in a salute to her new friend’s genius, Lucy promised jovially, “And when it is all over, and Tristan has been suitably humbled, he will fall at your feet begging for your hand in marriage!”

Mary’s smile faded as she remembered the events of the previous evening. “Then I will have him aboard that ship to Africa after all!” she vowed sincerely, not noticing Jennie’s and Lucy’s exchange of broad winks.

CHAPTER FOUR

MARY FLUNG DOWN the magazine she had been reading, unable to sustain an interest in a gushing description of the latest fashions from Paris, and hopped up to pace back and forth impatiently across the drawing-room rug, her small hands clenched into unladylike fists. Oh, she was so angry! Drat that Tristan Rule anyway!

She halted in her tracks momentarily to stare malevolently at a Sevres figurine, seeing Rule’s dark, well-made features rather than the smiling face of an innocent young country maid dressed in pink ruffles. Who does he think he is, she ranted to herself, to be judging me like the Lord on Doomsday? He’s an obtuse, despicable, intolerable, opinionated… Mary turned on her heels and set about pacing once more, unable to continue her thoughts else she’d be forced to throw something.

And it wasn’t bad enough that the man had all but convicted her of spying for the French, oh no—he had also shown her, by his actions of the previous week, that he was not about to do his accusing from the sidelines. Acting as if she had never warned him to approach her again, he had been up to his old tricks, standing up with her for the length of one infuriating dance and then retiring to a nearby pillar to glower at her like some angry ancient god for the remainder of the evening, just as if he expected her to give herself away somehow, proving his ludicrous theory to be correct.