Hortense snorted. “Aside from all else, we’re too fagged from driving up this afternoon to weather an outing to some other entertainment.”

“And, dear,” Millicent put in, “we should remember that Miss Carling and Sir Humphrey and young Mr. Carling had a funeral to attend this morning. A neighbor, I understand?”

“Indeed.” A vision danced through Tristan’s mind, of a comfortable if large dinner party, rather less formal than might be imagined—he knew his great-aunts and their companions quite well…He looked around, met their bright, transparently hopeful gazes. “Do I take it you’re suggesting this dinner would be in lieu of any appearance in the ton tonight?”

Hortense pulled a face. “Well, if you really wish to attend some ball or other—”

“No, no.” The relief that flooded him was very real; he smiled, struggling to keep his delight within bounds. “I see no reason at all your dinner can’t go ahead, precisely as you’ve planned it. Indeed”—his mask slipped; he let his gratitude shine through—“I’ll be grateful for any excuse to avoid the ton tonight.” He bowed to his aunts, with a glance extended the gesture to the others, deploying his charm to maximum effect. “Thank you.”

The words were heartfelt.

They all smiled, bobbed, delighted to have been of use.

“Didn’t think you’d be all that enamored of the gadding throng,” Hortense opined. She grinned up at him. “If it comes to it, neither are we.”

He could have kissed them. Knowing how flustered that would make most of them, he contented himself with dressing with extra care, then being in the drawing room to greet them as they entered, bowing over their hands, commenting on their gowns and coiffures, on their jewels—deploying for them that irresistible charm he knew well how to use but rarely did without some goal in mind.

Tonight, his goal was simply to repay them for their kindness, their thoughtfulness.

He’d never been so thankful to hear of a family dinner in his life.

While they waited in the drawing room for their guests to arrive, he thought of how incongruous their gathering would appear—he standing before the mantelpiece, the sole male surrounded by fourteen elderly females. But they were his family; he did, in truth, feel more comfortable surrounded by them and their amiable chatter than he did in the more glittering, more exciting, but also more malicious world of the ton. They and he shared something—an intangible connection of place and people spread over time.

And into this, Leonora would now come—and she would fit.

Havers entered to announce Lord and Lady Warsingham and Miss Carling—Gertie. On their heels, Sir Humphrey, Leonora, and Jeremy arrived.

Any thought that he would have to act as a formal host evaporated in minutes. Sir Humphrey was engaged by Ethelreda and Constance, Jeremy by a group of the others, while Lord and Lady Warsingham were treated to the Wemyss charm as dispensed by Hermione and Hortense. Gertie and Millicent, who had met the previous evening, had their heads together.

After exchanging a few words with the other old dears, Leonora joined him. She gave him her hand, her special smile—the one she reserved just for him—curving her lips. “I have to say I was extremely glad of your great-aunts’ suggestion. After attending Miss Timmins’s funeral this morning, attending Lady Willoughby’s ball tonight and dealing with the—as you described it—prurient interest, would have severely tried my temper.” She glanced up, met his eyes. “And yours.”

He inclined his head. “Even though I didn’t attend the funeral. How was it?”

“Quiet, but sincere. I think Miss Timmins would have been pleased. Henry Timmins shared the service with the local vicar, and Mrs. Timmins was there, too—a nice woman.”

After an instant, she turned to him and lowered her voice. “We found some papers in Cedric’s room, hidden in the bottom of his woodbasket. They weren’t letters, but sheets of entries similar to those in the journals but most importantly, they weren’t in Cedric’s hand—they were written by Carruthers. Humphrey and Jeremy are concentrating on those now. Humphrey says they’re descriptions of experiments, similar to those in Cedric’s journal, but there’s still no way to make any sense of them, to know if they mean anything at all. It seems all we’ve discovered so far contains only part of whatever they were working on.”

“Which suggests even more strongly that there is some discovery, one Cedric and Carruthers thought it worthwhile to deal with carefully.”

“Indeed.” Leonora searched his face. “In case you’re wondering, the staff at Number 14 are very much on alert, and Castor will send to Gasthorpe should anything untoward occur.”

“Good.”

“Have you learned anything?”

He felt his jaw start to set; he pulled his charming mask back into place. “Nothing about Martinbury, but we’re trying a new tack that might get us further faster. However, the big news is that Mountford—or whoever he is—has taken the bait. He, acting via the weasel, rented Number 16 late this afternoon.”

Her eyes widened; she kept them fixed on his. “So things are starting to happen.”

“Indeed.”

He turned, smiling, as Constance joined them. Leonora stood by his side and chatted with the ladies as they came up. They told her of the church fete, and of the little routine day-to-day changes, the alterations the seasons brought to the manor. They told her of this and that, remembered snippets of Tristan’s early life, of his father and grandfather.

She occasionally glanced at him, saw him extend that ready charm—also saw beneath it. Having met Lady Hermione and Lady Hortense, she could see from where he’d got it; she wondered what his father had been like.

Yet in this sphere Tristan’s manners were more genuine; the real man showed through, not just with his strengths but with his weaknesses, too. He was comfortable, relaxing; she suspected that previously, he might well have gone for years without lowering his guard. Even now, the drawbridge chains were rusty.

She moved around the room, chatting here, chatting there, always conscious of Tristan, that he watched her as she watched him. Then Havers announced dinner, and they all went in, she on Tristan’s arm.

He sat her beside him at one end of the table; Lady Hermione was at the other end. She made a neat speech expressing her pleasure at the prospect of shortly yielding her chair to Leonora, and led a toast to the affianced couple, then the first course was served. The gentle hum of conversation rose and engulfed the table.

The evening passed pleasantly, truly enjoyably. The ladies repaired to the drawing room, leaving the gentlemen to their port; it wasn’t long before they rejoined them.

Her uncle Winston, Lord Warsingham, Mildred’s husband, stopped by her side. “An excellent choice, my dear.” His eyes twinkled; he’d been concerned by her lack of interest in marriage, but had never sought to interfere. “Might have taken you an unconscionable time to make up your mind, but the result’s the thing, heh?”

She smiled, inclined her head. Tristan joined them, and she directed the conversation to the latest play.

And continued, at some level she wasn’t sure she understood, to watch Tristan. She didn’t always keep her eyes on him, yet she was wholly aware—an emotional watching if such a thing could be, a focusing of the senses.

She’d noticed, again and again, his momentary hesitations when, discussing something with her, he would check, pause, consider, then go on. She’d started to identify the patterns that told her what he was thinking, when and in what vein he was thinking of her. The decisions he was making.

The fact he’d made no move to exclude her from their active investigations heartened her. He could have been much more difficult; indeed, she’d expected it. Instead, he was feeling his way, accommodating her as he could; that bolstered her hope that in the future—the future they’d both committed themselves to—they would rub along well together.

That they would be able to accommodate each other’s natures and needs.

His, both nature and needs, were more complex than most; she’d realized that sometime ago—it was part of the attraction he held for her, that he was different from others, that he needed and wanted on a somewhat different scale, on a different plane.

Given his dangerous past, he was less disposed to excluding women, infinitely more disposed to using them. She’d sensed that from the first, that he was less inclined than his less adventurous brethren to coddle females; she now knew him well enough to guess that in pursuit of his duty he would have been coldly ruthless. It was that side of his nature that had allowed her to become as involved as she was in their investigations with only relatively minor resistance.

However, with her, that more pragmatic side had come into direct conflict with something much deeper. With more primitive impulses, all-but-primal instincts, the imperative to keep her forever shielded, tucked away from all harm.

Again and again, that conflict darkened his eyes. His jaw would set, he would glance at her briefly, hesitate, then leave matters as they were.

Adjustment. Him to her, her to him.

They were meshing together, step by step learning the ways in which their lives would interlock. Yet that fundamental clash remained; she suspected it always would.

She would have to bear with it, adjust to it. Accept but not react to his repressed but still present instincts and suspicions. She didn’t believe he’d put the latter into words, not even to himself, yet they remained, beneath all his strengths, the weaknesses she’d brought forth. She’d told him, admitted why she didn’t easily accept help, could not easily trust him or anyone with things that mattered to her.

Logically, consciously, he believed in her decision to trust him, to accept him into the innermost sphere of her life. At a deeper, instinctive level, he kept watching for signs she would forget.

For any sign she was excluding him.

She’d hurt him once in precisely that way. She wouldn’t do so again, but only time would teach him that.

His gift to her had been, from the first, to accept her as she was. Her gift in return would be to accept all he was and give him the time to lose his suspicions.

To learn to trust her as she did him.

Jeremy joined them; her uncle seized the moment to talk estates with Tristan.

“Well, sis.” Jeremy glanced around at the company. “I can see you here, with all these ladies, organizing them, keeping the whole household ticking smoothly along.” He grinned at her, then sobered. “Their gain. We’ll miss you.”

She smiled, put her hand on his arm, squeezed. “I haven’t left you yet.”

Jeremy lifted his gaze to Tristan, beyond her. Half smiled as he looked back at her. “I think you’ll find you have.”






Chapter Eighteen

For all his relative naïveté, Jeremy was correct in one respect—Tristan clearly considered their union already accepted, established, acknowledged.

The Warsinghams were the first to leave, Gertie with them. When Humphrey and Jeremy prepared to follow them, Tristan trapped her hand on his sleeve and declared that he and she had matters pertaining to their future that they needed to discuss in private. He would see her home in his carriage in half an hour or so.

He stated it so glibly, with such complete assurance, everyone meekly nodded and fell into line. Humphrey and Jeremy departed; his great-aunts and cousins bade them good night and retired.

Leaving him to usher her into the library, alone at last.

He paused to give Havers instructions for the carriage. Leonora went to stand before the fire, a goodly blaze throwing heat into the room. Outside, a chill wind blew and heavy clouds blocked the moon; not a pleasant evening.

Holding out her hands to the flames, she heard the door click softly shut, sensed Tristan draw near.

She turned; his hands slid about her waist as she did. Her palms came to rest on his chest. She locked her eyes on his. “I’m glad you arranged this—there are a number of matters we should talk about.”

He blinked. He didn’t let her go, yet he didn’t draw her closer. Their hips and thighs were lightly, teasingly, brushing; her breasts were just touching his chest. His hands spanned her waist; she was neither in his arms nor out of them, yet wholly within his control. He looked down into her eyes. “What matters are those?”