A Rogue of One's Own

“I’d show her bollocks,” muttered Addington.

Calthorpe chuckled. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Don’t be wet, old boy. Women like her are rebellious because men are too timid with them. They desperately crave a firm hand and a firm prick to keep them in their place, so the more you kowtow to them, the more hysterical they become.”

“Ho ho,” Weston exclaimed.

MacGregor gave a lackluster laugh and shuffled his feet.

“Careful, Addington,” Tristan said, pleasantly enough. “She’s still Tedbury’s sister.”

A sober man would have heard the threat thrumming in his tone.

Addington smirked. “Tedbury. Is he here?” He shaded his eyes with his hand and cast an exaggerated glance around the hall.

“I’m taking offense on his behalf.” Lucie had halted at the bottom of the stairs, hesitating. An escort was nowhere in sight. She would enter a ballroom filled with people who regarded her as a freak, alone. In a bollocks contest with the men presently surrounding him, this woman would leave them all in the dust.

A warm tide of pride rose in his chest, briefly filling all the empty hollows.

He would contemplate the significance of this later.

“Twenty pounds that MacGregor shan’t dare to ask the harpy for a dance,” Calthorpe said.

MacGregor’s tawny brows flew up. “I prize my bollocks higher than a paltry twenty pounds, thank you.”

“Thirty,” Calthorpe said quickly, “and double that if you can make her dance the first dance with you.”

“MacGregor? Waltzing with her?” Weston laughed. “Here, I double the stakes.”

“You fiends,” Addington said. “As if MacGregor could turn down a hundred quid—his old man is tight-fisted as a clam.”

MacGregor groaned like a man defeated.

“What say you, Ballentine,” Addington said softly near his ear, “are you not partial to the boyish ones?”

Someone was intoxicated beyond caution.

He turned. “Hold this, would you?” He pushed his empty tumbler into Addington’s free hand, and the man’s fingers clamped around it in surprise.

Lucie stood near an overspilling flower arrangement, last in the slowly moving queue to the ballroom.

The coil of white-blond hair between her pretty shoulders looked too heavy for her slender neck. He had known she was slight, but she was tiny. He could probably lift her up with one arm and tuck her into his chest pocket and knowing this made him feel restless and hot.

She did not grant him a glance when he halted next to her, in the spot where her escort should have been.

“We have discussed the matter of you following me,” she said stiffly, keeping her eyes fixed on the back of the gentleman queuing in front of her.

“Good evening, stranger.”

She shifted a little, as if she had something pointy in one of her shoes, bothering her.

“Do you wish to make a statement and enter alone,” he continued, “or would you consider taking me as your escort?”

Now she looked up at him. He blinked. A curl had been pulled down her forehead, and red flowers were tucked into her coiffure. It was the current fashion, he knew, but at first glance, it made her look like a stranger in truth.

“Entering with you is a statement, too,” she said.

He inclined his head in acknowledgment.

“I was forced to lose at lawn croquet today,” she added cryptically.

“That’s . . . dreadful?”

“It quite makes me want to make an entrance,” she murmured, and eyed his arm.

His heart beat faster. “I reckon it also makes you want to dance the first dance with me.”

She was staring at the back of the fellow in front of them again. When she spoke, a smirk was in her voice. “Why don’t you try and find out, my lord.”

* * *

Why don’t you try and find out, my lord.

Apparently, a farcical game of croquet made her want to do something reckless. Or perhaps it had been the two glasses of champagne, drunk in haste in the dressing room. She was contemplating entering the ballroom on his arm, as if her in a crimson ball gown with a surprise cape was not enough to raise eyebrows. She was contemplating whether to waltz with her nemesis or not to waltz at all.

Despite her defeat on the croquet lawn, no gentleman had asked her to dance. It would have made a statement to the rest of the ballroom that they were apparently unwilling to make. Tristan, of course, was quixotic enough to find gossip about him and the Nefarious Nag amusing.

She scrutinized him from the corner of her eye. Naturally, he looked dashing, wearing the formal black-and-white evening attire with an alluring casual ease. She should reject his dance request, preferably in full view of everyone. But they entered the ballroom the moment the soft sway of a French horn announced the “Blue Danube” waltz, and an electric burst of excitement shot through her legs and curled her toes. She had not danced in years.

Tristan faced her, with one arm held very formally behind his back.

Her breathing quickened. “You are going to ask, aren’t you.”

“Of course.” He performed an old-fashioned bow. “Will you honor me with this waltz, Lady Lucinda?”

The ballroom was watching; the attention coming their way was palpable like a cold draft in the air.

She looked past the hand he offered to his face. His eyes held an emotion far more complex than mockery. This was another truce. The languid song of the violin celli changed into a perky three-quarter time, and as if on command, dozens of couples began to twirl past them.

She placed her right hand into Tristan’s left.

Something sparked where their palms connected. She watched him raise their clasped hands into position, feeling unsteady. The warm pressure of his hand on her waist was already sinking through layers of silk and corset right into her bare skin. Keep your enemies close, but this close? A bad, bad idea.

Too late. He stepped backward into the fray, pulling her with him. And she was flying, literally, as the momentum briefly lifted her off her toes. Her little shriek was swallowed by the swelling music and the rhythmic shuffle of heels on parquet, but Tristan had caught it; his hold on her tightened, and a memory flashed, of the feel of his hands on her hips as she had lain on top of him in the stables.

She fixated on the knot of his white bow tie, which was still above the level of her eyes.

She tipped back her head. “You are very tall.” Her voice was decidedly too high.

He tilted his face down. “You have great observation skills for a woman. I imagine you occasionally frighten the gentlemen with your pluck?”

Pluck?

He smiled, and she glanced away again, to a less dazzling place. His throat. Too intimate. His left shoulder. She had seen it naked, bronzed and smooth. A hot flush spread up her neck. No part of him was neutral tonight.

“Where did you come from all of a sudden?” he teased. “I have not seen you before.” His gaze grazed over the edge of her low, square neckline.

“I believe this counts as flirtation, my lord.”

“The shameless kind,” he confirmed, and pulled her closer. Well. He had never been afraid of her pluck. Warmth still tingled on the path his eyes had casually drawn across her chest. The combination of champagne and tight lacing was perilous; it was making her light-headed and overly forgiving. Round and round they went, the skirts and fans and garlanded pillars surrounding them melting into a colorfully streaked blur.

“It is now your turn to deliver a witty reply,” Tristan remarked.

“Well then,” she said. “Where is your earring?”

His brows rose in surprise. “Not what I expected.”

She had, now and again, wondered about this since their meeting at Blackwell’s.

He was quiet for a turn. “The earring went the same way as your skirt-trousers,” he then said.

“My skirt-trousers?”

“They looked as though you had fashioned them from an old skirt with wide, billowing trouser legs,” he said. “You tried sneaking to the stables while wearing them and you almost did not get caught—it was the summer when you were fifteen, I believe.”

She remembered. It had been the summer she had become too old to steal Tommy’s breeches for riding Thunder. But she couldn’t ride astride in skirts; hence, she had fashioned a pair of trousers. That Tristan should remember it was astonishing, but then again, there had been a memorable commotion when they had caught her.

“I loathed riding sidesaddle,” she said. “Tommy snitched on me, the lout. They locked me in my room for three days to make sure I knew it was wrong.”

He claimed his earring had gone the same way. Someone had told him to remove it—but who, she wondered, had the power to dictate a nobleman’s fashion choices?

They flew past Lord Melvin and his dance partner, and she returned his nod with a smile.

“Lord Melvin,” Tristan said, when she looked back up at him. “Is he your beau?”

She would have tripped, had he not been leading. “You are not entitled to ask such things.”

“You looked very familiar during the recital.”

They had not; more significantly, had he been watching her? If he were any other man, she would think he was displaying signs of jealousy. But Tristan would never be so gauche as to be jealous, even if he had a claim.