“There have been comments, too, about you and Ben,” Beatrice continued, leaning forward to pluck another tartlet from the plate before them.
They were having tea in Bea’s favourite drawing room awaiting the arrival of a mantua maker. Lady Fortescue had ordered some gowns for Beatrice for the house party.
Every year the lady invited copious amounts of young bachelors in the hopes that her daughter would marry one of them.
Every year she bought her daughter a wardrobe fit for Town in the Season.
Every year, Beatrice remained single.
But Lady Fortescue was nothing if not determined.
Natalia had ordered two gowns herself but when Papa had arrived, he’d brought with him a trunk full of new gowns for his daughter. They were more elaborate than Natalia would have wanted to wear, but it was her father’s wish that she wear them, and so she would.
“What comments?” Natalia asked, her stomach fluttering in the most peculiar way.
Comments were what she wanted, after all.
Since that first dinner party two nights ago, Ben had been attentive and, she supposed, charming.
Papa actually seemed to like him, though he rarely allowed anything more than a few minutes of conversation between just the two of them before he interrupted or sent Mama or one of the twins.
“Oh, just about how attentive Ben has been,” Bea said airily, waving around the strawberry tart she held. “How you seem to be amenable to his attentions when you have never shown an interest in anyone before. Your acting skills are quite impressive.” Beatrice grinned.
Natalia’s stomach flipped at Beatrice’s words.
“Just what we wanted,” she responded weakly, taking a sip of her tea.
She couldn’t have said why Beatrice’s news made her feel so peculiar. After all, it was just what she had wanted, just what she’d planned.
Was it that she was worried her acting skills weren’t, in fact, all that good? That she was amenable to Ben’s attentions because since he’d been pretending to be attracted to her, she’d begun seeing him in a completely different light? That the memory of his kisses plagued her, and she found herself desperate to experience them again?
“Talia, are you quite well? You’ve become terribly flushed.”
Bea’s concerned voice distracted Natalia from her alarming thoughts, and she quickly offered her friend a smile of assurance.
Before she could speak, however, the butler arrived with the announcement that the mantua maker had arrived.
“Will you stay?” Bea asked as she stood and shook out her skirts.
“No, I should return. I told my father I wouldn’t be too long.”
And with that, Natalia quickly took her leave and headed outside.
She’d walked over to see Beatrice this morning, wanting some time alone. She’d hoped that a brisk, cold walk through the winter’s morning would clear her head.
If anything, Beatrice’s words left her feeling more confused than ever.
How could it be that Ben had only spent a handful of days even being nice to her, yet there was a yearning inside her for his attentions to mean something sincere, to be real?
Surely she wasn’t so foolish as to develop real feelings for Benjamin Trafford?
Before Natalia’s heart could race any quicker, she shook her head and gave herself a stern talking to.
“Of course you’re not,” she muttered to herself and the surrounding woodlands. “It’s just an unusual set of circumstances. He’s only pretending to be nice, in any case,” she continued, really getting into her stride now. “He’s conceited,” she reminded herself, stomping through the frosty grass toward the woodland that bordered Bea’s home and hers. “He’s arrogant. He’s not even that handsome.”
Here she stopped.
That simply wasn’t true, and Natalia could be honest enough, at least with herself, to admit that.
He was handsome. Devastatingly so.
“But that’s beside the point,” she muttered again. “The point is you don’t even like him.”
The snapping of a twig behind her interrupted her admittedly quite mad rambling, and Natalia spun round to see the object of her spiralling thoughts on horseback, coming through the trees.
“Talia.”
Ben drew the horse to a stop and was off the beast and striding toward Natalia before she could panic about whether he’d heard her talking to herself like a madwoman.
He stopped mere steps from her, his golden eyes gazing at her, an emotion she couldn’t name turning them to liquid fire.
“G-good morning,” Natalia managed past a sudden lump in her throat.
This wouldn’t do.
The second she’d seen him her heart had taken flight, silly organ that it was.
He frowned suddenly, looking around before his eyes met hers once more.
“Are you alone?” he asked. “And on foot?”
“Yes. I’ve just been visiting Bea. I wanted to – to walk. Clear my head.”
He raised a brow.
“Thoughts muddled, are they?”
“No!” she answered hastily. “Just – well, there’s a lot going on at Aunt Mary’s with my family over. And – “
“And your father doesn’t let you out of his sight,” Ben interrupted with a grin. “So how did you manage a morning walk alone?”
Natalia could feel heat beginning to rise in her cheeks.
“Oh, he doesn’t mind me being alone all that much,” she lied. “And – and he never minds me leaving to see Beatrice,” she lied some more.
“Hmm.”
She looked up to see that Ben was gazing sceptically at her, and she felt irritation flicker inside her.
She welcomed it. Embraced it. Irritation was good. Familiar. Safe. Irritation was not, for example, inexplicable attraction.
“Am I to assume you left without telling anyone?”
Drat the man. He was right.
Natalia had been feeling more and more like a prisoner since her family’s arrival, and that feeling brought with it a whole host of other unpleasant ones.
Guilt gnawed at her every time she had such thoughts. This was her family. She loved them. She missed them. She shouldn’t be feeling that Papa was overbearing and controlling. She shouldn’t be trying to keep away from them. She should be ecstatic to be reunited and looking forward to returning to her homeland.
In addition there was the uneasiness she felt in lying to everyone. Why hadn’t she thought any of this through? The shame she and Ben would bring to everyone — their friends, their families — when they broke off this “engagement” would be acute. It was selfish, Natalia knew, to disregard the effect her actions would have on others.
And yet…
The idea of being dragged home to be married off to a stranger filled her with horror.
And now, the idea of never seeing this irritating specimen in front of her again made her feel ridiculously close to tears.
It was too much. Too confusing.
“Assume whatever you like.” She tried and failed to sound nonchalant, instead sounding like a petulant child.
“You’re a hoyden. Has anyone ever told you that?”
His smile evoked a small one in her.
“You have,” she reminded him. “Frequently.”
“Yes, but you listen to me even less than anyone else, so it doesn’t count.”
“Well, we can agree on that,” she quipped, feeling more like herself.
He laughed softly.
“You’re a brat, Natalia Soronsky. You’re supposed to be in love with me. Do you know what that entails?”
Natalia ignored the flutter of panic in her stomach at his words.
“You’re supposed to swoon when I’m around. Fawn over me. Wax lyrical about my virtues.”
“Yes, but you’d have to have any for me to wax lyrical about them,” she responded tartly.
Ben scowled at her, though there were merriment in the gold of his eyes.
“I’ll have you know,” he growled, stepping closer until there were mere inches between them, sending her heartrate galloping, “I’m considered quite the catch.”
“Are you indeed?” she scoffed. “Because of all those non-existent virtues of yours?”
“Your low opinion of me is flattering, really,” Ben drawled.
Natalia laughed until she noticed an abrupt change in Ben. He went from affable to predatory in an instant.
His golden eyes suddenly glowed with a fire that heated Talia’s very veins.
“We’ve barely spoken properly since your family got here,” he surprised her by saying. “And we’ve certainly not been alone.”
“N-no we haven’t,” she managed, though it was difficult. Breathing was difficult with him this close.
“And whilst I can’t quite believe I’m saying this, I’ve missed you.”
Natalia felt her jaw drop at his words.
Never could she have imagined that Ben Trafford, the Arrogant Earl, the man who spent years swatting her away as though she were an annoying insect, would be standing here saying he’d missed her.
“Don’t worry, I’m just as surprised as you are.” He frowned. “But there we have it.”
“I – I – “
Natalia had no idea what she could or should say, so she stumbled to a halt.
“Now, given that I’ve spent these last couple of days missing your company, I think it’s only fair that I remind you of at least one of my virtues.”
Natalia darted her tongue out to wet her dry lips, and Ben’s eyes flew to her mouth, the gold in their depths deepening further still.
Good heavens, I’m in trouble, Natalia thought.
“Wh-what virtue is that?” she asked, her voice shaking, her heart pounding.
Ben’s answering grin was positively wolfish.
“I happen to be an excellent kisser, remember?”
Before Natalia could gasp at his arrogance and scold him for his impropriety, he closed the miniscule distance between them and pressed his mouth against her own.
And then she could do nothing at all except kiss him back.
CHAPTER TEN
Ben stood in the receiving line beside his aunt, the dutiful nephew charming the guests and playing his role to perfection.
But his mind wasn’t in it.
And his heart certainly wasn’t.
In fact, he was becoming more than a little concerned that his heart was three miles away with the black-haired, blue-eyed enchantress who had somehow, after years of his knowing and disliking her, become something terrifyingly important to him.
“You’re a damned idiot,” he muttered to himself.
“What was that, dear?”
Ben’s eyes snapped to Aunt Elizabeth.
“Nothing,” he assured her quickly.
She eyed him speculatively before returning her attention to her guests.
“Ah, here is Lady Cybil and her mother. You are acquainted with Lady Cybil, are you not?”
Ben looked over the receiving line before he spotted the blonde daughter of Viscount Tressle.
“I am,” he said carefully. “To some extent.”
He frowned at his aunt suspiciously.
“Why do you ask?” he demanded.
“No reason.” His aunt shrugged at him in between nodding her greetings and accepting compliments on her home.
This evening was the real start of Aunt Elizabeth’s famed festivities; a week of parties and events, culminating with the Christmas Eve Ball.
The ball at which he would announce his fake engagement to Natalia.
“She is lovely,” Aunt Elizabeth said, but Ben was hardly paying attention. Instead, he was scanning the crowd for a glimpse of raven hair.
What the hell had become of him?
“Yes,” he agreed distractedly.
“I’m glad you think so. She’s shy but quite pretty and from an excellent family. You will take care to dance with her?”
“Of course,” he muttered, still not really paying attention.
“Where are the Soronskys?” he blurted.
If memory served, Natalia had always been at the house with Bea from sun-up on the first day of Aunt Elizabeth’s festivities.
He remembered the headache he used to get from the pair of them squealing and giggling all day, following him around, and Natalia in particular making a nuisance of herself.
Only two years ago, he’d had to rescue her from the bannister at the top of the staircase when she’d climbed up there to fix a sprig of holly and gotten stuck.
Then he’d wished her to perdition, torn between wanting to wring her pretty little neck and ignore her existence entirely.
So how was it that now he stood here like a nervous schoolboy desperately awaiting her arrival?
He never should have kissed her. Again. That was the problem.
Kissing her before the arrival of her parents had been bad enough. Well, not bad. But not a good idea.
And he’d lived in a haze of tortured longing ever since because now he knew what it was to hold her, to taste her lips.
Seeing her alone yesterday morning had been more temptation than he could bear.
If he’d thought that kissing her again would have slaked his thirst for her, then he’d been very much mistaken.
Because now he couldn’t concentrate on anything, couldn’t think of anything but her.
Now he craved her in ways he never had before.
Yesterday morning, when he’d taken her in his arms and kissed the living daylights out of the poor girl, something had shifted inside him.
His desire for her was growing by the second, his attraction like a live thing slithering along his veins until he thought it might drive him mad. But beyond that, he craved her company.
He wanted to see her smile. Hear that laugh.
He missed her wit and her sass.
She was an utter termagant. And he couldn’t get enough of her.
So, what the hell did this mean?
Before he could panic more than he already was about these feelings that were absolutely not part of his deal with Natalia, the crowd parted, and there she was.
Ben’s heart stopped dead in his chest as he watched Natalia sweep into the room.
She was a vision. Beyond any beauty he’d ever seen before.
His heart stuttered then started up again, racing now as though it would burst clean from his chest.
Get a hold of yourself, he commanded sternly. This isn’t the arrangement. This isn’t the plan.
Natalia looked up then, and her ice-blue gaze collided with his own.
Ben muffled a black oath under his breath.
Because in that moment, he knew. Planned or not, arrangement or not, he was losing his heart completely to Lady Natalia Soronsky.
***
“You look quite the thing tonight, my dear. So beautiful. And it looks as though I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
Natalia smiled weakly at Mama’s compliment.
In truth, Natalia could have had a face like a horse’s behind and people would have stared.
The gown Papa had brought from Russia was opulence itself. Far too glamourous for a country Christmas party.
And it was nothing compared to the gown she would wear, whether she wished to or not, at the Christmas Eve ball.
The ball where Ben would announce their betrothal.
As soon as her thoughts inevitably circled to Ben, her eyes sought him out.
A rotund couple in front of her moved away and then she saw him.
He was staring right at her, and Natalia felt trapped in that golden gaze. He looked like an angel standing there, towering over all around him, his light hair almost the same colour as his eyes in the candlelight.
Natalia couldn’t have looked away if her life had depended on it.
“Be careful, Talia.”
Mama’s gentle warning caught Natalia’s attention, breaking Ben’s spell ov
er her, and she turned to face her mother.
Petr and Andrei were already flirting with a bevy of giggling debutantes, and Papa was discussing hunting tactics, his accented baritone commanding the attention of everyone around him.
“What do you mean?” she asked nervously.
Mama studied Natalia’s face for a moment before sighing and reaching out to grasp her daughter’s hand.
“Your father is quite determined, my dear,” the countess said, her tone all seriousness. “Nothing will dissuade him. You will be coming home with us.”
Natalia’s stomach roiled at her mother’s words.
“Natalia, I know you have built a life here. And I know, more than anyone, how hard it is to leave this country. But Russia is your home.”
“England was your home,” Natalia countered. “And you happily left it for somewhere else.”
“I left it for someone else,” her mother countered gently. “I left it for love.”
Natalia took a deep breath. Perhaps she should come clean. Confess to Mama just what she’d been up to. Explain that somewhere along the way the waters had become so muddy that she couldn’t even imagine her life now without Ben in it.
But Mama wasn’t finished.
“Your father is determined to have you home. Nothing you do or say will dissuade him, Natalia. And you should know that. It wouldn’t be fair to you or to – anyone else, if you were to think otherwise.”
Natalia’s worry grew exponentially.
It had never really dawned on her that Papa would force her hand, engagement or not.
“If you had been forming an attachment,” Mama continued shrewdly, “then it would be a waste of your time. Your father will not yield.”
“But – “
“Do not leave your heart in England when you come back to Russia. Because you are coming back.”
With a gentle squeeze of her hand, Mama turned and joined Aunt Mary and Lady Fortescue.
Natalia felt her eyes fill with helpless tears as they sought out Ben again.
There he was, chatting with Lady Cybil, their heads bent toward each other.
A jealousy, ugly and visceral, reared its head and warred with the other unpleasant emotions storming through her.
What good were Mama’s warnings now?
Her Accidental Groom Page 5