by Evie Dunmore
“Definitely a rogue,” Annabelle said darkly. “A hero and a pest, a man can be both.”
“Then again, it did spur Montgomery on to declare his feelings,” Hattie suggested.
“Of sorts,” Annabelle said, and her cheeks turned rosy.
Lucie was still struggling with visions of a murderous, partially nude Tristan Ballentine when the pendulum clock whirred and announced with a bong that she must take her leave and meet the man.
Chapter 6
Early morning had transitioned into a warm midmorning with not a whisper of a breeze to cool her curiously overheated face. She arrived in front of Blackwell’s bay windows feeling sticky and vaguely provoked by the sight of Ballentine’s maroon coat. It shone like an errant chestnut in the summer sun, while the man himself looked pleasantly cool and collected. She had observed him awhile before he had noticed her, because he stood head and shoulders above the flow of pedestrians going past the bookshop while she was all but submerged in it.
The corner of his mouth tipped up when she halted in front of him.
He lifted his top hat. “My lady.”
A sunbeam struck off his auburn hair as if it were polished copper. She was certain she’d heard a woman sigh in the crowd moving past.
“I have half an hour to spare,” she said.
“That suits my schedule perfectly.”
He was going back to London, she supposed. She swept up the three steps and into the bookstore, sending the bells above the door jingling erratically.
A dozen heads swiveled toward her in the dim heat: pale, bespectacled student faces. Eyes widened, possibly with recognition. Too many people in this town knew of her, or perhaps, they knew Tristan. Anyone would find it sensationally curious to see Lady Lucie Tedbury with the prize rake of London in tow. Quite literally. Tristan was looming behind her, standing too close after her abrupt standstill. His scent curled around her, warm and disturbingly familiar. She could have picked out of a line with her eyes closed.
She made for the narrow staircase.
The coffee room on the second floor was no larger than the shop below, fitting perhaps ten patrons on the few tables clustered around the cold fireplace. They were alone. On a hot day, except for the keen specimen downstairs, students were either abed or drunkenly floating down the river Cherwell in a punt. Tristan certainly knew how to pick a secluded place in plain sight.
By the time he pulled back a chair for her at the table next to the window, she was feeling prickly like a hedgehog. The face he was putting on was too harmless for her liking, not a leering stare or smirk in sight.
“Coffee,” he said to the waiter who had bustled in with a fresh white tablecloth. “Milk and three sugars for the lady, black for me. Unless”—he glanced at her—“you take your coffee differently these days.”
For a moment, she was tempted to say that she did. It appeared someone had spied on her during breakfast in her previous life at Wycliffe Hall.
“Milk and three sugars it is,” she muttered.
The table was small. Observed from the outside, they were friends taking coffee, their knees in danger of touching beneath the tablecloth.
And this close, she noticed changes in Tristan’s face that the dark had concealed during their encounter two days ago. Months after his return to England, his skin still had the honeyed hue of a man who had marched for miles under a foreign sun. There was a first hint of horizontal lines across his brow. Faint purple crescents were smudged beneath his eyes, as though he had slept little. None of it detracted from his beauty, but it gave him a harsher varnish. Something else was different, and it took her a moment to identify it as the absence of the diamond stud. Had she imagined it there on his ear a few nights ago? Was Ballentine not just growing older, but growing up? She could not help but wonder, then, what changes time had wrought upon her own appearance.
“You look lovely, Tedbury,” he said smoothly, as though her thoughts had been written plain on her face. “May I compliment you on your well-preserved complexion?”
“I would rather you did not,” she said. “In fact, before I discuss any matter with you at all, I must know: what were your designs on the Duchess of Montgomery at the New Year’s Eve ball?”
He blinked at her slowly. “What?”
“Montgomery’s New Year’s ball. I heard you were trying to coax the duchess to accompany you outside after a dance.”
“Ah. She was plain Miss . . . Country-Bumpkin, then, wasn’t she.”
“That’s of no consequence to my question.”
An emotion was brewing in the depth of his gaze. “If I were the type of man you evidently take me for, would I tell you the truth?”
“I would know if you were lying.”
His smile was derisive. “I doubt it.”
“Very well.”
Before she could come to her feet to make good on her threat and leave, he braced his elbows on the table and leaned in close, a startling intensity flaring at the back of his eyes.
“I don’t force my attentions on women,” he said quietly. “I never have.”
She had never seen him so annoyed, all languor gone. She was transfixed despite herself.
“Then why insist she accompany you outside?” she managed.
He gave a shrug. “I don’t quite recall. I was likely bored. Perhaps I felt she was wasted as a wallflower, and that she required some assistance. Propriety is dreadfully pervasive among the middle classes—much to the detriment of their own enjoyment. It does not mean I would have taken liberties against her will.”
“You arrogant cad—you claim you were doing her a favor.”
“Well, we shall never know, shall we? Montgomery became a little territorial, seeing his future duchess on my arm, and I thought it wise to retreat before he ordered one of his minions to run me through on the ballroom parquet.”
If he was lying, it was indeed impossible to tell. His eyes were a murky mélange of amber and green, and the more deeply she looked the fuzzier she felt. She realized she had leaned in close enough to feel his breath softly brush her cheek. Unbidden, her gaze strayed to his left cheekbone. Long ago in Wycliffe Park, it had borne a perfect imprint of her hand after she had slapped him, gripped by a terrible, angry sense of helplessness of which he had not been the cause. . . .
The waiter hurried back into the room and slowed abruptly at seeing their heads stuck together so intimately. Lucie drew back, allowing two steaming cups to be placed on the table.
She reached for her spoon and gave her coffee a superfluous stir. “What brings you to England in the first place?”
Tristan gave her a last assessing look, and then the rigidness in his shoulders eased and he leaned back into his chair. “I sold out.”
“Already?”
He hadn’t yet made the rank of captain, when he should have, after six years in the army. But then, if rumors could be trusted, his disobedience, which saw him frolicking in a river while his comrades were under fire, had been a reoccurring problem, and it was astonishing he hadn’t been dishonorably discharged several times over.
He smiled in some mild amusement. “There is not much to be had after the Victoria Cross, Lucie.”
Well. There was that. He had been awarded the highest military honor of the country. The Ballentine men always distinguished themselves on the battlefield; With Valor and Vigor was their family motto. His older brother, Marcus, had advanced rapidly through his naval career, until a riding accident had put a tragic end to it all.
She eyed Tristan’s left hand, wrapped loosely around his coffee cup. The signet ring of the House of Rochester encircled his little finger, its ruby glistening like a fat dollop of blood. This was likely the real reason why he had sold out—as the last heir, he must not risk his life on front lines. His main responsibility now was to secure the family line and to quickly learn everyth
ing the previous Lord Ballentine had been taught from the cradle. It made her wonder: Had grief drawn the fine lines across his brow? Their mothers had been close friends once; perhaps they were friendly still. It would be within the bounds of etiquette to inquire after the well-being of Lady Rochester, or even his. However, inquiries of the kind might unexpectedly stir unwanted memories and sentiments. Besides, she was currently sharing a table with him because he was not up to any good. A hero and a pest, a man can be both. The reasons for their meeting, she suspected, were firmly inspired by the pest side of him.
“Now,” she said. “Who told you I was an expert in the publishing industry?”
His lips quirked. “My lawyer. He insists on giving me a lecture on the state of the British economy every month. Apparently, we currently own over twenty percent of world trade, and you are busy buying publishing houses.”
Tristan had a lawyer. Who would have thought.
She raised her chin. “And what sparked your sudden interest in women readers?”
He picked up his spoon. “Even more interesting is the question: what sparked yours?”
Her brows lowered. “What do you mean?”
He was toying with the spoon now, turning it back and forth as a child would, admiring his upside-down reflection. “It’s an interesting match, isn’t it,” he said. “A woman with your views and ambitions, acquiring a majority stake in one of Britain’s established women’s magazine publishers. Such wholesome magazines, too.”
She sat oddly frozen, like a rabbit unexpectedly stumbling upon a lethal predator.
What did he know?
Nothing. He knew nothing, and even if he did know something, it would be of no consequence to him.
He looked up from the spoon then, his eyes cold and intent.
She nearly recoiled. She had felt him inside her head for a beat, his gaze entering her as easily as light filtering through a cotton sheet. And she must have schooled her features a fraction too late, for there was a hint of a smile on Tristan’s lips and it was not a friendly one.
She forced a cool smile of her own. “It’s not unheard of to hold multiple interests. You see, I can both champion women’s political rights and still be keen on a good business opportunity. In fact, the two go very well together—the suffrage movement is an expensive undertaking. It costs time, too, and presently, you are wasting mine.”
He inclined his head. “Well then. If I were of a mind to publish a book,” he said slowly, “should it be by Anonymous, or by a John Miller, or by Lord Ballentine?”
His hesitation gave her pause. “This is not a rhetorical question, is it,” she then said. “You have already written the book.”
He nodded. “The question is whether my name, or, rather, the reputation attached to it, would entice or deter the good women of Britain to purchase it. My instinct tells me they would throw their pin money at my works.”
“You are asking whether women would purchase something not for its content or quality but because it was associated with your name?”
His brows rose at her incredulous tone. “Content and quality are excellent, but yes.”
“That’s preposterous. You are hardly enough of a rogue as to turn it into profit.”
“Now, there’s a challenge. But let us assume the book exists and is already profitably published, and what I have in mind is a new edition with the Ballentine name.”
“Already published,” she echoed, not liking the tickling sensation on her nape. “What sort of book is it, anyway? It’s a war diary, isn’t it?”
A look of surprise passed over his face. “No,” he said. “It would be poetry.”
“Poetry.”
“Yes.”
“War poetry?” she tried.
Again, a hesitation. “No,” he said. “Romantic poetry.”
* * *
Her gray gaze sharpened on him, pricking his skin like a blunted razor blade. Ironic, because he was truthful about the poetry and about his interest in her opinion—but she was right to suspect deviousness of sorts. Clever as a cat, Lucie. And quite incapable of deviousness herself, so despite all the battles she had fought, one could still call her naïve. He had just read her face like an open book—the hell did she want London Print solely for business reasons.
He picked up his coffee cup and drank without tasting the black brew. She had a habit of making things difficult for him. Undoubtedly, she made things difficult for herself, too. The two frown lines, rigidly upstanding between her slender brows, made his thumb twitch with the irrational desire to smooth them. She probably still thought she could take on the ills of humanity with her bare hands because she had justice on her side. To hold any such conviction was of course a source of endless frustration. Otherwise, he would have envied her the purity of her single-minded rage and determination. She would never wake in the morning and stare at the ceiling, wondering where to go this day.
“Romantic poetry,” she said. Her tone was belittling, as though poetry held as much gravity as nursery rhymes. It could have crushed a wordsmith; poets were saddled with sensitive souls, after all, but, having successfully rid himself of both sensibilities and much of his soul, he just felt his male instincts stir, keen to pick up the gauntlet. A bad direction for his mind to take, in a public coffee room, as the scenario of vanquishing Lucie Tedbury inevitably ended with her in the nude, her fair skin flushed with desire and her tongue busy with something other than trying to cut him down to size. . . . Her eyes widened, and he realized he might have growled.
“Coffee,” he said, clearing his throat. “Irritating stuff.”
He’d never know her reply, for she became distracted by a small commotion behind his back.
He glanced over his shoulder.
Three young women were forming an excited, tittering cluster in the doorway to the tearoom. He had registered them earlier, when they had made their way upstairs amid giggles and hushed whispers. They must have dawdled in silence somewhere out of sight and had now decided to advance. Shopgirls, by the looks of it. Rosy cheeks all around. A little young to be out without a chaperone, even as a group. They tried to halfheartedly hide behind each other as he surveyed them.
“Good morning, lovelies,” he said. “Can we be of assistance?”
Their enthusiasm rushed toward him like a breeze.
“Lord Ballentine.”
They moved toward their table as one, bringing with them the scent of lily of the valley, until the most courageous of them stepped forward after her curtsy, her hands behind her back.
“We saw your lordship enter the bookshop . . .”
“Did you now.”
Their sparkling eyes did not match their bashful tone. On her side of the table, Lucie’s gaze had narrowed.
“We were hoping you would sign this for us,” one of the girls said, a redhead. Her little nose was enticingly freckled. Lovely. Since Lucie was glowering a mere arm’s length away, he was briefly tempted to provoke her and flirt, but then the redhead thrust something at him. A card. It was of the size of a Valentine card, he knew; he had seen a shipload’s worth of them in his lifetime thanks to tireless legions of admirers. Except that the motif of this particular card was—himself. Someone had cut out his picture—the one in uniform, where he was staring valiantly into the middle distance—from a newspaper article about his Victoria Cross. Someone had glued it onto a card. And had added a lace frame. They had colored his eyes blue. And there was an illustration of a dog, a small, fluffy one that looked as though it would yap and bite ankles.
“It’s . . .” He squinted. “It’s—”
“It’s a Ballentine card,” said the girl who had addressed him first, setting off more giggling.
“I see,” he said blandly. “How neat.”
“Aren’t they lovely?” one of them cooed.
“If only you could sign them, milord
—it should make them even more precious than the others.”
“There are . . . more?” he dared to ask.
Three heads nodded vigorously.
“They’re all the rage,” the redhead said. “There are a few other heroes the girls like to put on a card, but your lordship is by far the most popular. It costs two or more other heroes to trade, more if they have no lace frame.”
“We wouldn’t ever trade ours,” the leader added hastily. “They’re our good-luck charms.”
He supposed it wasn’t necessary to comprehend any of this.
His hand slipped inside his jacket and pulled a pen from the inner breast pocket.
He signed the card with the dog as the girls stood with bated breath, and two more equally absurd ones.
They disappeared in a chorus of sighs, leaving a delightful trail of spring flower fragrances behind.
He turned back to Lucie slowly.
An evil gleam was dancing in her eyes.
“Well,” she said mildly.
“Well,” he said darkly.
The corners of her mouth were twitching. “This should sufficiently answer your question. You see, I would have recommended you pursue the idea of the war diaries, but romantic poetry under your name might work very well indeed. You could, however, just set up a shop . . .” She lost the struggle. She burst out laughing, her small white teeth flashing.
“Here now—” he began.
“. . . a shop,” she wheezed, “and sell . . . Ballentine cards. Most lucrative. One for two!”
He should say something stern, but she was bewitchingly ill-mannered, laughing out loud in public. Unfortunately, the object of her glee was—him.
“Do not forget the lace frame, for highest value,” she told him, and took her leave after a glance at her pocket watch, abandoning him to the company of her empty cup.