The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh

by Stephanie Laurens

  Desire, passion, lust—all emotions he was entirely willing to own to. Especially with her.

  When, ready to leave, she glanced at him, he opened the door, waved her through, then strolled beside her down the corridor to the front hall. “Do you have a carriage waiting?”

  “Yes.” She glanced at him. “I often use my parents’ second town carriage.”

  He nodded and made a mental note to buy her her own carriage.

  Reaching the front door, he went to open it but paused with his hand on the knob. He caught her eye. “One last point—the date of our wedding. Unless you specifically wish to delay it, I believe it will be in our best interests to tie the knot as soon as practicable.”

  Returning his gaze, she didn’t pretend not to understand; for a twenty-two-year-old lady of quality, she was refreshingly short on guile.

  Although faint color again rose in her cheeks, after an instant’s pause she nodded crisply. “Yes, I agree. That being the case, I believe we’ll be meeting at St. George’s a week after Henrietta and James.”

  Looking down, she resettled her gloves.

  Amused, he swung open the door and managed an abbreviated bow.

  She slanted him a glance, then inclined her head. “Good day . . . my lord.”

  He smiled back, making no attempt to conceal his appreciation. “Good day, my lady.”

  Still smiling, he watched her walk down the steps to where her footman waited to open the door to a small black town carriage. He’d suppressed a very real impulse to ask which events she would be attending that evening. He was still too sore to attempt standing for long; he had to be content with remaining where he was and watching her drive away.

  Two evenings later, having surrendered to her mother’s insistence that she attend Lady Percival’s ball, Mary accepted that she’d lost all patience with her current social role, given over as it was to adequately responding to the constant stream of congratulations and not-so-subtle queries the announcement in the Gazette had spawned.

  She hadn’t expected being feted would prove such a chore.

  Standing by the side of Lady Percival’s ballroom, alongside the chaise on which Louise sat chatting to several other matrons, close enough to intervene if necessary, Mary continued to smile and accept the proffered felicitations—some less than sincere—with passable grace, pointing out that she and Ryder had in fact been acquainted for more than a decade . . . she wished she’d stayed at home.

  Which was shockingly unlike her. Being a bossy soul meant she needed people to steer and direct . . . indeed, she knew the people she wanted to steer and direct, but none were present, not even Stacie. More to the point, being the focus for so many others, she couldn’t march off and find something to amuse her; she had to stay in one place and provide amusement for everyone else.

  She was debating how soon she could nudge her mother toward the door when the crowd to her left parted and Ryder appeared.

  He was carrying his cane but otherwise appeared his usual, rakishly eye-catching self, perfectly groomed, his golden-brown hair gleaming, his linen and cravat precise and pristine, the latter arranged in an intricate fall, the ivory at throat and cuff in stark contrast to the midnight black of his elegantly cut evening coat and trousers, and his subdued black-and-gold checkered waistcoat.

  Meeting her eyes, he smiled his lazy lion smile—no one observing it could doubt the sexual possessiveness with which he viewed her—and made straight for her.

  The few still between them melted out of his way; the pair of matrons who had been about to approach her, their charges in tow, fell back in a tittering flutter.

  She barely heard them. Something in her chest leapt; interest and more geysered. As if she’d been a desert, parched and dry, renewed engagement flowed like revivifying rain down her veins, yet . . .

  As he neared, concern for him welled. She opened her mouth to upbraid him for having left the comfort and protection of his house, but before she could speak, he swooped. Even though he didn’t actually surround her, she felt as if he somehow had, as if she was enfolded within his protection; capturing her hand, he bowed—only she was close enough to register that the gesture lacked his customary fluidity—but as he straightened, both the expression in his eyes as they trapped hers and the tension inherent in all his movements carried a clear, if unvoiced, warning.

  Eyes locking with hers, he carried her hand to his lips and brushed a lingering kiss over the backs of her fingers, and she battled to suppress a shiver.

  Apparently oblivious—although she doubted he was—he murmured, in that sinfully deep voice he reserved for such moments, “My dear delight, I hoped I’d find you here. I fear I grew bored, and nothing would do but to seek your company.”

  Ryder held Mary’s gaze, watched her blink, saw sudden awareness of where they were flare in her eyes, along with the understanding that quite half of her ladyship’s guests were now surreptitiously watching them and she couldn’t—shouldn’t—give him the piece of her mind currently hovering on the tip of her tongue. He’d elected to carry his cane, a necessary precaution, but as he wasn’t at the moment leaning on it, there was no reason for anyone to imagine he was recovering from any near-fatal wound rather than nursing a twisted ankle.

  Then her awareness refocused on him and she smiled. “I’m delighted you did.” The quality of her smile assured him she was sincerely happy to see him.

  Which led him to ask, sotto voce, “Has it been that bad?”

  Her smile escalated by several degrees. “Worse,” she whispered as, beaming smile in place, she turned to the two matrons now even more eager to engage.

  He dutifully stood beside her and played second fiddle to her lead; it was, after all, what he’d come there to do—to support her in whatever way he could. Hiding in the peace and quiet of his library while leaving her to face the social barrage alone hadn’t appealed on a number of counts; given his wound no longer troubled him unless he twisted and his strength had returned enough to risk the time on his feet, he’d sent a footman to inquire of her parents’ butler as to where she might be found, and had followed her there.

  Despite his intentions, within ten minutes his lazy smile had grown somewhat forced. Slanting a glance at Mary, he seized a second between congratulatory exchanges to murmur, “How the devil can you swallow such syrup?”

  Glancing up, she arched a brow. “With more than a grain of salt?”

  “Ouch.” He had to desist while they chatted with the next couple waiting to offer their felicitations and archly marvel at how he and she had managed to reach an understanding without any of the gossipmongers, let alone the grandes dames, realizing they had formed an attachment. Which reduced him to all but whining as the pair withdrew, “Do we have to do much more of this?”

  She cast a swift glance at her mother; earlier Ryder had seized a moment to pay his respects. “Perhaps”—glancing around, confirming there were no others immediately about to pounce, she gripped his arm—“we might stroll.”

  “Excellent idea.” Closing his hand over hers, anchoring it on his sleeve, he immediately stepped out. “Perhaps if we’re ambulatory we won’t be such easy targets.”

  He glanced down at her—and discovered she was studying him, her eyes faintly narrowed.

  “I didn’t expect you to turn up here. Are you sure you’re strong enough to weather this?”

  He grinned. “Quite.” He felt a trifle guilty over the pleasure he derived from the concern filling her eyes. He held up a hand, palm out. “I swear I won’t overtax myself. There—will that do?”

  She made a huffing sound. “I suppose it will have to, but I warn you I expect to enjoy my engagement waltz, and I won’t be able to if I have to hold you up through half of it.”

  He laughed. When she arched a haughty brow at him, he waved. “The image was just a little too much.”

  She pinched h
is arm. “You know what I mean.”

  Still chuckling, he patted her hand. “Never fear—I swear you’ll have an engagement waltz to remember.”

  “Very well.” She tipped up her chin. “Just as long as you don’t forget.”

  He resisted the impulse to assure her he wouldn’t, not now she’d made such a point of it, and instead devoted his energies and talents to the twin tasks of steering them clear of those trying to catch up with them through the crowd, wanting to wish them well while simultaneously trying their hand at extracting more details of their unexpected romance, and amusing her, which in turn amused him.

  Although Fate had determined that they would wed without benefit of any real wooing, he saw no reason not to claim the days until their wedding to give her what he could of the moments her saving his life had denied her.

  They strolled and talked, teased and laughed, and occasionally stopped to chat with others.

  Somewhat unexpectedly, he enjoyed the hours—principally because he knew she did, too. He’d known she was direct, that she didn’t often bother with guile, but the openness she displayed in interacting with him was something he was growing to treasure.

  They reached the end of the evening in pleasant accord. After handing Louise, then Mary, into their carriage, Ryder waved them off, then climbed into his own, smiling to himself as he sank back in the leather-cushioned dimness. Mary had, of course, demanded to be told how he intended returning to his home; that he’d brought his carriage had earned him an approving, if somewhat imperious, look.

  As the carriage rolled along, he realized he was still smiling—for no specific reason that he could discern.

  Chapter Nine

  Three evenings later, Mary sat beside Ryder at the middle of one long side of the massive table in the formal dining room of St. Ives House and, buoyed on a wave of exuberant happiness, surrounded by her family and his, listened as her father, from his place closer to the head of the table, proposed a toast to “the baby of our family in her generation, and the gentleman she will wed.”

  With smiles, supportive cheers, and much tinkling of glasses and thumping of the table, everyone raised their glasses high and called in unison, “To Mary and Ryder!” then enthusiastically drank to their health.

  Mary couldn’t stop beaming; she was finally here, perhaps not, in the circumstances, at the very end of her quest, but well and truly on her way. This, in effect, was the point of no return; she was now committed beyond recall, and had her ultimate goal front and center in her sights.

  She could barely contain her impatience to get on—to press ahead, to take the next step, whatever that might be, toward bringing Ryder, metaphorically speaking, to his knees.

  As the noise subsided and everyone returned to their conversations, he caught her eye. “Happy?”

  They’d conversed enough over recent days for her to know he meant the question literally and specifically; she reined in her enthusiasm enough to actually consider, then, meeting his gaze, nodded. “I can’t think of any part of the evening thus far that might have gone better.”

  He smiled, not his lazy-lion smile but an expression several degrees more personal, and for a moment amid the madness there was just the two of them—a second of privacy within the swirling chaos.

  Then Luc, Amelia’s husband, seated a few places to Ryder’s right, called to him and he turned to respond, and Marcus, Mary’s cousin Richard’s son, seated to her left, posed a question, and she turned to answer.

  Nearly seventeen, Marcus, dark-haired and blue-eyed like his father, together with his twin, Lucilla, had traveled down from Scotland with their parents for Henrietta’s nuptials. Being able to attend Mary’s engagement ball and wedding, too, was an added bonus in Lucilla’s and her parents’ eyes, but Mary wasn’t so sure Marcus saw dallying in the capital in the same light.

  Yet even as she chatted with her younger relative about the sights he’d seen thus far in town, her attention remained in some way linked to, attuned to, the man on her other side.

  He who would shortly be her husband.

  They’d spent the days and evenings since he’d joined her at Lady Percival’s ball and had so definitely claimed the position by her side largely in each other’s company. Until the following morning in the park when he’d arrived in his carriage to stroll the lawns beside her, she hadn’t fully appreciated the degree to which he’d established his social claim on her, but the way others now treated her, ladies young and old and gentlemen, too, eventually impinged and opened her eyes.

  Once she’d realized . . . she’d been ready to narrow said eyes at him the instant he stepped beyond protective into possessive, yet although he’d sailed very close to that line on several occasions, as if sensitive to her impending ire, he’d tacked away from overstepping her mark every time he’d got too close.

  They’d walked in the park, had strolled the length of Bond Street, and spent countless hours in his library—talking, discussing, arguing, relating anecdotes, and, even more amazing, indulging in companionable silences. Somewhat to her surprise, she’d discovered that they shared rather more than just a liking for always being in charge. In the evenings, he’d joined her and her mother in Brook Street, without argument or complaint accompanying them to whichever events her mother had selected; once there, he had set himself to make her evenings as pleasant as he could.

  This morning, he’d arrived in a closed carriage—not his phaeton because, as he’d informed her, mindful of her strictures regarding their engagement waltz he’d decided against attempting to hold his horses—and they’d been driven out to Richmond to spend the day in the peace of the park there, returning to town with only just enough time to prepare for the whirl of this event, their engagement dinner and ball.

  That he was putting himself out to please her, perhaps viewing that as an avenue to ease their way into their somewhat rushed union, was neither difficult to see nor particularly surprising. What had, however, captured her attention was the simple fact that in all he had set out to do, it truly was the case that her pleasure defined his.

  He enjoyed the things they did, the moments they spent together, because she did.

  He measured the success of anything he caused to happen against the yardstick of whether it pleased her.

  That could have been a purely superficial exercise, one dictated more by reason than feeling, more deliberate than instinctive, but for him, with her, his focus on pleasing her seemed an intrinsic part of him.

  Something that sprang from somewhere deep within him.

  When Marcus turned to respond to Portia, on his other side, Mary seized the moment to, from beneath her lashes, slant a glance at Ryder; she couldn’t stare too hard or he would notice, but . . . seeing him in this setting, joking with her cousins, her brother, and brother-in-laws, all of whom she knew well and of whom over the years she’d heard revealing tales aplenty from their wives, she had to wonder if, perhaps, Ryder’s propensity to focus on a lady’s pleasure had become an intrinsic part of him because of his lengthy reign as one of the ton’s great lovers.

  That was a thought to give any lady pause.

  Feeling warmth rise in her cheeks, she quickly looked away before he—or anyone else—noticed.

  Glancing around, she confirmed her assessment that the dinner was a resounding success; both it and the preceding gathering in the long drawing room looked set to pass off without the slightest hitch. Ryder’s family were all present, including his stepmother, but, as he’d predicted, Lavinia appeared to be on her best, albeit it rather chilly, behavior, although to give her her due she was warm and encouraging to everyone except Mary and Ryder.

  Making a mental note to, at some later date, see what she could do to thaw the marchioness’s ice-clad spine, Mary rose along with everyone else as, under Honoria’s direction, the company quit the table and moved toward the doors and the stairs up to the ballroom.


  Ryder had risen and drawn back her chair; he offered his arm with a smile. Smiling back, she laid her hand on his sleeve; as they walked slowly along the table, following other couples, it registered just how familiar walking beside him, at his side, had so quickly become.

  Familiar, and on some level reassuring. Safe.

  She had never felt any physical threat from him. A sensual sparking of her nerves, definitely, but even that instinctively flaring alarm had transmuted to something more akin to . . . curiosity.

  Smiling still, she glanced up at him, but he was watching those ahead. She was about to speak, to draw his attention back to her, when movement ahead and to the side drew her eye.

  Lucilla, slender, almost elfin in pale green silk with her rich red hair cascading in ringlets about her face, was weaving through the crowd, her green gaze locked on Mary, her expression intent.

  Mary halted and looked up as Ryder glanced at her. “I have to speak with Lucilla for a moment—in private. Why don’t you go ahead? I’ll join you and the others in the receiving line.”

  Ryder’s gaze shifted to Lucilla, who had halted several paces away; smiling, he inclined his head to her, then his gaze returned to Mary’s face. He briefly searched her expression, as if to confirm that she wasn’t anticipating any difficulty, then he simply said, “Don’t take too long.”

  “I won’t.” Drawing her hand from his sleeve, she made for Lucilla.

  As she neared, Lucilla said, “I believe you have something for me.”

  “Indeed, I do.” Grinning, Mary took Lucilla’s hand. “Come on—I’m fairly certain we’re supposed to do it over here.”

  Lucilla looked puzzled, but she allowed Mary to tow her to one side of the room, to a spot beside one of the long sideboards. “Why here?” Lucilla asked as Mary released her.