“Your Grace!”
The title was still unfamiliar; it took Dyan a moment to recognize what the two ladies bearing down on him were after. Him.
“I was just speaking to Miss Winton,” the possessor of myriad red ringlets informed him. “She quite sang your praises, my lord.”
Dyan raised his brows. “Indeed?”
“Your efforts left her utterly prostrated, she said.” The redhead leaned closer—any closer and she’d have pressed her breast to his arm.
“So we’ve come to offer our services in her stead.” The second lady, a sultry brunette, drifted close; her musky perfume rose like a cloud—Dyan fought not to wrinkle his nose.
“I fear, madam, that I’m already spoken for.” With a nod, he stepped aside and turned away.
“But you can’t be!” the redhead protested. “You’ve only this minute walked into the room.”
Dyan glanced back, cynically dismissive. “I’m here to consort with an old friend.”
Leaving the two ladies whispering vituperatively, he strolled languidly on, not stopping until he’d reached a wing chair placed in one corner of the room. He lounged in its comfort, long limbs sprawling; a nearby ottoman caught his eye—he nudged it closer, then propped both booted feet, ankles crossed, upon it.
And fixed Fiona, on the opposite side of the room, with a dark and brooding gaze.
He needed to talk to her—fully intended to talk to her— but he was obviously going to have to wait until she learned the truth of Harriet’s innocence the hard way. Turning his head, he searched for Harriet and discovered her chatting blithely—too blithely—with a Lord Pringle. His lordship already had his arm about her waist. Well on the way. Inwardly shaking his head, Dyan looked away. Why on earth had the witless wanton painted herself as an injured innocent to Fiona? The outcome—the present imbroglio—was all too predictable. Fiona had always been a loyal friend, steadfast and true. A friend one could rely on, with a strong, very forthright character. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to doubt Harriet’s word.
“Might I interest you in a wager, Your Grace?”
Dyan glanced up—a well-developed blonde smiled seductively down at him. Deliberately, she leaned forward, bringing the ripe swells of her breasts to eye level.
“I’m sure,” she purred, “that we could think up a most satisfying challenge—and an even more satisfying reward.”
“I’ve been informed by my great-aunt that, having succeeded to the title, such endeavors are now beneath me.” Dyan waved dismissively. “Something to do with my dignity.”
His great-aunt Augusta might as well be useful for something; she had, indeed, made such a comment. Taken aback, the blonde blinked and straightened, then, seeing his gaze once more fixed across the room, tartly shrugged and walked off.
A shrill shriek cut through the rising hum; Dyan recognized it—so did Fiona. She stiffened. The glance she threw Harriet—an ice-bolt—should have transfixed her; instead, their hostess, clinging to Lord Pringle, didn’t even notice.
Fiona’s chin went up another notch; her expression turned a touch colder, a touch haughtier. His gaze fixed on her face, Dyan narrowed his eyes. Perhaps fate wasn’t being unkind—with any luck, Fiona would be so incensed, so distracted by Harriet’s perfidy, he’d be able to learn what he desperately wanted to know without being too obvious. Perhaps even without showing his hand.
“I declare, my lord, that my legs are quite exhausted.” Artistically flicking a fan, a gorgeously arrayed brunette paused beside him, her large eyes greedily surveying his long frame. She licked her lips. “Perhaps I could—”
“No.” Dyan spoke quietly, coldly. His fingers closed about the woman’s elbow before she could swing about, her clear intention to plant her lush rump in his lap. His gaze, chill and dark, trapped hers. “If your limbs have weakened so soon, dear lady, there are chairs by the wall. I suggest you avail yourself of one.”
He withdrew his hand and his gaze, leaving her to retreat with whatever dignity she could muster. She left with a heated glare, but not a single word.
His expression growing grimmer, Dyan looked again at Fiona—at the gentlemen still surrounding her. Some, sensing the state of play, had drifted away; only the most determined remained. Four—four too many for Dyan’s liking.
He’d studied the male company over the port; they were not of his circle; none were familiar. More importantly, they were not of the haut ton, the rarefied elite to which Fiona was accustomed.
She’d been presented at eighteen, and had instantly attracted the very best of attention. The most eligible gentlemen had flocked about her; she’d never lacked for suitors. Dyan’s frown deepened; the single most important question he had for Fiona resonated in his head. Why hadn’t she married Anthony, Marquess of Rusden, as Dyan had fully expected her to?
A quick shake of Fiona’s head had him tensing. She turned from one gentleman, imperiously dismissive; the man frowned, hesitated, then strolled off. Three left. Dyan forced himself to relax—at least outwardly. Despite the Seasons she’d spent in London, he doubted Fiona would find her remaining suitors-for-the-evening quite so easy to dismiss. Her very presence would be interpreted as a declaration that she was available. Beneath his breath, Dyan swore. It was just as well he was there to haul her out when she got in over her head. Then she would have to be grateful.
As well as distracted. Fleetingly, he raised his brows. Perhaps there was hope yet?
He wasn’t, however, enjoying the situation. Another lady swanned close—he froze her with a glance. She quickly changed tack and swanned out of his sight. Dyan glowered at Fiona. He felt like a dog watching over a particularly juicy bone—or a wolf over a particularly bountifully endowed sheep.
Fiona saw his glower—and inwardly glowered back. Her face felt stiff, having been held in a distant, impassive expression for too long. She was beginning to wonder how much longer she could maintain it, along with her hold on her temper.
“You really need to relax, my dear Miss Winton.” Sir Magnus Herring, on her left, inched closer. “A little flirting’s so innocent.”
Fiona fixed him with a severe glance. “That, my dear sir, is hardly my style.” Earls’ daughters didn’t flirt, but she couldn’t tell him that.
Sir Magnus inched closer; regally, Fiona waved the two would-be cicisbeos on her other side back and started to stroll. “A little fresh air would be more to my liking.” The French doors behind Dyan’s chair were open to the terrace and the soft shadows of the evening outside.
Not that she had any intention of setting foot on the terrace. She was heading for Dyan. He might be annoyed enough to look like a human thundercloud, a reincarnation of Thor, the god of war and lightning, his dark hair falling, rakishly dangerous, over his forehead, his eyes dark and stormy—but for her, he represented safety, security; he wouldn’t let her down.
Her three encumbrances clung like barnacles as she glided over the parquetry. She was used to dismissing unwanted advances—Mr. Moreton and Mr. Coldthorpe she was sure she could handle. Sir Magnus was a model cut from a different cloth. A bluffly genial, heavily built, and handsome man, he was, she sensed, used to success.
He wasn’t going to accept failure easily.
She’d blocked a score of his subtle advances, turned aside a host of glib propositions—and still he persisted.
“Perhaps,” he murmured, holding fast by her side, head bent so the others couldn’t hear, “we could view the moon together, my dear? Moonlight, they say, can have a quite liberating effect on a lady’s passions.”
Fiona met his warm gaze with a blank look. “There’s no moon tonight.” There would be, but much later; she doubted Sir Magnus would know.
The chagrin that showed fleetingly in his pale eyes said he didn’t; the flash of something else Fiona glimpsed—an almost grim determination—brought Lady Henderson’s timetable forcibly to mind.
She looked ahead, and saw a band of ladies—the redhead, two brunettes, and two
blondes—descend in a froth of silken skirts on Dyan.
Fiona blinked. Then, plastering a bright smile on her lips, she headed for the melee. She swept up as Dyan, scowling blackly, was fending off two females by main force.
“Enjoying yourself, my lord?”
Her cool query, ringing as it did with the assurance of old friendship, made all five women pause. Dyan grasped the moment to set aside his two tormentors. “As always, my dear.” Carefully, he reset his cuffs.
The undercurrents between them ran deep; they always had. Mr. Moreton and Mr. Coldthorpe, the hopelessness of their cause evident, opted for second best. With glib and ready charm, they moved in on the disappointed ladies.
Lady Henderson had been right—all the ladies, some with last, disgruntled glances at Dyan, accompanied by Mr. Moreton and Mr. Coldthorpe, headed off to join the large group of couples gathering at the center of the room.
Sir Magnus did not follow. He studied Dyan, still lounging with no overt show of interest, then turned to Fiona, and smiled. “Well, my dear, shall we?” He lifted a suggestive brow. “Would you rather the terrace or are the bright lights more to your liking?”
Fiona raised her brows. “Neither holds any appeal.”
Sir Magnus’s smile deepened. “Ah, but you see, you really must choose.” With a nod, he indicated Dyan stretched beside her. “I rather think it’s me—or Darke.” His teeth flashed; smoothly, he slid an arm about Fiona’s waist. “Now tell me—which would you rather?”
Fiona froze—literally. Her spine locked; every muscle in her limbs clenched. Her gaze, cold before, turned as chill as hoar frost. When she spoke, her words froze the very air. “You are mistaken.”
Watching, even Dyan fought back a shiver. He had never seen Lady Arctic in action. Knowing Fiona as he did, he could hardly credit the transformation—but he recognized the look in Sir Magnus’s eyes instantly.
Braving the ice, Sir Magnus leaned closer. “I don’t believe you understand, my dear.” Teeth clenched, presumably to stop them chattering, he spoke softly. “You have no choice but to make a choice.”
Dyan didn’t think—he reacted; the next instant, Fiona was safe in his lap. He met Sir Magnus’s surprised gaze over Fiona’s curls. “Unfortunately, Herring,” he drawled, settling his arms comfortably about Fiona’s waist, “it’s you who have, as Miss Winton said, made a mistake.” A languidly bored expression on his face—and a fell warning in his eyes—he smiled urbanely at Sir Magnus. “Miss Winton and I made our choices long before we arrived tonight.”
Sir Magnus’s face set. He hesitated, looking down on them. Safe in Dyan’s lap, Fiona looked coldly ahead and refused to even glance at Sir Magnus, leaving him with no option but to accept defeat. With a curt nod, he turned and strode away, toward the congregation at the room’s center.
The instant he moved off, Fiona drew a long breath. “Well!” Incensed, she glared after him. “Of all the coxcombs—”
She’d always had a good line in tirades. Dyan listened with half an ear; she was as incensed as he could have wished.
“It’s outrageous! What sort of friends are these for Henry and Harriet? Old Lady Brooke would turn in her grave! That hussy with the red hair and the blonde in the green—do you know what they asked me?”
The question was rhetorical; Fiona didn’t pause for an answer but swept straight on.
Leaving Dyan to consider the sight of her, the feel of her, as she sat across his thighs, his arms loosely about her, and railed at the company. She was distracted, certainly; she was also relaxed—with no hint of the frigid rigidity that had attacked her the instant Sir Magnus had touched her.
Experimentally, Dyan tightened his arms; she shifted within them, but otherwise didn’t seem to notice. He raised his brows, and pondered, then grasped her waist and lifted her, ostensibly settling her more comfortably in his lap.
She threw an absentminded frown his way, but didn’t even focus on him. She didn’t so much as pause for breath—her tirade continued unbroken.
As the weighted heat of her seeped through his breeches, Dyan gritted his teeth. Lady Arctic wasn’t freezing him. Far from it.
He let her ramble while he toyed with that discovery. And considered how it fitted with her past. The next time she paused for breath, he asked, “Why didn’t you marry?”
Startled, she looked at him.
He raised his brows, his expression as innocent as he could make it. “I was sure you would accept Rusden.”
So sure, he’d gone to India. He’d met Tony, an old and valued friend in White’s; Tony had been bubbling over with his news. He’d come from Coldstream House; he’d made a formal offer for Fiona’s hand and was waiting for the summons to return. For Fiona to accept him. No one, least of all Tony, had doubted that she would. He had already succeeded to his father’s estate; as a Marquess, he could offer Fiona far more than most others, and she’d made it clear she approved of his company. She’d always had a bright smile for easy-going Tony.
Which was a great deal more than she’d bestowed on Dyan.
He’d been at White’s to meet with a merchant trader keen to find a partner to finance a venture in India. The trader had got more than he’d bargained for—a partner, but not a silent one.
He’d left for India on the next tide.
And had never, in his infrequent letters to his brother, asked about Fiona—never asked about the children he imagined she would have with his good friend Tony.
Fiona looked down at her hands, loosely clasped in her lap. With Dyan so close, it was easy to remember those lonely days in London, when she’d finally closed the door on her youthful hopes. Witnessing him and his ladies, she’d been forced to concede that she had no future with him. So she’d done the right thing and considered her earnest suitors—Anthony, Marquess of Rusden, had been the outstanding candidate. Remembering Tony, and his easy smile, she shook her head. “He was too nice.”
“Too nice?”
Too nice for her to marry—to let him give her his heart, without having anything to give in return. That had been the definitive moment when she’d finally accepted the truth. She’d given her heart away long ago—it was no longer hers to give. She hadn’t been able to offer any softer emotion, not even sincere wifely duty. Her unfailing reaction to any man touching her, especially with amorous intent, had made marrying a man who required an heir an impossibility. So she’d refused Tony as gently as she could, turned her back on marriage, and come home to be her brother’s chatelaine. She shrugged. “My parents died soon after, so I had Coldstream to manage—you know Edmund couldn’t do it on his own.”
His gaze locked on her face, Dyan drew a slow, even breath. Edmund was going to have to learn.
Fiona breathed in and straightened, then leaned back against his shoulder. After an instant’s hiatus, she softened and sank against it. Against him. Dyan only just quashed the impulse to close his arms fully about her. Her fingers trailed across his arms; he forced himself to remain still.
From their long-ago past in London, he let his mind roll forward through the years, through the inglorious, notorious events of his life. Through all the loneliness. All sprang from the loss of Fiona from his life. Even his characteristic wildness was driven by a sense of incompleteness—a void that had come into being fifteen years ago.
And now? Now he was jaded—he’d drunk of life’s well until it was dry. He no longer felt anything—unless it be a mild distaste—for the perfumed bodies so readily offered him. He could walk away from it all—from the women, the adventures—without a backward glance. Indeed, he’d already done so, which was why he was there.
There—searching for his elusive something. Who he’d discovered in the Brookes’ front hall. And who was presently warming his lap.
He focused on Fiona, although he couldn’t see her face; his senses reached for her, wrapped around her. In glee, in joy, in a giddy rush of lust—and something far more powerful. His feelings for her were not jaded at all; they spra
ng from a different well.
She was different. She’d always occupied a special place in his life, the only woman of his generation he’d dealt with person to person, intellect to intellect, heart to heart. She’d been the only woman in his life fifteen years ago—she was still the only one.
Dyan felt her topmost curls, soft as down, against his jaw. And wondered how to tell her.
The fact that she was sitting on a man’s lap, his thighs hard beneath her, his arms loosely, but quite definitely about her, his shoulder and chest a pillow behind her, took some time to seep into Fiona’s mind. And when it did, along with a nagging niggle that she really should stand up—Sir Magnus was long gone and there was no overt danger to excuse her seeking shelter in Dyan’s arms—she promptly dismissed it. The man in question was, after all, Dyan—and she was still in Harriet’s drawing room, a place she no longer considered safe without close escort.
Besides, she felt comfortable—safe, secure, and pleasantly warm.
Precisely how warm she felt, how relaxed and at ease, how much she was luxuriating in the sense of rightness that held them—that knowledge unfurled slowly, a dawning revelation.
And when it finally burst upon her that she was not rigid, not frigid, that the vise that normally locked her every muscle was simply not active, the answer seemed obvious. This was Dyan, her one and only love, although she’d never acknowledged that except in her heart. She never reacted that way when he touched her. Through the years, they’d wrestled, fought, shared saddles—she’d never frozen at his touch, as she did with every man but him.
Her senses, fully alive, it seemed, for the first time in fifteen years, registered the heat of him, the steely strength surrounding her, the subtle scent of sandalwood. Without conscious thought, she shifted, sinking deeper into his light embrace. The swell of her hip slid over his thighs; her leaping senses registered the hard ridge now pressed against her.
Her breath caught; for an instant, she thought she might freeze. Instead, a warm flush spread through her, insinuating heat just beneath her skin. A tingle of excitement skittered along awakening nerves. Her lungs abruptly resumed their proper function, a little faster than before.
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