Page 13 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses
Bel slapped her glass to the table. “Well, that settles it. He’ll never come.”
“Unless…” Adelia Rothingham-Wicket, Countess Milburn, once the loveliest creature to roam London, shot a sly look Camille’s way. “Unless he has a reason to think he should.”
Bel scooted forward on the settee, her knees popping. “I love it when you get that Machiavellian tone.”
“Servants talk and men like competition,” Adelia murmured into her glass. “I witnessed Mercer giving out his own share of piquant looks during our outing today, which is why my hip is acting up. The jaunt across an icy field, not adoring attention from a duke. Who needs a treeinsidethe house? Hope the blessed thing doesn’t catch fire and burn you up in your sleep.” She sucked on her teeth and nodded, agreeing with her unspoken suggestion. “What if a certain bit of gossip, another man interested in Lady Camille, for instance, a rival laudable enough to get Mercer’s blood flowing, reached Tierney Hall’s lower staff? They chatter the most. It wouldn’t take much scheming for this tidbit to make it to Mercer’s valet. He’s had the same one, that old crone Oswald, since his youth. If the man has any inkling his duke is interested in someone, even if he doesn’t want to be, this could work. And I get the finest winter ball since ’01.”
Camille lifted her head, unease racing through her as her aunt and the countess exchanged glowing looks. “Why would I agree to this?”
Adelia rolled her eyes and huffed out a savage breath. “Must we do all the work here? Because you want him.”
“I don’t want him.”
“I’ll try again. Because you want to know if he wantsyou. If he does, you can decide what to do with him.”
Camille paused, alcohol swimming through her mind and muddling her thoughts. Did he want her? He’d admitted his attraction, but the Duke of Mercer had been attracted to many women if one believed the broadsheets Countess Milburn valued so much.
Unaccountably, spitefully, Camille admitted she wanted Tristan to want her so much it decimated him, as her adoration for him had always decimated her. Turnabout was fair play, after all. “I have Ridley,” she finally said in a pained tone speaking little of beinggladshe had him or this wanting a duke to want her badly business.
“Posh, that’s nothing to boast about. But the Duke of Mercer…” The countess sent a defiant glance over the rim of her glass. “If you’re so prideful about your prior infatuation, which everyone in England is aware of and which you could take pitying advantage of, well then, we’ll make him come to you. You’re lovely, and he’s noticed. It won’t be hard.”
Camille slid low on the settee, closing her eyes and praying for sleep to take her. “He won’t agree to it. He won’t come. You’ve seen the last of the man for months, years even.”
Countess Milburn sniggered and her aunt, after one delicate breath of silence, joined in. Camille listened to them giggle and whisper and plot until slumber and a liberal dose of brandy claimed her.
CHAPTER4
WHERE A WALTZ DOES THE TALKING
Tristan stood in a shadowy corner of the terrace, his back pressed to a snow-dusted windowpane, and gave the assemblage flowing into Countess Milburn’s ancestral castle a bored glance—should anyone have sussed out his hiding place and taken leave to note his expression. He took an appreciative sip from his flask and slipped it back in his waistcoat pocket, wondering what the everlasting hell he was doing here.
Attending a winter ball in the Yorkshire countryside, that’s what.
A decision madeafterhis valet, the long-suffering Oswald, told him a juicy snippet he didn’t wish to hear. When Tristan hated balls. Hated dancing, although he was quite good at it. Hated gossip and innuendo and answering questions about Waterloo and where he’d been disappearing to since he returned—on darkened terraces, don’t you know. He wasn’t charming anymore. Wasn’t fit for his title, though he wanted it. Or wanted Tierney Hall, to be precise. He loved it more than any property he owned, and he owned five. His parents had routinely sent him to Yorkshire with his tutor and valet in tow, the servants stepping in where his family faltered. He hadn’t wanted them to come with him. Not after he realized they weren’t a real family.
Here, he’d always felt at home. At peace.
Turning, he took the stairs leading to the side garden, drawing a breath of air that frosted his lungs on contact. There would be a servant’s entrance somewhere along the side of the house, near the kitchens, and he meant to use it. He’d show his face at this event, but he wasn’t going through a bloody receiving line.
Not even for the chance to touch her again.
Ridley was temporarily out of the picture, but a handsome young marquess of some notoriety was interested in Camille and taking advantage of her betrothed’s absence this very night. Which shouldn’t have mattered one whit to Tristan, but here he was, tromping through ankle-deep slush, his Hessians, when no one wore boots to a ball, filthy, his breeches damp, his skin chilled. He was wounded, in soul if not body, the worst man for her should he have considered offering for her himself, which wasnotthe plan. There was no room in his life for eyes the color of spring rain and kisses that made him forget what year it was.
Cunning looks and witty rejoinders and a sharp pinch of attraction he didn’t remember feeling before.
He would act the protector, stepping in for her brother, Edward, since she and her aunt seemed unable to locate a good man between them.
With a weak curse, Tristan halted at the first service door he came to. What would Camille Bellington—female botanist and entrepreneur—think if he told her he’d spent the last forty-eight hours dodging memories of her fingers tangled in his hair, her lips molded to his, her breath, light and effervescent, sliding down his throat to dent his heart?
Dodging what he’d like to do if he got his hands on her.
Not exactly brotherly affection.
She’d be pleased; she wanted him to pay for not loving her back when it had been an impossibility.
Now, he was interested. And she was unavailable.
“Shit,” he said and shoved the door open with his shoulder, music from the ballroom enveloping him like a hug. Ditching his coat and hat in a chair in the deserted hallway, he followed the sound of the orchestra, ignoring the startled looks of the kitchen staff as he muscled his way through them. The aroma was redolent of snug nights by the hearth, holidays,family.