The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh (The Cynster Sisters Duo 2)

Her joy was infectious. His smile couldn’t have got broader as he looped the delicate confection about her throat, then bent to fasten the catch. “There.” He straightened.

Standing before the mirror, eagerly and excitedly viewing her reflection, with spread fingers she gently patted the necklace into place, then with her fingertips touched

, lightly traced.

The complex creation of diamonds and violet-blue sapphires quivered. Each marquise-cut diamond represented a leaf or the petal of a flower, each individual diamond suspended on fine wire around the richly colored sapphires. The latter, large and vivid, formed the center of each flower, and were set in the actual links of necklace, while the diamonds trembled in a delicate, glittering, surrounding frame.

She looked up, in the mirror met his eyes. Then she whirled and flung herself into his arms.

He laughed and caught her; setting the jeweler’s box aside, framing his face with her hands, she pressed her lips to his and kissed him.

He tried to kiss her, but she drew back and pressed kisses to his jaw, his cheeks, punctuating each with a “Thank you.”

But eventually he recaptured her lips and took her mouth, slow and achingly complete, and she sighed, relaxed against him, and allowed it.

For long moments they communed, through the simple kiss sharing the essence of thoughts and feelings, alluding to the wants and needs that, unsurprisingly, smoldered, presently latent, but nonetheless there.

The whir and bong of a clock drew them back to earth, to the here and now of their new reality. Their now joint life.

Breaking the kiss, they yet remained as they were, locked together. She looked into his eyes, her own reflecting a deep content, as if for once she saw no reason to rush, and every reason to savor. Then her lips, lightly swollen from his kisses, curved, and she pulled back. Reluctantly, he let her go.

Her smile deepened a touch. “Come, my lord, and help me drape myself in your gifts.” Turning to the dressing table, she picked up the bracelet and held it up for him to take. “And then”—she met his eyes—“we have our first dinner to attend.”

His smile a mirror of hers—his content a mirror of hers—he lifted the delicate bracelet from her fingers and did as he was bid.

The dinner was, in Mary’s estimation, impossible to fault. Although they were separated by the length of the table, at least it was the smaller table in the family dining room and not the formal dining room’s fifty-plus-foot monstrosity, and neither she nor Ryder was so foolish as to suggest she move up the table to the place on his left, not when the staff were so obviously primed to serve her her first meal in the house with all due pomp and ceremony.

Aside from said pomp and ceremony, which was flawlessly executed, the dishes were a superb combination of light and delicious for her, and hearty and tasty for Ryder. While he endeavored to do justice to the cook’s offerings, she chatted, wine goblet cradled between her hands, reminiscing about moments during the wedding ceremony and the breakfast, filling him in on scenes he might not have noticed, happenings he might not have observed.

The table could comfortably seat twelve, but she had no difficulty projecting her voice to the required degree. Ryder clearly heard, nodding, fleetingly smiling or laughing as appropriate. Mary also noted that the two footmen who stood like statues, their backs to the wall, and Forsythe, too, who waited behind Ryder’s chair, were listening avidly, no doubt making mental notes so they could share with the rest of the staff later. Recognizing the likelihood, she extended her descriptions, making them more colorful; at one point, Ryder cut her a puzzled glance, but when she smiled and let her gaze wander to the footman to his right, he realized, grinned, and returned to the business of eating.

He was a large man; he ate a lot. But when the covers were finally drawn and she arched a brow at him, questioning whether he intended to indulge in a brandy in splendid isolation, he smiled, tossed his napkin on the table, rose, and came to join her as the footman drew back her chair and she came to her feet.

Taking her hand, Ryder twined her arm with his. “Come—I’ll show you the drawing room.”

He did. In typical country house fashion, it was a large and comfortable room, sufficiently fashionably furnished to pass muster, but here, in the country, practical comfort had a higher priority. Drifting about the room, taking note of the gentle warmth thrown by the small but cheery fire, she murmured, “It’s a warm place—and I’m not talking about the temperature.” Turning to Ryder, she smiled. “It’s welcoming and relaxing—it feels like home.”

Eyes on hers, he merely nodded. After an instant’s hesitation, he asked, “Do you want to sit here?”

She glanced around the room, then looked back at him. “I know Mrs. Pritchard will show me around tomorrow on my official tour, so to speak, but perhaps you could give me a quick introduction to the rooms down here, and tell me which ones are used for what.” She wanted to, was impatient to, find his place—the room he retreated to when in this house—preferably without asking him directly.

Patently content to fall in with her wishes, he showed her the morning room and the garden parlor; they spent several minutes in the formal dining room while he appeased her curiosity over those of his ancestors who looked down from the portraits on the walls. They glanced into the estate office and his study next door—too tidy, in her estimation, to be his principal den.

But at the last, he ushered her into the library, and she knew she’d discovered his particular spot. The long room was laid out similarly to the library in the London house, with packed bookshelves lining the walls, a massive stone hearth in the center of the inner wall, three long double windows set in the wall opposite the fireplace, and a heavy desk in prime position at the far end of the room.

Two long sofas and four well-padded armchairs were grouped before the fire, and nearer to hand a large round library table provided a place on which to consult the leather-bound tomes. A library ladder stood in one corner, providing access to the upper gallery that ran around all four sides of the room.

Her gaze drawn upward, she slowly turned, taking in the glory of the paintings in the panels high above.

This library, she realized, was the original the other was drawn from. Both were so similar, but this room was created on a scale several times greater and grander. Also older, and somehow more solid.

And this room was lived in; she could sense it, a subtle scent of longtime human presence that had sunk into fabric and wood. The desk, moreover, showed obvious evidence of frequent use—marks on the blotter, several pens in the tray along with a letter knife and stubs of sealing wax.

“Your father used to use this room, too, didn’t he?” She looked to where Ryder had paused near the sofas. When he nodded, she asked, “When did he die? Some years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Six.”

No lingering effect could be so strong; it was Ryder’s presence she was sensing.