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

Mary frowned. “What does that mean?”

Widening her eyes, Lucilla shifted, lightly shrugged. “I can’t truly say.” Meeting Mary’s eyes, she paused, then grimaced. “I get messages sometimes—like that—but as for their meaning, that’s more . . . nebulous.” She paused again, as if studying something only she could discern, then offered, “What I can say is that The Lady is pleased—that in her eyes you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, marrying Ryder . . .” Lucilla blinked, then added, “Being challenged by him.” She glanced at Mary. “If that makes any sense.”

Mary stared at Lucilla for several seconds, then nodded. “Yes, actually, it does.”

Lucilla’s smile flashed. “Good. In that case”—she waved the necklace she still held in one hand—“I thank you for this. I hope it will be as efficacious north of the border as it has been for all of you down here.”

“Mary?”

They turned to see Henrietta beckoning urgently from the doorway.

“You’d better run,” Lucilla said.

With a grin, Mary picked up her skirts and rushed as fast as decorum would allow for the stairs, her betrothed, and their engagement ball.

Ryder was waiting at the top of the stairs; unable to hide an appreciative smile, he offered his arm as his giddy betrothed reached him. “I’ve been instructed to bring you immediately to the receiving line.”

She rewarded him with an effervescent smile. “I’m ready—lead on!”

He laughed and they turned to cross the wide foyer. His gaze lingered on the expanse of fair skin above the neckline of her shimmering violet gown. “What happened to your necklace?” She’d been wearing a fine cameo on a purple velvet band, and that was still in place, but the necklace was gone.

“It was only mine for a time. I passed it on to Lucilla.”

He remembered when he’d first seen the curious necklace about Mary’s throat—at Henrietta’s engagement ball. As the earliest guests, just entering the hall below, had yet to climb the stairs, he slowed and asked, “Did Henrietta pass it on to you at her engagement ball?”

Mary glanced at him more sharply. “How observant of you to notice.”

He smiled one of his sleekly persuasive smiles. “So it’s what?” Recalling the conversation he’d overheard between Mary and Angelica about Mary embarking on her quest to find her hero, he guessed, “A talisman of sorts?”

She regarded him for several seconds, patently debating whether to answer, and if so, how much to tell him; eventually she said, “It’s a gift from Catriona’s Lady—The Lady—and is supposed to assist those it’s given to in locating the right gentleman for them.” She looked forward as they neared the ballroom doors. “It went to Heather first, then passed to Eliza, Angelica, and Henrietta in turn—and then to me.” She glanced at him, clearly anticipating disbelief. “Each of us believe it worked, although I don’t expect you’ll credit such a superstitious tale.”

Holding her gaze, conscious of the others in the receiving line just ahead, he wondered if he dared state that he knew for a fact the necklace had worked for her—it had steered her to him, after all. Instead, he smiled easily and looked ahead. “The Lady?” Swinging Mary into position in the receiving line, he lowered his head and murmured just for her, “Admittedly I’ve never called her that—I’ve always simply called her Fate.”

Looking up, she met his eyes, an arrested expression in hers, but then the first of the select guests invited to their engagement ball—Lord and Lady Jersey—swept up, and all conversation, all revelations, were necessarily suspended.

For the next hour, neither Ryder nor Mary had any chance to do anything beyond greet and chat with guests, but the nature of the gathering ensured neither of them had to exert themselves—they knew everyone and everyone knew them. Despite being a ball held at the height of the London Season to celebrate an unexpected betrothal linking two of the oldest and most powerful families in the ton, the atmosphere remained relaxed and genial, lacking the heightened tensions of a larger and consequently more formal event.

For Ryder, the only less than perfect note was struck by his stepmother, but his half siblings’ efforts to keep Lavinia both amused and out of his and Mary’s way warmed him and made him smile. Together, he and Mary circled the room, moving smoothly from group to group, confirming that their wedding would take place in just ten days, a week after Henrietta and James’s.

Then the musicians set bow to string, and the moment Ryder had been waiting for—the moment Mary had been so looking forward to—was upon them.

Smiling into her eyes, he bowed—with unrestricted grace now that Sanderson had removed his stitches and pronounced him fully healed. Straightening, he closed his fingers firmly about the hand she offered him—and felt something inside him tighten, lock. Her eyes were pools of blue-violet alight with expectation, with shimmering anticipation as he led her to the floor.

Without taking his eyes from hers, he swept her into his arms and stepped out, and took her with him, into their engagement waltz.

The music swelled and sent them swirling across the parquet floor as the crowd, smiling and delighted, fell back.

Leaving them whirling alone under the chandeliers, with crystal-fractured light glinting in their hair, in their eyes, as the world fell away and there was only them.

With his gaze locked with hers, with her eyes locked on his, they were caught and held captive by the moment.

He smiled intently, outwardly and inwardly. He’d heeded her words, had seen in them opportunity—the perfect moment in which to take the next step. To draw her closer yet, to stake his claim on her, on her senses, in a significantly more absolute way.

To move to the next stage and to capture her as his. As his bride-to-be, recognized and acknowledged not just by society, not just by their families, not just by him but by her. And not just by her rational mind but by the sensual, emotional, steely-tempered and iron-willed female every instinct he possessed assured him dwelled inside her.

That was his aim—to capture that fey creature—and he was highly experienced in that type of hunt.

As they whirled down the room, effortlessly revolving, his well-trained muscles without conscious direction sweeping them through the turns, as she followed his lead with even less thought, his focus never wavered. For them, for his intent and purpose, and for hers, too, they weren’t dancing in Mayfair.