Admitted, quietly, to himself, that he didn’t truly care what she thought.
He had to have her—in his house, within his walls, in his bed. Safe. Had to; he no longer had any choice. The dark, dangerous emotion she’d stirred to life and now unleashed would not permit any other outcome.
He hadn’t known he had it in him, that degree of feeling. Yet that evening, when he’d been forced to stand on the garden path and watch her—let her—walk away from him, he’d finally realized what that roiling emotion was.
Possessiveness.
He’d come very close to giving it free rein.
He’d always been a protective man, witness his erstwhile occupation, and now his tribe of old dears. He’d always understood that much of himself, but with Leonora his feelings went far beyond any protective instinct.
Given that, he didn’t have much time. There was a very definite limit to his patience; there always had been.
Rapidly he mentally scanned all the arrangements he’d put in place in pursuit of Mountford, including those he’d initiated that evening after returning from Montrose Place.
For the moment, that line would hold. He could turn his attention to the other front on which he was engaged.
He had to convince Leonora to marry him; he had to change her mind.
How?
Ten minutes later he rose and went to seek his old dears. Information, he’d always maintained, was the key to any successful campaign.
The dinner with her aunts, a not-infrequent event in the weeks leading up to the Season when her aunt Mildred, Lady Warsingham, would come to try and convince Leonora to cast her hat into the matrimonial ring, was a near disaster.
A fact directly attributable to Trentham, even in his absence.
The next morning, Leonora was still having trouble subduing her blushes, still battling to keep her mind from dwelling on those moments when, panting and heated, she’d lain beneath him and watched him above her, moving in that deep, compulsive rhythm, her body accepting the surges of his, the rolling, relentless physical fusion.
She’d watched his face, seen passion strip away all his charm and leave the harsh angles and planes etched with something far more primitive.
Fascinating. Enthralling.
And utterly distracting.
She threw herself into sorting and rearranging every scrap of paper in her escritoire.
At twelve, the doorbell pealed. She heard Castor cross the hall and open the door. The next instant Mildred’s voice rang out. “In the parlor, is she? Don’t worry—I’ll see myself i
n.”
Leonora pushed her piles of papers into the escritoire, closed it, and rose. Wondering what had brought her aunt back to Montrose Place so soon, she faced the door and patiently waited to find out.
Mildred swept in, stylishly turned out in black and white. “Well, my dear!” She advanced on Leonora. “Here you sit, all by yourself. I wish you would consent to come with me on my visits, but I know you won’t, so I won’t bother bemoaning that.”
Leonora dutifully kissed Mildred’s scented cheek, and murmured her gratitude.
“Dreadful child.” Mildred subsided onto the chaise and settled her skirts. “Now, I had to come because I have simply wonderful news! I have tickets for Mr. Kean’s new play for this very evening. The theater is already sold out for weeks ahead—it’s going to be the play of the Season. But by a fabulous stroke of magnanimous fate, a dear friend gave me tickets, and I have a spare. Gertie will come, of course. And you will come, too, won’t you?” Mildred looked at her beseechingly. “You know Gertie will mutter all through the performance otherwise—she always behaves when you’re there.”
Gertie was her other aunt, Mildred’s older, unmarried sister. Gertie had strong views about gentlemen, and while she refrained from voicing these in Leonora’s presence, deeming her niece still too young and impressionable to hear such caustic truths, she had never spared her sister from her blistering observations, blessedly delivered sotto voce.
Sinking into the armchair opposite Mildred, Leonora hesitated. Visiting the theater with her aunt generally meant meeting at least two gentlemen Mildred had decided were eligible partis for her hand. But such a visit also meant watching a play, during which no one would dare talk. She would be free to lose herself in the performance. With luck, it might succeed in distracting her from Trentham and his performance.
And a chance to see the inimitable Edmund Kean was not to be lightly refused.
“Very well.” She refocused on Mildred in time to see triumph fleetingly light her aunt’s eyes. She narrowed her own. “But I refuse to be paraded like a well-bred mare during the interval.”
Mildred dismissed the quibble with a wave. “If you wish, you may remain in your seat throughout the break. Now, you will wear your midnight blue silk, won’t you? I know you care nothing for your appearance, so you may do it to please me.”