Tristan’s eyes had been dark pools, impossible to read. His hand had continued slowly, reassuringly stroking. He must have read her confusion in her face. “I want to marry you—I won’t change my mind. You don’t need to worry I’ll hurt you like he did.”

Realization had dawned. She’d pushed up, stared down at him. “Mark didn’t hurt me.”

He’d frowned. “He jilted you.”

“Well, yes. But…I was actually quite happy to be jilted.”

Of course, she’d had to explain. She’d done so with greater candor than she’d previously brought to the subject; stating the reality aloud had more clearly established the truth in her mind as well as his.

“So you see,” she’d concluded, “it wasn’t any deep and lasting slight—not in any way. I don’t have any”—she’d waved—“adverse feelings toward soldiers because of it.”

He’d considered her, searched her face. “So you don’t hold my former career against me?”

“Because of what happened with Whorton? No.”

His frown had only deepened. “If it wasn’t Whorton jilting you that gave you a distaste for men and marriage, what did?” His gaze had sharpened; even in the shadows she’d been able to feel its edge. “Why haven’t you married?”

She hadn’t been ready to answer that.

She’d brushed it aside, clung to a more immediate point. “Is that why you told me about your career—to distinguish yourself from Whorton?”

He’d looked disgruntled. “If you hadn’t asked, I wouldn’t have told you.”

“But I did ask. Is that why you answered?”

He’d hesitated, his reluctance clear, then admitted, “Partially. I would have had to tell you sometime…”

“But you told me this afternoon because you wanted me to see you as different from Whorton, different from how you imagined I saw him—”

He’d hauled her down and kissed her. Distracted her.

Effectively.

She hadn’t known what to make of his reasoning—his motives, his reactions—last night. She still didn’t. Yet…he’d obviously felt threatened enough by her experience with Whorton, and how he believed that affected her view of military men, to tell her the truth. To break with what she suspected was habit and neither hide nor conceal his past.

A past she felt sure none of his family knew. That few others of any sort knew.

He was a man with shadows behind him, yet circumstances had dictated he step into the light, and he needed someone—someone who understood, who could understand him, someone he could trust—beside him.

She could see that, acknowledge that much.

Slowly stretching under the covers, she sighed deeply. Because of his earlier suggestion, she’d allowed herself to imagine what being married to him would be like; her response to the vision had been completely different to what she’d expected. To what her response to all such thoughts of marriage had been in the past.

Now…now that she was imagining being his wife, the prospect enticed. With age and experience—maturity, perhaps—she’d come to value things—things like the gentle round of country life—far more than she had previously; she’d gradually come to realize such elements were important to her. They provided an outlet for her natural abilities—her organizational and managerial talents; without such outlets she’d feel stifled…

Just as, indeed, she felt increasingly stifled in her uncle’s house.

The realization was not so much a shock as an earthquake, one that literally rocked the concepts she’d thought for so long were the foundations of her life. That realization was not a small thing to assimilate, to absorb.

The sunbeams danced on the ceiling; the household was awake—the day called to her. Yet she remained in the cocoon of her bed and instead opened her mind. Let her thoughts free.

Followed where they led.

The girlish dreams she’d buried long ago had revived, subtly re-created, altered so that this time they were attractive to the woman she now was—this time, they fitted her.

She could see, imagine—start to desire if she let herself—a future as Tristan’s wife. His countess. His helpmate.

Swirling through those dreams, lending them greater fascination and power, was the enticement of being the one—the only one according to him—who could give him all he wanted. That, very possibly, he needed. When they were together, she could sense the power of what had grown between them, that welling emotion deeper than passion, stronger than desire. The emotion that in those quiet, intense and private moments wrapped them about.

The emotion they shared.

It was something ephemeral between them, something most easy to see in those heated moments when both their guards were completely down, yet it was also there, peeking through, like something caught from the corner of an eye in their more public exchanges.

He’d asked why she’d never married; the truth was, she’d never truly studied the reason. The instinctive, deeply held belief—the one that had made letting Whorton go so easy—was something so buried in her mind, so much a part of her, she’d never taken it out and examined it, never truly concerned herself with it before. It had simply been there, a certainty.

Until Tristan had appeared, and laid all he was before her.

He did, now, have the right to question, to ask for her reasons, to demand they were sound.

It was time to look deeper, into her heart, into her soul, and discover whether her old instincts were still relevant, whether they remained relevant to the new world on whose threshold she and Tristan now stood.

He’d seized her hand, dragged her to that threshold, forced her to open her eyes and truly see…and he wasn’t going to go away. To simply draw back and leave her.

He’d been right; the attraction between them wouldn’t fade.

It hadn’t. It had grown.

Lips setting, she flung back the covers, got out of bed, and determinedly crossed to the bellpull.

Reexamining and possibly restructuring the basic tenets of one’s life was not an undertaking that could be accomplished in a few rushed minutes.

Unfortunately, throughout that day and those following, rushed minutes were all Leonora could find. Yet as the events of each passing day strengthened and deepened the connection between her and Tristan, the need to revisit the reason underlying her aversion to marriage grew.

Their slow progress on the matter of Mountford, either locating the man masquerading by that name or identifying whatever it was he was after, only added pressure by way of Tristan’s increasing protectiveness, which spilled over into a more primitive possessiveness.

Even though he battled to hide it, she saw. And understood.

Tried not to let it prod her temper; he couldn’t, it seemed, help it.

February had finally given way to March; the first hint of spring blew in to soften winter’s bleakness. The ton started to return to the capital in earnest, to prepare for the upcoming Season. While earlier the entertainments had been small, largely informal, the social calendar was growing ever more crowded, the events equally so.

Lady Hammond’s ball bade fair to be the first acknowledged crush of the year. Arriving with Mildred and Gertie, Leonora stood patiently on the stairs leading up to the ballroom together with half a hundred others all waiting to greet their hostess. Looking around, she noted familiar faces, nodded, exchanged smiles. There were weeks yet before the Season proper; in years past, she was sure town hadn’t been so crowded so early in the year. Even in the park…

“My dear, of course we’re here early.”

The lady behind Leonora had just met an old friend.

“Everyone will be, mark my words. Or at least, every family with a daughter to bring out. It’s quite criminal the number of gentlemen who were lost in all those wars…”

The lady continued; Leonora stopped listening— she’d seen the light. Pity the eligible gentlemen as yet unmarried.

Eventually, she, Mildred, and Gertie gained the ballroom door; after making her curtsy to Lady Hammond, an old acquaintance of her aunts’, she followed Mildred and Gertie to one of the alcoves set with chairs and chaises to accommodate chaperones and the older generation.

Her aunts found seats among their cronies; after turning aside a number of arch queries, Leonora retreated.

Into the crowd. Tristan would have some difficulty locating her; he hadn’t joined the queue to the ballroom by the time she’d gained the top of the stairs, which meant it would be some time before he could join her.

Tonight, the crowd was too dense to amble through with only nods and smiles; she had to stop and chat, to exchange greetings and opinions and social conversation. She’d never found that difficult, sometimes boring perhaps, but tonight so many were newly come to town that there was plenty to catch up with, to hear, to laugh at and be amused. Nevertheless, aware she was attracting a certain degree of attention from gentlemen too recently returned to the ballrooms to have registered Tristan’s interest, she did not remain for too long within one group, but kept drifting.

Dealing with one wolf at a time seemed wise.

“Leonora!”

She turned, and smiled at Crissy Wainwright, a plump and these days somewhat buxom blond who had been presented in the same year she had. Crissy had quickly snared a lord and married; successive confinements had kept her away from London for some years. Crissy all but elbowed her way through the crowd. “Phew!” Reaching Leonora, she snapped open her fan. “It’s a madhouse. And here I thought I was wise coming up to town early.”

“Many had the same idea, it seems.” Leonora took Crissy’s hand; they pressed fingers, touched cheeks.