He chuckled. “Well, you will forgive me for saying so, I am sure, but you do not look it, sitting there on the edge of your seat. Why don’t you lean back? The seats are very comfortable, you know.”
She turned and glared at him. “I do not need you to tell me how to sit!” she retorted sharply.
“I am quite sure you don’t,” he replied evenly. “But all this tension cannot be good for your health.”
She had always been a little uptight, he remembered. There had been a visit to a dress shop that was lurking in his memory, and he dredged it up, remembering how she had not liked to be teased for her rather old-fashioned taste in clothes. Perhaps they had gone a bit far, he thought, recalling the blush that had crept up her cheeks as they stood in the shop together. But really, it would do her good not to be so uptight.
“My health is none of your concern,” Diana said tersely, and turned away from him.
The way she was behaving towards him made it almost impossible to resist teasing her further, and Tristan could not hold back.
“I wonder what it would take to make you lose your composure entirely?” he said softly.
That blush began to creep up her cheeks again; he could just make it out in the candlelight as he fixed his eyes on her face.
“Please, My Lord, do not trouble yourself about me,” she said, a note of desperation in her voice.
“You know that composure is very overrated?” he went on. He wondered how much further he could push her.
“All I am interested in, My Lord, is keeping you as far away from my sister as possible,” she replied, turning to him and flashing those eyes at him again.
He chuckled softly. There was a sonorous richness to his voice as he replied to her. “I am sure that your sister is quite capable of handling herself.”
“You are wrong,” Diana insisted hotly. “She is young and inexperienced. She had never had the misfortune of meeting a man like you before, and she will fall for your charms if –“
“If what?” Tristan interrupted.
“If I do not protect her from you,” Diana finished, a resolute note to her voice. He could see, though, that her hands were shaking, even though she was trying to hide it by clasping them tightly in her lap.
“She does not need to be protected from me,” Tristan insisted. “I will make her my countess, and she will have everything she ever dreamed of.”
“Never,” Diana vowed. “I will not allow it. She deserves a much better husband than a rake like you. I do not trust you at all, nor your professed intentions.”
Tristan raised an eyebrow. “That is a scandalous accusation, Lady Diana,” he said. “I am sure that I have done nothing dishonorable. But even so, and even if I had done all these terrible things that you think I have done, do you not know that rakes make the best husbands?”
She gasped, a hand flying to her mouth. Tristan had to fight with himself not to laugh at the shock that was evident on her face. But very quickly, she seemed to regain her composure, and she met his gaze with a steely look. Perhaps Alistair had been right after all; perhaps he had met his match.
“And when you abandon her and pay court to the next fashionable lady who comes along? Then what will happen?” Diana said.
Tristan frowned. Perhaps he had gone too far, after all. He had to remember the end goal, as much as he was enjoying this little game.
“I assure you, I am not so fickle as all that,” he replied. “I have every intention of marrying her. She is everything I am looking for in a wife. You need have no fear of her being ruined, or anything like that.”
“I do not trust you at all,” Diana shot back. “I won’t allow you anywhere near her. You are far too dangerous.”
Something about the way she spoke ignited a spark within Tristan, and he could not help himself. “Lady Diana,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Perhaps it is not your sister you should be worried about. Perhaps it is you who should be worried about being alone with me?”
He heard a sharp intake of breath coming from her. What he would give to be inside her thoughts just now, he reflected. He would have given his whole fortune just then to know what she was imagining.
She did not reply and he could not resist going further. “What is life without a little danger, after all?”
“My Lord, please, do not say such things to me,” she said, her voice shaking a little.
He sat back in his seat. He had gone too far, and he did not want to distress her, much as he enjoyed seeing her blush and bluster. “My Lady, forgive me,” he said smoothly. “Much as I have enjoyed are little game, you are quite right. We must be practical. A scandal is the last thing either of us need, and it would not be good for your sister either.”
She nodded, still staring at him. He could not quite make out the expression in her eyes, but it seemed, in the darkness, like a strange mixture of relief and disappointment all rolled into one.
“I will not allow you to toy with me, My Lord,” she said.
