He stopped, making her do so, as well. “No, look me in the eye and say my name.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Humor me.”
With a deep breath that made her bosom heave, she lifted her face to meet his gaze, her eyes soft and moss green in the moonlight. “Tristan,” she breathed, a tremble on her breath.
He could drown in those eyes. The problem was, she undoubtedly still wanted him to. “That’s better.”
“Is there anything else you want me to say? The name of your horse, or the multiplication tables?”
His lips twitched. “My name will do. Thank you.”
They continued on, hurrying to catch up with the dowager duchess. “I don’t know why you persist,” she said, her voice still pitched low enough that no one in the crowd would be able to overhear. It was a tone they’d perfected over the years. “I told you I would never trust you.”
“You already trust me, sweet one.”
“And what in the world makes you think that?”
“You’ve left several very personal items in my possession, and whatever you pretend to think of me, you know I would never use them against you.” He caught her arm, turning her to face him again. “Never.”
She blushed. “So you have one redeeming quality. Amid all the poor ones, it’s hardly something to brag about.”
“I’m beginning to think I should have brought you a fan.”
“I—”
“There you are,” the duchess said, taking Georgiana’s other arm and snagging her away from Tristan. “You must rescue me from Lord Phindlin.”
“You’re an attractive woman, and a widow,” Georgiana told her aunt, all charm again now that she wasn’t conversing with him. “You can hardly blame him.”
“I think it’s my money he wants,” the duchess commented, glancing over her shoulder at Tristan.
Bloody wonderful. Now he was just another of the greedy, grasping male multitude.
“It could be, Your Grace,” he drawled, “that he just has very good taste. If it was only money he wanted, he might have set his cap toward a more…amenable woman.”
Both of the duchess’s eyebrows lifted. “Indeed.”
The aunts, Bradshaw, Andrew, and, surprisingly, Bit, had already commandeered the box when they arrived. Georgiana greeted everyone, favoring Milly and Edwina with kisses on the cheek, then sat amid the trio of aunties. Frederica settled in for a chat, ignoring the fireworks and the orchestra in the nearby square. Tristan watched the lot of them with increasing frustration. He knew he affected Georgie; if he didn’t, she wouldn’t bother hiding. As long as she was keeping the duchess between the two of them, though, he couldn’t do much in the way of wooing.
Tristan gave a brief smile. He’d never thought to put “wooing” and “Georgiana” together in the same sentence. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her, and as she glanced back at him, heat soaked into his veins. She’d been so angry at him six years ago that all of this might be the beginning of another game; she’d as much as said that he hadn’t learned his lesson. But he’d been playing games of chance for longer than she had. However high the stakes, he would play this one to its end.
“Wasn’t it the marquis, Georgiana?”
Georgiana shook herself, tearing her gaze from Tristan and looking at her aunt. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
Frederica’s brow furrowed, then smoothed again. “Milly was asking about your suitors.”
“Oh. Yes, it was the marquis, then. Of course.”
That was at least the third time since Tristan had picked them up that her aunt had mentioned suitors, Georgiana thought, and she didn’t like it.
She wasn’t going to marry Lord Luxley or any of the others who proposed almost weekly. Even if she had no particular reason for refusing them, she wouldn’t have been interested. Most of them bored her. And the idea that Tristan could be pursuing her with the idea of marriage was simply…absurd. She’d humiliated and angered him, and now he was trying to do the same to her. He expected her to fall for him all over again, just so he could laugh at her and walk away the victor. She could walk across the Thames on the multitude of hearts he’d broken, yet he simply couldn’t stand taking his own medicine.
The way he kept finding excuses to take her hand or brush her arm might make her hot and shivery, but that was just lust. Her body craved his, but her mind was her own. And only where her mind went would her heart follow.
“Georgiana, stop daydreaming.”
