A Lady's Guide to Improper Behavior (6 page)

She opened her mouth to retort that no one residing with a woman—not in the way he implied—would have kissed her the way he did. Before she could utter a sound, though, the door in front of her opened.

“Tess!” Amelia exclaimed, her faced flushed and a smile on her face. “I—we were—”

“Here,” Theresa said, handing over the ear bobs. “I’ll be downstairs.” Without a backward glance she strode off in the direction Colonel James had taken.

She found him four steps down from the top, his hands braced against either side of the narrow walls and his cane hooked over one thumb as he swore under his breath.

Arguing with him or not, she didn’t like seeing him in such obvious pain. Grimacing, she caught up to him and pulled the cane out of his fingers. “You are n—”

With a breath-freezing hiss he whipped around. Before she could react he had a forearm across her chest shoving her against the wall, the other hand fisted and headed for her face. Gasping, she squeezed her eyes closed.

The blow never came. She opened one eye to see his fist lowered, his mouth inches from hers, breath warm on her lips. “Apologies,” he said roughly. “I don’t like anyone coming up behind me.”

Theresa nodded. “I can see that. Would you please release my bosom?”

He stayed where he was, his hard body pressing her against the wall, close enough to kiss but not doing so. “I don’t want to,” he murmured.

Her heart skittered. “Do so anyway, Colonel,” she ordered.

“Call me Tolly.”

“You are…not behaving,” she bit out, realizing both that she could fairly easily push him down the stairs and that she had no intention of doing so. He might act like a wild creature who went about grabbing women by the bosom, but she would not misbehave in turn.

“I’ve never found much benefit in following the rules.” He raised his free hand again, this time to brush his fingers against her hair. “I haven’t heard a woman say my name in a long time, Theresa. Say my name.”

She pulled in a hard breath, pretending to be annoyed rather than unsettled and excited by the intimacy. “Very well. Tolly. Better?”

“Infinitely.” Slowly he ran his fingertips along her cheek, making her shiver. “So many handsome gentlemen courting you, Tess,” he whispered, “and yet here you are.” Finally he brushed his mouth against hers, lightly at first, making her ache, then hotter and more insistently. He shifted his confining hand to join the other at her shoulders.

The cane clattered onto the step and then down to the small landing below. She noted the sound distantly, every ounce of her immediate attention on where Tolly touched her. Mouth first, expert and delicious and breathless, then his hands tugging her hips forward against his. The immediate, insane desire to put her hands on his bare, warm skin seized her, making her moan.

“Tess? Where the devil are you?” Amelia’s voice echoed from the hallway just above them.

With another hot, openmouthed kiss, Tolly broke the embrace. “I can’t run,” he murmured, brush
ing a fingertip down the front of her throat. “You should.”

For a heartbeat she didn’t want to move. She wanted more kisses, more touches. His cynical gaze, though, brought her back to herself. He expected her to flee. She could even guess what he was thinking. Why would she want anyone to know that she’d been compromised at all—much less by
him
?

Theresa narrowed her eyes. No one had seen them, and she refused to be intimidated. Not by some aggravating man who thought none of the rules applied to him. “I’m on the stairs, Leelee,” she called. “With Tolly.”

He blanched as she lifted an eyebrow at him. “You little…” With a curse he grabbed her hand and placed it around his waist, sliding his free arm across her shoulders and turning back down the stairs as Amelia came into view above them. “I lost my balance,” he grumbled, his eyes glinting.

Amelia made a sympathetic sound. “Oh, dear. Shall I call for Stephen?”

Even through his clothes Theresa felt Tolly’s spine tense. “Oh, no,” she said aloud, waving her free hand up at her cousin. “We can manage. We’ll meet you around front, shall we?”

“Of course. Thank you for the ear bobs. I’ll see you in a moment.”

As soon as Amelia’s footsteps faded from hearing, Tolly jerked halfway around to face her. “I’m not meeting anyone around front. Go to your own damned party.”

With him down a step, they were eye to eye. His expression could likely melt glass, but she didn’t feel
in the mood to be trifled with, either. “You’re dressed for it,” she noted, meeting his furious, frustrated gaze squarely. “And I think we’ve established that you have a thought for at least your own reputation. So yes, you are going with us to the Ridgemont soiree.”

Whatever the condition of his leg, she knew without a doubt that Tolly James was not a man to be bullied into something he didn’t wish to do. When he uttered another curse and continued down the stairs, she felt both relieved and thrilled. He wanted to go. With her.

“I don’t need your damned help,” he growled, shrugging out of her grip.

“You’re the one who put my hand there.”

“Only because I was in error about you having common sense. You don’t have the sense God gave a kitten.”

She frowned again, brushing past him as they reached the landing and retrieving his cane before he could regret his short-sighted rejection of her assistance. Clutching it, she proceeded down the remainder of the stairs to wait at the bottom.

“What, no response to that?” he jibed, a little out of breath as he hitched himself down toward her.

“Is it my lack of sense or the grayness of my eyes this evening that compelled you to kiss me, then? Or was it perhaps your parting from the imaginary woman with whom you claimed to be living?” she retorted, glaring up at him.

That compelling mouth of his twitched before it dove back into a scowl. “The eye color.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. I’m partial to gray.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

She didn’t believe that, of course. It was entirely possible, however, that he was as mystified by his attraction to her as she was by the effect he had on her. No good would come of it; Colonel Tolly James was an angry, defensive man who’d in three seconds gone from nearly striking her to kissing her. But something had kept her thinking about him for the past two days, even while she danced and drove and rode and chatted with a half dozen other gentlemen who’d already made their intentions toward her very clear, and who knew how to behave themselves.

When he finally reached the level floor just outside the kitchen, she held out his cane to him. “Thank you,” he said, not sounding grateful at all. “And don’t ask me to dance with you tonight. We both know that that’s an impossibility. Nor is it particularly amusing.”

“I have no intention of asking you to dance,” she said, falling in beside him as they left the house through the servants’ entrance and slowly made their way up the carriage drive to the front of the house. “From now on you will have to ask me to dance.”

“I will not do that.”

With a quick smile she left his side and climbed into her brother’s carriage. “Yes, you will,” she returned, leaning out again. “I’ll save you a place on my dance card.”

I
’m so pleased you’re living at James House again,” Violet gushed, taking the chair beside Tolly’s and grabbing his right hand in both of hers. “I’ve missed you terribly, you know.”

“You’ve only seen me for two months or so every two or three years as it is, Vi,” he returned, freeing his hand as swiftly as he could do so without dumping her off the chair in the middle of the damned Ridgemont ballroom.

“Yes, but you always stayed with us the entire time you were on leave. This time we had to come to London just to find you, and then you still wouldn’t come near us.”

What could he tell her about that? That he’d become
more comfortable among strangers he could watch with suspicion than with friends and family he was expected to trust?
Trust
. That word had certainly taken on new significance in the past year.

Of course his obsession with that word in no way explained his immediate fascination with Theresa Weller. Even with his gaze on his sister he knew precisely where Tess was in the large ballroom, and with whom she was dancing—currently stocky, round Francis Henning. Apparently she enjoyed dancing so much that she would partner with anyone.

Except him. He shifted a little, though it had been months since he’d found something close to a comfortable position. Bartholomew glanced at the dance floor again, catching a glimpse of violet gown and hair the color of morning sunshine.

“Stephen’s letter said he met Amelia at the Hutchings recital last year,” he commented, making a final attempt at distracting himself.

Violet snuggled in against his shoulder as she used to do, and he steeled himself as both her arms wrapped around his. “Yes. He complained about going, you know, but my good friend Celia was going to play the pianoforte, and so I forced him to escort me.”

“Love at first sight?”

His sister chuckled. “Most definitely. We only realized later that Tess had forced Amelia to go because she reckoned Stephen might be there. She thought they would suit.”

With a slight scowl he looked again at the lavender butterfly floating elegantly across the dance floor. “Amelia and her cousins do seem very close.”

“They were all raised together by their grand-
mother. That’s her,” Violet said, gesturing with one forefinger. “The Dowager Viscountess Weller. She’s very nice, too. And quite funny. She’s obsessed with cats. She asked us all to call her Grandmama Agnes.”

Bartholomew glanced over at her—and blinked. Grandmama Agnes wore a hat topped with three brightly colored ostrich plumes, the thing so enormous he was somewhat surprised she didn’t topple over. Despite her advanced age she looked bright-eyed enough, with an open, friendly countenance very like all three of her grandchildren.

But his curiosity had little to do with grandmothers. “What’s your opinion of Amelia’s family?” he pursued. “The cousins, I mean.”

“Well, I think Michael is excessively handsome,” she said, and sighed. “Extremely excessively handsome.”

“Mmm-hmm.” He wondered whether Stephen knew of their sister’s infatuation, but then Violet had had a new beau for every letter she’d written him since she’d turned fifteen. “And the sister?”

“Tess is wonderful. And very witty. And she knows a great deal about how to encourage or deflect the attentions of a gentleman. So I hope you don’t hate her simply because she spoke a bit harshly to you the other night.”

Hate wasn’t the word. “Confounded by” fit much better. And “infatuated with.” He shook himself, realizing that his sister expected a response. “I spoke harshly first,” he decided. Then he blinked. “What does she know about encouraging the attentions of a gentleman?”

“Oh, a great deal. She’s already published a booklet on proper behavior. Anonymously, of course, but Amelia told me it was Tess after she saw me reading it.”

“Really?” He doubted some of the things she’d said to him were in that booklet.

“Truly.” The cotillion ended, and Violet bounced to her feet as a young man approached. “Hello, Andrew,” she chirped, and took his arm without a backward glance at her brother.

Tolly stopped her with his cane. “Introductions, Vi,” he said. This fellow might be known to Stephen, but as Violet had already noted,
he’d
been away. And he was not a damned sack of potatoes, for God’s sake.

“What? Oh. Apologies, Tolly. Andrew, this is my brother, Colonel Bartholomew James. Tolly, Mr. Andrew Carroway, Lord Dare’s third brother.”

With a nod, Tolly dismissed the pair of them. He couldn’t very well tell Andrew that he’d met his older brother, Captain Bradshaw Carroway, at the Adventurers’ Club, unless he wanted to be asked to leave it.

“How’s the leg?”

Alexander Rable, the Marquis of Montrose, sank onto the chair beside him. Alarm bells immediately began ringing in Tolly’s skull; the two of them hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words together over the past five years, and there was a quadrille being played thirty feet away. “I still have two of them,” he returned.

“I heard you lost everyone under your command. And by ‘lost’ I mean they died.”

The hostility didn’t surprise him; they’d never been on friendly terms even at Oxford. He did not, however, appreciate the path this little conversation was taking. “They were murdered,” he corrected, keeping his voice level.

“But you weren’t.”

“Are we playing a game of state the obvious? You should have told me, so I could mention that you’re acquiring that hanging jowl that runs on your father’s side of the family.” He gestured at the base of Montrose’s jaw.

“If you weren’t a cripple, I would flatten you for that.”

Bartholomew sent a quick look toward the dance floor. Theresa was on the far side of the room, well out of earshot. For some reason that was important. “Don’t talk to me about India, and I won’t mention your wobbling jowls.”

“I actually only came over here to tell you to stop staring at Tess Weller. You’re embarrassing yourself, and if you keep it up, you’ll embarrass her.”

He could explain his attention away, he supposed, mention that her cousin had recently married his brother and that he was attempting to become acquainted with the family. It would be a lie, though.

“Thank you for the advice,” Tolly said coolly. “Have you warned away everyone who looks in her direction, or is it just the cripple you feel threatened by?”

“I’m not threatened by you,” Montrose shot back. “I told you, you’re an embarrassment. You carry damned rumors with you, and she won’t want them touching her.”

“I suppose I’ll wait for her to tell me that.”

“If you want to appear that pitiful, then by all means.” The marquis stood. “I was only trying to be kind.”

“Ah. Then you’ve changed.”

With a cold smile, Montrose nodded and vanished into the large, festive crowd. Tolly curled his fingers around the brass handle of his cane so hard his knuckles turned white. He should be gratified, he supposed, that anyone had taken enough notice of his presence to warn him away, but mostly he was angry because Montrose was correct. He didn’t have much to offer, and he’d heard the rumors, too. Both the ones about his cowardice and the ones that he’d manufactured the entire incident with the Thuggee. They couldn’t possibly help his reputation, or his standing with Tess Weller.

Was he actually in pursuit, though? Yes, in her presence he tended to forget the blackness and pain of the last months. And she was definitely pleasant to look at. But she also made him want things, made him feel things he wasn’t certain he had the right to enjoy any longer.

Dancing, first and foremost. And sex. As he considered it, he would place sex first, with dancing a far-following second. At least he could still manage sex, though it hadn’t been much on his mind until he’d crossed Theresa Weller’s path.

She twirled into view, shimmering in the light of a hundred candles. She laughed and spun, happy and safe amid her large circle of friends and admirers, while he crouched, steeling his thoughts against the creeping, silent dark that threatened to overwhelm him
every night. The worst of it was the knowledge that the horror was real, because that one night, back when he’d thought that kindness and vigilance and honor would be met with the same, it had caught him.

At least he’d learned the lesson and accepted the pain and punishment that had been dealt him. Sommerset said that he didn’t deserve either, but it wasn’t about what he deserved. His men couldn’t change their circumstances. It was wrong of him to attempt to alter his.

The quadrille finished. Amid the chatter and the applause, a swirl of rose-scented lavender gown dropped into the chair Montrose had vacated. “Well?” Theresa prompted.

“Well what?”

“I told you that I wouldn’t ask you to dance again. I left a space open on my card later in the evening because you’re somewhat dim-witted, but you still have to ask me.”

That was bloody enough of that. Keeping his gaze sightlessly somewhere three or so feet ahead of him, he clenched his jaw. “Tease and prod at me as much as you please, Theresa, as long as you stay out of my damned reach,” he uttered in a low voice.

“I—”

“Because while I am slow-moving,” he continued, ignoring her interruption, “I am not a simpleton, and I believe I mentioned already that I am not a eunuch. I have some pride, and I must still have the remains of a gentleman about me, or I would tell you precisely what I would like to do with you right now. And it has very little to do with dancing.”

He heard her sharp intake of breath, waited for her to scream, faint, or stand up and stalk away. She had spleen, but he’d become well enough acquainted with her to know that she didn’t like being spoken to that way. And now she knew that he didn’t like it, either.

“Don’t you have a dance?” he demanded when she neither spoke nor fled.

“What, exactly, happened to your leg?”

Tolly flinched. That hadn’t been on his list of her possible reactions, blasted chit. “You don’t want to know. Leave me be.”

“I asked because I do want to know, and no, I won’t leave you be. Not until you answer my question.”

For a moment Theresa thought he might refuse to say anything. With her next dance partner hovering at the edge of her vision, she didn’t have much time to convince the colonel to talk to her. What she did have, though, was a very fresh memory of a kiss on the servants’ stairs. A kiss that had positively curled her toes. And quite possibly his, as well. He didn’t want her to walk away. He couldn’t want that. And so she asked an improper question, one that a lady wouldn’t ask. At least she’d made certain that no one but Tolly had heard her.

“Very well, Tess,” he said in a low, toneless voice, his gaze lowering to the floor. “I was stabbed and shot and thrown into a deep, damp well, and the corpses of my men were dumped in after me. That is what happened to my leg. Now go waltz with Lord Lionel.”

Theresa couldn’t breathe. She’d known it would be something awful. She’d even steeled herself against a
tale of a battle and bloodshed. But this—no matter what she imagined, the reality must have been much, much worse. Shaking, she clasped her hands tightly together against her thighs. “Bartholomew,” she whispered, willing him to look at her.

He didn’t. “Will you go away now?”

She nodded. For heaven’s sake, she wanted some fresh air. A strong wind out in the open, in the sunlight, and preferably on the top of a hill. Grabbing onto the back of her chair, she stood.

As Lionel approached, though, Theresa stopped. She could fill her mind with other things, push the images that Tolly’s words conjured far away from her. He couldn’t. And she’d asked the question because she’d wanted to know the answer. Taking a deep breath, she faced him. “Look at me,” she murmured.

Golden brown eyes lifted to meet hers.

“I wasn’t teasing,” she continued in the same low voice. “I wanted to dance with you. What you just told me is horrific, but it is not my fault. And I would still like to dance with you. I would settle, however, for you coming to call on me.”

“Would you, now? You would settle for a social call?”

At this moment, she could recall the exact passage she’d written in her lady’s guide about how a lady did not ask a gentleman to call on her. And that wasn’t even the first of her own rules she’d broken where Tolly James was concerned. He intrigued her mightily, and though the reasons for that were still madly baffling, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him. And she wanted to figure out why.

“Since you haven’t managed a social call yet, I think that would be a good beginning.” She favored him with a slow smile, excitement tingling down to her toes. “And we both know you’ll be stopping by.” Before he could reply to that, however, she took Lord Lionel’s arm and pulled him onto the dance floor.

“That fellow always seems to be about, don’t he?” the marquis’s second son commented as they turned about the floor.

“Everyone’s about all the time during the Season,” she returned with a brisk smile. She wanted a bit of time to sort through her thoughts, and thankfully Lionel didn’t tax her mind too severely.

“Yes, but he’s always about you.”

Theresa stifled an annoyed sigh. At times, dancing was quite overrated. “Shall I name all of the gentlemen who are about me all the time? Your name would appear on that list, my lord. And you and I don’t have a close familial connection as Colonel James and I do.”

“But Montrose don’t mind me being about you. He ain’t so fond of Bartholomew, there.”

“And why is that?”

“You’d have to ask Alexander. I ain’t a wag.”

Theresa just barely restrained herself from pointing out that Lionel had done nothing but gossip since the moment they’d met. Instead she glanced again in Tolly’s direction, as she’d been doing all evening. His chair was empty.

Keen disappointment touched her, in herself for ignoring the rules of politeness and decorum and quite probably saying the wrong thing, and in him for
taking the excuse of their conversation to leave when he hadn’t wanted to be there in the first place.

After those blasted kisses he had best manage to pay a call and say hello properly, or she would be forced to track him down and find out why. And that was something that would never appear in her
Guide
.