But as an object of a man’s desire?

She had overheard comments about her person, uttered just loudly enough for her to hear. There’s more meat on a butcher dog’s bone . . . bedding her would be like pulling a splinter . . . would she rattle, you think? It was enlightening, the words coming out of purported gentlemen’s mouths when they did not consider a woman a lady. Naturally, a woman’s appearance was an easy target; even the most dull-witted could hit with great effect. She knew this. The words still returned to her now as she was trying to see herself through the eyes of a man.

She laid a finger against her collarbone. It felt hard and pronounced, beneath skin that was never touched, not by sunbeams, not by glances. Never by another’s hand.

She traced a vein from the hollow of her throat, down across her chest. A tingling sensation followed in the wake of her fingertip, raising the fine hairs on her arms. The shallow curve of her left breast was petal soft and cool against the back of her knuckles. But she was hardly a fashionable size. No bubbies on this one.

She slid her arms around herself and squeezed. How would it feel, if someone were to embrace her?

Possibly equally disappointing as kissing. A young man from the Law Society had had the honors of her first kiss. She had thought him shy and guileless, but soon after the event, rumors had reached her through the society that he had won fifty pounds at White’s for daring to kiss the Tedbury Termagant. Fortunately, the whole affair had not been as exciting as she had hoped; it had been oddly detached and their teeth had collided—hardly a loss.

But Tristan’s lips looked soft and sensual, and he would certainly know how to kiss . . .

Angry heat sizzled through her. If it were not for his charming looks, his offer would not merit a second’s worth of consideration, which told her exactly how bad of an affront it was. Besides, he had not propositioned her because he desired her—he had done it to provoke her. And he probably liked the idea to have her surrender to him in the most primitive way possible.

Her gaze made a slow journey around the Valentine Vinegar cards flanking the mirror, the hatchet-faced suffragists and the withering rhymes about women who dared. They had been sent to her to intimidate her in her own home. She had taken them into the sanctity of her bedchamber and made them hers, until familiarity had blunted the cutting words and mellowed the ugliness. This was how she dealt with adversaries: she met them on the field. She would deal no differently with Tristan. When she locked eyes again with her reflection, her face was determined. If his lordship wanted war, he’d better batten down the hatches.

Chapter 12

The clock had just struck ten, too early in the day for a nobleman to be in the process of getting dressed, but recent events compelled Tristan to summon fast-fading military habits and rise at the hours of the working people. The desk back in his bedchamber bore evidence of his matutinal productivity: a stack of formal letters to London and India, already sealed. Now he was observing his valet as the young man did whatever he deemed necessary to his jacket sleeves with a clothing brush.

“Avi,” he said. “You are from Calcutta.”

“I am,” confirmed Avi.

“Now, knowing what you know of my person, and of Calcutta, and of the British as a whole—do you think a British lady and myself would find life more pleasant in Calcutta or in Delhi?”

For a beat, the brush continued its work as smoothly as though he hadn’t spoken at all, and then Avi’s dark lashes lifted. “The lady would certainly find life more pleasant in Calcutta. His lordship, neither. He would be best suited for Hyderabad.”

“Right. Hyderabad,” Tristan said, his tone bemused. “Write me a list of all the womanly things an English countess would require for her comforts in Calcutta, and another list of the families she should call on there. Then I require the same for Delhi. I need the lists by next Tuesday.”

“Of course.” Avi put the brush back onto the tray and picked up a cuff and the emerald cuff links.

“Not these,” Tristan said. “The plain, chained ones today.”

“Certainly. Milord, are you planning to take us back to India?”

Avi stoically ignored the rule of staff not speaking until spoken to, which made for entertaining, less lonely mornings.

“If I were, what would you say?” he said. “Be frank. Should you miss England terribly?”

This time, there was no pause. “No, milord.”

“No?” He found himself intrigued. “Whyever not?”

Avi looked him in the eye while his slim fingers expertly secured his left cuff. “Because the climate is cold, and the food is bland,” he said. “And I find that many of the ayahs of my acquaintance here are poorly paid by their English masters. I shall not miss England much at all.”

This surprised an amused huff from him. “Cold, bland, and exploitative,” he said. “There is an obvious line between frankness and insolence, Avi, and I’m impressed by how boldly you cross it.”

“Thank you, milord. May I ask you to raise your chin, please?”

While Avi fixed his cravat with a silver pin, Tristan said to the ceiling: “Many of the ayahs of your acquaintance, hm? Am I paying you enough to entertain multiple women?”

Avi stepped back and assessed his handiwork. “I’m an economical man.”

“I see. Remind me again why you agreed to follow me to this cold, bland island?”

Avi’s smile revealed perfectly straight teeth. “I wanted to study at Oxford.”

“Oxford—but I was taking you to London.”

A shrug. “Oxford, London, all the same, when you are from Calcutta.”

He supposed it would feel like that—the distances in India made the length of Britain look puny. “It is not easy to gain admission to Oxford,” he said instead.

“I hear Rabindranath Tagore studied in London, and Brighton,” Avi said. “Great poet.”

“Well, damn. To think you crossed an ocean in the hope to enroll, while I just squandered my time here.”

Avi shook his head. “There were other reasons, too. Trouble with a girl’s family in Calcutta. More importantly”—he picked up the other cuff—“it is a pleasure to dress you.”

Tristan arched a brow. “It is, is it.”

“Yes. You are perfectly proportioned.”

“I see.”

“Your build does justice to fine clothes. A dreadful thing, a beautiful, exquisite waistcoat which is wasted on its wearer. No garment is wasted on you.”

“Well,” Tristan drawled. “Fortunately, then, these charming proportions are attached to my person regardless of where we set up house.”

“Yes, milord. When will we leave?”

As soon as I have seduced the Lady Shrew.

What an absurd thing to first spring to mind.

He brushed it off with a shrug; after all, on the list of things presently requiring his attention, from protecting his accounts and business from Rochester to surviving travel with a melancholic woman, bedding Lucie was the only task that appealed.

“We leave no later than six weeks from today, possibly sooner,” he told Avi. It would see them leave England well before exhausting Rochester’s three-month ultimatum. Admittedly, it was ambitious timing for seducing a woman like Lucie. She would resist out of spite alone, and unless she was in the London offices often, there were few occasions to woo her.

“One way or another, she will surrender,” he murmured.

“Milord?”

“Never mind, Avi.”

* * *

Friday noon bathed Oxford in sunshine and birdsong. Stained-glass windows sparkled, swallows flitted. The breeze carried the scent of the wisteria cascading down the façade of Somerville Hall. Lucie was marching down Woodstock Road, tight-lipped, her skirts snapping around her ankles.

The night had been short, fraught with pondering how to proceed with London Print and unwelcome erotic dreams of Ballentine’s tattooed chest. By the time dawn had winked through her curtains, two things were clear: one, Ballentine had the power to make her life hellish. As much as society pretended to be shocked—shocked!—by him, he was a war hero, a peer of the realm, and next in line for a wealthy earldom. In Darwin’s words, he presided over the food chain, which had led to the second realization: she now needed every social and political ally she could muster. Her position in society had long been tenuous at best, but over the years, she had achieved a status which had allowed her to advance the Cause despite her outspokenness. Now the moment she had secretly dreaded had come—she had to try to . . . be nice. She had to pick up the weapons of a good woman: Demureness. Gracefulness. A benevolent management of contrarian males. Very well, it was too late to be credibly demure and graceful, but a more benevolent approach to males was still within reach. She had sent a missive to Annabelle, requesting an urgent meeting at the Randolph this afternoon. Now she was about to fulfill the second point on her battle plan: order a whole new set of dresses.

The shop window of Mrs. Winston, the most recommended dressmaker on Oxford’s High Street, displayed three mannequins which she supposed were fashionably dressed. The interior beyond was small but neatly organized, with tightly spaced rolls of fabric affixed to the walls and a gleaming cherrywood counter at the center of the room.