“Eliza will have to be said to have behaved beautifully,” he said. “Graciously. No hint of impropriety or distress.”
“Elizadidbehave graciously,” Imogen said. “In her way. She had the grace to remove herself entirely from the situation.”
“Mm.” He appeared to consider this. “It could be worse.”
“Itisworse,” she said, with feeling. “We are simply choosing to describe it differently.”
Something shifted in his expression. It was brief—a fraction of a second—but she saw it, the corner of his mouth tucking in on itself, the small involuntary capitulation of a man who had been handed an argument he could not quite refute.
He removed his hand from hers.
“Very well,” he said. He settled back in his seat and cast one brief, assessing look toward the house, where the footmen were already moving toward the carriage door. “We tell them it was love.” His voice carried no warmth, no softness, no concession beyond the purely logistical. “A sudden and violent attachment. Eliza acquits herself nobly. We are, against all precedent, the romantic event of the season.”
“Yes,” Imogen said.
“Those who disbelieve it are welcome to their disbelief. As you say, they cannot disprove it.”
“Exactly.”
“And you,” he said, and there was that quality again, that slight, cool edge of something, “will endeavor to look appropriately besotted when the occasion requires it.”
She met his eyes. “I shall do my best.”
“See that you do.” He reached for his gloves and smoothed them with unhurried precision. “I have never been known to inspire that particular emotion in anyone, except for perhaps my mother. I would find it rather difficult to counterfeit convincingly without your assistance.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but he put a gloved finger to her lips.
“There is one problem.”
“Problem?” she asked.
“Indeed. I can’t very well appear to be madly in love with my bride if I’ve never even kissed her properly.”
With that, he leaned forward and took her mouth, slanting his lips across her own. When he swiped his tongue across her plump bottom lip, she gasped. He took the opportunity to slide his tongue into her mouth.
The sensation was not at all as repulsive as she might have guessed had someone told her that a duke would plunge his tongue into her mouth before noon. On the contrary, it was immeasurably pleasurable. Her nipples tightened into hard little peaks, and she found herself gripping her groom’s lapels.
Tentatively, she moved her tongue against his, and he growled in response. Why had none of her sisters told her about this kind of kissing? Certainly, the married ones must all be enjoying such activities every spare moment they had.
When Tristan ended the kiss, she found herself brazenly moving towards him to once again feel his lips.
He chuckled. “That will do,” he said.
Before she could respond—before she could determine whether she had been offered a piece of self-deprecation or a warning or something else entirely—the carriage door opened.
The footman extended his hand.
Tristan descended first, turning back to offer her his arm. The morning light fell full and merciless across his face, and whatever had been in his expression inside the carriage had been replaced, with absolute efficiency, by the particular pleasant blankness of a man entirely at ease in public.
He was, she realized, rather good at this.
She placed her hand in his.
“Smile,” he said, from the corner of his mouth. “You are, after all, madly in love.”
Imogen lifted her chin.
And smiled.