Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Come now, Tristan! Where is that fighting spirit you had a few weeks ago!” Hugo goaded, then took another swing.
Again, Hugo’s hit landed square and true, this time into Tristan’s jaw.
Tristan, sweaty and bruised, stumbled from the hit.
The entire world spun around him. He felt nauseous.
Dizzy. And worst of all, empty. His back sagged into the ropes of the ring and for a moment he just stayed there, unsure what it was that made him want to get back up.
“Get up,” Hugo barked, walking a circle in the middle of ring. “I am not letting you off that easy. Something is not right within you and if you will not talk about it I am going to beat it out of you.”
From the outside of the ring, Alistair, Everett, and Dominic exchanged worried glances. Alistair rose from his chair, gripping the back of it tightly as he watched the sorry excuse for a fight wage on.
“Hugo. Perhaps he has had enough,” Alistair warned.
Both men ignored him as Tristan forced himself away from the ropes and staggered forward.
“I am fine,” he panted, feeling a sharpness in his lungs. No doubt from a bruised rib- one of many injuries he’d sustained thus far from the fight.
He bent his knees, trying to find balance in his trembling form, and put his boxing gloves up to his face.
“Ring the bell,” Hugo grunted.
“I think he’s had enough old boy,” Everett spoke up, running a worried hand through his hair.
“Ring the blasted bell!” Hugo shouted, narrowing his eyes at Tristan.
“We’re going until he finally breaks and tells us what’s wrong.”
“Ring it,” Tristan wheezed, feeling sweat pour down his forehead, “I told you. I am fine.”
A moment of awkward silence stretched within the room before the sound of a single bell toll ring echoed through, and Hugo came at Tristan again.
Tristan swung out at Hugo far too early, the momentum making him twist nearly into a pirouette, and he grunted in pain as Hugo got two good shots at his already bruised kidneys.
“Enough!” Alistair snarled as Tristan went down to his knees.
“No!” Tristan said on a ragged breath. He pressed his gloves to the floor and pushed himself up. “I want to keep going.”
He wobbled as he turned around to face Hugo, but Hugo was no longer in his fighting stance. He wore a deep frown as he gravely shook his head, his gloved hands hanging at his sides.
“No, old boy. Alistair’s right. You have had enough,” Hugo replied. “I thought I could push you into letting go of whatever it is your are holding onto, but if we keep up like this I’ll end up a murderer.”
Tristan laughed bitterly at the word. Murderer.
That’s what he thought he had been chasing, but now, after weeks of turning up nothing but nonsense, he felt like he was chasing a shadow.
He shook his head at his own insanity. He had thought finding Perley would help take his mind off of Ophelia so he’d poured himself into it.
Now, not only did he have a broken heart he had a broken mind; and he could not make sense of either.
Ophelia was not his. She had never been so. Yet when she’d left that last night. When she’d slammed that door between them…
He shook his head, trying to pull himself away from the thought and ache in his chest, and put his gloves up.
“Let us go again,” he insisted.
In response Hugo just silently pulled his gloves off, threw them on the ground, and walked out of the ring.
“Oh, come on!” Tristan yelled, watching Hugo walk off toward the rest of their friends.
“Everett?” Tristan called when Hugo only took a seat and began toweling the sweat from his naked chest.
Everett shook his head as he gave him a worried look.
“No, old boy. I think you have had enough.” He replied.
Tristan snickered as he leaned his arms heavily into the ropes.
“Dominic?”
“Have a rest,” Dominic insisted, nodding toward the empty chair beside him, “Talk with us. Then maybe.”
Tristan blew a raspberry and rolled his eyes. Then he looked for Alistair, and saw that he was already climbing into the ring. He forced a grin and pushed away from the ropes.
“Here we go,” he crowed, putting his gloves up, “Finally a taker.”
“I dinnae think so, old boy,” Alistair said, placing a hand on Tristan’s bare shoulder. “Come and sit down. Talk with us. Ye not yourself.”
Alistair’s eye then widened as he moved his hand over Tristan’s shoulder to his forehead.
“Jesus, man. No wonder ye acting strange. Ye have a fever!” Alistair exclaimed.
Annoyance ticked through Tristan’s tired muscles as he shoved Alistair’s hand away from his forehead.
“It is not a fever. I am just simply working up a sweat,” Tristan retorted, taking a step away from him as he pulled off his gloves. “Tell me, when did you all turn into dandies?!”
“Ye need to come sit down, now,” Alistair insisted, ignoring Tristan’s insult as he took a step toward him.
He reached out to grasp Tristan’s shoulder again, but as a sudden surge of his pent-up rage and hurt overtook him, Tristan grabbed Alistair’s arm and twisted it behind his back.
“I said I am fine!” He barked loudly near Alistair’s ear. “Why do none of you believe me!”
“Well, for starters,” Alistair grunted, trapped in Tristan’s hold, “Ye have a man trying to help ye trapped in an arm lock.”
Tristan bared his teeth as he held tight to Alistair, feeling himself losing more control by the second. Then suddenly several hands were upon him, forcing him back and prying his hands away from Alistair.
“Settle down, Tristan,” Dominic menacingly growled in Tristan’s ear.
“Or what?” He shouted, fighting against Dominic and Hugo’s hold as Everett helped Alistair stand.
“Or I’ll knock you out cold myself!” Dominic snarled back.
“Hold him,” Alistair demanded as he walked back up to Tristan.
Tristan thrashed as Alistair brought his face close to his own and he clapped his hands by Tristan’s ears and held his gaze.
“Look at ye,” Alistair grunted, “Starin’ at me with that same hatred you had for me the day I married Theo. I knew right away you were not the perfectly mild mannered lord you pretended to be but I thought ye and I were past this sort of contempt.”
Realizing not only that he had truly lost control of himself, but had just also nearly broke his brother-in-law’s arm, Tristan stopped struggling against Dominic and Hugo’s hold.
He felt the rigid lines of disdain slip into defeated sadness; felt the ache in his chest bloom free, and he hung his head.
“I am sorry, Alistair. Everyone,” he murmured guiltily. “I lost myself.”
For a moment he simply hung in Dominic and Hugo’s hold as silence stretched between them. He felt the heat of his fever pound into his very flesh, his temples, and finally accepted that he was in far worse condition that he’d let himself believe.
“Let him go,” Alistair softly commanded.
Shame funneled through his soul as Tristan dropped to his knees as his friends’ grip loosened on him, unable to look up at the men he’d just betrayed.
“I have never seen him like this,” Dominic murmured.
“You three go, I shall handle this,” Alistair replied.
Tristan kept his head bowed as the shuffling of footsteps filled the room, followed by the sound of a shutting door.
With his eyes still on the floor, Tristan watched as Alistair’s shoes appeared before him and his friend crouched down.
A second later he felt Alistair’s large hand pat his cheek twice.
“Get up,” he commanded. “We need to speak.”
This time Tristan made no move to fight Alistair as he put his hands on him and helped him up. He let Alistair walk him off the ring and to the table, where Alistair pushed him into a chair then flung a towel at him.
“Clean yourself up,” Alistair insisted, pouring a glass of water. “Drink this. Then I want you to start talking. Perhaps I can be of more assistance than you think.”
As Tristan rubbed the towel over his soaked hair and behind his neck, he picked up the glass of water with the other and drained it.
“I am not myself,” he stated as he sat the glass down.
“That is obvious,” Alistair replied dryly. “The question is why. Is it about this Perley fellow? I told you we would find him. You just need patience.”
Tristan huffed out a humorless laugh.
“Perley is part of it,” he replied, “Every time I think I’m about to grab hold of a solid lead it slips through my fingers. As for patience? Could you be patient if you found a man responsible for your father’s death? A death that had been disguised for over a decade as a natural cause?’”
“Nay,” Alistair admitted, rubbing his jaw tiredly. “I suppose not.”
A moment of silence stretched between them before Alistair quietly asked, “But he is not the only one that evades your grasp, is it?”
Tristan looked up wearily, and from the look in Alistair’s eyes Tristan knew there was no denying it. Alistair did not have to say her name for him to know who he was alluding to. Ophelia.
“No,” he whispered.
“Something happened between you two,” Alistair egged on, “Something perhaps at the club you operate?”
Tristan’s body went still as he willed his eyes not to widen.
“I do not know what you are talking about,” Tristan lied.
Alistair raised a doubtful brow and leaned back in his chair.
“Theo shares much with me,” Alistair stated. “There is not much we keep from one another.”
Tristan’s brows furrowed.
“So?”
Alistair shrugged.
“So I find it mightily suspicious that the same time Ophelia reveals to Theo that she has been working as a painter for the Devil’s Masquerade until recently. And coincidentally along that same time line you start acting as if your entire world has fallen apart,” Alistair replied.
Tristan’s world spun as he tried to remain in control of his reaction. Even so, he felt his heart begin to beat rapidly as fresh sweat erupted over his muscles.
“She told Theo that she was simply out of sorts after losing such a lucrative commission,” Alistair went on, steepling his fingers together, “However Theo believes that it is more than that. That it is possible that her fierce, man-hating best friend has betrayed even herself and fallen in love.”
Eagerness pulsed through Tristan’s veins as he leaned forward.
“With whom?” He could not help but ask.
Alistair looked at him intensely.
“I cannot say for sure, seeing as all of this speculation. But if I were to guess, I would say it was with the man who hired her. The man behind the coordination of the club…the man sitting in front of me.”
For a moment Tristan was so shocked he could not speak. Could not even breathe. He’d been successful for years at hiding his secret right up until this very moment.
“Well,” he said at last, “As you said. It is not as if you can prove anything.”
Alistair gave another shrug as he smirked.
“Nay, I can nae,” he agreed, “But if that man were to try to deny it right now, I could nae say I would believe him.”
They stared at one another for a long, tense moment, then Tristan chortled as he rubbed his hands over his face.
“Oh, you nosy, filthy Scot,” he sighed.
Alistair let out a raucous bark of laughter as he leaned forward and clapped Tristan on the back.
“Aye,” he chuckled, “Maybe I am. But I am also a friend that cares for you very much, and as that friend, I have a right to tell ye that these secrets ye are keeping is eating alive.”
Tristan shook his head wearily as he dropped his hands to the table.
“Operating the Masquerade used to be my biggest thrill,” he confessed. “I never felt so much freedom or power as I did when I coordinated those parties.”
“But now?” Alistair prodded.
“Now every time I host one I look for Ophelia,” Tristan sighed. “Then when I finally convince myself she is not there, I go to her paintings and stare at them for hours on end. When I am not obsessing over her I am obsessing over Perley. I cannot remember the last time I slept more than an hour.”
“Well, that explains the fever and how horrid you look,” Alistair remarked.
Tristan threw him a narrowed gaze but couldn’t quite muster up a glare. Alistair was right and he knew it. He looked horrible. He could not eat. Could not sleep. He’d barely bathed and he was almost certain that he was wearing the same suits over and over again without them being washed.
“For the first time in my life I do not know what to do,” Tristan confessed.
He looked at Alistair with half- amused, half- imploring smile.
“You are my big brother now, are you not? You tell me what to do,” he said, and Alistair chuckled.
“First thing you need to do is come home with me,” Alistair said.
“Theo has been worried about you and she will be thrilled to know that you are staying the night. She has a rather powerful sleeping tonic that I will give you, and we will ensure you finally get a solid night’s sleep so you can be well again.
“Then in the morning you and I will visit this source you have together. Perhaps there is something I can say that can help his investigation. Either way, we will work together to solve this Perley mystery from now on.”
Though Tristan was not used to being told what to do, he nodded.
“And what about Ophelia?” Tristan asked.
Alistair’s determined looked slipped a little as a softness took over his eyes.
“All I can say is that I was almost too late in telling Theo my true feelings,” he answered softly. “I nearly lost her. God’s teeth, I nearly lost my life. All because I was too much of a coward to say what I was feeling. I do not wish the same for you, my friend.”
Tristan nodded his head, now feeling more weary than ever. He was not used to any of this. Asking for help. Letting someone take the lead…falling in love.
“Come along,” Alistair encouraged. “We will make it all right.”
Tristan sighed wearily as he rose from his chair and followed his brother-in-law to the door.
“Good God I hope so,” he murmured.