Chapter 3
“Open this door, Brandon! Right now! If you do not, I have no choice but to break it open!”
Tristan did not care if his voice was echoing down the whole east wing.
He merely glared at the frightened housemaid who dropped her bundle of linens after being startled by his voice.
The woman ran off quickly. Exhaling with impatience, he pounded his fist against the wooden paneling again when it opened.
“Tristan? Have you lost your mind?”
Finally. Brandon must have been sleeping like the dead.
The door opened, but not as wide as Tristan would want it. Brandon Seffield, Viscount of Farstone, peeped out. His face was pale and sweaty, and his eyes were wide. He appeared to be guarding the rest of his room like a sentinel, with his hands gripping the edge of the door.
“Out here, now!” Tristan ordered, grabbing his friend’s lapel and pulling him out into the hall.
“What is the matter with you today?” Brandon asked, looking completely bewildered.
Tristan did not reply immediately. How could he?
He was too occupied by the distraction that was Brandon’s hair.
His oldest friend’s hair might not be as impeccable as his own, in his opinion, but today, it was a chaotic nest. It was damp with tendrils sticking to his temples.
It was like he had run from Scotland to London the night before.
There was a curious twitch in the viscount’s eye, too, one that he had not seen since his friend lost five thousand pounds on a single night at White’s.
He looked so jittery, as if his soul might separate from his body.
“What, pray tell, were you doing inside your room?” Tristan demanded. “You look like someone submerged you in the Thames. Are you all right?”
Did he have a woman in bed with him, or was he having a nightmare? The Duke shook his head in disbelief and kicked the door behind his friend shut.
“Why do you look like that?” Brandon had the nerve to ask. “You are bellowing in the corridor like a wounded bull. Some of us are still trying to sleep, Tristan. We had a long night.”
“A long night?” Tristan asked, crowding Brandon.
He towered over his friend, and it made the other man stiffen.
“I woke up in the guest wing of my own wedding party, in a bed that was not mine. The woman I was with looked at me with total disdain, as if I were a thug from the darkest parts of London and not a duke.”
A duke at his own wedding party.
Brandon’s jaw dropped. His eyes darted toward his closed door for a moment before snapping back to his friend.
Brandon was completely stunned, but Tristan studied him more closely. He wanted to see if there was even a flicker of guilt. Was his friend guilty of a prank gone wrong the night before?
Tristan expected Brandon to laugh or rant about his friend’s lack of decorum, but Brandon’s eyes kept darting toward his closed bedroom. The glances were meant to be quick, but Tristan recognized the look of pure horror.
“A woman? You do not mean you slept with your...” Brandon said.
Tristan growled almost inaudibly in his throat. Brandon seemed to be thinking he was with his betrothed, Anne.
“No. I mean... Miss Quinten,” Tristan corrected.
“The eldest of the four. I woke up with her hand around my... Imagine me pleased, and then shocked afterward. Care to explain how I ended up compromised during my own wedding party, not with one of the ton’s flirts, but with the most horrifyingly proper spinster in London and beyond? ”
It was then that Brandon let out a half-laugh, half-gasp. The man had gone from white to red in seconds.
“You? With the Quinten girl? Or rather, the Quinten spinster? That is the one who enjoys spending her nights auditing her father’s ledgers for him while he drinks in gambling hells.
Tristan, tell me this is an elaborate lark to escape your impending future?
Your wedding is tomorrow. I am afraid there is no more backing down. ”
Tristan narrowed his eyes at Brandon.
“Do I look like I am joking, Brandon?” Tristan growled, inching closer. “I do not know what I remember. I remember arguing about poets, and that does not sound like me. There was a hint of whiskey or bourbon, but then, a dark void.”
“Oh, this is gold. You? With Miss Priggish? Did, uh, you two…?”
Brandon seemed stuck on that detail.
“Are you serious now?” Tristan demanded, even though he could still feel the heat of Cathy’s fingers instinctively curled around his cock.
There was a hunger in the way she held him, but perhaps he was merely projecting his own desires.
In this case, the desire was completely inconvenient.
He was getting married, and Kathleen Quinten was a spinster with a drunkard father.
“We are speaking of Kathleen Quinten, the coldest spinster known to the ton. She was screaming when she saw me. A lady seasoned to scandalous trysts would know to keep quiet. This one threw a pillow at me!” Then, he took a deep breath before admitting, “She does have a firm grip, though. Such fire in a woman is wasted in the dowdy clothes she prefers.”
I wonder what lies beneath those buttoned-up gowns she prefers...
Tristan groaned.
“Tristan, stop that line of thinking,” Brandon warned, looking more alarmed than amused now. “I do not think you would want to be in the scandal of the century. It does not look good for you to be in bed with another woman during a wedding party at the house of your betrothed.”
“Then tell me what happened!” Tristan bellowed. Then, he paused, wondering, this time, if anybody had heard. “I remember drinking a little, but I had no intention of looking like a fool.”
“Well, there was a competition,” Brandon said, sighing.
Tristan had let go of him, and he took it as a chance to rest his back against the wall for strength.
The man looked positively exhausted. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“It started innocently. You two were so eager to win each round. Some guests even placed bets. But I was there with you, Tristan. You did not drink that much. The amount you consumed could not justify a loss of memory.”
“I was not drunk the whole time?” Tristan asked, a chill passing over him. He fixed his friend with a stare, trying to study every expression on his face.
“Not enough to forget your own bedroom or who you were with,” Brandon said slowly.
“If I were not drunk, then what could have happened, Brandon? Did someone put something in my drink? Did someone lead me to Miss Quinten’s room? Did she lead me there herself?”
Tristan had to ask the questions, even though he was not certain how he would take the responses.
“I am not certain how that would happen,” Brandon muttered as if he did not want to discuss it at all.
“She seemed quite dazed near the end of the night as well. Listen to me, Tristan. I know I do not look any better, but you are the groom. You must prepare yourself for the wedding tomorrow. Pray that Miss Quinten does not utter a word about this, or else we are all finished.”
We?
That word certainly made Tristan wonder just what Brandon meant.
“Do you think that people will suspect there was something more to it?” the Duke muttered, still feeling a throbbing pain in his temples. The heavy feeling in his brain could not have materialized out of nothing. He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I have no idea. It was clear, though, that Miss Longrove witnessed the whole competition. There was a lot of shouting, which was already scandalous in itself if not for the fact that some people were actually clapping and jeering you on. It was only the race that would have been considered unacceptable, but there was an audience, the whole wedding party. Anyway, your betrothed was furious at the whole scene. She left the games in tears.”
Tristan’s chest clenched. He did not often feel guilty because he knew he was always in control.
This time around, he was not. Anne Longrove was sweet and biddable.
She was what anyone in the ton would consider a pleasant woman.
Her family spent a fortune hosting the wedding party at their house.
While he did not love her, she did not deserve such humiliation.
“I must speak to her,” Tristan mumbled. “I need to apologize to her. I will tell her that the excitement of the impending wedding, plus whatever I drank, had made me act like a total fool.”
He straightened his cuffs the way he intended to straighten his life, while he kept his expression steady and devoid of any warmth one might expect from a groom.
“I did not expect you to care so much about her all of a sudden.”
“It is not that, and you know it. However, it is a matter of decorum. I do not want anyone to say that I began this marriage by failing my duties as a gentleman and groom. I will go to her rooms now.”
“No!” Brandon had moved so quickly that Tristan was startled that his friend was suddenly blocking his path.
“Brandon, what are you doing? I need to do this.”
“I... I think that it would be best if you gave her some space for now, Tristan,” Brandon pleaded, his voice unusually strange.
“She is likely still resting. If you go to her this early in the morning, disheveled and perhaps smelling of Miss Quinten...” Tristan’s brow rose at that.
“You will only make it worse. Wait until later.”
Tristan tilted his head to the side as he studied his friend.
“Since when are you an expert on Miss Longrove’s temperament? I am her betrothed, and I confess that I know little of her yet.”
“Women are all the same. Besides, I am your friend,” Brandon replied, his eyes shifting to the side. “I am merely trying to save you from disaster. Wash first. Change your clothes. Even my not-so-sensitive nose can smell a hint of lavender that does not belong to you.”