Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
It took all of Tristan’s willpower not to pull Caroline into his arms right then and devour her. He held his ground, difficult as it was, and maintained steady breathing as she confessed her feelings for him—the very thing he had been dying to hear.
“Perhaps I am being foolish, but I think we could contrive to live simply,” Caroline said. “I have been practiced in economizing these last few years, and I do not have a great need for expensive entertainment.”
“You needn’t worry about money,” he said.
“Why?”
“As you mentioned, James will be quite all right. Your brother is going to marry an heiress. He will be securely settled, and the estate will flourish. As to our comfort, I have already set something in motion which I hope will prove prosperous. We must be prepared for the economizing you speak of. Only, I hope it will not be necessary.”
Caroline’s shoulders relaxed.
“As for how you feel,” he said, stepping closer, “I have long hoped you would come to this decision.”
“It was not easily done, I assure you.”
“Ah, yes. Dennison’s masterful diatribes on horseflesh put me to the blush.”
Her smile broke free, stretching over her lips. “You are being ridiculous.”
“Or was it his monologues on his other great features? I vow I’ve never had a conversation with the man that did not somehow center around him.”
“Be kind.”
“You are correct.” Tristan ran his fingers over her silky hair, then along her jawline. “He is going to be devastated, and I am going to be yours.”
Caroline sucked in a breath that made Tristan’s blood hum.
She leaned toward him, and he did not need further encouragement.
He pulled her tightly against him and lowered his lips, brushing them softly against hers.
Caroline melted into him, her hands sliding up his chest as she tilted her head.
He kissed her deeply, feeling every inch of his body on fire with her touch.
He had waited so long for this moment—it was everything he dreamed it could be, and more.
Caroline fit seamlessly against him, and her willing lips left no doubt that her heart answered his own.
Tristan took her head gently in his hands and kissed her with all the pent-up emotion he’d been harboring for weeks. He showed her exactly how he felt, tilting her head and deepening the kiss through volleys of shivers and waves of heat.
“I love you,” he breathed. “Have done so since the first moment you released a cunning remark. Your wit and beauty combined were unmatched, and I was lost to you almost at once.”
Her round blue eyes blinked up at him.
“At once? When we were climbing trees as children, then?”
He smiled, relishing the weight of her leaning against him.
“I do not recall whether it was when you told me you would rather marry a toad, or when I heard you inviting your maid’s sister to stay at your house when she had nowhere else to turn.
Learning you put me aside for Dennison stung less when I learned it was because your family needed you.
Caro, you are forever caring for others.
Your heart it so large already, it is a wonder you have room for me in there as well. ”
Her eyes shone.
He dipped his lips, laying a tender kiss on hers. “I have yet to speak to your father, and I daresay he might reject my suit, but I want to marry you, Caro.”
“I want to marry you as well,” she breathed.
“Shall we scheme to be discovered in this position? He would be forced to announce our union this very evening.”
“I would not allow Kitty to do so, and I will not allow you to either.”
“Allow Kitty?” He chuckled. “So the two of you did arrange that whole farce.”
She continued, ignoring his remark. “I have a better idea, Tristan. You would like to convince my father to approve of our union? We only have to employ the services of one person.”
“Who is that?” he asked.
She grinned. “Your mother.”
The ball had continued as though nothing had happened, not one soul aware of the marriages being decided in the parlor.
Tristan entered the ballroom while Caroline found the retiring room to sit for a spell before she would follow him in.
As much as he had made a jest of causing a scandal to expedite their engagement, he valued Caroline too much to ruin her name.
Mother and Father were standing near the back of the room in conversation with Mrs. Whitby. They stood together as though the last half-hour had not passed at all, as though their children had not been missing for the whole of it.
When he approached, Mother turned a suspicious gaze on him. “We did not see you dancing with Miss Whitby.”
“There was an emergency—a torn gown.” He spoke flippantly, as though it was of little consequence, though he could still feel the lingering heat of Caroline in his arms. “Mr. Fielding oversaw the matter, and everything is right again.”
“Where is Caroline?” Mrs. Whitby asked.
“The retiring room, I believe.”
“I will go to her.” She pressed Mrs. Shepherd’s arm. “I shall speak to you again later. You ought to come for tea tomorrow.”
“I would like that.”
Tristan looked at his nails. When he glanced up again, he found his parents watching him shrewdly. “Shall we leave soon?”
“If you’d like,” Father said.
“I wondered if you would prefer to wait for Miss Whitby to return from the retiring room.”
He maintained a bland expression. If he said too much now, Mother was liable to make a scene. They needed to be more intentional than that. “Yes, well, I have passed the duration of a set in her company, so I feel my time here is complete.”
Mother drew in a small, eager gasp.
Wonderful. She was precisely where he wanted her.
Father took her arm, and they walked the perimeter of the room toward the exit, Tristan trailing them. It took a matter of ten minutes to have the carriage brought round, and only a few minutes more until they had filed inside.
“You are carrying a tendre for Caroline Whitby, are you not?” Mother asked the moment they had tapped the roof of the carriage and were off.
Tristan considered that. “Not precisely, no.”
Mother frowned.
He rubbed his chin in thought. “My feelings for her are much more evolved than that. I would more accurately state that I love her.”
Mother gasped. “Tristan! How could you tease me in that way?”
“It could amount to nothing, Mother.”
“Caroline is the woman you spoke of, the one who is more likely going to marry a richer gentleman? I do not believe it. She has never been a prideful, greedy girl.”
He smiled, glad she seemed to know Caroline’s character so well. “Indeed, she is neither of those things.”
“Tristan,” Mother said again, her nerves sounding more frayed. “Speak plainly.”
“It is a delicate matter,” he hedged.
“The Whitbys are our friends,” Father said. “You can trust we will not repeat anything you say in confidence.”
They were saying everything exactly as they ought. He could not have planned a better conversation. Whether that was indicative of how well he knew his parents or how predictable their motives were mattered little. He believed it was going to work.
Tristan held the seat as they rumbled over a bumpy patch in the road. “They lost nearly everything. James is doing his best to work with a man of business and correct their situation, but if they do not marry money, they could very well lose their estate.”
Mother drew in a compassionate gasp. “Oh, that poor family.”
“Rotten business, by the sound of things,” Father said.
Tristan agreed. “Even if Caroline chose me, it is very probable her father would not permit my suit. He needs money, and I cannot provide it. I only have the house to my name, and even that is not mine. It belongs to you.”
Mother was silent.
“Mr. Whitby has known you all your life, Tristan,” Father said. “Surely your character will speak for you.”
“I do not believe he is opposed to me, only my lack of funds.”
“That is ridiculous,” Father said. “You have plenty—”
“Richard,” Mother snapped. “Be mindful of what you say.”
“Deborah,” he retorted. “The boy has a right to know.”
A deep and anxious foreboding filled Tristan’s gut. He was being bounced around the carriage seat, but found he did not care. “What is it?”
His parents shared a look. Mother sighed. “I might not have been entirely honest with you in the past.”
If she was preparing to inform him that he would not receive Marblegate House, as he had originally supposed, he did not know what he would do.
“When we realized your brother would inherit the estate and the income attached to it, we separated Marblegate House for you,” Father explained. “We also set aside a sum of money to come to you when we die.”
Tristan’s heart had been pumping wildly, but now it went mad. “A sum of money,” he repeated.
“Five thousand pounds.”
Tristan felt the floor fall out from under him.
“It was meant to provide you an income so you might support a family once we were gone,” Mother explained. “For the time being, Father and I will keep up the house and your quarterly allowance.”
“Yet you did not want me to know of it?”
“Not intentionally.” Mother frowned. “At the time we spoke of it, I had hoped you would court that wealthy young woman with the red hair…Miss Greene, perhaps? Ghering? I cannot recall. I thought if you believed you needed a wife’s dowry to continue living at Marblegate, you would be more enticed to propose.
Never did it occur to me that it would stand in the way of a marriage.
” She giggled. “Though now I can see how foolhardy that assumption was.”
Tristan would not use such blunt phrasing, but he couldn’t deny the amount of stress and concern he had needlessly endured was frustrating.
He could not even recall the red-haired woman Mother spoke of.
It must have been a passing fancy of hers.
He knew Mother had the best of intentions.
She wanted to see her sons married, with good reason, and she never schemed with evil intentions.
This was just one more foolish thing she had done with his best interests in mind.
He was glad when the carriage came to a stop and the groom let the step down. He pulled his coat tighter as he left the carriage and followed his parents up to the house he would one day inherit—with five thousand pounds.
What would Caroline say to that? Indeed, Mr. Whitby could have nothing to say against his marrying Caroline now, surely. He would have the funds he needed if James married Kitty, and Caroline wouldn’t enter an impoverished marriage.
Tristan rubbed a finger absently over his lips. The only thing left for him to do was ask for her hand.