Chapter Twenty-Two Tristan
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tristan
A month was a long time.
Long enough for the sharp edges to dull. For memory to ease into something manageable. Long enough for me to drift, carefully and obediently, back into the life that had always been waiting for me with its arms politely open.
Which was where I stood now. Tuxedo and all.
In a room where money was everything.
Not loud money. Not nouveau or grasping.
But old money. Settled, disciplined, carefully maintained.
Linen-draped tables lined the edges of the hall, waiting for the seated portion later, crystal catching the light, place cards embossed in cream and gold arranged with faultless precision.
For now, it was a standing reception. Champagne flutes.
Murmured conversations. A string quartet tucked discreetly beneath the gallery balcony, playing a classical rendition enough not to offend anyone important.
Inner Temple Hall had been stripped back to its bones. Stone pillars rose into shadow, banners hanging high overhead, centuries of precedent bearing witness as we drank and laughed and congratulated one another on being on the right side of things.
This was my mother’s cause.
A legal access and rehabilitation charity dressed up as a justice initiative.
Carefully worded, impeccably funded. Eloise had been involved in the political side of it for months, smoothing pathways, aligning donors.
Zara, too, in her official capacity at Westminster.
My mother had insisted I attend. My father had agreed because tonight marked his first public appearance since treatment.
And there he was.
Impeccable in black tie, thinner than he’d been before but standing straight, my mother’s hand resting cautiously at his elbow as she spoke to a cluster of senior judges and KCs.
She was radiant in white silk, the picture of composure and loyalty, as if none of us had spent months holding our breath.
Marcus stood nearby, watchful as ever. Eloise to his right.
She wasn’t drinking. The flute in her hand remained untouched, fingers curled protectively around the stem.
Her cheeks were flushed, her smile softer than usual, and every so often she drifted her hand, almost unconsciously, to her abdomen.
It hadn’t been announced. Not yet. But it didn’t need to be.
Everyone knew how long it had taken them to conceive.
Good for them.
I adjusted my cufflinks and resisted the urge to fidget.
This was where I belonged. Where I had always belonged.
Where my name made sense on embossed card and my presence required no explanation.
And yet, standing there beneath the banners and the soft spill of candlelight, I felt oddly displaced.
As if I were playing a role I’d rehearsed too well, waiting for a cue that never quite came.
I lifted my glass, took a polite sip, and reminded myself to smile.
Henry drifted up beside me, just as immaculate as everyone else in the room, though his discomfort showed in ways mine didn’t. He kept shifting his weight, eyes scanning the crowd as if half-expecting a crash call to come through at any moment.
“Hen.” I lifted my glass and nudged his. “Here we are again.”
“Two stags.” He slipped a hand into his pocket, gazing instinctively across the room.
I knew who he was looking for.
“You could always hire a date.” I nudged his elbow. “Save people starting rumours we’re… waiting for each other.”
He huffed. “Perhaps we should lean into it.”
“Is this you coming out?”
“Perhaps I should. I imagine your mother and my father would be thrilled at the efficiency of our pairing.”
“A shame, then, that you’re not actually gay.”
He glanced at me. “Though I could try?”
I tilted my head. “Hen. If you were gay, you’d be a bottom. And that would be of absolutely no use to me.”
He considered this with mock seriousness. “One of life’s many inconveniences.”
“Isn’t it just?”
We clinked glasses and drank.
After a beat, he glanced down at his very polished shoes. “Have you… er… heard anything?”
I looked away, swallowed champagne I’d barely tasted. “No.”
“I rather think that is quite fortunate for you.” Henry took a sip himself.
“Hm.”
It was as much as either of us could offer.
After Razor had walked into Henry’s A&E, I’d had to tell him something. Especially given it was the second time Henry had been confronted with Razor attached to injuries belonging firmly outside the realm of unfortunate accidents. At some point, professional disbelief gives way to personal concern.
I hadn’t told him everything. Certainly not that I’d met Razor months earlier in a Hackney alley, back when he’d been operating at street level.
Nor that he’d since demonstrated a frankly alarming aptitude for promotion, rising through the ranks of organised drug trafficking with the sort of efficiency and work ethic most chambers would kill for.
In another life, I supposed, that kind of entrepreneurial instinct might have been applauded. Just not in that particular industry.
So I’d edited. Smoothed. Reframed.
I’d said he worked in high-end clubs. That he handled logistics.
Supply. The sort of discreet necessities for private parties Zara’s family had historically built their wealth on.
Which wasn’t untrue. It just omitted the consequences.
Enough for Henry to understand why it was vital, absolutely essential, that no one knew who I was seeing.
Or what kind of life that man actually inhabited.
Some truths didn’t need airing.
They needed containing.
Henry took another sip, eyes drifting to a group of consultants laughing too loudly near the centre of the room. “I forget sometimes how… polished this world is.” He tutted. “When you’ve spent twenty hours in A&E, this all feels rather… theatrical.”
“Give it time.” I bumped my shoulder to his. “You’ll start spotting the cracks.”
“I already do.”
Then he stilled, gaze fixed somewhere over my shoulder, expression shifting before he could catch it. Softening. Tightening.
I followed his line of sight.
Zara.
She looked effortless, as she always did.
Deep green gown, hair swept back from her face, posture straight with the confidence of someone who belonged in rooms like this for reasons beyond invitation.
Flanked by two people I didn’t recognise, staffers maybe, her attention scanned the space, alert and engaged.
Henry shifted on his feet.
I glanced back at him, caught the moment before he masked it.
“You miss her,” I said quietly.
He didn’t look at me. “Some things don’t stop because they’re inconvenient.”
I knew that feeling far too well.
Henry lifted his glass to his lips. “God, she is simply stunning, isn’t she?”
“She does look rather radiant tonight, yes.”
“How profoundly irritating.”
I let out a ghost of a smile before Zara caught sight of us watching her.
Henry looked away immediately. I held up my glass.
And her expression warmed as she crossed the room.
Henry straightened instinctively, smoothing down the front of his jacket.
And watching him, watching the care he took not to reach for what he wanted, an echo settled low in my chest.
Some lives ran in straight, elegant lines.
Others curved sharply away, no matter how badly you wanted them to intersect.
“Tristan.” Zara greeted me with two light air kisses. “You look very Inner Temple this evening.”
“High praise,” I said. “Congratulations. It’s a beautiful turnout.”
“Thank you.” Her smile softened, then she turned politely to Henry. “Hen.”
“Zara.” He dipped his head, then immediately stepped back. “Excuse me, I just need to… find someone.”
We watched him disappear into a cluster of tuxedos.
Zara exhaled. “He still loves me.”
“He does,” I said. “Deeply.”
She snorted. “He dumped me by text, Tris.”
“I didn’t say he was emotionally competent.”
That got a real laugh out of her. She slid closer, shoulder to shoulder with me, the way she always had, conspiratorial as ever.
“So,” she leant in, “I hear you’ve been acquainting yourself, rather strategically, with Lord Wolfe.”
She gestured with her champagne flute towards the far side of the room, where Wolfe stood in animated conversation with two KCs and a man I recognised from Westminster.
“You know him?” I accepted a fresh glass from a passing server.
“Doesn’t everyone? Officially, I know him through Westminster. Unofficially…” She spoke out of the side of her mouth. “He’s a familiar face at The Halcyon Room.”
I lifted my eyebrows a fraction. That was her parents’ venue. The very private, very discreet, high-end sex club where people went when they didn’t want to be recognised for the things they enjoyed after midnight.
Zara smiled into her glass. “He has… eclectic tastes. Likes spaces where boundaries blur a little. Chemistry, you might say. And likes to take it with very attractive young men.” She nudged me. “You into all that?”
I said nothing and was beautifully saved by a spoon tapping against crystal.
A microphone crackled. The call went out for guests to take their seats, and the moment slipped neatly away, folding back into silk and chandeliers and plausible deniability.
The evening unfolded as they always did.
Exquisite food. Champagne never running dry.
Eye-watering bids on holidays, art, access.
A public appeal delivered with the right balance of emotion and restraint.
Then the dancing. And I caught Henry watching Zara from the edge of the floor as she laughed with someone else.
A tall, polished, and immaculately forgettable older man.
“Can we go?” he muttered.
I wanted to, anyway.