Chapter 33
“Father?”
The voice, hoarse from crying, should not have been able to penetrate the study’s thick oak door. Yet it managed to slip in, echoing around the room and summoning Tristan from the dark realm of his thoughts.
He looked up. The door stood open, and in the gap stood Sophia, her eyes swollen, her cheeks blotched. Whisper squirmed in her arms, periodically letting out a complaint that sounded suspiciously like a human wail.
Tristan’s first instinct was to send them away. His second was to brace for an onslaught of feelings he had no preparation to receive, let alone return.
“Sophia.” He said her name without inflection, but she took it as an invitation and rushed in.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she stammered, tears spilling afresh. “I tried. I really did, but—” She broke off, burying her face in Whisper’s fur.
Tristan steeled himself. “Would it help to sit?”
She nodded, then collapsed into the chair opposite, tucking her legs up as if she might disappear entirely. Whisper, abandoning her, leapt to the floor and began a purring circuit of the room.
“I’m sorry for coming to you like this,” Sophia said at last, not meeting his eyes. “It’s just, when I close my eyes, I can’t stop seeing her. And when I open them, she isn’t there.”
He waited, uncertain how to proceed. “You refer to Lady Lavinia.”
She nodded, the motion nearly lost in the smallness of her frame. “Why did she go, truly?”
He might have lied. Once, he would have. But there seemed no purpose now.
“She is to be married,” Tristan said. “Her responsibilities no longer permit her to remain.” He searched for more words that might matter. “Sometimes, people must do what is required, even if they would prefer otherwise.”
He saw Sophia’s fingers twist the hem of her nightdress, worrying it nearly to shreds. She sniffed and glanced up, face red and wet.
“She didn’t want to leave. I know it. She… she cried, too. I saw her.” She wiped at her cheeks. “Can’t we do something? Couldn’t you—couldn’t you go to her and ask her to come back?”
He had prepared for many questions, but not this one. “It is not so simple.”
Sophia leaned forward, eyes enormous. “Why not? You’re a Duke. You can do anything you want.” Whisper, having finished exploring, jumped onto the desk and began kneading at it as if it, too, were stricken with loss.
Tristan watched the cat, then watched his daughter, and for a fleeting moment, the urge to say, ‘yes, I will bring her back,’ rose in him with such force that it nearly broke his ribs. Instead, he said, “Lady Lavinia has chosen her future. It is not for me to interfere.”
“But what if she wants you to?” Sophia’s voice came out in a rush, as if she had been holding her breath for weeks. “What if she wants—” Here, she faltered, then blurted, “What if she wants you to stop her?”
He could not bear to see himself in her pleading, so he stared down at his hands, noting with distant surprise that they were trembling. “She would never say as much.”
“Maybe she’s waiting for you to say it.” Sophia’s voice was brittle with hope. “I… Father, I think you can do something. Even Whisper thinks it.”
The cat, sensing its cue, let out a mournful mewl.
Tristan struggled to marshal his thoughts. “There are some things that cannot be undone, Sophia. Some mistakes which cannot be corrected.”
He had expected her to argue. Instead, she went perfectly still, like an animal caught in the sights of a predator. “Why not?” she whispered. “You told me nothing was impossible. You said, if I worked hard and learned, I could do anything.”
“That is different.”
“It isn’t.” Now she looked him dead in the eye, and for the first time, he saw a steel in her that surprised him. “Why don’t you marry her, if you don’t want her to go?”
The room spun. He gripped the desk to anchor himself. The absurdity of the question, its childlike bluntness, stripped him bare. He had no answer, because every possible answer was an admission of cowardice.
He heard his own voice say, “Because I cannot.”
Sophia’s brows knit in confusion. “But why?”
He had never told her about his vow, or the guilt that walked beside him every moment of every day. He had never said, “I do not believe I deserve another chance.” He had never said, “I am afraid of loving anyone, because I do not know how to keep them safe.” He did not say it now.
Instead, he folded his hands and said, “There are some things which must remain as they are.”
Sophia’s mouth set in a thin, unhappy line. For a moment, he thought she might argue further, but she only reached out and, without asking, took his hand. “I don’t want things to stay the way they are,” she said. “I want her back.”
He squeezed her hand, just once, before letting go. “So do I,” he said, and the honesty of it shocked them both.
They sat like that for some time, the only sound the slow, uneven thud of Whisper’s purring.
Eventually, Sophia stood, wiped her nose with the heel of her hand, and looked down at the cat. “Come, Whisper. We’ll go to bed and dream better dreams.”
The cat, ever obedient to her moods, hopped down and wound itself around her ankle.
When the door shut, he allowed himself a single, shuddering breath. The pain in his chest did not abate; if anything, it grew sharper.
He sat alone, and if he listened carefully, he could almost hear Lavinia’s voice in the room, or see her shadow across the carpet. It was not a comfort, but it was better than nothing.
“Are you sure that isn’t poison?”
Henry’s voice broke the silence, slicing through the thick blue. Tristan, caught mid-pour, eyed the brandy as if it were something newly discovered, then set the decanter down with a carefulness that was, in itself, a confession.
He did not bother to reply. Instead, he raised the glass to his mouth and drank until the taste burned away anything that might have passed for feeling. He set it down, then reached for the decanter again.
“Ah,” Henry said, sitting across from him. “So it is poison, then.”
Tristan kept his eyes on the glass. “It is the only thing I find tolerable, just now.”
He did not need to say more. The study was private, and Henry had always known when to let silence ferment into the sort of talk men would die before they’d have in daylight.
They sat. The brandy diminished, but Henry’s own glass remained untouched.
“I’ve lost her,” Tristan said at last, the words landing with the finality of a signed death warrant.
Henry did not pretend confusion. “Lady Lavinia.”
“In three days, she’ll be married to Dawnford.”
Henry made a low noise, part laugh, part curse. “Is she so eager to be a countess, or is it merely a matter of survival?”
Tristan looked up. “She does it for her sister. For her family. She would have never—” He stopped, the sentence broken before it could betray more than he intended.
Henry nodded, then took a measured sip of his own drink. “Is that what’s destroying you? That she sacrifices for others? Or is it the man she is to marry?”
Tristan swallowed, the glass trembling as he set it down. “Dawnford will crush her. She is not—she cannot—”
“Then do something about it.” Henry’s voice was calm, but beneath it was an old, hot anger, banked and ready for fuel.
Tristan looked at the wall, at the dancing lamplight, at the way his own hands looked foreign in this new, unfamiliar sorrow.
“She was the woman at the masquerade.” He said it as if he were confessing to murder. “The one from Scarfield’s Ball. And I, like a blind fool, did not see it until she walked away from me forever.”
Henry absorbed this without surprise. “That was a memorable night, as I recall. I thought you’d been enchanted, but you denied it so fiercely I assumed it was only the wine.”
“It was never the wine,” Tristan said, and for the first time, his voice cracked.
Henry, not given to sentiment, leaned forward anyway, elbows braced on his knees. “If it’s her, and if you care, why let her go?”
“Because I do not know how to keep her,” Tristan said. “I tried. I thought—” He shook his head. “I do not even know what I thought. When she left, all I could do was let her go. And then Sophia asked why I couldn’t just marry her myself, and I could not answer.”
The confession hung in the air. Henry considered it, then gave a humorless smile. “Well, why don’t you?”
“There are things you do not know.” Tristan’s jaw worked. “About my first marriage. About the promises I made, and why I do not intend to break them.”
Henry’s gaze softened, just for an instant. “A man can be loyal to a memory, but it will never keep him warm at night. Or give him an heir.”
Tristan let the words settle, then pushed them aside. “It isn’t that. It’s—” He broke off, unable to say the rest.
Henry waited as he always did.
Tristan poured another measure, then took it without ceremony. “She deserves love and care, but I do not think myself capable. I told myself it was enough to keep Sophia safe, but even there, I have failed. She is bereft, and it is my doing.”
“Children are more resilient than you think,” Henry said, and then, more quietly: “So are women. Especially that one.”
Tristan let out a brittle laugh. “You have never met a woman like her.”
“I have not,” Henry said. “Which is why you are a damned fool for letting her slip.”
Tristan stared into the glass, as if the bottom held secrets. “She would not want me now. Not after what I said. Not after—”
“You can undo it.” Henry’s voice was sharp enough to cut. “Go to her. Tell her the truth.”
Tristan shook his head, but with less conviction than before. “I have never told anyone the truth, not even myself.”
“Well, it is time.” Henry leaned back and tilted his head as if he was challenging Tristan. “Unless you would prefer to sit here and drink yourself into legend.”
There was a moment’s silence between them before Henry said, “Are you in love with her, Tristan?”
The word felt dangerous, like a weapon left out in the open. Tristan rolled it around, testing its shape and heft. He looked up, met Henry’s eye, and said, “Yes.” The syllable fell like an axe.
Henry smiled, thin and real. “Then you know what to do.”
Tristan’s hand dropped to his coat pocket. He pulled out the amethyst pendant, let it lie in his palm. “I kept this,” he said, as if to himself. “I told myself it was only a curiosity. Now I think I kept it because I knew I would never see her again.”
“Rubbish,” said Henry, standing. “You kept it because you are a sentimental idiot.”
Tristan barked a laugh, the first real one in days. “I suppose I am.”
Henry clapped him on the shoulder. “So, what will you do?”
Tristan stood. The room spun, but he steadied himself. “I have already begun.”
Henry’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
“You will see,” Tristan said, and for the first time he could recall, a real smile broke across his face.
He moved toward the door, then paused as Henry called after him.
“Whatever you’re planning, don’t wait too long. Dawnford’s wedding plans are like a military campaign.”
Tristan did not look back, but the line of his body was pure willpower. “I won’t,” he said. “Not this time.”