Chapter 15
The footman at the door eyed Madeline suspiciously.
“Ladies don’t often come in here,” he repeated. “This is the Devil’s Clubhouse.”
“I know that,” Madeline snapped. “I am the Duchess of Tolford. I am here to see my husband.”
The footman wavered. She had a feeling that he would have very much liked to dismiss her and close the door in her face. However, that terrible title, duchess, dissuaded him.
And of course, the even more frightening title of duke.
At last, the footman sighed and stepped aside.
“Ladies are not generally admitted,” he said snippily.
Madeline, who knew this was not true, said nothing. She strode past the footman, careful to keep her head up, and hurried into the clubhouse. She heard the door slam behind her and flinched.
This was where the poetry reading was held, she thought. It looks entirely different in the daylight.
For the reading, a platform had been set up in the middle of the huge clubhouse floor, and chairs arranged around it.
If she closed her eyes, Madeline could still see the audience peering up at her, swathed in gloom.
There had been candlelight, of course, but not much of it, creating a strange, eerie glow in the room.
Even in her imagination, Tristan sat front and center, staring straight at her.
She shivered and swallowed hard.
Enough of that, she scolded herself, and turned to face the footman. The man still hovered behind her, sour-faced.
“Where is His Grace, the Duke of Tolford?” she demanded.
The footman barely smothered a sigh. “He is training, Your Grace. He has asked not to be disturbed.”
She lifted her chin, careful to meet the man’s gaze square in the eyes.
“And surely you cannot imagine that this exclusion applies to his wife, do you?”
The footman began to wilt. “The thing is, Your Grace, His Grace is so very pointed. So very clear. He generally doesn’t like to be disturbed, and for this particular match…”
“Match? What match? What is he doing?”
The poor footman appeared to be on the brink of tears. Madeline narrowed her eyes at him.
“This is important,” she said at last. “Go on, show me. Take me to him.”
Madeline found herself trotting along a high, railed open corridor, higher even than the mezzanine, ringing the ample space.
She peered down at the clubhouse floor far below, and her head swam with the height.
They were right against the ceiling, so close that if she were a foot or so taller, she would be able to touch the exquisite molding and carvings there.
There were doors set at regular intervals in the wall, all closed. This did not seem to be an area of interest for the average club member. The footman stopped at a door, seemingly at random, and lifted his hand as if to knock. His knuckles never quite touched the wood. Abruptly, he stepped back.
“You can go in if you wish,” he managed, swallowing, and scuttled away. Madeline watched him go with something like amazement.
Ridiculous man, she thought, and shoved open the door.
It had occurred to her, of course, that Tristan might be enjoying an assignation with a lady. Perhaps Miss Juliana Bolt, perhaps somebody else.
Either way, I intend to find out.
The door swung back, bouncing against the wall. Madeline found herself looking into a square, spartan room. A sparring room.
In the middle of the room, inside a marked-out ring, two men were sparring. One gentleman was unfamiliar to her, tall and strong-looking with a loose white shirt, but she barely gave him a second glance.
Tristan had stripped off his shirt, fighting bare-chested. Sweat rolled down the swell of his torso, and she could see the muscles in his shoulders shift as he moved. Curls of hair stood out across his chest, dampened by perspiration.
Heat coiled in her breast, plunging downwards, heavy as a stone, and seemed to rush through her whole body, right to her extremities. The pulse of arousal started up inside her, and Madeline swallowed thickly. Tristan’s arm flew back, fingers curled in a punch, about to hit his sparring companion.
“Stop!” Madeline cried.
At once, the two men stepped apart. The taller of the two, the one she did not recognize, put his back to her immediately and strode off to a low counter along an opposite wall.
There was a bowl and a jug there for washing, and a crumpled towel.
He did not even greet her, which she thought was rather rude.
This man did not attract much of her attention, however. Her gaze was dragged back to Tristan as though by a magnet.
Tristan was breathing heavily, sweat glistening on his chest as his shoulders heaved. He eyed her with a strange look, cool and intent. It made Madeline swallow hard again.
“Madeline, what are you doing here?” Tristan asked, voice rasping. “I was in the middle of a sparring session. I gave orders not to be interrupted. That footman…”
“Oh, don’t blame the poor footman,” Madeline muttered. “I bullied my way in, I can assure you.”
He grunted. “Be that as it may, I should have been left alone.”
Silence fell, and Madeline found that her gaze was tugged, quite shockingly, down to his naked chest. When she forced her eyes upwards again, Tristan was grinning knowingly at her.
“You are staring very hard, my lady,” he mused. “Whatever could have attracted your attention?”
She flushed and folded her arms. “Nothing much, as it turns out.”
He gave a bark of laughter. “Oh, very witty, my dear, very witty!”
“Put some clothes on, for heaven’s sake,” Madeline snapped, reddening further. She felt like somebody’s prudish spinster aunt.
Still chuckling, Tristan swaggered over to a low table by the window, where a second bowl, jug, and towel were set out.
He splashed water on his face, droplets rolling down his chest. Clearing her throat, Madeline concentrated on keeping her face averted.
She glanced over at the man again, the strange one.
He still had his back turned, and had not removed his shirt to wash his face, even though she could see that sweat plastered it to his skin.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your companion?” Madeline asked.
Tristan wandered back over to her, dabbing his face with the towel. He had still not put on a shirt, the wretch.
“You may call him Orion,” Tristan answered thoughtfully.
She frowned. “Orion? He’s a member of the rival gang, then?”
“One might say that.”
“Orion cannot possibly be his name.”
Tristan looked at her oddly. “Well, of course it is not.”
The man—Orion—moved over to a narrow side door, which she had not noticed before, still keeping his back to her.
“It is good to have met you, Your Grace,” he said in a deep, low voice that she did not recognize. Then, without so much as a goodbye or a by your leave, he slipped out through the doorway, closing it softly behind him.
Madeline sniffed. “What a strange man.”
“Enough about him,” Tristan said shortly. “You won’t see him again, I imagine. The man likes his privacy.”
There was an edge in his voice that made Madeline think that she’d pushed the subject to its limit. Oh, well, never mind. She didn’t particularly care too much about the stranger in any case.
“I am sorry for the interruption,” she murmured. “It all felt rather urgent at the time.”
“I would have won, you know,” he added with a grin, and it took her a moment to realize that he was talking about the fight.
“I… I don’t much care for violence,” Madeline admitted.
He chuckled. “Not even the friendly sort?”
“No. Although I did meet some people this morning who made me think of violence.”
This seemed to intrigue him. He waited, and she told the story about the promenade in the park, and what Charlotte had told her about the gossip regarding Adam’s birth.
Tristan did not seem as shocked as she had expected him to be. Perhaps he had already heard the gossip and did not care.
“I suppose that is the reason for your presence here, then?” he inquired, tossing the towel over his shoulder. He tilted his head, eyeing her curiously.
“I wanted to talk to you about Adam. About his christening, specifically.”
“I see. I’m sure his parents christened him already.”
“Maybe so, but I think a public christening would put paid to these rumors. And it will be a good way to introduce him to the ton.”
Tristan was silent for a long moment, lost in thought.
“You must know,” he said at last, “that a christening will not make this gossip go away.”
She reddened. “No, but we must try something.”
There was a moment of silence between them.
During the silence, Madeline noticed just how quiet the world around them had become.
She could hear the ticking of a clock somewhere.
The man called Orion had spilled a little water on the counter, and she could hear it falling, drop by drop, onto the floor below, slow and even as a metronome.
She could even hear a footman shuffling past outside, talking in a low voice to his companion.
The voices passed by and disappeared, yet Tristan still did not speak.
It occurred to her then that he must be getting cold. The room was not warm, and the exercise had caused sweat to break out on his skin, which was surely cooling off now. She glanced apprehensively down at his chest and saw that goosebumps rippled across the surface.
“You really should put on your shirt,” she said.
Tristan lifted an eyebrow. “Perhaps you should stop staring at me.”
“I am not… Oh, I cannot argue with you. What do you think of my christening suggestion?”
He shrugged. “I have no objection to christening the child. Do you wish to arrange it yourself, or shall you let my mother do so?”
“I don’t mind,” Madeline confessed. “There is another thing, too.”
“You do love to create suspense in our conversations, don’t you, my dear?”
She felt her cheeks heating at his teasing tone.
Curse my fair skin, Madeline thought mournfully. Heroines in novels don’t blush at the drop of a hat, do they?