Chapter 13
Thirteen
The carriage rattled down the rutted road into the little town of Greytonwich that blinked up at Greystone like a contented cat. Its rooflines warm with sun, chimneys crooked as old fingers, and the market square bright with bolts of linen and baskets of early pears.
Ernald Thynne sprawled opposite Tristan, his long legs bracketed around a picnic basket Elizabeth had insisted on bringing.
“You’ll come with us after your appointment in town,” Ernald said, tapping the basket, “Elizabeth means to parade me and the girls before the milliner like prize geese. You may as well suffer with dignity.”
Tristan grunted. “I have no interest in ribbons.”
Elizabeth, perched beside Ernald, smiled sweetly. “You have an interest in a certain lady who looks as though she might have worn her ribbons out. New ones do wonders for a woman’s courage.”
“I did not come to purchase courage,” Tristan said. “I came to gather facts.”
“Facts,” Ernald mused, “are fluid. I’ve found ribbons much easier to acquire.”
The solicitor’s little brass plate, Jamison he would not allow it. “Speak.”
Jamison drew a note from the mess, flattened it.
“A tradesman, a cooper by the river, has a cousin in Clerkenwell who swears a gentleman answering Davidson’s description let a tavern room for a night, three evenings past. He paid in new coins and left before dawn.
More usefully, the landlord overheard him ask after Greystone.
He has learned where the Dowager’s party is staged. ”
Tristan’s fingers drummed once, twice on the arm of his chair.
So he is close enough to know that his sister is at Greystone. He knows of the Duke Hunt and who has been invited. More well-informed than I gave him credit for.
He felt a thrill at seeing the fulfilment of his quest move closer. Tangibly closer.
“You advise?”
“I advise that pretense will draw him within reach. A scandal may suffice, but it would obviously impact your own good name. A betrothal to the young woman in question?”
Jamison’s eyes held the acquisitive sparkle of a magpie. Tristan smiled, pleased that his solicitor was quick enough to see the plan that Tristan had already formed. A canny ally always saved time that would otherwise be spent on explanations.
“What brother would not be drawn by news of his sister’s betrothal?” Tristan said.
“If rumors of a betrothal will not do it, a wedding will. In haste. Announced loudly,” Jamison hesitated, “an annulment can be managed if both parties agree and the marriage remains unconsummated.” Silence pressed between them, filled with the faint scratch of a clerk’s pen in the next room.
At last, Tristan said, “Draw up what you must to prepare for posting the banns at Greystone and at St. Martin’s. You’re right. A wedding might be called for not just news of a betrothal. And keep your eyes on Clerkenwell.”
Jamison inclined his head. “Very good.”
Tristan stood. “Send word at once if you learn more.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Jamison hesitated as Tristan turned, “If I may…”
“You may not.”
Jamison smiled. “Then I shall only say, wolves hunt best with a mate.”
Tristan left before he said something regrettable.
The square had swollen with afternoon trade. Tristan was halfway through his navigation of the crowded market when the world narrowed to a single point. Coppery hair catching the sun. Christine.
She emerged from a bookseller’s with Blanche Waldron, a modest parcel tucked in her arm. The Dowager’s coachman lingered discreetly by the post-house. Christine’s gaze skittered over the square, wary as a doe measuring the wind.
She saw him before Blanche. Her eyes met Tristan’s and held; the doe had spied a wolf. Blanche looked around, and Tristan saw her brows deepen. She whispered to Christine, who smiled. They crossed. Blanche, irrepressible as ever, swept a curtsey that turned into a grin.
“Your Grace. I was just assuring Christine that town air cures every ill.”
“Except gossip,” Tristan said.
Christine’s eyes held his for a breath too long. “We were only buying a book. Not gossip.”
“Two,” Blanche amended, “one for sense, one for scandal. A balanced diet.”
Tristan’s mouth quirked despite himself. “Which is which?”
“Time will tell.”
“How fares your courage today, Lady Christine? Has anyone thrown wine at you in the last hour?”
Her chin lifted. “Only admiration. It can be just as sticky.”
“Admiration washes off,” Tristan said, “contempt stains.”
Blanche blinked once, approving perhaps. Christine looked away, fingers tightening on her parcel.
“We were going to explore something of this charming town if you would care to join us?” Christine said.
“Escort us, you mean,” Blanche said.
“You require protection from…” Tristan looked around the market, “Geese or ribbons?”
“From bullies and…” Blanche began with a close approximation to fierceness.
“And I am more than capable of dealing with Martha,” Christine put in.
Tristan wondered if the omission of the honorific was a message.
“She has chosen Bingley, so her judgment is certainly suspect,” Tristan said.
“I once chose Bingley,” Christine reminded him.
“And would you choose him now?” Tristan said, holding her gaze with an eagle stare.
“He is cultured. Well-bred…” Christine said thoughtfully.
“Insipid. Cowardly.” Tristan retorted
“Is cowardice the good manners not to insult another?” Christine said.
“It is the unwillingness to confront.”
“Confront in order to insult and denigrate.”
“To speak truth. Even if it is not palatable to the other party,” Tristan countered.
“Should I walk in a different direction? You seem like guests at a private function,” Blanche said breezily.
Tristan blinked, realizing that he and Christine were standing mere feet apart in the middle of the pavement. The market swept around them as though they were an island in the middle of a river. Blanche smiled sweetly when Christine looked at her. Christine blushed, looking at Tristan.
“Not at all. Let us walk together so that I might guard you against…”
As he spoke, Tristan forced his eyes from Christine, conscious of the desire to look nowhere else. His gaze ran over the market with the eye of a general, mapping the square without appearing to look. There, the cooper’s boy with the news-sheet.
There Christine, taking Blanche’s arm but glancing back at him, and there the old woman selling posies. Christine’s bronze hair against her pale neck. Her roseate cheeks and emerald eyes, there, the pair of clerks who kept glancing and whispering.
And, just under the awning of the apothecary, a man whose clothes tried and failed to be respectable.
His hat was low, his attention elsewhere whenever Christine turned, then too fixed when she did not.
Tristan’s skin went cold, then hot. Christine and Blanche had paused at the window of a milliner's shop.
Blanche said something that made her smile—a sliver of summer on the drab street.
The man under the awning shifted closer, drifting the way a thief drifts by not drifting at all, merely allowing the crowd to carry him. Tristan’s hands were very still. He stepped away from the ladies and took a long route to the watcher, moving as if idling.
A tin-smith hawked ladles; a piper sawed at a reel. The man in the hat kept to the shade, now angling toward the narrow cut between the milliner and the barber, an alley no wider than a man’s shoulders.
Blanche touched Christine’s sleeve.
“On second thought, that straw is hideous. Come see the blue ribbons.”
She turned Christine away from the alley, but the man adjusted, patient. Tristan came up the far side and stopped outside the barber’s, where the alley gave out onto the lane behind. He leaned against the sun-warmed brick, the picture of boredom.
When the man slid past the corner and into the alley’s mouth, Tristan caught his sleeve. The fellow jerked, looked up, and found himself staring into a pair of eyes the color of winter sea.
“Afternoon,” Tristan said softly, “lost your way?”
“I beg pardon, sir,” the man tried to wrench free, “you mistake me.”
“I rarely do,” Tristan’s hand tightened, not visibly, but with the implacable pressure of a trap closing, “your name.”
“Thomas,” the man said. Sweat prickled his lip.
“Family name.”
“Thomas,” he repeated.
Tristan smiled without warmth. “And I am Duskwood Duskwood. Try again.”
The man’s glance flicked toward the milliner’s shop. Christine laughed at something Blanche said. The sound resounded like a bell. Tristan’s grip tightened an infinitesimal turn.
“Name,” he said.
“Gale,” the man stammered, “Henry Gale. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Not yet,” Tristan said. “But you will, unless I explain the world to you. Attend carefully, the woman you were following belongs to me.”
The words came out cold. Not the snarl of a wolf but the inevitable terminal promise of a gathering storm cloud.
Gale swallowed. “I didn’t know she was attached.”
“You knew enough to skulk,” Tristan said, “who sent you?”
“No one.”
Tristan’s smile showed a hint of tooth. The wolf stirred.
“You breathe like a liar. Try the truth, Mr. Gale. It has the benefit of requiring less wit.”