Chapter 14
Fourteen
The path through the woods dappled sunlight across Christine’s skirts as she walked, following the faint sound of a stream somewhere ahead.
The day had turned fine, and the air smelled of warm pine and earth.
While Blanche circumnavigated the market and burdened herself with ribbons, hats, and jams. Christine had begged leave to take a walk before returning to Greystone.
Perhaps it was not wise to escape while Tristan was occupied with Lord and Lady Thynne and their picnic. Not if someone is watching me.
But if Charles was ultimately behind the watcher, she could not bring herself to feel afraid. Her brother could not possibly mean her harm.
No matter how far he may have sunk. He would not do me harm. Will I see harm done to him, even indirectly? No.
The conflict within her was tearing her in two. Charles’ victims, including their own father, deserved justice. But Charles was her brother. Nothing could change that. She knew that she would do anything to protect him.
It was rare, these quiet hours to herself, rarer still that her thoughts did not run immediately to Gillray House, to Charles, Selina, or the heavy question of her so-called betrothal to the Duke of Duskwood.
Which I have agreed to! I have actually agreed! I feel like I am dreaming. But is it a dream or a nightmare?
She could retract her agreement, she knew that.
But part of her was bereft at the thought.
Part of her did not want the arrangement to be cancelled.
Wanted a wedding night with the Wolf…She lengthened her stride as though to escape the thoughts.
Pushing through a cluster of ferns, she stopped short.
A child’s voice was crying somewhere to the left, thin and frightened. She called out.
“Louisa! Louisa, don’t leave me!”
Christine’s heart leaped. “Hello? Who’s there?”
Two small shapes burst out from the bracken like startled birds. Both were girls, one perhaps eight, the other no more than six. They were dressed in pale muslin already stained with grass and adventure. Their bonnets hung from ribbons; their hair tumbled loose.
The elder halted at once, clutching the other’s hand. The resemblance was close enough that Christine thought they must be sisters. The younger sniffled and wiped at her eyes.
“Are you lost?” Christine asked gently, crouching to put herself at the same level as the two children.
The older one nodded with grave dignity.
“We were playing hide-and-seek, but our governess went the wrong way. I think she’ll be very cross.”
“I expect she will be more worried than cross,” Christine said, “where were you meant to be?”
“Near the orchard,” the little one hiccupped. “We saw a squirrel.”
Christine smiled. “Then you’ve had quite an adventure. Shall we find your way back before your governess sends the entire militia to look for you?”
The older girl hesitated, squinting up through her curls. “You’re not afraid of the woods?”
“No,” Christine said, offering her hand. “I rather like them.”
The girl’s face brightened. “Uncle Tristan’s not afraid either.”
Christine blinked. “Uncle Tristan?”
The younger one nodded eagerly. “He walks faster than anyone! We saw him just now, but he didn’t see us. He was going that way.”
She pointed down a side path. Christine’s pulse skipped. Tristan was hardly the most common name in England. And for there to be another in this vicinity seemed to stretch the plausible.
But Uncle Tristan? I know nothing about him, so I cannot say if he has a brother or a sister. I just don’t see him as being called Uncle by young children.
“And he’s very fierce,” the older child went on with relish, “when he’s being the Big Bad Wolf.”
“The…what?” Christine gasped. “It’s a game!” the little one squealed, delighted now that tears were forgotten, “he hides and then chases us, and we have to run to the safe tree before he catches us! If he does, he says he’ll gobble us up,” she giggled, “but he never does. He only growls.”
Christine felt something warm and unfamiliar unfurl in her chest. She could hardly reconcile the two images.
The grim guarded man of stone and the…the big bad wolf?
A big, bad wolf that could reduce his nieces to fits of giggles. The idea was an attractive one, and it led her to a thought that she tried to bury the moment she discerned its shape.
It was the notion that Tristan sounded like he could be a father. It made Christine acutely aware of her own femininity. To be the sire of children was as masculine a role as a man could have. And Christine loved children.
“Your uncle sounds terrifying,” she teased.
The elder girl grinned. “He pretends. But he never lets anyone frighten us for real.”
“Well then,” Christine said softly, “let’s see if we can find your wolf before he gets worried.”
They followed the winding path through the trees. Their chatter filled the quiet glades of ponies and ribbons and how Uncle Tristan had shown them how to climb the low orchard wall.
“Does your uncle live near here?” she asked.
“Not very,” the older replied, “we live in London mostly, but we come to visit Uncle Tristan when the weather is nice. Uncle Tristan says country air makes beasts of little girls.”
Christine laughed aloud at that, and the sound startled a blackbird from a nearby branch. She loved the way the girls seemed so desperate to insert their uncle’s name into every sentence. As though they were proud of him.
When the path widened, a figure appeared ahead, tall and unmistakable. He was striding quickly, coat and collar unbuttoned, head bent as though searching the undergrowth. The two girls gave a shriek of glee.
“Uncle Tristan!”
Tristan looked up sharply, relief flashing across his face before surprise softened it.
“God above,” he muttered, closing the distance in a few long strides, “where the devil have you…” he broke off when he saw Christine, his expression flickering from irritation to something unreadable.
“I found them wandering and quite lost. They ran off chasing a squirrel,” she said, smiling at the girls’ beaming faces, “I thought you might be missing them.”
“I was,” he said dryly, “and so is their governess, who will age ten years before the hour is out.”
He crouched to their level. “Do you know what happens to little cubs who run away from their den?”
The smaller girl giggled. “They get gobbled up?”
“Worse,” he said gravely. “They get carried.”
With a theatrical growl, he scooped them both up under his arms. The girls shrieked with laughter, kicking their legs and clutching his coat as he spun once, just enough to make them squeal. Christine’s laughter joined theirs before she could stop it.
It felt impossible not to; he looked so absurdly, gloriously human. He set the girls down at last, their cheeks pink from excitement.
“Back to your governess with you, my wild things. Straight down that path and no diversions. If you stray again, I’ll huff and I’ll puff…”
“…and you’ll blow our house down!” they chorused, scampering off down the path.
Christine watched them go, her smile fading into quiet wonder. “I did not think you knew any nursery tales, let alone enacted them.”
Tristan dusted off his hands. “My friend Ernald’s children. They think me a beast, so I oblige them.”
She arched a brow. “A rather gentle beast, it seems.”
“Do not spread that rumor,” he said, “I have a reputation to maintain.”
“Why?”
It was an unexpected question for both of them, a thought that appeared in her mind and was spoken aloud without conscious volition. She flushed at its brazen directness.
But then, don't I have the right to ask if he wishes us to pretend to be betrothed? Not even that, but married!
“To keep others away,” Tristan replied, his tone suggesting the snarl of the challenged pack leader.
“That sounds lonely.”
“I have everyone I need.”
“Except me.”
Pause. A blade had slipped through his armor. He looked at her from beneath gathered brows, his hair, a mane, tumbling about his carved features. Christine gasped, thinking of primitive epochs in which men’s language was strength and force, survival of the savage.
“Do I not?”
Christine flushed.
I must learn to think of our marriage of convenience as a transaction only. I cannot go weak at the knees every time I think of being Christine Valentine of Duskwood.
“We were talking of your frightening away people.”
“Are you not frightened?”
“Not for myself, no.”
“You are fond of the girls,” she said.
“I am,” he said without hesitation.
“Their parents have been kind to me. The girls…remind me that not everything in this world must be earned through fear.”
There was a melancholy in his tone she had never heard before. Christine found herself stepping closer. Proximity to him made her heart skip and her breath come quick. Her pulse raced when she realized that he could simply reach out and touch her in the blink of an eye.
“It is commendable that you were so anxious to find them.”
“I have lost much in my life. I do not say that for sympathy. It is a fact,” Tristan said, “it makes me value what I have.”
“What have you lost?” Christine asked.
His storm-dark eyes found hers, held them with the force of a clasped hand.
She could not look away and did not want to.
She felt stripped by that gaze, exposed to her skin.
To her soul. She forgot to breathe, flushed with embarrassment, and took a deep breath.
His gaze never wavered to her heaving chest, but she felt the effort of his attention.
He wants to look. He wants me, my body. Oh Lord, that thought is enough to make my knees tremble.
She had unlocked an aspect of his character that had previously been completely hidden. But there was more, and her heart hammered at the prospect of discovering it. Of peeling back another layer, a layer closer to discovering the real Tristan.
“That is too grim a subject for an afternoon walk.”
“A subject that brings understanding cannot be grim. Only good,” Christine countered.
She was determined to hang onto this opportunity.
She was glimpsing the man behind the portcullis.
Seeing through his defenses. He looked away, and she found herself studying his profile, wanting to run her fingers over the planes and angles of his face.
To touch him and feel him react to her touch.
It was enough to make her feel drunk, dizzy.
“That depends on the reason behind the question. And the role of the questioner,” he said evenly. “For now, we play our parts. You as my betrothed, I as your devoted protector.” She should have been angry at his shutting his gates in her face. Instead, she found herself laughing again, softly.
“You are insufferable.”
“And yet you smile.”
“I smile because I pity you. You have no idea how transparent you are.”
He stepped closer still, the shadow of a grin ghosting his lips. “Then enlighten me.”
“You think this pretense of betrothal is a game you control. It is not. One day, you will find yourself caught by your own snare.”
His eyes darkened. “Is that a threat?”
“A prediction.”
The tension between them coiled tighter than the sunlight through the trees.
She turned to walk on, but he caught her wrist, not harshly, just enough that she could feel the strength behind the gentleness.
Her breath shuddered; she relished that strength, knowing that its display had been prompted by her.
He was the one whose self-control slipped. Not I. And it was I who made that control slip its chains.
“You enjoy testing me,” he murmured.
His voice was a soft rumble that reverberated through Christine.
“Perhaps I do,” she whispered.
For a moment, they stood like that, the forest hushed around them, their breaths shallow in the same air. His thumb brushed the pulse at her wrist, deliberate, lingering.
“Careful,” he said, “you might wake the wolf.”
“Maybe I am a wolf also. And you are waking me.”
He drew her closer, so close she could see the faint scar that ran along his jaw. His eyes were molten grey, his breath warm against her temple.
“This is foolish,” she said, though she made no move to step away, “anyone could happen along.”
“Just two wolves engaged in the most primal of dances,” he said, and kissed her.
The world seemed to tilt. The scent of crushed grass, of his skin, filled her senses.
Her heart raced. His mouth moved against hers with a hunger that stole thought, that made her forget propriety, gossip, everything but the way his hands framed her face as though he would devour and worship her in the same breath.
She pressed herself against him, feeling his hardness, feeling his heat in the pant of his breath, the movement of his chest, the unyielding power of his embrace.
She felt soft in comparison. Fragile. Delicate and helpless.
She clutched at him, wanting more of his hardness, more of his power, while also fighting against it, resisting, refusing to be utterly helpless.
When his lips broke from hers, she fastened onto his neck, pulling his head down, becoming the she-wolf.
He gasped her name in a desperate exhalation that caused her legs to buckle.
His arms were all that held her upright.
One of his hands landed on her left breast, and it was his name that escaped her in urgent fervor.
The shocking inappropriateness of the touch was more intoxicating than the most potent spirit.
She clasped her hand atop his, reason demanding that she rip the touch away.
Instinct demanded a louder scream that his hand never move.
She pressed, encouraging his fingers to delve and squeeze, moaning into his hungry mouth, letting her desire escape her.
When at last he broke away, she was trembling.
“Christine,” he said roughly, “if I were a better man, I’d beg your forgiveness.”
She caught her breath. “And since you are not?”
“Then I’ll only warn you that once the wolf has tasted, he never forgets.”
She laughed, low and breathless. “Then we are both doomed.”
He smiled, a real smile this time, rare and devastating, and brushed a stray lock from her cheek.
“Perhaps,” he murmured, “but what a delicious doom it is.”