Chapter 18
Eighteen
The outer fringes of the woodland couldn’t help but yield to the ferocity of the rainstorm. It didn’t take long for the drops that permeated the thin canopy to become irritating.
“This was probably a foolish idea,” Christine said, wiping rain from her face.
“You want to go back to Greystone?”
“I should, they will be drying themselves before fires and warming their insides with tea and buttered toast.”
“And burning each other’s ears with their gossip. No, thank you. I would rather be wet.”
Christine laughed. “I suppose that at the very least, I can walk.”
“No,” Tristan said, immediately, “your shoes are entirely unsuitable for woodland walking. They’re little better than slippers.”
Christine’s slippered foot poked out beneath the hem of her skirt, and she waggled it.
“They are pumps rather than shoes. Silk and very thin leather soles. Very pretty though. I have never had a pair so pretty.”
He slung one arm behind her back, the other beneath her knees, the warm curves of muscle as steady and strong as any oak. “Be careful, or I might think I am carrying Lady Martha or one of her ilk.”
Christine playfully slapped his chest with one hand.
She meant to draw it back, but her fingers lingered against his damp shirt.
The starched cotton was thinning under the liquid assault, and in several places it clung to Tristan’s skin, rendering itself transparent.
She felt as though the barriers between them were thinning.
Perhaps only for the duration of this game. The way the veil between life and death is said to thin on All Hallows’ Eve. But that does not last.
“Lady Martha, no doubt, expects the best of everything because she has always had the best. I have never had it. At least not since I was a young child.”
Tristan gazed down at her from a distance of inches. Christine laced her fingers together behind his neck, telling herself that it was simply to aid him in holding her up. His arms showed no sign of noticing the burden of her weight, though. They were solid as stone and without a tremor.
It would be nice to be held…for a while. To be carried as though I am fragile and precious.
“I am sure I saw the crown of an oak earlier, perhaps a quarter mile from the house. That would provide solid enough cover for us to wait out the storm. Shall we dare it?”
“Let’s,” Christine responded.
Tristan grinned. Not a wolfish grin. Not savage.
It was pure enjoyment. As though she had stumbled on an activity he could take genuine pleasure in.
It felt like a chink in an iron mask that had been impenetrable to this point, revealing a living, breathing man behind the image that was so relentlessly presented to the world.
They walked deeper into the woods. After a few dozen yards, Christine spied a key dangling from the low-hanging branch of an elm.
“Take it. When the game resumes, we will have a head start on the rest,” Tristan urged.
“That would be cheating.”
“No one will ever know.”
“I would. Aren’t gentlemen supposed to hold honor sacred above all?”
“Not all gentlemen do,” was Tristan’s loaded reply.
Christine looked at him, then pushed against his chest.
“Put me down.”
“Your feet will get wet.”
“I don’t care.”
He put her down. She turned her back on the key and the victory in the last game of the Hunt. She put her hands on her hips, glaring at Tristan. Rain spattered through leaves to wet her hair, plastering it to her head.
Tristan tossed his own head, hair sending droplets flying. The clothes of both were darkening and thinning, but these changes were ignored.
“I do not deny that Charles has behaved dishonorably,” Christine began.
“That is well because to do so would be a lie,”
“But I do not believe he acted deliberately!” Christine shot back, “he is not a bad man.”
“Only a liar and a cad and…” Tristan began.
“No!” Christine exclaimed, “he got in over his head in something I do not understand and over which he lost all control. He was incompetent and perhaps selfish and even delusional. But not malicious. We must establish that here and now.”
Tristan loomed, but she stood her ground. She had seen him do it to others. He wielded his name and reputation like a club, and all he swung at fell down. But she would not.
I will be heard! I am not to be a mute bait dangling on his line for my brother. I am to be a Duchess. Well, let me be one then!
“You forgot, ‘coward’,” Tristan said in a voice like steel being unsheathed.
The club had swung and she had withstood the blow. Tristan grimaced.
“He did terrible things, but he is still my brother. He was the one I ran to as a little girl when I fell and skinned my knee. He was the one who protected me. I cannot simply hate him as though I am closing a door on a room of my life. He behaved dishonorably, but does that make him wicked?”
“Perhaps not. A dishonorable coward. He still deserves…”
His mouth clamped shut around whatever he had been about to say. It was time for Christine to wield her own weaponry.
“Yes? Deserves you were about to say? Deserves what, exactly?”
“Justice,” Tristan said, finally.
“In court before a judge and a jury. Not summarily at the hands of a man who feels he has been wronged.”
“I have! My family has!” Tristan barked.
“And yet you are not destitute? You dress well, have property, horses, and carriages. You are still wealthy.”
Tristan laughed bitterly. “Easy to say when you have never had these things.”
“Yes. Perhaps I can see how meaningless such things are when I have been deprived of them. Perhaps I value other things more, and perhaps you would do well to learn from my example.”
“My family lost more than coin!” Tristan roared, “Do not dare trivialize what your brother did to us!”
Christine saw the savage anger in his face, felt the rawness of the wound. This was not just about a rich man who had lost some of his wealth but could spare it. Not just the wounded pride of a wealthy aristocrat who felt himself duped. She frowned, wiping water from her face again.
“I will not,” she said, calmly, “I would not where genuine loss has been suffered. I lost my father. Charles’ actions led to his death. His heart broke from the strain of the dishonor he felt.”
She felt tears pricking at her eyes and hoped the rain would disguise them. She could do nothing about the catch in her voice, though. The trembling that ran through her words, especially the word father, was a betrayal of her emotions.
Tristan stared at her, breathing hard, face tight with cruel anger. The wolf at bay. He stepped closer and took her hands. His grip was gentle, as tender as though he thought her made of flower petals.
“I lost the man who was a father to me. The man who stepped into my true father’s shoes and…excelled. He lost most of the Duskwood fortune to Charles’ schemes. The guilt consumed him.”
Tristan removed his hand from hers and held it up. She looked at the bisecting scar. She ran her fingers down it.
“I lied. I did not receive this burn as a child on a swing. I…” He trailed off. Christine saw his throat flex as he swallowed. “I had to tend to my uncle after his death. There was a rope and…” He cut himself off abruptly and looked away.
“Then why did you lie. There has been so much suspicion and distrust in my life; why add to it? Particularly when you have wished to earn my trust?” Christine asked.
Tristan rubbed his palm and scowled. “Forgive me for not making you the center of my world, even when I barely knew you.”
“You knew me well enough to wish to marry me,” Christine replied, “to force me to marry you.”
“I forced nothing. You agreed. I merely suggested what was in your best interests,” Tristan retorted.
Christine laughed bitterly. “You discovered my name and bent your will to molding me to yours.”
“You had and have agency,” Tristan snapped, “if you choose not to exercise it, that is not my fault.”
“I have exercised agency in the only way I could.”
“Then we agree! You have made your own choices.”
“I have selected from a very small number available to me.”
Tristan threw up his hands in exasperation.
Christine watched his face, saw the mask fall away for the first time.
There was naked grief there, as fresh as the day it had been caused.
Open pain as though the scar were a fresh wound.
She was aware of the trust the Wolf Duke placed in her, revealing even the slightest wound, but he was still willing to overlook her own wounds in his pursuit of justice.
She folded his fingers over the scarred palm and released his hand, though her own trembled as if to reach.
His eyes were wide and full of an energy that drew Christine, that leaked into her soul and set it alight.
He was breathing hard, as though he had been running.
Lips slightly parted made Christine wish to be kissed.
To press her mouth against his, silence his words, and feel only his passion. The air between them hummed.
For a long, silent moment, she breathed.
His palms were rough, not the hands of a man of indolent wealth.
His scent was intoxicating, filling Christine’s head with thoughts of kissing, nipping, touching.
Of being pressed against him and held. Of holding him.
Her lips parted because to breathe hard against his skin felt like a scandalous intimacy.
“If I do not get you into shelter, you might catch a fever,” Tristan whispered.
His hand cupped the back of her head, and his own head lowered to hers until their foreheads touched. Christine looked up, questing for his lips and finding them briefly. The instant’s touch was enough to set every nerve afire and her pulse running like a startled deer.
“I am struggling to care about that,” she whispered, conscious of the cold wetness only as a trivial peripheral detail. His skin was so warm, her own pulse a fire that burned despite the rain.
“I know. But I must care, for your own sake,”