Chapter 20
Twenty
The storm had broken but seemed to linger inside Greystone’s walls, woven into the laughter and the bright chatter of guests who refused to accept that the Duke Hunt was over.
By mid-afternoon, the drawing room was a hive of triumph, champagne glasses flashing, music tumbling from the pianoforte, and the Dowager Duchess glowing with satisfaction as though she had engineered a royal marriage rather than a game’s ending.
Not all shared the triumph. Lady Martha pleaded a headache and left the room, shadowed by her fiancée.
Some of her court left with disapproving looks towards the victors and whispered words about the sad end that the Dowager’s games had reached.
The hostess seemed blithely unaware of the disgruntlement which her winners had drawn.
Tristan endured it all with the distant civility of a man tolerating the end of a play whose conclusion he already knew. His arm had remained fixed at Christine’s back as the Dowager made her speech, declaring them the perfect pairing, proof that the heart knows its match.
The words had been met with laughter and toasts, and Christine’s cheeks had flushed a lovely shade of pink, though whether from pleasure or mortification he could not say.
It makes her glow. Makes her radiant. Like she was when I brought her to the peak of ecstasy in the woods. The same shining glow.
He fought to keep his thoughts focused and under control. This was no time to indulge his desire or pretend that everything that had happened was not happening in accordance with his plans.
I am not in search of a wife. And any excitement I feel at the conclusion of these ludicrous games is for the furthering of my objectives. That is all.
When he had finally excused himself, murmuring something about business to attend to, Christine had caught his hand. It was a brief, uncertain gesture.
“You will return?”
“Before supper. Do not worry. I am not going to abandon you.”
The unspoken word hung in the air between them. Yet.
It will be necessary. It is necessary, and I will shed no tears over it.
Tristan wished he did not feel that he had to convince himself.
“Where are you going?” Christine asked.
“To remove an obstruction from our path.”
Now, his carriage rattled towards his objective, and Tristan planned. Christine’s belongings, what could they be? A few dresses, a book or two, perhaps a trinket from her sister.
Lady Gillray had treated her as a servant; it was unlikely she had much to her name. Still, Tristan felt the need to recover every scrap, as though each item might testify to what she had endured. And to what she was owed.
He told himself the errand was practical. Necessary. Yet beneath that reasoning coiled a far less comfortable truth. He wanted to stand in the house where she had suffered and remind himself of what he had rescued her from and of what he had sworn never to become.
The carriage stopped at the door of Gillray House, its facade yellowed by age, its windows shut tight against the world. The knocker was tarnished brass, dull beneath his glove.
He rapped once. A full minute passed before a butler appeared, his face grey with apprehension.
“Yes?”
“The Duke of Duskwood requires an audience with Lady Gillray,” Tristan said, abruptly.
“Is Her Ladyship expecting you, Your Grace?”
“Damned if she is!” Tristan snapped, pushing the door wide and shouldering past the bewildered man.
“Your Grace, this is most…”
“Unexpected, yes,” Tristan said, “you may inform Lady Gillray that I shall not require her to stand. I only require her attention.”
A portrait of the late Viscount Gillray stared down in dusty disapproval as Tristan strode toward the morning room. Voices drifted through the door, one male, one female, one drawling and superior. He recognized the male voice. Dreadford. His jaw tightened, and he entered without announcement.
Lady Gillray was ensconced in a high-backed chair, lace cap quivering as she turned. Lord and Lady Dreadford were on the sofa opposite, the man red-faced with wine, his wife swathed in ruffles and moral indignation. All three stared as though he were an apparition risen from the carpet.
“Your Grace,” Lady Gillray gasped, one hand flying to her throat, “how very sudden.”
Tristan bowed, perfunctory. “You are not mistaken. Suddenness is sometimes necessary.”
He crossed to the hearth, refusing the wave of her hand, which was an invitation to sit. Rain had begun again, and it beat a faint percussion against the windows.
“I have come to arrange for Lady Christine’s possessions to be sent to Duskwood tomorrow. My servants will collect them in the morning.”
The silence that followed was thick with outrage.
“Collect them?” Lady Gillray repeated faintly, “You speak as if she were already…already…”
“My betrothed,” Tristan supplied, “she is. The announcement will appear in tomorrow’s papers.”
Lord Dreadford’s face turned a curious shade of crimson.
“Surely you jest, sir. The chit is scarcely fit for such an honor. I myself…”
“Wished to ruin her?” Tristan’s tone was mild, but it froze the room. “I am aware.”
Those three words carried a menace worse than a shaken fist. They were spoken in the same tone as a blade whispering from its sheath.
Lady Dreadford gave a strangled sound. “My husband…!”
“Your husband,” Tristan said, his gaze slicing toward her, “is fortunate that I prefer not to dirty my gloves twice in one week.”
Dreadford lurched to his feet, fists clenching. “You dare insult me!”
Tristan took a step forward. “I do. And if you so much as breathe a word of my fiancée’s name in any company again, I will ensure the world knows precisely what kind of hospitality you offer to young women. But the slander against your name will not matter to you because you will be dead.”
Dreadford blanched. Lady Dreadford clutched his sleeve and hissed.
“Sit down, you fool!”
Lady Gillray rose unsteadily. “You have no right, Your Grace! Christine is my ward until she marries, and only with my consent. You cannot simply steal her away…”
Tristan turned, his voice quiet but lethal. “Do not speak of theft. You bartered her virtue for favor. You shackled her with work and humiliation. You will not touch her life again.”
Her lips trembled. “You would threaten me?”
“I do not threaten,” he said, “I state terms. Refuse them, and I shall see your name in every scandal sheet from here to Edinburgh. The story of how Lady Gillray sought to sell her ward to Lord Dreadford might amuse the Dowager Duchess’s acquaintances.”
Her face went the color of old linen. “You would not dare.”
“Wouldn’t I?” He smiled without warmth, “Try me. Please.”
For a long moment, the only sound was the rain whispering against the glass. Then Lady Dreadford gathered her husband and swept out, muttering about impropriety and ill breeding. The door clicked shut behind them. Lady Gillray sagged into her chair, clutching at the armrest.
“You will regret this.”
“Unlikely,” Tristan said, “my regrets are reserved for the living.”
He turned and strode from the room before she could reply.
The butler stood frozen in the hall like a decorative column.
Tristan passed him, already done with the house and everything in it.
He was halfway down the front steps and across the drive to where his carriage awaited when a soft cry stopped him.
“Your Grace, please, wait!”
A maid had slipped out the servants’ door, breathless and pale, clutching her apron.
She looked barely twenty. Her cap was crooked, and rain had dampened her curls.
She kept to a corner of the house, out of the view of any of its windows.
Tristan glanced at those panes of soft light, seeing no faces, and walked to where the girl stood.
“What is it?” he demanded.
She dropped into a curtsey so deep she nearly lost her balance.
“Forgive me, Your Grace, but I thought you should know. For Christine’s sake, I mean Lady Christine, she gave me leave to use her name.
She is my friend, you see. Her ladyship, Lady Gillray, I mean, intends to go to a magistrate tonight.
She says you’ve taken Lady Christine against her will, and that Lord and Lady Dreadford will swear to it.
Sir Jeffrey Sharpe, his name is. I heard her dictating the invitation to dinner. ”
Tristan stilled. “Kidnapping,” he said softly, “how creative.”
The maid swallowed. “She says she’ll have the Bow Street men at your door before the week is out.”
He looked at her properly then—small, frightened, trembling with loyalty to a friend and prepared to defy a mistress who would throw her into the street without a second thought.
“What is your name?”
“Jane, Your Grace.”
“Jane,” he repeated, as if testing the sound, “and why tell me this?”
“Christine is my friend and has been for years,” the girl whispered. “If you’ve helped her get out of this house, then I won’t let anything old Gillray does stop you. I want her out of it.”
Tristan’s expression flickered, something sharp and conflicted passing through it. “You’ve risked much.”
“I know, Your Grace. But I don’t mind if it helps her. You are helping her, ain’t you?”
Tristan admired the fierceness in Jane’s eyes when it came to the matter of helping her friend.
“I am,” he said, “if you’ve a mind to leave this house, go to Duskwood. Tell my steward your name and that I promised you a position. He’ll see you set to rights.”
Her eyes widened, a mix of shock and gratitude. “Truly, Your Grace?”
“Do I look the sort of man who trifles?” his voice softened a fraction. “Go back before you’re missed.”
She dipped another curtsey, tears glinting in her lashes. “God bless you, Your Grace.”
Then she vanished back into the house like a shadow in the rain.
Tristan walked back to where his carriage waited. As he climbed inside, he caught sight of his reflection in the glass, the hard planes of his face. The rain outside blurred the world into moving streaks of silver.
He flexed his hand.
“I’m surrounded by orphans and fools,” he muttered, “waifs, strays, sentimental causes.” The carriage lurched into motion, wheels splashing through puddles, “and now maids.”
The irony wasn’t lost on him. He, who had sworn never again to expose himself to attachment, to weakness, now found himself collecting additions to his life as though they were trophies.
Christine would laugh if she knew. She would clasp her hands and say the girl must be helped, that kindness cost nothing. He could already hear her voice in his mind. Soft, infuriating, but unyielding. He looked out at the passing countryside.
“I’m getting soft.”
But even as he said it, he knew that softness was contagious. Christine’s compassion had begun to seep into him, dissolving edges he had spent years sharpening. She had stepped into his life like light spilling into a locked room, and he, fool that he was, had not barred the door.
The carriage turned toward London. Through the misted glass, he watched the lights of the city glow in the distance, smearing and shifting through the rain.
Somewhere out there, Gillray’s carriage might already be rattling toward a magistrate’s house, armed with outrage and self-righteousness.
Let her go. A public accusation only strengthens my position. Scandal will surely draw the brother like a wasp to honey.
Still, his jaw tightened. He disliked being maneuvered by anyone, least of all an old harridan who reeked of lavender and malice. Perhaps tomorrow he would send his solicitor to pay the magistrate a visit, just to ensure the man’s imagination did not wander too far.
His thoughts drifted back to Christine, her wide, watchful eyes as she’d stood beside him in the Dowager’s drawing room, the tremor in her voice.
“You will return?”
He had swallowed the answer his heart had wanted to give.
Dismissed it as a weakness. As superfluous, irrelevant to his objectives.
Emotion was a currency he spent sparingly.
He pressed his fingers against the windowpane, feeling the cold seep through.
What a fool he was becoming. He could almost hear his uncle’s dry laughter echoing from the grave.
You cannot save the world, Tristan. You can barely save yourself.
The carriage jolted over a rut, jerking him back to the present. He exhaled slowly. The last traces of daylight were sinking behind the horizon. Rain turned to fog.
He thought of the future waiting at Duskwood.
Christine’s quiet defiance, her unflinching kindness, the maddening warmth that crept beneath his skin whenever she looked at him.
A house filled not with shadows and silence, but with her laughter and perhaps, if she had her way, with half the downtrodden of England she insisted on rescuing.
“Waifs and strays,” he said again, but there was no bite to it now, “we’ll make a fine menagerie.”
As the carriage turned, he felt the first threads of tension loosen in his chest. Gillray might plot, Dreadford might sneer, but Christine was his now, and he intended to ensure that neither law nor scandal could take her back.