Chapter 25 #2
“Tristan, they are not beggars gathered for your purse. They are your people, whether you like it or not. The estate is their bread. Will you truly throw a celebration inside your walls and treat those who keep the walls standing as if they did not exist?”
“And you think walking into the inn with your sweet smile will redeem a decade of silence?” he asked, too sharp. “Besides, they are not my people. They are free people. I am not their feudal lord. If Duskwood ceased to be tomorrow, they would go on as before.”
Christine laughed, and Tristan came forward, lips curling into a snarl at the mockery. He stopped to stand in front of her, hands clasped behind his back. Blanche and Mrs. Fogarty both took a step back. Christine did not. She watched him, tapping her foot.
“Did I say something amusing?” Tristan growled.
“Yes. I cannot believe an educated and intelligent man can be so naive. Do you think that Duxworth is an independent entity? It is the moss that has grown on the stones of Duskwood. Take away the stones, and the moss shrivels and dies. How many tradespeople in the village rely on your custom as the core of their business? How many crafters would starve without the coin you spend on their work? How much produce from local farms ends up on your table?”
“They are free to sell their wares to anyone,” Tristan snapped, “they are not beholden to…”
“Yes, they are! It costs twice as much to cart goods or produce to the next town, or even to London, where they would be competing with a thousand others. You are their livelihood.”
Tristan scowled, feeling as though the village and their need were an anchor and chain wrapped around him. He had never considered it in those terms before.
I always thought that free Englishmen had the choice to do as they will. I didn’t think that they might be constrained because of my wealth.
The portraits along the gallery seemed to lean closer to hear. He saw his uncle’s mouth in three different frames, set in an identical line of disappointment, or perhaps that was memory shifting its weight beneath his ribs.
“You support my very reason for not going to the village,” he said, the effort of keeping his voice level costing him dearly.
“When I walk into that village, they do not see a man; they see a purse. They were content to see my father, God rest him, as a saint while he poured out coin, and a sinner the moment he paused to plan. I have no wish to wear either mask.”
“Then do not,” Christine said, “walk in as Tristan. Not the Wolf, not the purse, not the Duke. Just the man who intends to do better than silence and better than bribes. Just a man who wishes to make his betrothal a celebration. A cause for happiness.”
Blanche stared at her with the theatrical bliss of a woman watching a play turn out exactly as she hoped.
“Do let me come,” she whispered to no one in particular.
Tristan looked at Christine. There was something plaintive in her words.
It was as though she cried out for those words to be real.
That the engagement should be a cause for joy.
An occasion to be remembered. They both knew that the engagement was not a celebration.
It was a trap. He saw the papers spread out behind her, the practical scheme of lists and lanterns.
In that, he glimpsed the thing that truly pulled at her.
It was not a ball but a bridge, thrown from this cold house to every hearth that warmed it.
He wanted to tell her it could not be done.
That men were not so easily mended as roofs.
That road, if laid, would only deliver criticism faster.
He found instead that he remembered the margin notes in his uncle’s hand.
Widow Pelham’s rent was deferred again.
It had enraged him as a boy. It had smacked of people taking advantage of his father, of his uncle, of him. It moved him now in a way he did not care to name. He set both hands upon the chair and said, because he had no better weapon than bluntness.
“It is not safe.”
Blanche blinked. “The village, Your Grace, is unsafe?”
“Blanche,” Christine murmured.
“Not safe,” Tristan repeated, “for you, walking into a crowd of people who have decided what they think of your household before you speak. Envy grows teeth. I have scars to prove it.”
She lifted her chin, the stubborn line he knew too well. “I have teeth of my own.”
He swallowed the answer that would wound them both.
“If you insist upon this, you will not go alone. Nor with Miss Waldron alone. You will go with me.”
Christine’s eyes warmed in a way that made the gallery brighter. “You would come?”
“I will not have you conquering my domains without my permission,” he said dryly, “nor inviting the vicar to weep upon my boots. Yes. I will come.”
Blanche clapped her hands and then, to her credit, schooled her delight to the level of mere insolence. “Then we must dress. I have a bonnet that could convert a whole parish.”
Tristan lifted an eyebrow. “To vice?”
“To adoration,” she said sweetly.
“Miss Waldron,” he said, “I will not have you encourage the blacksmith to propose to my housekeeper.”
Mrs. Fogarty snorted. “He already tried. I told him I have charge of three stills and a duke; I don’t want a fourth child.”
Christine’s laughter slipped out before she could stop it. The sound struck him in the center of his chest and made it difficult to play the tyrant convincingly. He looked back at the map to avoid looking at her.
“Rollins will send word to Mr. Reeve that we wish to meet him and Reverend Potter tomorrow morning,” he said, “a notice, not a surprise. If I am to endure their civility, I expect it washed and dressed.”
Christine nodded, solemn as a sworn oath. “Thank you.”
“Do not thank me,” he said, “I am going to prevent calamity, not to encourage your habit of rescuing all England.”
She tilted her head. “And if England wishes to be rescued?”
“Then England should apply to my duchess and not to me.”
That, apparently, was quite the wrong thing to say to a woman intent on not blushing. Color rose like dawn along her throat; her eyes went softer than a man like him deserved. He turned at once and addressed Mrs. Fogarty with unnecessary severity.
“Inform the kitchens we will require stout bread for the morning, and something that convinces a vicar I mean him no harm. Not cake. Cake is a declaration of surrender.”
“Pies,” Mrs. Fogarty said, already making lists in her head. “A good pie says we are God-fearing. Two pies says we are generous. Three pies says we are sorry.”
“One pie,” he said. “We are not sorry yet.”
Blanche, who had drifted to the window to judge the quality of her reflection in the glass, turned back with her grin like a small scandal. “How you terrify me, Your Grace. One pie. The village will faint.”
He might have ended it there, with the plan made and the future duly postponed to the morning. But Christine moved to the window seat, gathered the papers in a neat stack, and rested her palm upon them as if swearing them to silence. When she looked up, he could not pretend not to see.
“I do not mean to shame you by any of this,” she said, “nor to make you into something you are not.”
His throat tightened. “What is it you think I am?”
“A man who knows what is owed,” she said simply. “And who hates that knowledge when it costs him?”
“I do not hate it. I am just tired of being a purse with boots.”
She spared him the answer by turning to Blanche, “We should let His Grace return to his ledgers.”
Blanche made a face. “Ledgers! Very well. Mrs. Fogarty, let us go and terrify the poultry.”
The housekeeper gathered her dignity and her lists. “The poultry’s already terrified, miss. They’ve heard about the pie.”
They left in a rustle of skirts and a mutter about egg counts.
The long gallery breathed again. Tristan remained where he was, one hand still upon the chair, the other braced against the table’s edge, as if the furniture were the only sensible thing left in the world.
Christine stayed. She did not move closer, but she did not flee.
She looked out into the bright rectangle of afternoon and said, very quietly.
“Blanche is one of my only friends. I know you do not like her outspokenness. In your absence, I find her company soothing.”
“Do not flatter Lady Blanche. I think nothing of her,” Tristan said.
“You have buried yourself in work for three days, which is why I asked her to stay and help me with the ball.”
“Quite proper.”
“Then could you inform your face that you approve?” Christine said with an arched eyebrow, “I know you can smile. I saw plenty of them when Ernald, Elizabeth, and the girls were here.”
Tristan found her directness refreshing, even as he felt the wound her rapier made. He smiled, hoping it didn’t look forced.
“I know you think the village will only take from you. Let them show you, Tristan, that they are good people. That people can be good.”
“All people?” he found himself asking.
“I believe so,” Christine replied.
Including your brother?
It remained unspoken between them. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat. When he opened them, the portraits were watching with sanctimonious delight. He wanted to throw a sheet over the lot.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we go tomorrow. If Mr. Reeve attempts to secure for himself a second inn, I will move the one he has, three miles downriver, out of spite.”
Her mouth curved. “You will not need to. I have faith.”
He should have laughed. He did not. He took one step toward her; it was as far as he trusted himself.
Her chest rose and fell in a way that only a saint or a blind man could resist. He anchored himself to the knowledge that his ancestors were calling on him to remain strong.
To be steel until revenge had been secured.
“Do not mistake my company for agreement,” he said, softer than he meant, “I am doing this because you insist on walking into rooms with your heart uncovered. Someone must stand at the door.”
She met his gaze and held it. “Then stand there.”
For a moment, neither moved. Somewhere at the far end of the gallery, a floorboard remembered the weight of an old footstep and creaked. A cloud sailed across the sun and sent the light wobbling along the floor. Instead, he bowed as if to end a dance and said, with all the dryness he could muster
“One pie.”
“Two,” she said, and gathered her papers with a decisive sweep that somehow felt like victory. He let her have it.
He meant to return to the study. He even made it as far as the door before the old habit of watchfulness turned his feet toward the servants’ passage and down, past the green baize door, into the working belly of the house.
He told himself he wanted only to remind the kitchens that the pie count remained scandalously at one. In truth, he wished to feel the engine tick, to reassure himself that the engine cared nothing for hearts.
Mrs. Fogarty had already set the room to boiling.
The smell of butter and pepper wafted through the warm air.
Jane, the maid he had snatched from Gillray, had arrived that day.
She darted between the table and the scullery like a cheerfully domestic sparrow.
When she saw him, she fluttered into a curtsey so swift it nearly sent a basket of onions to the floor.
“Steady,” he said, catching the handle. “You are not a candle, Jane; no need to gutter.”
“Sorry, Your Grace,” she murmured, the stubborn line of fear around her mouth easing. “It’s only…well…no one told me dukes come into kitchens.”
“They do not, generally,” he said, “Mrs. Fogarty, tell Reeve we will meet him at ten. Reverend Potter as well. And tell the stable to put a second groom to the curricle. Miss Waldron’s bonnet demands additional horsepower.”
He found himself adding.
“And when we return, tell the laundry not to take the sheets from the east rooms until Lady Christine has looked them over. She has opinions.”
“We all do,” Mrs. Fogarty said enigmatically.
He left to the accompaniment of a ladle clapped on a pot and thought, as he climbed the back stairs to the corridor above, that if tomorrow ended with nothing more than one honest conversation and one tolerable pie, it would still be farther than he had come in years.
At the study door, he paused, palm on oak. He could hear, distant and muffled by a floor and the thickness of a life, Christine’s voice and Blanche’s laughter, crossing and recrossing the hall like birds. He shut his eyes and very nearly prayed. Tomorrow, then.
Let the village bring its envy and its petitions and its old, sour memories.
Let Reeve count his barrels and Potter his souls.
He would go down the hill beside the woman who had decided Duskwood could be lit from the edges inward, and he would stand at the door as she asked.
And if he failed, if the old resentments bit as they had before, then he would endure the teeth and not let them touch her.
He opened his eyes, entered the study, and bent once more over the ledger. Numbers steadied. Wax cooled. Outside, the long light of afternoon began its slant toward evening. On the morrow, the village. One pie. Possibly two. He would not concede three. Not yet.