Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
They drifted beneath the painted arch and into Vauxhall Gardens as the sun slipped up into the sky. Music drifted toward them from the orchestra platform, flutes teasing violins, a drum pretending to be more important than it was.
Lanterns swung from the trees like small, agreeable moons; the leaves answered with a soft clatter each time a breeze passed through. The air smelled of lilac and spilled ale, hot sugar and rain-damp bark. Christine took it in with the greed of a woman making a memory.
“Where would you like to walk?” Tristan asked.
“Everywhere,” she said, “and slowly.”
“That, madam, is the secret to conquering a kingdom.”
He offered his arm. She took it. The walking stick came, too, from habit and prudence. But her step was easy now, the lane to Duxworth only a ghost in her muscles. He had suggested this outing with an almost shy practicality:
You’ve turned half of London into ribbon; permit me to show you something more attractive than string.
She had laughed and said yes before sense could protest. They wove through the promenading crowd.
Two girls carried a paper balloon between them like a moon on a string, and its glow strobed their faces as they ran.
An old man sold gingerbread hearts pricked with tin studs.
Every other woman wore one and pretended she had not bought it herself.
“You should have a heart,” Tristan said, deadpan, as they passed, “preferably mine.”
“Overpriced,” she returned.
His mouth tugged. “Ah. Heartless as London itself, my Lady.”
They paused at the colonnade to watch a troupe of acrobats bow to applause. When the applause broke and scattered like shot on water, Tristan leaned and murmured.
“May I confess a vulgar thought?”
“Please.”
“I would like to steal something for you.”
“From Vauxhall?”
“From Vauxhall.”
He surveyed the nearest shrubbery with the seriousness usually reserved for legal documents. “A flower.”
“Well, then,” she said, eyes brightening, “you must become a criminal.”
He took two steps off the path, reached past a lantern, and plucked an extravagant spray of foxglove. He returned with the spoils and tucked them into the curve of her arm with a flourish that made two elderly ladies gasp and one painted shepherd pout.
“Sir,” said a voice at his elbow, already primed for outrage. A park attendant had materialized, hat at a corrective angle, expression a sermon.
“The flora are not to be disturbed. It is posted.” He gestured at a sign that read, with saintly confidence, NO PICKING.
Tristan considered the sign as if it had interrupted him at cards. “Is it?”
“It is,” the man said, scandal gathering like weather, “and you, sir, have picked.”
Christine bit the inside of her cheek.
“Your Grace,” she said sotto voce, “you have been apprehended.”
“Quite thrilling,” Tristan murmured, and turned to the attendant with a gravity so gracious it bordered on generous, “you are correct, Mr…?”
“Griggs.”
“Mr. Griggs. I have committed a botanical outrage.” He reached into his coat and drew out a guinea, held as delicately as a thorny rose stem. “May the gardens accept a donation toward further outrages prevented?”
Griggs went pink, then officious, then pink again.
“I…this is most…well…strictly…”
“Strictness is the only way to keep us safe,” Tristan agreed with terrible sincerity, “please allow me to escort my accomplice out before she confesses and causes a scene.”
“I…well…yes…very good,” Griggs said, already convinced he had won a victory for civilization.
They retreated in excellent order, Christine barely containing her laughter until they reached a darker turn of the walk. Then she let it go. Bright and loud, the kind of laugh that turned a man’s head.
“I have never been evicted from anywhere,” Tristan said, delighted, “it is vastly entertaining. We should try White’s next.”
“And be barred for life?” she asked, “how you suffer for love.”
And there it is. The first utterance. I should reply to it. It is a Rubicon to be crossed. Reply. Now!
Christine’s breath misbehaved. She pretended to examine the foxglove instead.
“We have broken a rule.”
“We have paid for it,” he said, “it’s London. It is held together by rules.”
He had not replied, and she had not repeated. They walked on, and Tristan inwardly kicked himself. Silence reigned between them. He wondered if Christine felt foolish. If she believed him to be separate from her still, behind high walls.
Couples drifted past. A troop of young officers admired themselves in the gilt-edged mirrors set cunningly along a hedge. Tristan’s arm remained under her hand and, since the world was busy entertaining itself, she allowed her fingers to curve a little more securely around it.
“You’ve worked yourself hollow this week,” he said, softer, “I can tell because I do not trust you with a teacup.”
She smiled. “You have been watching me very closely.”
“As a man watches an engineer who has promised his bridge will hold.”
“And will it?”
He considered, then nodded. “I find myself reckless enough to walk across.”
“That is a compliment,” she said.
“It is a declaration in my language,” he said, and somehow managed to make the words untheatrical.
They strolled, companionably silent for a span.
He felt the day unhook itself from his shoulders and fall away.
He had been different since Canterbury House.
He was gentler at the edges, a hardness turned on the world but not on her.
Tamed was not the word. No one tamed a wolf.
But even wolves could learn when to lie by the fire.
They passed a table where a boy sold prints, views of the Rotunda, caricatures of ministers, a lurid etching of a highwayman with too many buttons.
A separate stack, smaller, lay to one side.
Scandal-sheets, the paper roughly folded, ink still smelling of hurry.
Christine felt the prickle along her scalp before she saw the headline.
The boy flashed the top sheet to a passing couple with a wink.
SCULLERY DUCHESS DISGRACES OXFORD STREET
Her hand moved without her consent, snatching the sheet and crumpling it into a ball. The boy blinked.
“Half-penny, miss.”
Tristan had already paid and dismissed him with a glance that would have turned wine to vinegar. “Give it here.”
“It’s nothing,” she lied.
He took the paper from her and read. She watched the slow change in his face. The humor banked, the light gone from the eyes, the mouth flattening to a line a magistrate would have respected.
“They have an astonishing gift for being wrong in every particular,” he said at last, voice quiet in the way quiet is most dangerous, “it is almost admirable.”
“It is almost daily,” she said, keeping her tone light because his was not, “they needn’t be right to sell.”
He turned the sheet and read again, in case rage looked better from a different angle.
“They call you an adventuress who learned her arts in a kitchen.”
His eyes lifted to hers, and the gentleness that replaced anger made her flinch harder, “Does this wound you, Christine?”
“It pricked,” she attempted a smile that did not quite deserve the name. “A shopgirl used the name yesterday, too. And Lady Martha during the Duke Hunt, when we were walking in Greytonwic.”
He folded the sheet with care and tucked it, like a specimen, under his arm. “Come.”
“Tristan…”
“Come,” he repeated, the syllable clipped, not unkind, “we are paying a call.”
I will not stand for it. I will not have her name dragged through the mud of London’s streets and the gutters of its minds. It stops now.
She followed because she had learned, by now, when the wolf had decided to run.
He found their carriage with a look. London rose, wet and watchful.
Tristan sat forward, one hand braced on the rail, his fury coiled into purpose so neatly that she almost pitied its object.
She reached for his sleeve. He covered her hand with his and left it there as if he had forgotten he did not usually ask for comfort.
The offices of The Evening Clarion squatted in a crooked street that smelt of ink and old cabbage.
Pressmen moved like ghosts behind the window; a boy swept letters from a doorstep with a broom that had given up but refused to retire.
Inside, the air was hot with metal and damp paper.
The clerk at the desk tucked his pen behind his ear and saw two people he did not recognize and did not fit in this place.
“Good evening,” Tristan said, utterly polite, “we would like a word with the editor.”
The clerk swallowed. “Mr. Setter is occupied.”
“He will be unoccupied,” Tristan said, “tell him the Duke of Duskwood is here about a correction.”
The name went through the room like a rolled drum.
A door opened at the back. A man with spectacles too small for his face emerged, a quill still in his hand like a cigarette.
He took them in, the height, the title, the woman whom his paper had turned into a headline, and recovered faster than sanity recommended.
“Your Grace,” he said, as if he conducted conversations with wolves daily, “we are honored. If you object to the tonality of a particular item, I can assure you we have the highest respect for…”
Tristan handed him the folded sheet. “You will retract this tomorrow,” he said, calmly, “you will apologize for the language you used, which was inaccurate and designed to injure. You will do so in the top left, above the fold, where I am told eyes go when readers pretend to be moral.”
Mr. Setter glanced down the column as if hoping the words had arranged themselves into virtue since printing.
“Ah,” he said, “you will understand, Your Grace, that the public’s appetite…”
“—is not a stomach I mean to fill,” Tristan said, “here is what I offer instead. An exclusive to your paper, the Clarion. The particulars of the engagement festivities at Duskwood. That includes guest lists, benefactions, a public supper on the green, a subscription fund for the parish school, and the widow’s board administered by Mr. Reeve, Mayor of Duxworth.
Your paper may have the news first, clean and whole, with as many flattering engravings as you can contrive.
You will also enjoy the novelty of being correct. ”
Mr. Setter blinked. “And if we decline?”
“Then you will enjoy a lawsuit,” Tristan said pleasantly, “and discover that printers’ ink washes off hands more easily than it does from reputation.
Furthermore, you will find your rival…” he nodded toward the window, where across the street a meaner office stood, “will suddenly be favored by the highest houses in town, beginning with my own. I will teach them the pleasure of accuracy.”
Setter’s pen twitched in his fingers. “You propose to bribe us with truth.”
“I propose to reward you with it,” Tristan said, “bribery would insult your profession.”
Christine watched Mr. Setter measure coins. He was a pragmatist, not a martyr. He studied Tristan’s face as if for a leak and found none. He studied Christine’s, found neither tears nor appetite for them, and reassessed again.
“Top left,” Setter said slowly. “Above the fold.”
“With your name,” Tristan said, “so that men know whom to thank for decency.”
Setter hesitated, looked down at the sheet one last time as if hoping it would absolve him, and then flicked it in half with his fingers like a card trick.
“Done,” he said. “My compositor will letter it tonight. You will have proofs in the morning for your corrections.”
“I will not correct what you write,” Tristan said, “you will write well without my hand. I will only confirm that you have not lied.”
Setter’s mouth twitched. It was the smile of a man who collects rare things and had just come across an unexpected treasure.
“Very good, Your Grace.” He looked at Christine then and made a small, awkward bow that could not undo what his paper had done and nonetheless tried.
Christine inclined her head.
“Write something kind to a girl at a confectioner’s while you’re about it,” she said gently, “she buys your wit and wears it like jewelry. You might consider selling her better trinkets.”
Setter’s ears went pink. “We will aspire to the quality of our readers,” he said, and meant it for the length of an hour at least, “good morning to you both.”
They were outside in the damp again before Christine realized she had been holding her breath. Tristan stood there with the city on his shoulder, the rain in his hair.
“I want to be away from here. I want you back at Duskwood. These people do not deserve the sight of you or the memory of you. Let them forget you and leave the sight of you to me alone,” he said.
“You did not have to do that,” she said finally. “I have lived through worse.”
“I have not,” he said, “and I prefer not to start.”
She laughed, then weakly but real. “How exceedingly selfish.”
“Utterly.” He offered his arm again, “Will you permit me a further outrage?”
“Another flower?”
“A lemon ice,” he said gravely. “I am told they are forbidden at this hour by the laws of digestion.”
“Scandal,” she breathed.
They walked back to the carriage, the foxglove nodding in her arm.
“You were magnificent,” she said when the carriage steps folded up and the square began to move.
“I was entertained,” he answered, but the humor had a new warmth to it, the kind that comes when anger has found work and finished it. He looked at her, “If you ever see that word again, show it to me first.”
“Scullery?”
“Duchess,” he said, and closed his hand over hers so she would feel the weight of it.
She did not answer; there was nothing to add that would not either cheapen or crown the moment and let her fingers curve into his instead.
Vauxhall’s lanterns slid away. Portman Square waited with its correct face and its secrets.
The foxglove brushed her wrist, and she resolved to press it between the pages of a book to keep it.
When the carriage turned, Tristan leaned, stole a kiss that tasted of sugar and rain, and said almost ruefully,
“We will be barred from the gardens if I continue to amuse myself at their expense.”
“Then you must learn to amuse yourself at mine,” she whispered, because she could not resist.
“Already begun,” he said.