Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
Morning broke with the kind of deceptive brightness that made the world seem trustworthy.
A thin mist burned off the hills. Dew silvered the lawns, and the lake beyond the terrace mirrored the sky.
Duskwood’s great windows flung ribbons of light across the floors, and servants moved like tides, up, down, in, out, each in pursuit of some last perfection for the evening’s celebration.
Christine had been awake before dawn. Sleep had abandoned her as efficiently as a footman dismissed from duty. From her dressing-room window, she had watched the house come to life. The sight should have comforted her, but it filled her instead with a restless unease.
The engagement ball. My engagement ball.
And the man she was to celebrate it with had just unfolded a letter at breakfast, read two lines, and changed his expression from sunlight to storm.
“London,” he said abruptly, rising before she could ask, “there’s a matter that cannot wait.”
Christine set down her teacup, carefully enough that it did not clatter. “London? Today of all days? What can be so urgent?”
He did not answer but folded the letter and slid it into his pocket.
“I’ll be back before the first guests arrive.”
“But the ball…”
“May proceed without me for a few hours,” Tristan said, giving the lie to his previous sentence, “you’ve organized every detail. The house could dance itself at this point.”
He tried a smile, but it looked borrowed.
“Can you not tell me what calls you away?”
“I would rather not until it’s done.”
That tone, low and implacable, usually meant statecraft, ducal matters, or some crisis among tenants or investments. Yet the faint tension at the corner of his jaw betrayed something more personal.
“I wish you wouldn’t go,” she said quietly.
He came around the table, took her hand, and brushed his lips across her knuckles.
“And I wish I could stay. But I give you my word, I will be here. You have nothing to fear tonight. Lady Gillray will not darken the door, nor Lady Martha, nor that miserable barnacle, Lord Bingley. You are safe.”
“That isn’t what I fear,” she murmured.
He looked at her then, a long, searching look that left her breath tangled, and for an instant, she thought he might kiss her there in the breakfast room. But he only squeezed her hand once and said,
“You’ve faced worse storms than the ton’s chatter. Trust yourself, Christine.”
He left soon after, his carriage wheels snapping on the gravel like musket fire.
She watched until the curve of the drive swallowed him, the weight of his absence settling before the dust had even fallen.
All day, the preparations spun around her.
She gave orders automatically, smiled when she was supposed to, adjusted a garland here, approved a menu there.
Yet beneath the calm, she felt the peculiar hollow of loneliness, a silence where his voice should have been.
By late afternoon, she escaped to the terrace for air. The gardens shimmered under the sun, and yet something in the scene made her uneasy. The air itself seemed to hold its breath. She was turning back toward the house when one of the younger footmen hurried down the steps.
“Beg pardon, my lady,” he said, doffing his hat, “Mr. Cobb from the grounds says there’s a stranger about the gardens by the yew walk near the south lawn. Thought you’d wish to know, seeing as His Grace is away.”
A chill threaded through her. “A stranger?”
“Yes, my lady. He wouldn’t let any of us approach.”
Christine’s heart began to hammer. “I’ll come.”
The footman blinked. “My lady, shouldn’t we send word to the steward?”
“No. Two of you with me will suffice.”
He obeyed, reluctant but trained, and within minutes they were making their way along the narrow path between clipped yew walls. The air smelled of damp greenery. When she reached the bend by the sundial, she saw him. Charles.
He stood half in shadow, half in sunlight, the same familiar tilt of the head and careless stance.
He was thinner now, the sharpness of want in every angle.
His clothes hung from him, patched and travel-stained.
His hair had lost its gloss, his boots their polish.
He looked older than his years, and behind the familiar arrogance, she saw desperation.
Her heart leapt and broke in the same instant.
“Charles!”
He flinched, then straightened, eyes darting past her to the footmen.
“Send them away.”
“They’re only…”
“Christine, please.”
Something in his voice, the raw, ragged note of it, undid her. She turned to the footmen. “Wait at the gate. I’ll call if I need you.”
They hesitated, exchanged looks, and obeyed. When they had gone, she closed the distance between them.
“My God, what’s happened to you?”
“Life,” he said bitterly, “or what’s left of it.”
She reached for his arm, but he drew back.
“I shouldn’t have come. I swore I wouldn’t. But I’ve no choice. You’re the only one who’d still see me.”
Her pulse quickened. “Are you in danger?”
He laughed once, low and hollow. “Only from men who expect payment. Money, Christine. That’s all. Just enough to get me out of England. I swear it’s the last time.”
Her stomach turned cold. “You promised that before.”
“I mean it now,” his eyes shone with the fierce sincerity of the hopeless. “I’ve debts, ugly ones. They’ll kill me if I stay. I just need a few hundred pounds to buy my passage. After that, you’ll never hear from me again.”
I want to believe him. God help me, but I want him out of my life so I can have a life with Tristan. What kind of sister does that make me?
If she helped him to escape, then Tristan would never find him. He might keep looking—and as long as he looked, her marriage would survive.
But if he finds Charles, then he has no reason to go ahead with our marriage. It will all be over.
“Tristan will help you if you…”
“No!” The word cracked like a whip, “he’d hand me to the magistrate before the ink dried. Don’t you see? I’ve run out of chances.”
She stood frozen between duty and mercy.
The simplest thing in the world would be to summon the footmen, to end it here and deliver him to Tristan.
Let justice, or whatever passed for it, take its course.
But she saw in her brother’s face the boy who had made her laugh when they were children, who had held her hand at their mother’s grave.
“Christine,” he said, softer now, “you’re his duchess or you will be. What’s a handful of gold to you? Help me once more, and I’ll be gone for good.”
She closed her eyes. Tristan’s voice echoed in her memory
Trust yourself, Christine.
When she opened her eyes, she said, “Wait here. I’ll find what I can.”
He sagged with relief. “You’re an angel.”
“No,” she said quietly. “I’m a fool.”
She turned back toward the house, the footmen falling into step a distance behind her.
They had stopped too far away to overhear the conversation.
Her thoughts raced, sharp and guilty. If Tristan discovered Charles had been here, if he learned she had concealed him, the fragile peace between them would shatter.
But if she did nothing and Charles was caught, the end would come just the same.
She paused at the foot of the stairs and looked up at the grand facade of Duskwood. For the first time, it felt like something alive and watchful, the very walls whispering.
Do not lie to him.
“I’ll just be a moment,” she told the footmen, “see that no one goes into the gardens.”
In Tristan’s study, the air was cool and still, scented faintly with wax and cedar.
His desk gleamed, immaculate, papers stacked with a precision that made her heart twist. She began with the drawers of his desk, the right-hand drawer for correspondence, the left for ledgers, the center one locked.
She found a small key in an empty vase on a corner of the desk, which rattled when she nudged it.
Inside the drawer lay order and temptation. Stacked paper money, promissory papers, a leather purse of sovereigns. The gold gleamed like accusation.
She hesitated. This was theft—not of money, but of trust.
He’ll never know. I’ll replace it when I can. When Charles is gone, when it’s all over. He will never notice. I do this to give Tristan and me the life we deserve together. To free him of his quest for revenge.
She counted out thirty sovereigns, enough for passage, and folded one promissory note besides. Her hand shook as she relocked the drawer.
“Forgive me,” she whispered to the air of Duskwood.
Back in the gardens, Charles waited where she had left him. His eyes widened at the sight of the purse.
“You truly are my sister.”
“Take it,” she said, pressing it into his hands, “and go now. Go anywhere. Just don’t come back. Not ever.”
He nodded, though guilt never reached his expression. “You’ll hear from me once I’m safe.”
“No,” she said fiercely, “not even then.”
He looked at her for a heartbeat, something unspoken flickering in his gaze, then turned and vanished down the slope toward the river path.
When he was gone, Christine sank onto the sundial’s stone base, breath catching like a sob.
Tristan’s carriage would be returning by evening.
The house would blaze with candles, music would rise, guests would toast the illusion of their happiness, and she would stand at his side, smiling, while the secret lay between them like a crack beneath polished marble.
She pressed a hand to her heart. It thudded too fast, too loud.
“Please,” she murmured to the empty garden, “don’t let him find out.”
But the echo that came back from the yews sounded a great deal like:
He will.