Epilogue #2
Her body braced instinctively—muscles tightening, shoulders drawing up, every sensible instinct preparing for shock.
“Th—”
They went over.
She gasped, every muscle clenched—waiting for the bite, the ache, the cruel slap of cold—
The water closed around her like silk. Like the sun. Like relief.
Warm. Gloriously, indulgently warm.
Her breath burst out of her in a laugh as she surfaced, hair slicked back, eyes wide.
“It’s—” She sputtered, blinking at him. “It’s warm.”
He was grinning like a man who had known this all along. “Welcome to Ischia. The volcano warms the water.”
She scarcely heard the rest.
Marguerite slipped free of his arms with a small, incredulous sound and struck out on her own. The water closed over her shoulders, her spine, her hips—each inch a revelation.
She floated onto her back, and the Mediterranean held her up without effort, buoyant and generous. Sunlight fractured beneath the surface, turning the water into shifting silk—blue and gold and impossibly clear. She could see her own limbs moving through it, pale against the deeper hue.
She found him watching her. The sun warmed her face. The water warmed her skin. Her husband warmed the places neither could reach. When his mouth found hers, she had already forgotten the names of three Sicilian princes and one commercial grievance involving wheat duties.
“I want you.”
He caught her waist just as she broke the kiss, lifting her from the sea as though she weighed no more than the water still clinging to her. She gasped, arms instinctively looping around his shoulders.
The sun caught him as he stepped onto the sand, muscles slick, his eyes never leaving hers.
He carried her past the tide line, to a small rise in the sand where shadows pooled beneath a cluster of black pines. There, he laid her down carefully, like something rare, and sank to his knees.
“Wait. We’re—here? Now? In public?”
He looked around theatrically. “I see no audience but a few morally flexible gulls.”
She shoved his chest. He didn’t move. His eyes were shining.
“Today,” he said, voice huskier now, “you’ll be on top.”
Her brows rose. “Oh? And what military logic led to that decision?”
He grinned. “Be reasonable, woman. I’m trying to protect your most diplomatic parts from becoming exfoliated.”
“And yours?” she asked.
“I would gladly burn in hell,” he said, “if it meant having you like this. A bit of sand is nothing.”
That—that—silenced her.
She crawled over him, water still sliding from her shift, her knees sinking into the warm sand beside his hips. She reached between them, fingers curling around him. He was already hard. She braced her palms on his chest and rose onto her knees.
His hands steadied her thighs. “Look at me.”
She did.
She slid down his length, inch by inch, until her thighs met his. He exhaled, one long, trembling breath.
The waves played a lullaby at their feet. Her shift clung to her skin in transparent folds, and her hair hung wet and wild down her back. She was salt and woman and want, and he was beneath her, open and waiting.
She rocked.
His hands flew to her hips, but he didn’t push. He let her set the rhythm—deep, slow, coaxing.
She moved again, a little faster now.
Tristan groaned and arched slightly, but kept his eyes open, fixed on her, as if he couldn’t bear to miss a moment.
“You feel . . .” he began, but didn’t finish. He only kissed her, hard and reverent.
She kissed him back. And the ocean rocked them together, salt on their lips, sunlight on their skin, and no diplomacy in sight.
Only this.
Only them.
His control began to fray beneath her. She felt it in the flex of his thighs, the rougher pull of his breath.
“Marguerite,” he said against her mouth.
He started to lift her from him, to spend himself outside of her.
She caught his face between her hands. “Stay.”
His eyes went dark. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He splayed his hands on her back, holding her to him. She bent over him, her forehead touching his, and when she moved again, it was a promise made with breath and skin and the sun burning gold around them.
She felt him lose the last of his restraint as her own pleasure rose to meet him. Her body tightened around him, and she moaned his name. Tristan answered with hers.
They came together with the sea at their feet and the sky above them, his arms locked around her, her face buried against his throat, both of them shaking through the same wave of heat and release.
Then sound returned slowly, water dragging over sand, leaves stirring in the pines, his heart hammering beneath her cheek.
Marguerite buried her face in his neck. His hand slid into her wet hair, and he kissed her temple with a tenderness that made the aftershocks inside her turn soft and golden.
“Still sure?” he murmured.
She lifted her head enough to look at him.
Her body was warm. Her heart was full. Nothing in her felt spent beyond recovery. Nothing had been taken from her. Nothing had been bargained away.
She smiled.
“Tristano,” she said, “I have never been more certain of anything in my life.”
She had never known her body could feel so easy. Not merely satisfied. Easy.
Tristan came to stand before her.
He had something in his hand. A letter. Her smile faded when she recognized which one.
The bay receded. The lemon blossoms, the warm rock, the blue water, the ridiculous happiness of the morning all drew back as if an old cold had stepped between them.
Karl’s letter.
Tristan held it out. “You still keep this.”
Marguerite looked at the letter. It had traveled too far.
From one life to another, through ports and rooms and compartments she had pretended not to open.
A document by which one man had passed her value to the next, elegantly phrased, properly sealed, very kind in the way that had once nearly destroyed her.
She did not reach for it at once.
Tristan waited. “Are you still afraid?”
The question entered quietly.
She looked from the letter to the water beyond him. The bay shimmered in impossible blue. The sea that had once divided her from every future now held the sun as if warmth were the simplest thing in the world.
Was she afraid?
She searched for the old answer. The careful one. The diplomatic one. The one that would explain, soften, protect, and evade. She felt for the cold knot beneath her ribs, the tightness in her hands, the need to turn herself useful before anyone could turn away.
Nothing answered.
Only sadness, perhaps. A small tenderness for the woman who had kept the letter because proof of being wanted had once felt safer than wanting without proof. A little grief for all the negotiations she had mistaken for love. But fear?
No.
Marguerite took the letter. The paper felt dry and fragile in her hands.
She tore it. The sound was ridiculously small.
After all that paper had carried, one expected thunder, bells, an earthquake, a formal protest from the ghosts of every arrangement ever made in bad faith.
Instead, there was only a rip, and then another as she tore it again.
She stepped to the edge of the pier and opened her fingers.
The pieces scattered over the water. They floated on the bright surface, white against blue. Then the ripples took them apart, dissolving their importance.
Tristan took her hand.
Beyond the bay, the frigate waited to carry them to Sicily. Behind them, Naples warmed their palazzo, their bed, their lemon flowers, their impossible happiness.
Marguerite leaned into her husband’s side.
“Well,” she said, after a while, “we are now late for an official visit.”
“Yes.”
“And I am missing at least six hairpins.”
“Yes.”
“And you abducted your duchess into a hidden bay, undressed her beside sailors, made love to her on the sand, and caused her to litter official waters with evidence of a past liaison.”
His mouth brushed her temple.
“A diplomatic faux pas?” he asked.
Marguerite smiled, warm all the way through.
“No, love,” she said. “A triumph.”