by Evie Dunmore
Rochester steepled his long, pale fingers, as he did when he came to the crux of a matter, and fixed him with a cold stare.
“You must get married.”
Married.
The word turned over and over in his mind, as if it were a complex phrase in Pashtun or Dari and he was scrambling to gather its full meaning.
“Married,” he repeated, his own voice sounding oddly distant.
“Yes, Tristan. You are to take a wife.”
“Right now?”
“Don’t be precious. You have three months. Three months to announce your engagement to an eligible female.”
The first tendrils of cold outrage unfurled. A wife. He was in no position to commit himself to such a thing. Of course, since he had become the heir, matrimony had loomed on the future’s horizon, but it kept melting into the distance as he drew closer. Much as he liked women, their softness, their scent, their wit, a woman in the position of wife was a different animal. There’d be demands and obligations. There’d be . . . little spawns in his own image. There’d be . . . expectations. A shudder raced up his spine.
“Why now?” His tone would have alarmed another man.
Rochester’s gaze narrowed. “I see the military failed to cure your dire lack of attention. I shall lay it out for you: you are seven-and-twenty. You are the heir to the title, and since Marcus left his widow childless, you are the last direct heir in the Ballentine line. Your main duty now is to produce another heir. If you don’t, four hundred years of Ballentine rule over the Rochester title come to an end and the Winterbournes move into our house. And you have been shirking your responsibilities for nearly a year.”
“Then again, I was held up in India, trying to convalesce from potentially fatal bullet wounds.”
Rochester shook his head. “You returned six months ago. And have you diligently courted potential brides? No, you have caused headlines implying the cuckolding of fellow peers and rumors alluding to . . . punishable offenses.”
“I did?” He was genuinely intrigued.
Rochester’s lips thinned. For a blink, he looked like the younger version of himself who used to take his time when selecting an instrument to mete out yet another punishment. For Tristan’s fidgeting. Or for his fondness of poetry and pretty objects, or his “girlish” attachment to his pets. It had to grate on Rochester that his only instrument of control nowadays was the tight financial leash on which he kept his son. It had to lack the element of immediate gratification. And if all went according to plan, Rochester would soon lose his grip on the leash, too. Things had to go to plan because hell, he was not taking a wife now.
“I’m not in the habit of reading the gossip sheets,” he said. “Consider me blissfully ignorant of any rumors pertaining to my person.”
The earl slowly leaned forward in his chair. “You have been seen in an establishment.”
“Entirely possible.”
“With the Marquess of Doncaster’s youngest son.”
That surprised a chuckle from him. “The rumors are about Lord Arthur?”
The casual way he said it made Rochester go pale. Interesting.
Do not worry about Lord Arthur Seymour, Father—I let him watch while I shagged someone, but he hasn’t been on the receiving end of it. The words were on the tip of his tongue.
“Trust society to manufacture something out of nothing,” he said instead. “I doubt they dared to be explicit about it.”
A muscle twitched under his father’s left eye. “Enough for Doncaster to briefly contemplate a libel suit.”
“Against whom? Either way, a patently silly idea. Every person in the British Isles would learn about sweet Arthur’s inclinations.”
“And possibly yours,” Rochester snarled. “Mere whispers about such a thing are an impediment to your standing. An alliance with a lady of impeccable repute can redeem your reputation, but naturally, the fathers of such women are presently disinclined to hand them to someone like you—unless I laid out a fortune.”
Tristan’s jaw set in a hard line. “Keep your money. I’m in no need of a wife.”
There was exactly one woman with whom he’d ever contemplated something beyond a fleeting association, and she was not on the marriage mart.
Rochester was not interested in any of those facts. “Under the circumstances, we need to move fast,” he said.
Tristan shrugged. “Quite frankly, Cousin Winterbourne is welcome to all this.” He gave a careless wave, vague enough to include the entire house of Rochester: a sort of careless vagueness bound to annoy his father.
Rochester’s eyes were dark. “This is not a game, Tristan.”
“Sir, have you considered I might not find a willing, eligible woman in three months’ time, given my devilish reputation? Then again”—and this occurred to him now—“I suspect you have long selected an appropriate bride.”
“Of course, I have. But the potential scandal induced her warden to hold off on signing the contract. You cannot humiliate the lady in question and her family by proposing to her as you are.”
“Right—who is the lucky thing?”
Rochester shook his head. “And tempt you into committing some tomfoolery before matters are settled? No. For now, your task is simply to establish a rapport with relevant society matrons, and to dress and act like a man of your station. Start with taking out this . . . thing.”
He flicked his fingers toward Tristan’s right ear. Tristan had it pierced with a diamond stud. He liked the stud. He gave his father a cold stare and rose.
“I have survived the Siege of Sherpur and I walked to Kandahar while carrying a half-dead man on my back,” he said. “My days have been steeped in more death, blood, and filth than I care to remember, so forgive me if the matter of lily-white wives and gossip rags strikes me as trivial.”
He had nearly reached the door when the earl said: “If you wish for your mother to stay at Ashdown, I suggest you begin to see the gravity of these matters.”
He froze. Several things were happening at once: heat and cold, the spike of his pulse, the roar of blood in his ears. Part of his mind was racing; another had gone deadly still.
He turned back with deliberate slowness. His body was still all too ready for combat: useful on enemy territory, but not when the territory came in the shape of a nobleman’s study. Kill or be killed was but a figure of speech on British country estates, wasn’t it?
“What does it have to do with Mother?” His soft voice was softer still.
Rochester’s face was all shadows and hard angles. “As I said: she is unwell. She might be better cared for elsewhere.”
Tristan’s fist was white around the cane. “Be plain.”
“There are places more suited for people with her moods—”
“Are we speaking of Bedlam?”
The earl tilted his head, his smile thin as if slashed with a knife. “Bedlam? No. There are private asylums that are quainter, more suited for her care.”
Private asylums. The places where perfectly sane but inconvenient wives and daughters were still sometimes sent to die.
As he walked back to the desk, wariness flickered in Rochester’s eyes—the bastard knew he had gone too far. He had done it anyway, so he must be feeling bloody emboldened.
“She’s grieving,” Tristan said, his gaze boring into his father’s. “Her son is dead.”
Another flicker of emotion. “So is mine,” the earl then said, roughly.
On another day, in another life, he might have commiserated. “She does not belong in a mental institution. It would kill her, and you know it.”
“Tristan, I can only accommodate so much irregularity in my household. You may decide whose it is going to be: yours, or hers.”
It was an act of extortion, one to which he would have to bend, and every fiber of his body strained to eliminate
the threat to his freedom there and then. He drew a breath deep into his body, and another, until the wrathful heat in his veins abated.
Rochester gave a nod and said, almost amicably: “I appeal to you to do your duty. Marry, make an heir and a few spares. You have three months to reestablish a tolerable reputation. Prove you are not altogether useless.”
Useless. Another deep breath. Useless—Rochester’s favorite insult. Everyone who was not serving the earl’s plans in some capacity fell into this category, and yet, growing up, useless had always cut the deepest.
Well then. Visiting Mother in Ashdown’s west wing had to wait.
By the time he was back in the carriage and speeding down the driveway, he had formed a conclusion why Rochester was using the countess to force him rather than, as usual, his bank account: first, he must have become aware that he, Tristan, was close to achieving a modicum of monetary independence. And second: the marriage business was serious, and Rochester rightly suspected that another cut to his allowance would not yield results. Marry a woman of Rochester’s choosing, and have their children remind him of the earl for the rest of his days? Hardly. Hence, his father’s blackmail, a life for a life, his or his mother’s.
If he gave in, Rochester would turn his mother into the noose around his neck when it suited him for as long as she lived. It meant he needed a plan, too. He would send word to Delhi, to General Foster’s residence—perhaps he would be inclined to house two English guests for a while and not ask questions. This would take time, damnation; letters took weeks to travel back and forth such distances. He could use the submarine cable to telegraph a message to Bombay, but the cables from there to New Delhi were often cut. Briefly, he toyed with the idea of setting off with an invalid into the unknown; to hell with Foster, to hell with plans. But this kind of impulsiveness had rarely served him well.
What was clear was that he needed to increase and secure his money supply a lot faster than expected. Lucie’s face flashed before his eyes, and a fresh wave of resentment hit his gut. She was, unwittingly, on the cusp of crossing the plans he had made for his new, settled life in Britain. And as of fifteen minutes ago, her interference had become a threat.
He was looking out the carriage window, not seeing a thing, as Lucie kept barging into his thoughts. By the time he had reached the train station, he wondered whether a part of him, the one that had sometimes filled his long nights in the East with memories of her and unencumbered English summers, had been keen on being in the same country as her again.
His coach was empty, and the silence was blaring. He fished for the whiskey flask in his chest pocket. For a while, he would have to play along in Rochester’s game to buy time. But first, he would get drunk.
Chapter 5
Lucie woke with a cat on her face and her toes cold as lumps of ice.
“Blast it, Boudicca.”
Boudicca jumped and landed on the floorboards with a thud.
“Your place is on my feet, as you well know.”
Boudicca turned and was on her way down to the kitchen, because frankly, she was a cat, not a foot warmer. A lady might keep a pug for such services.
With a sigh, Lucie threw back the blanket and padded to the corner with the ceramic bowl and pitcher, trying to blink the remnants of sleep away. Her lids scraped like metal sponges against her eyeballs. She had finished working at the darkest hour.
A glance at the small mirror confirmed it: she looked haggard. A little ashen around the gills, too. Not unlike the women depicted on the cards tucked left and right into the mirror’s frame. Valentine Vinegar cards, carefully curated from the avalanche of anonymous ill-wishes that poured through her letter box every February. Their little rhymes and verses all concluded the same: she was a blight on womanhood, would suffer a tragic life and then die alone. She caught a poor cat and a bird, but she can’t snare a man, so we’ve heard . . . to see you muzzled, fast and tight, would be for all a joyful sight . . . Her favorite card showed a shrill-looking suffragist skewered on a pitchfork. The spinster’s wiry hair was flying in every direction; her nose was red and crooked like a beak. She had a touch of witch to her. And everyone was secretly afraid of witches, were they not?
Her reflection gave a sardonic little smile. She felt not at all powerful this morning. She wished to creep back under the covers, clammy as they were.
Downstairs, Boudicca was yowling and causing a racket with her empty food bowl.
Resigned, Lucie slipped into her morning wrapper.
The white light of an early morning gleamed off the white kitchen wall tiles and polished wooden cabinets. It smelled of tea, and Mrs. Heath, marvel of a housekeeper, had already kindled the fire, toasted bread, and chiseled open a tin can of Alaskan salmon.
“You can thank Aunt Honoria for the money she left me, or else you would feed on whatever the cat meat man has on offer,” she said to Boudicca while alternately spooning salmon chunks onto her own plate and into the cat bowl under the cat’s watchful eye. “Or worse, you would be out hunting mice every day, like a regular cat. What have you to say to that, hm?”
Boudicca’s white-tipped tail gave an unimpressed flick.
“Ungrateful mog. I could have left you in that basket. I could have put you back onto the street, easily.”
You are bluffing, said Boudicca’s green stare. You were as lost as I was and in dire need of company.
Possibly. Ten years ago, she had hurried out the door one morning and had nearly tripped over the tall wicker basket on the steps. The basket had contained a handful of mewing black fluff. That fluff had proceeded to ferociously attack Lucie’s prodding finger, and she had decided to keep it. She had only just settled on Norham Gardens after her banishment from Wycliffe Hall, and well yes, she had been feeling terribly lonely. No one had ever come to make a claim on her new friend.
The clock in the reception room chimed seven thirty, and the tea still had not fully revived her. It was a bad day to be tired, considering the number of appointments in her diary: First, Lady Salisbury at the Randolph Hotel, where she would admit to a negligible delay in the purchasing of London Print. Then, a second breakfast with Annabelle, Hattie, and Catriona, also at the Randolph, where she would tell her friends that they might be in trouble.
And at half past ten, Lord Obnoxious occupied a slot.
Her stomach gave a little twist. Her fractured night was in part caused by their latest encounter. She had tossed and turned in her bed, unable to shake the sense of unease about their meeting. For old times’ sake, he had said. The audacity. Their only history was one of antagonism. Even those days were long gone; they belonged to a different life of which nothing was left but oddly, occasionally, Ballentine himself. There were chance encounters at functions in London, and then there were the headlines and rumors which somehow always found a way to her. She’d rather not see him at all. But if he had even remotely nefarious plans regarding women and the publishing industry, she had to know.
Below the table, Boudicca yodeled bitterly, as though she had not been fed in days.
“Tyrant,” said Lucie, and scraped the rest of the fish from her own plate into the bowl.
* * *
Lady Salisbury had taken a room at the Randolph under the name of “Mrs. Miller,” which was ludicrous because the countess was so obviously an aristocrat in both manners and looks, no one would mistake her for a Mrs. Anything. But Lady Salisbury preferred to keep her involvement in the Cause incognito, as she called it, especially where this particular mission was concerned. She had still brought several women beyond Lucie’s circle of acquaintances into the Investment Consortium and had donated a considerable sum herself. Having to disappoint her now grated.
The countess was seated in the drawing room on a French chaise longue, a black shawl around her shoulders and a dainty teacup in hand. She put the cup down and rose when Lucie entered, something she insisted on doing despi
te being well into her seventies and walking with a cane.
“Lady Lucinda, soon-to-be mistress of London Print,” she exclaimed, her rounded cheeks crinkling with joyful anticipation.
Lucie pasted on a smile. “Not quite yet, I’m afraid.”
Lady Salisbury’s face fell. “Not yet? But the contract was to be drawn up days ago—here, have a seat. Will you have tea, or sherry?”
Sherry? The clock on the mantelpiece said it was nine o’clock in the morning.
“Tea, please.”
She seated herself and Lady Salisbury poured and said: “Now. What is this ‘not yet’ nonsense?”
“Mr. Barnes is experiencing a delay in drawing up the papers. I should have the matter resolved by next week.”
The countess was not fooled. Her shrewd blue eyes had the sharpness of those of a woman Lucie’s age, and they narrowed knowingly. “They object to who you are and are giving you trouble.”
“It is not out of the ordinary. We shall succeed.”
“I would certainly welcome that,” Lady Salisbury said mildly. “My Athena is raring to make herself useful.”
Lady Athena was Lady Salisbury’s niece and had her eyes on assisting with their coup. She was one of many of her station interested in applying herself to something, anything, outside the doily making in a drawing room.
“My regards to Lady Athena,” said Lucie. “It shall be a matter of days.”
Lady Salisbury shook her head. “Ghastly business, these games of politics.”
“It could be worse. We could be using swords and pitchforks to win our liberty rather than pen and paper.”
Though increasingly, the idea of charging ahead while brandishing a primitive weapon struck her as a more satisfying way of doing it.
Lady Salisbury regarded her pensively while she stirred her tea. “Have you perchance considered becoming a little more likable?” she asked. “Less brash, less radical, less unfashionable? It could make everything less controversial.”