by Evie Dunmore
The piano piece ended in a sound round of applause. The crown prince gave a start; he looked around, blinking, and belatedly joined the clapping crowd. Three further, forgettable piano performances followed.
And then Tristan strolled to the center of the room to a chorus of aaahs and ooohs.
Next to her, Hattie released a suspiciously yearning sigh.
Lucie’s head turned to her a little too sharply.
Hattie shrank away, embarrassed color flooding her cheeks. “I know, I know,” she whispered, “and I’m awfully sorry. I can’t help it. He’s so . . .”
“. . . obnoxious?” Her voice was a hiss.
“Beautiful,” Hattie said, and gave a helpless shrug. “He’s beautiful. His jawline, just look at it.”
She looked at it as he assumed his stance next to the piano and gave a bow.
“. . . Yes?”
“It has a perfect right angle. Do you know how rare that is? The whole composition of him—I must have him sit for my series of archangels.”
Lucie pursed her lips. “Can’t you just draw it on?”
Hattie looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“The jawline. Can you not just draw one with a right angle?”
Hattie was genuinely aghast. “That is not how it works, Lucie.”
“Hush,” someone said.
Faces turned toward them, none of them friendly. She could feel Lord Melvin’s probing gaze on her.
“Your Royal Highness, ladies, my noble friends,” Tristan began when silence was restored. “Allow me to take you along on the journey of . . .” He paused, and the room held its breath. “. . . the Shieldmaiden.”
The room swooned.
“This is a good one,” Hattie breathed. “So much like Tennyson.”
Lucie folded her arms over her chest, and Tristan stepped forward.
On either side the forest lie
Cold blue lakes which hold the sky;
Where she goes to see the eagle fly;
The shield-maid of a time gone by
A princess with no people . . .
How vexing. Five lines was all it took and there was no doubt: he could write. And recite.
And she had to sit still and witness how his baritone changed effortlessly from velvet to silk, from light to dark, until the meaning of his words was of no consequence and the poem became a melody. Eyes glazed over, breaths were held; four hundred people, entranced.
Apparently, he too knew that words could be used as weapons, and he wielded them with formidable effect.
When he eventually fell silent, there was a pause before everyone stirred as if released from a spell.
The Prince of Wales came to his feet, clapping. “Bravo,” he cried. “Bravo.”
The rest of the audience scrambled to follow His Royal Highness, sending chairs scraping across the floor as they rose and rattled the chandeliers with the thunder of their applause.
Amid the commotion, Lucie slipped away.
* * *
Tristan bowed again, using the brief moment to assume a neutral expression. Very well. A standing ovation from the prince annulled a multitude of sins on the spot.
His performance must have concluded the first half of the evening program, because groups of women began encroaching upon him, enveloping him in clouds of ambergris and excited titters. Cecily hovered among them, regarding him with an ardent expression that would have struck him as rather possessive, had he not become distracted.
“Lord Ballentine.”
The prince approached, his right-hand man Lord Manchester at his heels, parting the flood of admirers like the Red Sea before him.
Tristan clicked his heels together, just sharply enough to transform a mock salute into a real one.
“At ease, Ballentine, at ease,” Bertie said jovially. “Once a lieutenant, always a lieutenant, eh? Good man. And such a way with words. Why are you not at court more often?”
Because your mama would not be amused. In fact, he was the last person Queen Victoria would want near her heir, whom she considered to be a lothario and crushing moral disappointment in his own right.
“I’m afraid I’m occupied with editing my diaries from my latest tour in Afghanistan, Your Highness,” he offered. “I hope to publish them in a few months’ time.”
“War diaries—from this man’s pen. What do you say to that, Manchester,” said the prince, prompting Manchester to declare that it was a splendid idea, that it would undoubtedly make for a splendid read.
The prince nodded, his eyes still on Tristan. “Splendid, splendid. Dedicate these diaries to me, won’t you?”
“It would be an honor, Your Highness.”
The prince’s voice had been loud enough to reach any bystanders in a ten-foot radius. By tomorrow, everyone of importance would know that the heir to the throne was the patron of his latest work, and they could triple the figure currently planned for the print edition.
His official mission of bolstering his reputation was done.
As for his unofficial mission . . .
A glass door led from the green drawing room onto the spacious terrace. Lucie had slipped away through it, largely unnoticed during the mayhem of four hundred guests coming to their feet.
He bowed to the prince.
He strode toward the door, past a narrow-eyed Lord Arthur Seymour, whom he ignored as if he didn’t exist, away from Cecily, away from the armada of longingly batting fans and lashes.
Chapter 18
After descending the terrace stairs down to the French Garden, she had, on impulse, taken a left on the gravel path. Against the weathered terrace wall, next to a granite lion, stood a granite bench.
She sank down on the hard surface and took a deep breath. She probingly rubbed her bare upper arms. The evening air was still tepid enough for her not to catch a cold; besides, three glasses of wine were warming her from the inside out.
Beyond the symmetrical rectangle of the French Garden stretching before her, hills rolled into the distance. On one such hill stood a folly, strategically placed to please the eye from the terrace, and behind the folly, the clouds were afire with the last of the sun’s rays. The wistful song of a blackbird floated from one of the neatly trimmed hedges. The simple tune gradually edged out the echo of the Shieldmaiden.
She was not left in peace for long.
Footfalls approached, of a man with a long, leisurely stride, and sure enough, a tall, familiar figure appeared on the path.
Her palms turned damp. “Stop following me, Ballentine.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I came outside for a smoke.”
He made himself comfortable next to her on the bench, sprawling uninvited, and pulled a silver cigarette case from the inside of his jacket. “Do you care for one?”
The case appeared under her nose, presenting a row of cigarettes lying neatly side by side like peas in a pod.
Trust him to offer a lady a smoke. Or to smoke in the presence of a lady. Clearly, he did not consider her a lady.
She turned away. “You were in the park. You were in the stables. I don’t believe in such coincidences—you are following me.”
He closed the cigarette case with a snap. “If you truly prefer to grapple with five men at once or to fall off a ladder the whole way down, I shall desist.”
She ground her teeth, and they sat in silence, him smoking, her struggling with why she was not taking her leave.
Because it was not simple anymore. Equal and opposing forces, or perhaps the wine, were holding her in place, right in the spot between the granite lion and him.
“What did you think?” he asked, his eyes on the horizon.
“Of the poem?”
He nodded.
That, too, was complicated.
“It was good,” she said g
rudgingly.
Even if her expectations had not been low, she would have been amazed. She had tried to escape these tumultuous emotions by taking some fresh air.
“You do hold poetry in an atrociously low regard,” he said, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Or is it just my poetry?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said without heat. “I do not loathe it.”
“But?”
She sighed. “I don’t appreciate the elevated station it enjoys, considering it is largely hot air.”
“Is it?” He was watching her rather intently from the corner of his eye.
“Of course. The great Romantics were dreadful husbands and lovers.”
To her surprise, he turned to her, his expression intrigued. “I am all ears,” he said.
“I’m certain you know all about it.”
“It would please me to hear it from you.”
Why, she wondered, and why should she do something to please him?
“Very well,” she said. “Take Shelley—there were rumors his first wife drowned herself in the Serpentine while expecting, because he had abandoned her yet again to be with his mistress.”
He winced. “That is true.”
“As for Coleridge, he made no secret of the fact that he detested his wife, and he gave himself up to opium. Byron is the most loathsome of them all—his lover never saw her daughter again after he snatched the girl and put her into a convent.” Her hand gave a small flick of contempt. “‘She walks in beauty like the night,’ he says, but he takes her child, then abandons the girl, and the child dies soon after. His grand words do not exude much charm when one knows such things.”
Tristan’s expression was unreadable, and he was silent.
She put up her chin, inviting his rebuttal.
He just nodded and resumed watching the sun set again, exhaling smoke.
She shifted on the bench. “Well?”
“Well,” he drawled. “It poses an interesting problem.”
“Oh,” she said, and then: “Which problem?”
He glanced at her, then, a cynical edge to his lips. “By your logic, only a flawless paragon of a man is entitled to create things of beauty,” he said. He smiled widely enough to show teeth. “There goes poetry, then. How about music? The composers were by and large insufferable.”
And, when she was silent, he continued: “We would also have considerably fewer paintings. The adorable Pre-Raphaelites, with all the titian hair and knights and maidens? Millais stole Ruskin’s wife from right under his nose to make her his own—rude, I admit, but will you not look at his Ophelia again?”
“Your feathers are ruffled,” she said, astonished.
He stilled. “Ruffled feathers,” he repeated, his eyes narrowing. “God. You will tell me not to worry my silly little head next, won’t you.”
“Would it help?”
His head tipped back on a surprised bark of laughter. “Not at all.”
She gave a shrug. “Naturally. It never helps us to hear it, either.”
“Duly noted,” he said, grinning still.
Strange. She had never seen him laugh before. He’d mastered every variant of a seductive smile, but he never laughed. A good thing, perhaps, because his cheeks dimpled very charmingly when he did, and he had enviably attractive teeth.
Behind the folly, the last pink-hued clouds were usurped by midnight blue.
It wasn’t wise to sit with him alone in the dusk, warmed by wine, drawing the cigarette smoke leaving his lungs into her own. They were on their way to a civil, if not intimate, conversation, and she should truncate it now.
“I do not demand a paragon, nor perfection,” she said instead. “I just want the truth.”
She felt him sober then, and when she glanced at him, she saw that the mirth was fading from his eyes.
“Just,” he repeated. “Just the truth.”
“Honesty, truth. Authenticity. However you wish to call it.”
“That is, in fact, a lot to ask.”
She gave a shrug. “But is anything worth having without it?”
“Little puritan,” he muttered. “You truly are a fervent idealist.”
Her brows rose in surprise. “I don’t think I have ever been called such.”
“An idealist?”
“Yes. They usually call me a terrible cynic.”
Why she would tell him this, she did not know. She knew his words about the paragons had made her think, and she was intrigued that he would have this effect on her.
“It’s quite the same,” Tristan said. “Idealism, cynicism. Two sides of the same coin.”
“And the coin, what would it be?”
He waved his hand with the cigarette. “A yearning to control our fickle destinies.” His tone was faintly dramatic. “The cynic is but an idealist who preempts the shock of disappointment by deriding everything himself. Both have expectations that are rather too lofty. And you should consider reading Tennyson, if you haven’t already. I have a feeling both the subject matter of his poems and his moral character would pass your scrutiny.”
Her stomach fluttered with unease. Recommending books to her now, was he, as a friend would.
The air warmed around her, or perhaps it was the heat of his body, because the distance between them had melted. She could smell him, the note of his shaving soap more prominent tonight.
She slid back an inch or two. He refrained from following, he was too clever for that. But a knowing smile played over his lips, and it made her bristle.
“You made the fencing club donate a handsome sum to the suffrage cause,” she said.
He looked unsurprised but took his time to blow a smoke ring before saying: “I did?”
“Yes,” she said, impatience creeping into her tone. “How?”
His smile was vague. “I’d rather not disclose it. You would condemn me bitterly, little puritan.”
“At least tell me why?”
He raised his brows. “Who knows. Perhaps I am trying to get into your good graces, so you will give in to your attraction at last and come to me.”
His resonant voice had gone deeper and scratchy on the edges when he said come to me, and it sent a hot jolt of emotions from her middle down into her toes. For a beat, she was back in the stables, on top of him, possessed by the dark need to feel his mouth on hers.
She shifted uneasily. She had let things go too far tonight, here on this bench. She could not trust him; worse, she could not trust herself around him. Tristan would never reliably act the gentleman and save her from her own audacity. He would go along as far as her curiosity, no, her weakness, would take them, and provoke her to go further still.
She came to her feet. Her legs were stiff. The cold of the granite had seeped through her thin skirts into her skin unnoticed.
“For a reputed gambler, you show your hand rather carelessly,” she said coolly.
He laughed softly. “Hiding in plain sight can be quite effective in certain cases. Why don’t you try it yourself, sometime.”
She looked down her nose at him. “Hiding in plain sight?”
“No. Seduction.”
She scoffed. “From what I observe, being female and breathing is enough to provoke interest in most men.”
“Not men,” he said derisively. “A low standard by anyone’s imagination. No, try society. That ignorant, fickle, illiberal monolith.”
She found his eyes unfathomable and wondered how much he knew of her current attempts to become more likable. Wondered whether all this was part of his seduction of her, too.
He gave her a placating smile, as if sensing the turn her mind had taken. “Society is dumber but stronger than you,” he murmured. “Be devious. Be subtle. If you can.”
She left him as quickly as her narrow skirts allowed, feeling the weight o
f his gaze between her bare shoulder blades. Her pulse was running high. She had long assumed Tristan was careless and grew bored easily because his mind was lazy. She had been wrong. He grew bored easily because his mind was working entirely too fast.
She found she was not inclined to mingle with guests and chatter about inconsequential things when she reentered the green salon, and so she took to her room.
Give in to your attraction and come to me.
His words were pure provocation, but his baritone kept resonating, kept heating her from the inside out. Words mattered. She knew this. The manner with which they were said mattered, too. This, she might have underestimated.
She pulled a handful of copies of the Discerning Ladies’ Magazine from her carpet bag and spread them out on the small cherrywood desk, next to a stack of copies of The Female Citizen, which she had not yet had time to read.
She soon transferred the periodicals onto the rug in the middle of the room, each issue open at the beginning of a different section.
The structure of the content was the same in each issue: first the reports on major society events—balls, weddings, exhibitions—then the prints of fashion plates and advice on good manners, then the recipes. Miscellaneous household management advice filled the largest section. The final page featured a piece of sugary fiction. In between, elaborate advertisements for corsets, potions, dressmakers.
A story of sorts on each page, each in their own way trying to appeal. All of them trying to regulate, stating rules on how to do things right. Bewildering. If it was truly in woman’s nature to be an ever demure and pleasant sunbeam in the gloom, why then, it took an awful lot of ink and instructions to keep reminding woman of this nature of hers. . . .
Be devious. Be subtle.
She was in no mood to go and search for Hattie and Catriona in this cavernous house, and Annabelle would be occupied past midnight with hosting duties. With the help of obliging footmen, she had a note delivered to each of her friends’ rooms, requesting a meeting in her chambers before breakfast come morning. Upon second thoughts, she wrote a fourth note and sent it to Lady Salisbury.