by Evie Dunmore
Cecily bared her small teeth. “You are terribly insistent, cousin.”
“A woman, you say?”
“I just did, say so.”
“And you found nothing unusual about her?”
Cecily leaned forward, almost a crouch. “She’s very obviously in the nude.”
“Obviously, you say—so you were close to see it?”
“Indeed.”
It was very quiet in the library now, the moment where everyone in the room was picturing a situation that would have brought Tristan’s bare chest close to Cecily’s eyes. . . .
“And her four arms didn’t strike you as peculiar?” Lucie said.
Cecily stared at her unblinking for a beat.
Then her eyes lit with a realization, as though she’d just solved a tricky puzzle. “Why must you try and trick me,” she cried. “Of course she does not have four arms.”
“This is enough now,” Wycliffe said. “Enough of this. Gentlemen—”
“Actually,” Tristan said, “there are four arms.”
Everyone turned back to him. Only Cecily took a step back.
Tristan raised his hands to his cravat. “Does anyone care for a demonstration?”
“Hell, no,” Wycliffe, Tommy, and Rochester said in unison, sounding appalled. And uncertain.
Despite the previous threat to their license, the lawyers had their pens at the ready and were following the exchange, riveted, as though watching a match of lawn tennis. Played with grenades.
Lady Wycliffe stepped forward. Pale and shiny, she could have been a waxwork as she moved toward her niece. “Cecily,” she said quietly, one hand extended. “Say it isn’t true.”
Cecily was still backing away slowly.
“Oh, Christ,” said Wycliffe.
Cecily’s bottom lip quivered. “Arthur made me do it,” she said, her gaze darting around the room. “It was all Arthur’s idea—he said . . . the tattoo . . . he told me . . . I didn’t mean to. I just got lost at the fair, running after you, after you just left me there.” She directed a tearful stare at Tristan.
“Out,” Wycliffe said to the lawyers, his voice flat. “Get out, now.”
“I went to the boathouse to cry, because Lord Ballentine had spoken very harshly to me,” Cecily said between sobs. “And I fell asleep on his coat with exhaustion. When I woke, the hour was late, dusk had fallen—was I to sleep in the boathouse? I had to walk unchaperoned—I had no choice.”
“But there was a choice to clear my name,” Tristan suggested in a gentle tone.
She gave him an incredulous look. “There was a search party, scandal was inevitable. You wouldn’t have married me had there been a scandal that didn’t involve you.”
Tristan slowly shook his head. “I never meant to marry you at all, and I am sorry you were led to believe otherwise.”
Cecily’s hands balled into fists. “I shan’t idly stand by and marry just any man they choose for me. . . .”
“Felicity,” Wycliffe said quietly, “take her to her room.”
Lady Wycliffe moved with difficulty, as though she were wading through glue.
Then the countess raised her chin and clasped Cecily’s elbow. She did not grant the men in the room another glance as she led her charge outside.
When the door had fallen shut, Wycliffe slowly turned to Rochester. “Very well,” he said. “It appears your son is going to marry my daughter, not my ward.”
Rochester blanched. “The hell he will,” he said. “My son is the heir of the House of Rochester and will marry in accordance with his position.”
Lucie watched her father take a step toward Rochester, the movement so quick, it had to have been instinct. “Are you insinuating that a daughter from the House of Wycliffe is not fit for the position?”
“Come now, Wycliffe, a Ballentine can’t marry a—”
“I advise you to treat this with consideration.” Wycliffe cut him off icily. “When a Ballentine goes and ruins two Tedbury women in short succession, he will bloody well marry at least one of them.”
“I’m not marrying anyone,” Lucie said, and walked out.
She had expected Tristan to follow her. He reached her in the Great Hall when she was still a considerable distance from the exit.
“Wycliffe has a point,” he said without preamble. She had expected this, too, and kept walking. Pray her pony was still there, at the ready.
“He has a point, and we must talk.”
“Tristan, I will not marry you, so for the sake of our mutual dignity, please do not ask me.”
His hand clamped around her upper arm and she was halted in her tracks and turned to face him.
Her stomach squirmed. She wasn’t ready yet to be touched by him. To be close enough to smell him. She had little strength left right now to argue with him, not with his gaze boring into hers with such determination.
“You are aware that we have a situation.” Despite his calm tone, she had never seen him look so serious. He probably didn’t relish the prospect of marriage, either. He had told her so when she had interrogated him in her drawing room just yesterday. . . .
She shook her head. “I did not come here to make you choose between Cecily and me, but to give you a choice between Cecily and your freedom. I cannot marry. You should know this much about me at least.”
She made to leave and was promptly snatched back by her arm.
His features were hard as if carved into rock. “How long do you think it will take until word gets out? What do you think it will do for your reputation, Lucie? For London Print? Your cause?”
For a beat, she couldn’t breathe. The enormity of what she had done was presently kept at bay by a flimsy fence of temporary denial, and it would not withstand a battering now.
“My family will rather take this to their graves than allow word to get out, and nothing might happen at all.”
“Possible, but hardly guaranteed, darling.”
“It does not mean I have to be your wife,” she said. “This was about justice.”
“Justice?” His smile was deeply cynical.
“What else would it be?” Her voice was rising. She had to leave, leave this place, leave him.
The grip of his hand on her arm tightened. “What else?” he said. “After last month, it is not too presumptious to assume you have an affection for me.”
An affection?
What an innocuous, inadequate, ridiculous word.
“You seemed prepared to marry my cousin five minutes ago,” she said instead, “so my affection would hardly matter.”
His expression was plain incredulous. “The hell I was. And would you rather I had named you as my alibi? Very well, it crossed my mind—to name you. I did not, for how could I force you into it—but now you may have forced it upon yourself.”
“No.” She yanked her arm from his grip. “I’d rather be wrecked than enslaved.”
He drew a sharp breath. “This is not the time or the place. Let us talk in private.”
“Time and place have no effect on my decision.”
“Christ, see reason, Lucie. You already have me in your bed every night and you like it; where would be the difference?”
She nearly kicked his shin. “Bedsport,” she hissed. “Of course, that is all you see—oh, to have the luxury of male ignorance.” She sprung into motion again, eyes on the door. “The difference between wife and lover is like night and day,” she said, hating that he was following her again. “Name one married woman, just one, who advanced important causes outside the home.”
He made a sound of great annoyance. “That is your worry?”
Easy for him to dismiss her, just like that. “Name a single one—you cannot, because it is nigh impossible for a woman to achieve anything when burdened with a husband, and the constant demands of wifely prot
ocol, not to mention children. Why do you think it is that progressive women feel compelled to choose spinsterhood?”
“Stop,” he said tightly, “stop running. Stop hiding behind your work.”
“Hiding!”
“Yes, hiding.” Again, he used his strength to stop her, and she hated him a little, then.
He must have seen it in her face, for his eyes lit with a combative glint. “Think,” he murmured, and leaned in close. “If you truly were so opposed to a man in your life and all associated consequences, you would have never accepted the risks that came with taking me into your bed.”
She felt his breath on her cheek. He was so near. The erratic beat of her heart jumbled her thoughts. Run, was all she heard. Run, more loudly, when his eyes softened and showed all the familiar flecks of green and gold.
“You are not a fool, Lucie,” he said, his tone warmer, too. “You knew the risks. You wanted me anyway. Ask yourself why.”
Her throat was horribly tight. “You are right,” she managed. “I wanted you. But even if the laws were different, I would never marry you.”
It stunned him for a beat, and she tore free.
“You think I am good enough to share your bed, but not to wed?” His voice was low, but fraught with outrage.
Many women must have cried those exact words at him in the not-so-distant past.
Wide-eyed footmen swung back the entrance door for them.
“We would not suit,” she said, a few steps down.
“Ah,” he snapped. “Care to explain why not?”
Relief crashed through her; her pony was still there next to the fountain, held by an alarmed-looking groom.
Bloody steps, infernally tight skirts, it was taking forever. “If I were to marry,” she said, “I would need a faithful husband. And you could never be faithful.”
“And how would you know I couldn’t be?” he demanded.
She jumped the last step. “Because you are Tristan Ballentine.”
He turned abruptly into her path, crushing gravel under his heels. “My reputation is half-based on rumors and you know it.”
She glared up at him. “You don’t even trust yourself—you told me not to trust you. I listen when people tell me what they are.”
“God, I told you this because I believed it to be true at the time—and it was caused entirely by how I felt about myself as a man, not by how I feel about you. And if we talked calmly I would tell you that things have changed—”
“Words,” she cried. “Words do not matter, and you are impulsive. Take our first night: the moment you saw I was naked, you fell on me, when you had much to lose.”
He paled before her eyes. “Well yes,” he said softly. “I fell on you that night because I had wanted you half my bloody life.”
She raised her chin. “Step aside, please.”
Instead, he stepped closer and leaned over her, an intensity in his gaze that stunned the screaming in her head into silence. “Then for your sake, I hope there won’t be a child,” he murmured. “Because if there is, I give you my word now: I shall drag you to the altar, bodily, if I must, and you shall say I do, and politics can go hang.”
He might as well have gripped her by the throat.
For a moment, she feared she might be sick.
“And so the mask slips,” she whispered. “Consider this, Ballentine—any child might be better cared for without you, lest you turn into a brute like your own father.”
He blinked. He made to say something, but for once, he appeared to be lost for words.
At last he did not hinder her from leaving again. He moved not at all when she lurched past him, to the pony, and dragged up her skirts to scramble onto the saddle. From the corner of her eyes, she saw that he still stood as she had left him, rigid and with his back turned. When she galloped down the drive a moment later, she felt the tender bonds between them snap inside her chest.
Chapter 36
It was like the last time she had left Wycliffe Hall: she felt nothing at all. The pace back to Newbury was civilized; the pony was returned without further ado. On the train, her eyes were dry but saw nothing of the landscape flying past the windows.
Back home, she petted and fed Boudicca, then methodically went through the mail Mrs. Heath had left on her desk. Annabelle’s card with a note, inquiring whether she was all right. Annabelle must have seen her hurry from the Randolph’s luncheon room. Next, a missive from Lady Athena, reporting that people from the Manchester Guardian had visited Tristan’s office yesterday. . . . She turned the letter facedown. The mere sight of his name stung.
While tidying up the desk, she decided to pack for Italy in the morning. No one knew about her, suffragists, or Lord Ballentine in Tuscany.
* * *
Lord Arthur stumbled into his dorm room at Merton College shortly before midnight. He fumbled with the light switch, muttering to himself and smelling of alcohol.
He was as embarrassingly easy to ambush as a lone gazelle.
The moment the door fell shut, Tristan moved.
In a second, Arthur was in a choke hold, his head forced sideways at an awkward angle.
The keys clattered to the floor.
Arthur was stiff as a salt pillar, with his back flush against Tristan’s chest. Strong fingers had clamped over his mouth, making any sound die in his throat.
Tristan brought his lips close to his ear. “Do not move. I’m a hairsbreadth from breaking your neck. A pity if it snapped by accident.”
It was not true—a neck did not snap quite so easily. But his lordship would not know this; all he presently felt was a mean pain and murderous intentions.
“I can make you more comfortable. But struggle or yell, and you shall regret it. Understood?”
A pause, then Arthur made a noise of acquiescence.
“Good.” He spun the young man around and shoved him back against the wall, his hands coming down hard on either side of his head.
Arthur’s eyes were frozen wide with confusion, but the sickly-sweet smell of fear was already pouring off him by the buckets. The anger roiling in Tristan’s chest forbade him to commiserate.
He leaned in close. “My day was very, very unpleasant,” he said, “and would have been worse if not for your poor eyesight.”
Arthur pressed back into the wall. “What do you mean?”
“Or were you just too distracted to properly decipher my tattoo?”
Arthur turned white as chalk. “Cecily?”
“Cecily.”
“God,” he croaked. “I never—crikey, women. It was merely an idea. I never expected her . . .”
“She claims it was your master plan.”
Arthur’s mouth opened, but no words came.
Odd.
After the fierce displays of jealousy and the drunken nonsense in Holywell Road, he had expected more of a struggle. But then, he had several inches of height and a few stone of muscle over the young man. Who did look rather young, with his blond fluff glinting above his lip. Was he trying to grow a mustache? The thought interfered inconveniently. Thinking of Arthur as a puppy was not conducive to strangling him.
He shook his head. “If you were me right now, what would you do?”
Arthur’s throat moved convulsively in the silence.
He was staring straight ahead at Tristan’s cravat, sweat dampening his brow.
“More interestingly,” Tristan said, “are you planning to trouble me again?”
A moment passed, and then Arthur raised his pale face and looked him in the eye. “No.”
He could smell whiskey on the boy’s breath.
He realized he had shoved Arthur up against a map—a faded and battered map of Greece. In fact, the whole room was decorated with maps of all sizes, some colorful, some plain. He had no clue what subject Arthur was reading—archa
eology, cartography, the Classics? Perhaps he just liked maps. He had never asked.
“Well.” He stepped back. “Excellent.”
Arthur sagged into himself and touched his throat.
A sour feeling spread through Tristan’s gut. He suddenly could not leave fast enough.
“You don’t know what it is like.” The abject bitterness in Arthur’s voice stayed his hand on the doorknob.
Arthur’s eyes were bitter, too, but he had raised his chin. “You don’t know what it is like, knowing beautiful people like you exist but shall never be mine. Not even for a moment.”
Tristan gave him an incredulous look. His lordship only tipped his chin higher. Judging him.
He leaned against the doorjamb with one shoulder and contemplated Arthur’s haughty face more closely. Defiance might have edged out the fear, but the misery beneath was plain as day to a keen eye.
“You are right,” he said slowly. “I don’t know what it is like.”
Surprise flared in Arthur’s eyes, then quickly darkened to suspicion.
“I have yet to meet the person who would not, eventually, have me, for an hour, or a night, if I set my mind to it,” Tristan continued. “One could say Fortune has dealt me an appallingly favorable hand.”
Arthur’s jaw clenched with silent resentment.
“It may please you, then, that the only woman I ever loved rejected me,” Tristan said coolly.
He made to finally take his leave, when Arthur bit out: “Why won’t she?”
He glanced back. “I suppose because in order to share her life with me openly, she would have to marry me, thereby sentencing herself to life in a prison of sorts.”
Arthur’s lips twisted. “Not unlike me, then—prison, for but sharing my affections openly.”
Tristan stilled. “Indeed,” he then said softly. “Not unlike you.”
“At least her jailor wouldn’t thrash her on the daily,” Arthur said, mockingly. He cocked his head, his gaze assessing. “Or perhaps he would.”
Well, hell.
He had made the comment about prison without much thought, but it struck him now with the brilliant clarity of an epiphany that he was a fool. He had heard Lucie. But he had not understood her concerns, not truly—he would protect his wife with his life, could she not see? He understood now, as Arthur’s antipathy washed over him in waves, and he imagined the boy dirty and hungry behind bars. A heavy feeling filled his chest. It all bled together in his mind now, the concepts of desire and prison and marriage.