Courting Poppy Tidemore (Lords of Honor Book 5)

by Christi Caldwell

  Poppy flinched. “The terms,” she echoed.” His wife brought her chin up. “I had a right to know, Tristan.”

  He drew in a shaky breath. “You are correct, Poppy. I…owed you that. And I was…wrong to withhold this,” he finished lamely. He’d married her, consummated their union, and all the while, he’d withheld a crucial piece about their future together. Now he could confront the truth of his own treachery. He’d not told her for one simple reason: he’d been afraid she’d break it off. It had been the ultimate act of selfishness borne of a fear that she’d break off their arrangement.

  Poppy hugged her arms to her chest. “You don’t have to go. I have money, Tristan. You don’t need to take employment.”

  He jerked, feeling much the way he had when a bayonet’s blade had lanced his side. “Is that what you believe I sought? Your fortune?” he asked tersely.

  “Of course not, Tristan. You rejected my dowry.”

  Not entirely.

  “That money is reserved for you and our children.” A babe she might even be carrying now. And a hungering so fierce, so keen, left him breathless at the thought of it. A tiny girl with her mother’s dark curls and spirit and—

  “One has to have a marriage to have children,” she said, with a bitterness he’d never before heard from her.

  A piece of his heart cracked off.

  I’d tell you not to hurt her, but that is inevitable…

  In the moment, St. Cyr’s warning mocked him with its truth. But then, you always knew that. In his desire for her, he’d refused to acknowledge that, and instead opted to believe the lie before him.

  “There is a marriage, Poppy,” he whispered, looping an arm around her waist, and as he ran his lips down the length of her neck, she melted against him. “This is not forever. There’ll be a marriage when I return.” Her breath caught as he trailed another path of kisses along the trim of her neckline.

  “Tristan,” she moaned.

  It was a plea. For more? To stay with her always. For him to stop. Please, do not let it be that.

  “Tell me what you want, Poppy,” he begged, handing her control, even as her rejection would kill him.

  Her smoky lashes fluttered open. “You, Tristan,” she whispered. “It has always been you.”

  And terrified by the depth of emotion there and the meaning behind those seven words, he swept his mouth over hers.

  There was nothing gentle in their meeting. Their kiss was violent and desperate. He slid his tongue over her lips, in a bid to memorize the lush, silken contours. Poppy nipped at him, a primitive mate, marking her right. Her place.

  Tristan tugged her hem, lifting her dress, so that her long legs were exposed, and he guided her so that she was perched on the edge of his desk.

  “Tristan,” she rasped, as he fell to his knees before her. Catching her delicate foot, he angled her leg and brought her arch close to his mouth. He kissed the instep, reveling in the thready moan of her desire. He journeyed higher, pressing his lips to every bit of exposed flesh. “I love your legs, so firm from riding,” he praised, caressing his mouth higher still. “And the smell of you, Poppy. All musky heat and womanly desire,” he whispered, and she collapsed back on her elbows, sending all the books and ledgers toppling and tumbling to the floor in a discordant symphony, as he brought his mouth closer. Closer still to that apex. He teased a kiss along her inner thigh.

  The breath hissed between Poppy’s teeth. “What…oh, goodness…please…” All her speech dissolved.

  And then he dropped a kiss atop her damp curls.

  She cried out; as her limbs quivered; she let them splay wider.

  “You are so wet,” he praised. “I want to taste you.”

  “Yes,” she hissed. “I-I want that.”

  He slid his tongue inside, stroking her; alternately toying with the sensitive nub. Suckling that flesh until Poppy was undulating. She bucked underneath him. Cursing and crying out. And even through the lust that cloaked his senses, he smiled at the colorful expletives falling from her lips.

  “Don’t stop,” she ordered between great gasping breaths. “Don’t ever stop.”

  “Do you mean like this?” He ceased his ministrations, teasing her to a fever pitch, angling away from the thrust of her hips.

  She whimpered.

  Taking no mercy, he breathed lightly at her heated flesh. “Tell me what you want,” he coaxed, glancing up. “Let me hear you say it.”

  Her eyes heavy, her thick black lashes swept low, she managed just one sentence: “I want your mouth on me.” Tangling her fingers in his hair, she guided him back to her center; so unabashedly free in her quest for pleasure; his shaft throbbed with the need to plunge deep inside all that molten heat. To only take, but he made himself give.

  Tristan darted his tongue over her slit. Lapping her until he felt her trembling under him. Until her cries reached a fever pitch, and then she came. Poppy arched and lunged and twisted, her thighs closing tight around his head to hold him close, as she came loudly and wildly.

  Growling, he climbed to his feet, and catching her by the hips, he thrust deep. She cried out, another peal of further pleasure he’d coaxed from her just-sated body.

  “Wrap your legs around me,” he ordered sharply, as he came down over her. He rocked into her. Deeper and deeper. Stretching her. Filling her. Until sweat fell from his brow, and her cries of desire mingled with his own. The force of his thrusts sent the desk rocking back and forth on its narrow legs.

  And then she came again, screaming and screeching his name, and he was joining her over that glorious precipice, somewhere between here and heaven. He shuddered from the force of his release, and then collapsed.

  They lay there, with only the sharp draws of their breaths to break the silence as they found their way back to earth.

  But Tristan didn’t want to climb down from this moment. He didn’t want reality to rear itself and return to the place they’d been before this, of Poppy’s hurt and his inability to spare her from it. Mindful that she was stretched awkwardly out upon the hard surface of the desk, Tristan forced himself to straighten and right his garments. Coming around the desk, he retrieved a kerchief from one of the sideboard drawers, and returning to his wife, he gently wiped the remnants of his seed from her person.

  “You are leaving,” she said quietly, as if these past moments where their bodies had moved in exquisite harmony had never happened, and they’d simply resumed that tense exchange before it.

  “I am.” He had to.

  “There’s…nothing that can make you stay.”

  Her. He wanted to stay for her. He knew that now. Somewhere along the way, Poppy had become more than just a friend. She’d become someone he needed. Nay, the woman he wanted in his life…now and for always. And because of that, she was also the reason he had to leave. Straightening, Tristan hopped onto the edge of the sideboard so he and Poppy sat shoulder to shoulder. “This isn’t solely about money, Poppy.” For as she’d pointed out, she had money enough for the both of them.

  “Then what is it?” she asked; her fingers shook as she struggled to straighten her dress.

  “Here,” he murmured, guiding her hands down, as he saw to the task himself. When her garments were righted, he stroked her jaw. “This is about your name and your reputation.”

  “I don’t care about my reputation.”

  And he rather believed that. It was just one of the things he’d come to admire about Poppy over the years. “There will be our children. And even as you think you might not care in this moment, when you have a son or daughter”—or both—“you’ll want to do anything to protect them from hurt.” And he’d not be able to live in a world where Poppy grew to resent him, where he came to resent himself for not restoring their name.

  Sadness spilled from her eyes. “I will want to protect them at all costs, but do you know, Tristan? I’ll also know that as long as they are loved, nothing matters more.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Poppy
climbed down from the desk and her skirts fluttered about her legs. “When do you leave?”

  His stomach muscles contracted. “A fortnight.”

  “A fortnight?”

  And just like that, the shock and hurt of before blazed to life. “You’ve known this.” A bitter laugh gurgled in her throat. “At what point did you intend to tell me? Or did you simply intend to leave?”

  It had happened. St. Cyr’s prediction had proven correct—Tristan was responsible for Poppy’s misery. Just as he’d been unable to see his sisters happy, so too was he now failing his wife. “Of course I wouldn’t just leave.” Frustration with himself and his inability to make anything right brought his words out more sharp than he intended.

  Poppy raked a pitying stare over him. “Your pride will be your ruin, Tristan Poplar.” And her words, along with that condescending expression, grated.

  He chuckled. “I was ruined when Northrop reentered. But at least now I will have my honor.”

  “Pfft, honor,” she scoffed. “You equate your honor with how the world views you and not with how you live your own life.”

  Tristan stormed around the side of the desk so that only the swivel chair divided them. “How I live my life? And what of you?” Fury and hot emotion were calling forth every word.

  “What of me?” she demanded, folding her arms defensively at her middle.

  Soon he’d be gone, and he needed to know when he left, she’d have her work but that she wouldn’t shutter herself away with it. He needed to know that she wouldn’t trap herself indoors, hiding the one thing that brought her joy. “You, who paint your sister’s hotel and your own walls—”

  Poppy sputtered. Poppy, his always in command and in control wife, at a loss because of him, and through the swirl of emotion, he could not, nor would he call back a single word.

  Then she found her legs in their battle. “You’d speak of it as though what I do is somehow bad.”

  “I speak as though what you do is safe,” he said solemnly. “You’d call me out, and yet, bold and spirited and proud as you are, you’ve hidden yourself away. In your sister’s hotel, away from Polite Society. On your sketchpad. Unable to so much as sign your name to what you create and own what you’ve done.” He slashed a hand angrily at that book she’d gifted him.

  She gasped, and like a mother protecting her babe, grabbed that book up. Clutching it close, a gift he did not deserve. Just as he’d not deserved her. “You’re wrong. My work at Penny and Ryker’s is there for the world to see.”

  “Just not as yours. Your refusing to claim ownership of your art allows you to go through life never truly having your pieces judged.” Had his wife even realized she’d put those defenses up?

  Anger rolled off her in waves. “How dare you?” she seethed.

  “I dare because I might have been banished by society, but I’ve fought at every turn, and you? You speak of me, but you’ve done something far worse. You’ve hidden yourself…not because of Rochford but long before him, because you’re too afraid of what the world might actually say about your talents. A coward in the face of—”

  Poppy shot a hand out; the sharp crack of her palm connecting with his cheek echoed in the sudden quiet.

  Their chests rose and fell furiously, their breath coming in fast, angry spurts as they locked in silence.

  Then horror paraded over Poppy’s features and she jerked her hand close to her skirts. “I’m… I… I didn’t…”

  “It is fine,” he said tiredly. He’d deserved her fury and her blow, but for reasons long before this one.

  “Why are you doing this?” she implored. “Make me understand?”

  “I’m trying to make more of myself.”

  Poppy gripped him by the shirt and shook him lightly. “You are enough. Why can’t this be enough?” Why can’t we be enough? It hovered as real as if she’d uttered the question aloud.

  “Because this cannot be enough,” he said gently. “And someday you’ll see that, Poppy Tidemore.”

  She reeled as if he’d struck her.

  “Poplar,” she whispered. The evidence of her hurt struck like a gut punch that had been landed by an iron fist.

  He stared at her in confusion.

  “I’m no longer Tidemore, just as you’re no longer able to simply consider leaving without…without…”

  “Without what?” he demanded.

  “Telling me,” she cried out, slashing a hand angrily at the air. “Or asking me.” She forced herself to draw a calming breath. “You told me that Northrop was collecting a debt, not that he’d enumerated precisely every expenditure and the amount owed.”

  “It was all the same.” Whatever the amount would have been, would have been too much. Expenses he couldn’t afford.

  “I was wrong. This will never be enough.” She started for the door. And with every step that carried her away, there was a finality…to this moment. To them. Her strides widening the gap. “I’d ask that you say goodbye to me when I leave, and that you’d consider writing?” In requesting as much, his leaving became real in ways that it hadn’t been. Being parted from her took on a realness that he’d not previously felt because he’d not allowed himself to.

  Poppy stopped; her fingers on the door. “You want me to play the soldier’s dutiful wife and happily send you on your way, waving with my kerchief, while you put yourself willingly in harm’s way?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Tristan. I can’t do that.”

  This time, as she left, he let her go.

  And staring after her, long after the quiet echo of her footfalls had faded, he’d never felt more miserable.

  Chapter 18

  When she’d been a girl of fifteen, Poppy had secretly dreamed of a life as Poppy Poplar, the Countess of Maxwell.

  Of course, it hadn’t been the title which had mattered to her. It had been him: the charming gentleman with a love of dogs and an appreciation for horses.

  As such, married a fortnight now, one might say Poppy had everything she’d dreamed of.

  Except she didn’t.

  In the two weeks since they’d been wed, they’d been precisely as they’d been: teasing friends. Albeit teasing friends who made love to one another each evening. But during the day, they lived their own separate lives.

  Which was fine.

  Which was what she had essentially agreed to.

  So why was she so bloody miserable?

  On the heel of that was the rush of an answer: it wasn’t enough. Selfishly, she wanted more. Nay, she wanted more with him.

  Adding another stroke to the mural Penelope had commissioned for her daughter’s nursery, Poppy stole another glance out of the corner of her eye at her elder sister and husband, the blissfully happy couple, crawling on all fours, chasing the squealing little girl around the room.

  And there proved to be something inherently bad and wicked in Poppy, for she was awash with an envy that crippled her from making so much as another stroke.

  That was what a marriage was.

  Mayhap not to Polite Society and mayhap not for the world on a whole, but that relationship was all the Tidemores had ever witnessed or had for themselves. Until Poppy. Oh, she’d been the one to reassure Jonathan with the reminder that ultimately all the Tidemore women found love…even in the unlikeliest and formal matches they’d entered into.

  But after fourteen days as Lady Poppy Poplar, the Baroness Bolingbroke, she conceded one very distinct difference that she’d failed to note…until now—Poppy had known her husband for more than six years. First as a girl on the cusp of womanhood, and then as a young woman, and now, simply, a woman. They were not strangers to one another. And as such there was affection, but what had never blossomed between them—was love.

  “Da-Da,” Paisley cried happily, and toddled away from the growling Ryker Black.

  Her niece ran into Poppy’s skirts, knocking Poppy slightly off-balance.

  “Havn,” the little girl happily crowed the safe word.

  Bre
athless from the game of chase, Penelope fell back on her heels. “Aunt Poppy cannot be your haven. Aunt Poppy is painting.”

  Abandoning what had become a futile attempt at her work, Poppy set aside her brush, and scooped up her niece. “Don’t you listen to your silly mum,” she assured in sing-song tones. “Aunt Poppy always has time.” She blew on the ticklish spot at the back of the little girl’s neck until great big giggles spilled from her lips. Taking mercy, she dropped a kiss atop Paisley’s black curls, and then set her on her feet. “Run,” she whispered.

  With another loud squeal, the girl went toddling off.

  Poppy watched on wistfully as parents and child played, feeling like an interloper on that special family time they shared.

  And that was what Poppy was missing in her own life: time that she and Tristan shared. Oh, they made love every night, but during the day, Poppy worked on the redesign of her sister’s hotel, and in the early evening she returned and put the same efforts into her new residence. All the while, he remained either shut away in his offices or…elsewhere… “Sorting out his affairs”, as he’d come to say.

  His affairs.

  Not theirs.

  As though they were separate still.

  But then, wasn’t that precisely what they were? She made an angry swipe of her brush.

  “Are you all right?”

  Poppy started.

  Concern filled her elder sister’s eyes.

  “I’m fine,” she assured, making another stroke on the menagerie she painted on her niece’s wall.

  Penelope gave Ryker a look, and just like that, with no words, and some unspoken communication only they two understood, he scooped Paisley into his arms, and left the Tidemore sisters alone.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” her sister said without preamble.

  Poppy set her jaw. “You asked that I see to the redesign of your hotel. Where else should I be?”

  “At home, Poppy,” she said softly, resting an elbow against the wall. “Making your goodbyes…which is what a wife would do.”