“My lord,” she said. “If you could spare a moment longer. I’d hoped to discuss… That is…I came to tell you that I have come to a decision about my future.”
Tristan looked at her with sudden alertness.
“Have you now?” Lord Lynden asked.
“Yes, sir. It’s something Lord St. Ashton said that gave me the idea. Something about their being a great many Caddington relations who might wish to know me.”
“There might well be,” Lord Lynden said. “I’ve been thinking of one or two likely Caddington ladies myself. Not as high sticklers as the rest of the lot. A bit more open-minded.”
“Are there such ladies?” she asked.
“One in particular comes to mind. Lady Hermione Caddington. A distant spinster cousin of your mother.”
“Hermione Caddington?” Tristan sounded vaguely horrified. “The one who used to wear that outrageous Bloomer costume?”
“Reform dress,” Lord Lynden mused. “Yes, yes. She was a bit of an original in her day.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Tristan said dryly.
“And you think she might be willing to meet me?” Valentine couldn’t conceal the hope in her voice.
“We shall soon see. I sent her a wire this morning.”
“What?” Tristan’s face darkened with irritation “Without consulting me?”
Lord Lynden glared at his son. “And how was I to consult with you while you were gallivanting around York for the better part of the day?” he demanded. “No. I consulted my own judgment, sir. The more options Miss March has, the better.”
Valentine leaned forward in her chair, hands clasped tightly in her lap. “What do you suggest, my lord?”
“St. Ashton informs me that you’re opposed to staying with my son and daughter-in-law in Devonshire over the next year while he gets his property in order.”
“Not opposed, but…I confess, it’s not my first choice. I wouldn’t like to be among strangers for such an extended period of time. Not unless I’ve been employed by them for an honest wage.”
“You’d rather work?”
“I’d rather not be a burden. To stay with anyone on sufferance…” She shook her head. “No, my lord. I wouldn’t find it at all comfortable. And I can’t think your son and his wife would enjoy it very much either.”
Lord Lynden considered her from beneath furrowed brows. “Perhaps you might prefer travelling to London to see Lady Hermione? She’s not a stranger. She’s your family. And, unless I’ve greatly misjudged her character, it wouldn’t take much convincing to persuade her to stand chaperone for you.”
Tristan straightened from where he leaned on the mantelpiece. “What in blazes is this?” His deep voice was taut with sudden anger. “A bloody conspiracy? Am I to have no say at all in my own future?”
“It’s not your future we’re discussing,” Lord Lynden said. “It’s Miss March’s future.”
“The two are one in the same,” Tristan said. “Whether you like it or not, Miss March and I are going to be married.”
Valentine could feel the tension between Lord Lynden and his son vibrating in the smoky air of the billiards room. The atmosphere fairly crackled with it. She looked between the two men. She didn’t believe they hated each other. But there was a great deal of bitterness and disappointment on both sides. And she was certain it didn’t help that, at present, Lord Lynden held the purse strings.
“I think I should like to go to London,” she said.
Tristan looked at her. “Valentine—”
“I don’t want to stay here any longer,” she said. “After what happened last night…”
“Quite so,” Lord Lynden agreed.
“It’s become intolerable,” she said. “I want to leave as soon as possible.”
Lord Lynden nodded. “And so we shall. At dawn. As we should have done today.” He rose. “I must speak to my valet. And I must write to Lady Hermione. If you’ll excuse me, Miss March, I shall bid you good night.”
“Good night, my lord. And thank you.”
Lord Lynden acknowledged her thanks with an inclination of his head before levelling a quelling glance at his son. “St. Ashton. Pray don’t drink yourself into a stupor this evening.”
Valentine watched the Earl of Lynden walk from the room. When he was gone, she turned to Tristan. “You’re not really going to drink your dinner, are you?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters,” she said. “In truth, I wish you wouldn’t drink at all.”
“Don’t judge all drink by your unfortunate experience with the Fairfords’ sherry. Some alcohol is really quite good. Effective, too. It helps a man to round the corners, as they say. To plane away the asperities of existence.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what any of that means. It sounds like utter nonsense.”
“It means, my little innocent, that at times strong drink does a damned good job of making life more bearable.”
“Is life so unbearable for you, my lord?”
“My lord,” he repeated. “We regress.” He moved from the fireplace to take his father’s abandoned chair. Once seated, he fixed her with a brooding stare. “If you wanted to go to London to find a willing Caddington relation, why didn’t you come to me? Why approach my father?”
He looked like a great predatory cat sprawled in the leather armchair. All long, muscled limbs and coiled strength. But there was something else there, too. Some emotion intertwined amongst the magnificence of his physical presence. Was he disappointed in her? Was he…
Great goodness.
Was he hurt?
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I did come to you. I didn’t know your father would be here as well. How could I?”
“And now he’s taking you off to London without so much as a by-your-leave.” Tristan raked a hand through his hair. “You’re slipping away from me. I can see it. I can feel it happening, but I don’t know how in the devil I’m supposed to stop it.”
“I’m not slipping away from anyone. I’m right here.”
“You are now. And for a few moments today, I truly believed—” He broke off with a faint, wry smile. “Stupid of me, I know, but I thought I could make you happy. A great blow to my conceit, I’m sure.”
The butterflies in Valentine’s stomach stirred to life. “I enjoyed our time together today very much. Truly I did. But no one can make anyone else happy. Not really. We all of us are responsible for our own happiness. Our own contentment. We can’t seek it in other people.”
“Can’t we?” His expression softened almost imperceptibly. “You make me happy.”
Her heart performed a queer little somersault. “Do I?”
“Very much.”
“But how? We hardly know each other.”
“I’ve kissed you,” he said. “I’ve held you fast in my arms.”
She could feel the heat of her blush as it swept from the collar of her Garibaldi blouse, up the column of her throat, and into her face. It burned like wildfire. “Yes, but…it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since you…since our encounter in the conservatory. That’s scarcely any time at all.”
“Counting the minutes, are you?”
She frowned at him. “I wish you wouldn’t tease me.”
“I’m a brute and a bully. I thought we established that last night.”
“And I thought you promised to change.”
He shrugged.
Valentine could have happily throttled him. In a rustle of skirts, she stood from her chair. She could no longer pretend they were just two people, sitting together in front of a smoking fire, having a civilized discussion about an abstract future. Her nerves were too jangled. Her feelings too raw. She strode to the billiards table, arms folded across her midsection. She heard the leather of Tristan’s chair creak as he rose to follow her.
He wasn’t as uninterested in what she had to say as he pretended.
She turned to face him. H
is hair was rumpled, his untied cravat hanging low on one side and short on the other. He looked tired and more than a little defeated. “I’ve heard things about you, you know,” she said.
He didn’t appeared to be the least impressed by this revelation. “Oh?”
“Since we were discovered together in the conservatory last night, the entire household has been at great pains to inform me that you’re unreliable. That everything in life has been a sport to you. That you don’t mean the half of what you say.”
“They’re right,” he said. “It’s all true. Every word.”
“I don’t doubt it.” She saw him wince, but soldiered on. “They’ve also told me you proposed to me merely because your father’s here. Because you wanted to make a show of having done the right thing.”
“And you believe that.”
“Do you deny it?”
Tristan was silent for a long moment. “I don’t know if I can,” he said at last. “Not in all honesty.”
Valentine’s heart sank. “I see.”
“I don’t think you do. My father had just exiled me and cut off my funds. Earlier he’d intimated that if I married and set up my nursery he would reconsider his decision.” His fingers speared through his disheveled hair once more. “It must have had some impact on my proposal, mustn’t it? How could it not have? And yet…when I knelt before you and asked you to marry me, I swear to you, I wasn’t thinking of my fortune. And I was certainly not thinking of my father.”
She exhaled an unsteady breath. And then she nodded. “I believe you.”
“But you believe everything else as well. All the damning truths about my character.”
“I would be a fool not to.”
“And you’re no fool.”
“No, I’m not, but…” Her words came out in a rush of feeling. “I’ve put my faith in you, sir. And I have precious little faith left to spare. Don’t you dare let me down, Tristan. Don’t you dare break my heart.”
Tristan stared down at her, stunned. “Do I have your heart, Valentine?”
Her mouth trembled. “I’m very much afraid that you do. Against all better judgment.”
He searched her face, his dark eyes lit with a fierce tenderness that made her pounding heart stutter. She thought he would embrace her. A stupid girlish fancy! But he made no move to take her in his arms. Instead, he lifted his hand to her face and set the back of his fingers, very gently, against the curve of her cheek.
It was the barest touch. A mere caress of his knuckles on her skin.
But he was close. So close that she could feel the masculine heat from his body. Could smell the seductive scent of his expensive shaving soap.
Her lashes briefly fluttered closed, her bosom rising and falling on a tremulous, indrawn breath.
“What a mad little creature you are,” he said huskily. “Didn’t anyone ever warn you about men like me?”
“Often,” she said. “And often.”
“It never occurred to you to listen?”
“I listened. My whole life I listened. Until yesterday…” Her words trailed off as Tristan bent his head and pressed his lips to her brow. They lingered there, warm and firm, for a long while.
And her heart stopped. It simply ceased beating. She had a vague, ridiculous notion that it had swooned into a faint. Indeed, she wasn’t entirely sure how she remained standing. At the touch of his lips, her knees had gone as weak and wobbly as a blancmange.
She waited for his mouth to find hers as it had last night. She waited for him to take her lips in a searing, soul-scorching kiss. But he didn’t kiss her. Perhaps he didn’t wish to. Perhaps…
“Tristan,” she murmured.
“Yes, sweet?”
“Have you had a great deal to drink this evening?”
He stilled. “Why do you ask?”
She felt his breath against her forehead. “Have you?”
“Not a great deal.” He drew back to look at her. “Why?”
“Yesterday…when you kissed me…”
His dark brows lifted in surprise. “You think that was because I was drunk?”
“You said you were a trifle disguised.”
“A few glasses of wine, nothing more. Liquid courage. It prompted me to follow you into the conservatory. But kissing you…” His expression warmed. “Valentine, I wanted to kiss you in the folly—when I was wet, irritable, and cold sober.” He paused. “I want to kiss you now.”
A flicker of anticipation awakened within her. It was followed swiftly by shyness and an all too familiar feeling of uncertainty. “Why don’t you?”
He brushed his lips across her forehead again in a brief, whispering caress. “Because the door to the billiards room is standing open. Because I can hear the sounds of the other guests emerging from their rooms for dinner. Because, my darling girl”—she felt him smile—“last night I may have compromised you, but, contrary to my father’s opinion, I have no wish to ruin you.”
There was no swooning this time. Her heart beat hard and strong. And it swelled with affection for him.
She brought her hand to lay alongside his face. “Because you’re going to do the honorable thing.”
“Yes,” he said. And then he turned his face into her hand and pressed a chaste kiss to her palm. “Because this time, for once in my benighted life, I’m going to do the honorable thing.”
Despite all his best intentions, when the morning came, Tristan didn’t return to London with Valentine and his father. He hadn’t been permitted to do so. It would worsen the scandal, his father had said. And it would do nothing for Valentine’s reputation to arrive in town on the arm of the city’s most notorious libertine. Instead, his father had left Fairford House at dawn with Valentine in tow. They’d driven to the railway station to catch the fast train to London.
As for himself, he settled in the back of his travelling coach—his coachman driving the horses, not toward London, but toward Northumberland.
He hadn’t told Valentine. There’d been no time. Hell, he hadn’t even seen her this morning. They’d parted last night in the billiards room after an hour spent sitting and talking. There’d been no love words. No flirtation. He’d merely held her hand like a lad courting his first young lady, his thumb moving tenderly over her delicate knuckles as she confided in him about her visit from that spiteful witch Felicity Brightwell.
Even now, his jaw clenched to think of it.
And then that damned Celia Ravenscroft had gone and compounded the problem with her ominous-sounding warnings about his unsteady character.
Was it any wonder Valentine had decided so suddenly to seek out a sympathetic Caddington relation? Since her father’s death, she’d had no one in the world of her own. No one on whom she could rely. During their trip to York he’d thought, foolishly, that she might come to rely on him, but his prim little vicar’s daughter was too sensible for that. And he couldn’t blame her. He’d given her precious little evidence that he possessed any steadiness of character.
And now she was going to London, the city which formed the primary backdrop for his more than a decade’s worth of depravity.
Tristan stared, unseeing, out the window of the rumbling carriage. The passing landscape was a blur of gray skies and stark, frostbitten hills.
Well, she would learn soon enough that the Viscount St. Ashton hadn’t once in his life proven himself capable of being faithful to a woman. There were dozens of ladies of Felicity Brightwell’s ilk in London. Dozens of ladies he’d either spurned outright, debauched and deserted, or dallied with for a month or two before severing the relationship with a vague note and a parting gift of jewelry from Rundell and Bridge. Any one of those ladies would be more than willing to inform Valentine what a selfish, heartless bastard he was.
“Which is precisely why you must stay away from London,” his father had said earlier that morning. “And away from Miss March.”
Tristan had been standing with his back to his father. He was still in his dressing gown
. His travelling cases lay open on the bed. They were half-packed for the journey to London. “For how long?” he’d asked.
“A few months. Possibly longer.”
“In other words, you would have me stay away from Miss March for a year. Just as you originally planned.”
“The Caddingtons will be loath to accept her as it is. If they learn of her association with you—”
“You need say no more, my lord,” Tristan had said sharply. “I comprehend your meaning.”
When his father had gone, he’d swept the cases from his bed in a crashing burst of anger. And then he’d sat down at the writing desk and dashed off a letter to Musgrove, directing him to board the next train to Northumberland.
If he was to be barred from returning to London, he might as well travel to Blackburn Priory and see what could be done with the place. And if he must go into exile, so too must his meddling secretary.
As for Valentine March…
His father had said he’d explain things to her. That it was better not to linger. Better not to enact a dramatic farewell scene. Tristan had reluctantly agreed. He’d instead taken his leave of Valentine in a hastily scrawled note. Not because he didn’t wish to say goodbye to her in person, but because he couldn’t bear to see the look of disappointment in her eyes when he did so.
He was a coward.
“I’ll write to her again,” he’d told his father as he handed him the note. “Often. I’ll not have her think me inconstant.”
The Earl of Lynden had shaken his head. “She can’t receive letters from you while staying with one of the Caddingtons. Not you or any man. It would be gravely improper.”
“Under other circumstances, perhaps. But Miss March and I are engaged to be married.”
“Your betrothal has not yet been announced. Nor will it be. Not for six months at least.”
Tristan had gone perfectly still.
“You’ve overwhelmed the gel in your usual fashion,” his father had continued. “Now you must leave her be awhile.”
“Or else,” Tristan had replied. “That’s the threat, isn’t it? Do as you say in this matter or risk being cut off from all means of support.”
“Damn you, boy, I would have thought you’d want to protect Miss March. To do everything in your power to shield her good name. I’ve seen the way you look at her. You have a tenderness for her. Or am I mistaken?”
The Viscount and the Vicar's Daughter Page 11