“Tristan, please, this isn't what it—”
“Don't lie to me, Blythe. Take off his jacket. We are going home.”
“Don't speak to her like that. She doesn't deserve your scorn. Just for the love of God, listen to us for once, Parrington.”
Tristan gave him a look of deep disgust. “Stay out of my family matters. Blythe is protecting you with everything she has; the least you can do is be grateful.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Tristan, please. Please take me home.”
Both men turned to Blythe. She was shaking where she stood, and even in the dim light, Thomas could see how pale she was. She looked as if she was keeping herself together through sheer will, and right then, all he wanted to do was to wrap her in cotton and keep her away from the ravages of the world.
Tristan glanced at Thomas. “Keep your damn distance, Amory. You've done enough damage.”
As Tristan guided Blythe away, Thomas thought he had never seen her look smaller or more defeated. Tristan said he had done enough damage. Perhaps the damned man was right. All he knew was that he could not stand to see Blythe look like that.
* * *
25
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CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
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Blythe's brain was mired in mud and ice. Everything that people said to her came from some faraway place. She could not bear for Tristan and Thomas to fight, and the only thing she could do to keep it from happening was to walk away with Tristan. Even in her chilled state, she could feel the pain of leaving with Tristan. The whole way out of the room, she knew that Thomas’ eyes were on her, and that somewhere silently inside him, he was begging her to come back.
She also knew that Tristan seeing the two of them practically in each other’s arms was not going to make her cousin more merciful. Leaving with him seemed like the only choice.
He was silent in the coach heading toward their home.
Blythe was the one who broke the silence. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“You cannot be pleased by the current state of things between us. I want to know what kind of storm is brewing over me.”
Tristan's laugh was bitter. “You sound very brave when you speak like that. It's almost as if you are championing some cause you know to be right.”
“Thomas Martin is—”
“Thomas Martin is a Martin, and at the end of the day, that is all you need to know about him!”
Tristan's voice was so loud and hard that Blythe winced. She wanted to tell him about the men who had tried to abduct her and how Thomas had come and rescued her. Then she wondered if her cousin would even care, or if he would see it as one more sign of her degeneracy.
“Tristan—”
“No. Stop. I know what your defenses are going to be and believe me when I say I don't want to hear them. The Martins are rotten to the core, brother and sister both.”
“You are so very cruel when you speak of them. I do not believe that you speak of anyone else that way.”
Instead of dismissing her comment, Tristan was still for a long moment. “I must seem terribly cruel to you.”
“You do, sometimes. I also know that that is not truly you. I have known you for many years, Tristan, and I do not want to think that the boy I knew has become a cruel man.”
“I have, unfortunately. From experience, I will tell you here and now that the Martins are poison. If you will not stay away, or perhaps if you cannot stay away, believe me, I can understand that.”
Blythe eyed him, though, in the darkness, there was precious little to see. Something in his tone tugged at her mind. “What do you mean? How do you understand so well?”
“There are many reasons why Carrows and Martins do not mix, Blythe. Some of those reasons are ancient, and some are much more recent. But that's neither here nor there. There are more important things for us to speak of.”
“More important?”
“Yes. Tonight, we are staying at the Grosvenor Street house. Tomorrow, we are leaving. And before you get any bright ideas about fleeing, I am stationing a maid to watch your door until the moment we are back in the coach.”
“Leaving? But where in the world are we going?”
“Away. Away from the London madness. My duties in Parliament are fulfilled for the time being, and it is time I tended to matters closer to home.”
Blythe swallowed hard. When she spoke, she could hear the hollowness in her own voice.
“What do you mean, matters closer to home? What are you doing?”
“I don't want to talk about this right now. You have had a long and overwrought night.”
“Don't condescend to me as if I were some delicate child! If we are playing the game with you as the family patriarch and me as the erring female supplicant, you must at least tell me what is going on.”
There was a long pause where she thought Tristan was just going to ignore her. When he spoke, there was something dead in his voice, something that made her skin crawl. “Very well. If you must know this minute, I have decided that we are to be married. This solves many problems, not in the least of which is your ruin. We are leaving London while I procure the special license to do that.”
“You can't be serious! We're cousins!”
“Second cousins. It is perfectly legal; I only need the license to do it swiftly.”
“Tristan, do not do this to me, to yourself. We would make each other miserable.”
Tristan looked away, running all ten fingers through his hair. “We're making each other miserable now. You won't stay at home; you won't be married. At the end of the day, Blythe, I am your guardian. I am responsible for you as if you were my daughter.”
“Who you're going to marry?”
“Bad analogy. But the fact remains that I am responsible for you, and this has become the only acceptable way to continue.”
“The only acceptable way for you to take the Gallowglass property, you mean. Is that what this has all been about? Are you so very piqued that your father wanted to see to it that I wasn't a pauper?”
Tristan rocked back as if she had slapped him. For a moment, she felt guilty about saying such a thing, but she steeled herself against it. She refused to feel sorry for Tristan. After all, he was the author of her current misery.
“That's not true.”
“Isn't it? You've been strange with me ever since this all started. You were content to let me be until my damned inheritance came into play, and then you refused to stop.”
“Everything changed when my father died. If you remember, I was looking into settling an amount on you, so you could be decently wed.”
“A small amount. Not an heiress’ portion. And then everything changed.”
“Yes! Of course, everything changes! Everything always changes. That's the way of the world, and all we can do is to stay with it, to make sure that we do not get ground up when it goes by.”
Blythe stared at Tristan. There was something almost mad in the way he spoke, and a certain desperation in his eyes that made her shut her mouth. She had no idea what drove him like this, what devil sat on his shoulder.
Could my cousin be the one who is behind all of this? The man who entered my room, the two who tried to kidnap me?
A shiver ran along her spine. Tristan seemed to take her silence for obedience, because he lapsed into silence, leaning back against the velvet seats. He looked like a man torn by demons, and despite what she was beginning to suspect, Blythe could not resist a distant pang of sympathy for him.
I can't believe he ordered those things. But he is desperate now, and he seems on the brink of madness. I cannot take anything for granted.
At that moment, she missed Thomas more than she'd ever thought possible. It was tinged with the great love she felt for him, but more than that,
there was simply the fact that she and Thomas were better when they were together. Together, they could solve this. They had emerged triumphant from enough scrapes that she barely knew how she had gotten by without him before, and now that she had to, she didn't like it.
I should think that being with him made me weaker, but I'm not sure I would have gotten this far without him. I miss him. God, I miss him so.
* * *
As promised, Tristan stationed a young girl at Blythe's door, one of the maids who had helped her dress. When Blythe looked at her dubiously, the girl curtsied.
“Miss Dennings, his grace, the duke, told me to tell you that if I allowed you to leave before he came to fetch you in the morning, I and my sister in the kitchens would be dismissed without a reference.”
Blythe stared at the girl, her blood boiling. “Surely, he wouldn't do that! That's monstrous!”
The girl shrugged, a miserable look on her face. “All I know is that he looked well and serious enough, Miss Dennings.”
“I'm sure he did. Thank you for telling me that. Do not worry. I will not do anything that gets you and your sister dismissed, I swear.”
The girl looked comforted, but Blythe retired to her room in a simmering rage.
How dare he. How dare Tristan use other people against me, people who cannot stand against him, the very people who depend on him for their livelihood!
Of course, in many ways, what Tristan had done was ingenious. He had found the one barrier she wouldn't cross. The idea of the maid and her sister being cast out without references was horrifying. Without a reference, they might never find positions in a proper household again. She had helped far too many girls who had been cast out in similar situations to hope the world would be at all kind to them.
God, doesn't Tristan know what he's threatening?
She had to admit that perhaps he didn't. Tristan was of the aristocracy, and his life was as different from those of the two maids he had so callously threatened as night was from day. Of course, somehow, Thomas had learned that the people who cooked his food and swept his streets were people, and she warmed at the thought of him. She remembered his rescuing her at the tailor's, and how he had been so kind to Honey.
Blythe looked up at the ceiling, taking several deep breaths until she was sure she wouldn't cry. She couldn't afford to think of Thomas like this. After all, when she finally managed to get some sleep, she would probably dream about him, as she had so often over the past month.
She paced for hours, trying to find a way out of her situation, to escape, to flee London or at the very least to get some kind of word to Thomas, but in the end, she knew Tristan had finally found the best way to snare her. She refused to put the jobs of the women Tristan employed at risk, and so she was stuck.
In defeat, Blythe undressed and slept restlessly in her bed, and as she had guessed, she dreamed of Thomas. Somewhere in a thick mist, he was calling her name, and she knew she had to get to him, but she was mired to her knees in cold mud. With every shout, Thomas’ voice grew fainter, and no matter how she shouted, he never seemed to hear her.
A brisk knock at the door woke Blythe, and she realized she had kicked the blankets down to her legs, where they tangled her terribly. By the time she had untangled herself, the knocking had grown more insistent, and she nearly stumbled as she made her way to the door.
On the other side were two maids, one of them the girl who had stood guard all night. Her relief when Blythe appeared was palpable, and Blythe felt another hopeless stab of rage at Thomas.
“Well, here I am. What is to be done with me?”
“His grace has asked us to prepare you for a long journey. We'll get you packed and dressed in no time, Miss Dennings.”
Blythe was sure they would. As the two maids set about laying out her clothes and packing her bag, her belly dropped to somewhere in the vicinity of her shoes and stayed there.
Thomas. Oh, Thomas, I wish you were here...
* * *
26
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CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
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After Tristan and Blythe left the Portings, Thomas was so overcome by a blind rage that he nearly went after them. It was Georgiana who caught sight of him, and, dismissing her near-permanent crowd of admirers, herded him back to a quiet corner to calm him down.
“Seriously, Father's already irritated enough with you for the gambling and roistering you do. Do you need to make things worse by trying to get into a boxing match with Tristan Carrow?”
“I don't want to box the damned man. I want to challenge him.”
“Brother, no. Things are surely not that bad.”
“No, they're worse. He has some... some kind of blackmail that he's using on Blythe. He's forcing her to do as he says.”
“Custom and fortune are enough that a man does not need to blackmail a woman.”
“No! That may be true for most, but it's not true for Blythe. If it was the fortune, she would tell him to go hang, and well, you know by now how she feels about custom. No. Blythe's in danger, and that danger might be her damned cousin.”
“He's not going to murder her in her bed. Whatever Tristan Carrow is going to do, he's going to do it legally, openly, and in as pompous a manner as possible. He doesn't have a murderous bone in his body.”
Thomas eyed his sister. When she spoke of the eldest Carrow brother, there was always something especially venomous in her voice. “Is there a reason you are so very convinced of this?”
“It's hardly less than public knowledge what a prig the Duke of Parrington is. He's not a murderer, and I would stake my life on Blythe being safe at least for the night. Come. You are overwrought. We need to get you home.”
Thomas acquiesced, but when he saw Robert on the front doorstep, his heart jumped again. Robert was coming to the side of the coach even as they disembarked, and the look on his face was grim.
“Any news, Robert?”
“Some, but we ought not talk about it on the street.”
“Right. Come on, we'll go to my study.”
Before they entered the study, he turned to Georgiana, hesitating for a moment. “This does not necessarily concern you. It's a strange and bloody business.”
Georgiana's eyes flashed blue murder. “If it concerns my flesh and blood, it concerns me. Let me in.”
Thomas gave way without an argument. Georgiana had a good head on her shoulders, and God alone knew how tired he was of dealing with this all on his own. Quickly, he and Robert filled Georgiana in on the situation, and then Thomas turned to Robert.
“Were you able to chase the men down?”
“I did. I lost one, but I caught the other somewhere around the theater. I slammed him against the wall, demanding to know who he was working for and what the hell they wanted with Blythe Dennings. He babbled that it was a lord who had paid them to drag her out of there, that they were lucky she had gone out into the garden. He didn't know the name of the lord, only that he spoke with an upper-class accent and that he was disgusted by the filth of where he had to go to hire those men.”
“God, some lord hired thugs to kidnap Blythe.” Thomas shook his head.
“Yes, and unfortunately, while I was digesting the news, the man made a strenuous effort and twisted away. I was left holding a particularly filthy sleeve, and he disappeared into the crowd of theater-goers. I'm sorry, Amory, I've let you down.”
“No, no, you've done more than enough.”
Thomas’ head was spinning, and he had to shake it a bit to try to clear it.
“Tristan Carrow. Could he be the one behind this? He's already had no problem with having her followed, and I wouldn't put this past him either.”
Georgiana was already shaking her head. “This is underhanded. Carrows haven't the wit to do anything but move in straight lines.”
; “I don't want to underestimate him. Blythe looked... I can't describe it. She looked genuinely afraid when she stepped to Parrington's side. I've never seen her look like that before, and I've seen her in actual fights.”
Georgiana gave him a long look. “What does she look like when she's scared for other people? Something like that?”
“You think he's using someone else to blackmail her?”
Georgiana shook her head as if utterly confused at how Thomas could be so very slow. “I think she's trying to protect you, brother. The way you describe Miss Dennings, she seems impervious to most threats that Tristan can make against her, yes? She doesn't care about having her allowance docked because she doesn't need money for what she does. She doesn't care about not going out, because she can always sneak out. You're what's left that she cares about.”
Thomas sat in silence, feeling as if the sky had gone white with shock. He was the tool Tristan was using to break her spirit? She was suffering because of him? If Tristan Carrow were standing in front of him right now, he would have cheerfully shot the man.
Robert whistled. “She must care for you a great deal.”
“She does. I know she does.”
Thomas could barely believe what a fool he had been. He had seen how she suffered the day she left the flat he had bought for her. He could remember how she looked at the ball. He had thought Tristan had some terrible hold on her, and now he could tell that the hold was only love, a great and terrible love that bound them together and would not release either of them.
“I have to go to her.”
Thomas stood from his chair, ready to go down to the stables, wake the grooms, and demand a horse so he could go and storm the Carrow residence. Before he could quite make it to the door, Robert had caught him up and pushed him back into the chair. He stared up at Robert in bafflement.
The Marquess' Angel_Hart and Arrow_A Regency Romance Book Page 18