Lords of Honor-The Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  “I…see,” she said quietly, hovering behind a desk that wasn’t a desk, in a reminder of his financial state. He felt her eyes on him as he began stacking the paperwork. “And what will your assignment with the Home Office entail.” It entailed him leaving. “Will you keep offices there?”

  He stiffened. Oh, hell.

  “Not that I have a problem with you working daily,” Poppy said hurriedly. “I don’t. I’ve my work at Penelope and Ryker’s, in addition to seeing to our home.”

  This was a discussion they had to have. Mayhap one he’d owed her before they’d exchanged vows. And yet, based on the terms she’d set forth, a marriage of convenience to benefit the both of them, his work with the Home Office shouldn’t have mattered.

  And yet, low in his gut, he knew that would never be the case with Poppy. That in lying to her, he’d always been lying to himself.

  “I owe Maxwell,” How singularly odd speaking of another with the name Tristan himself had gone by for so long that everything else felt unnatural. “Fifty-five thousand pounds. Securing this commission, Poppy,” he went on, willing her to understand. Needing her to understand. “It will work toward restoring my name,” In the only thing he’d ever been any good at. “And eventually paying off those debts.” And then…he’d be free. Free of the crimes committed by his family. Free of society’s scorn.

  Poppy approached, taking hesitant steps, when she’d only ever been bold in her every movement. “This…assignment is not at the Home Office, is it?” she asked in achingly soft tones.

  He dusted a hand down the side of his stubbled cheek. “Poppy,” he entreated; needing her to understand. Because the arrangement they’d spoken of on the balcony of his hotel suite had been one where this, his temporarily leaving, shouldn’t matter. Not truly. Only, it would have always mattered to Poppy. He’d simply convinced himself otherwise.

  She stopped; and toyed with the scalloped back of his desk-seat. “I…see.” Poppy tipped her chin up.

  “The King’s hussars was expanded. It created a non-purchase vacancy. However,” He was rambling to his own ears, and yet, he could not stop because then there would be more questions and a hurt Poppy when there was never supposed to have been a hurt Poppy. Only a Poppy content with a mutually beneficial union. “Generally an officer who succeeded to a non-purchase vacancy cannot sell one’s commission for at least several years.”

  “Several years?” she echoed dumbly. “You’ll work in the Home Office, then, for several years and—”

  “No. I’d be employed through the Home Office.”

  Her eyes sparkled with confusion. “Where will you go then?”

  “Ireland.” She revealed no outward reaction to that announcement. “The Royal Barracks. It is not so very far,” he said lamely. “Cork.”

  Several beats of silence passed. “That is Irish Nationalist country.” His wife would be so attuned to all that she’d know that about British politics, too. She backed away a step. “You’d go and put yourself at risk, serving in a place where we have no right to be.”

  A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Such talk is dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” Her voice pitched. “Are you threatening me?”

  “No,” he exclaimed. “Of course not.” God, he was blundering this badly. Tristan scraped a hand through his hair. “I’m merely pointing out that you should have a care.”

  “A care?” she cried, throwing her arms up. “You tell me to have a care? You are marked with the scars left by bullets and bayonets. You escaped Boney’s forces with your life and now you’d risk all by serving in a place where the English are not wanted?” Her words came in a frenzy, picking up a dizzying speed. “And furthermore, who are you worried about hearing us? There’s two servants and my lady’s maid, and soon, there won’t even be you.” Her strident voice echoed off the walls, hammering home her hurt, and it threatened to cleave him in two.

  He took a step toward her, but Poppy presented him her back; in a cut that may as well have been a physical one for the intensity of it. “Poppy,” he began quietly, resting his palms on her shoulders. “What we agreed to—”

  She shrugged him off in a complete rejection that left him empty. “I know what we agreed to,” she said tiredly, and then with her usual spirit restored she spun, determination lit her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  Tristan attempted to make her understand. “I…believed that you wished for autonomy.” Or is it that you’re trying to ease your own deserved guilt. “This commission, it did not interfere with the freedoms you sought, and so it did not seem to alter the terms we’d discussed.”

  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 alo
ng 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 Po
ppy’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.”