He stared directly at her then, his eyes suddenly piercing. “Not frighten, Phoebe. Enlighten. And prepare. As to the why,” he shrugged. “Is it not obvious? I am evidently the only soul in this entire family capable of facing the truth of what is about to happen to me. Therefore, would you not say it falls to me to make sure you understand it as well?”
Leaning heavily on his elbow, he motioned toward her with his now half-empty glass. “It would be the very height of irresponsible behavior for me to downplay the situation; to foster within either of you even a tiny shred of hope that there might be a way to save me. I refuse to give anyone—and you most especially, Phoebe—the slightest bit of encouragement when it would be based on naught more than your own false sense of hope.”
Tears pooled in her eyes and she frowned across the brief space between them.
“Tristan, stop. Please,” she implored, her voice strained with unshed tears. “You are beginning to sound like Lucien and I don't like it. I want the old you back. The real you. Surely the cheerful, loving brother I once knew did not die along with...”
As if realizing what she had been about to say, whose name she was about to utter, she broke off, but there was such a wealth of pleading in her gaze, Tristan felt it to his soul. Letting his head drop back against the tall hand-carved headboard, he sighed. “Phoebe, please. For my sake and yours, you simply must forget about trying to save me. Forget about marrying Claybourne. Forget attempting to change that which cannot be changed. Let this be over quickly, and if possible, without regrets.”
“My only regret is how easily you seem to have given up!” She began to pace about the room, her fingers fidgeting within the folds of her skirts. “You are a St. Daine, Tristan Avery. Have you forgotten that? St. Daine's do not give up!”
“St. Daine's do not murder helpless women, either, and yet here sit I...” he murmured wryly, his tone completely unconcerned. Lifting the glass to his lips once more, he drained it, started to pour another, then sat the glass aside, opting to drink straight from the bottle instead.
“Which is why I must marry Edward, why it was important for me to see him alone this morning,” Phoebe hastened to explain. “What must I say to reach you, to make you understand? I am doing this for you! I do not want you to die. I want you to live, but I also want you to be at ease with the choice I have made. He is a good man, Tristan, yet you still continue to refuse us your blessing—just one more thing that I do not understand. Edward is an honorable person and I wish you could see that. Without him none of us would have had either the opportunity for or the pleasure of being together as a family these past days.”
Despite the passion in her plea, Tristan said nothing because there was naught more to be said. He only wished she could see. Instead, agitated by his refusal to discuss the matter further or even deign to feign a positive attitude in light of everything she had said, Phoebe stopped in front of him, still willing him across the small expanse between the chair and the door with her gaze to understand. “You have to know how important that has been for me—for all of us.”
At that, Tristan lifted his head to spear her with an accusatory glare. “Important, indeed,” he drawled. “So necessary, in fact, just this morning you decided you must sneak away from Rothwyn House to avoid my much beloved presence.”
“I didn't want to avoid you so much as I needed to soothe him. His disposition,” she hurriedly corrected. “He was becoming...distant. I was afraid your constant needling and picking was wearing his patience thin. It certainly was tearing at mine.”
His eyes narrowed. “Pardon me if I have a problem with men who resort to blackmail to gain a wife—especially when that wife is my sister! My hope was to force him to cry off, Phoebe. If it was working, your escape this morning may well have foiled my plans.”
“Hang your plans to come between Edward and I, Tris. You know we've but a few days to find a solution to your dilemma and I know we cannot do it without him.” She stopped her pacing to ponder upon his visage. “I do not know what happened between the two of you in that horrid cell at Newgate, but surely it was not so bad as to warrant this vicious grudge you seem to be holding against him. If he calls off the betrothal, Vykhurst will withdraw whatever protection he has to offer and—”
“—and I will swing a few hours earlier than I anticipated,” he finished for her.
“Will you stop?! I don't want to think about that. I came here to apologize—”
“Which you have done,” Tristan interrupted yet again, causing her to pause long enough to pin him with a narrow-eyed glare before continuing.
“And also to go over the details of your alleged crime with you. There must be some detail you have forgotten or overlooked—”
An arched brow was his only response but she must have taken it to mean he was considering her offer to recant the details of Chelsea's death, which he most certainly was not—reliving those moments had caused him enough pain. He would never willingly put himself through it again—not even for Phoebe.
“You have been known to be mistaken before, Tristan, and I absolutely believe you are now. If you will only tell me what happened, I believe I can help.” Phoebe's mood seemed much lightened, but he suddenly felt cold. She didn't notice. Instead, she came back to the chair and sat once more, looking for all the world as if she had managed to best a prized pugilist at Whites.
Smug, he decided. Her expression was smug. Her words proved it. “I am convinced the answer to your problem lies in the details, but to find it, you have to share them with me.”
Blackness licked up at the edges of his thoughts like flame, greedily attempting to steal through his control and he peered at her through eyelids narrowed to tiny slits. “The way you shared your outing with Claybourne with me this morning?”
Her sigh was audible. “This is not about Edward, Tristan.”
“Oh, but it is, Phoebe. You want to talk about the woman I killed? Fine. But first, I want to talk about your betrothed.”
If he could not pound some semblance of sense into her through logic, he would appeal to her tender emotions instead. Either way, her insistence that he discuss those terrible last moments before Chelsea's death must end. Now. Crossing his arms over his chest, he stubbornly demanded, “Tell me, what thought have you given to Claybourne, Phoebe? Have you paused, even once, to consider what this marriage will mean for him?” His quick snort of disgust was followed by an accusation he knew she would find most difficult to accept. “You are being selfish.”
“Selfish?” Her eyes went wide and she opened her mouth to hotly refute his words. “In what way is it selfish of me to attempt to spare a life by honoring my promise to marry Edward? You know full well the arrangement between Mister Claybourne and myself was made—with both my and Lucien's approval—to save you. Granted, my attempt has become many, many things to all of us, but selfish, dear brother, is not one of them.”
Tristan drew a long swig from the bottle. She was angry now. Good. Angry meant she was no longer thinking rationally. There would be no further efforts on her part to force him to think about that night, to remember.
Leaning forward to fill his glass again, he scowled, feigning an equally rising ire to match hers. “Sparing a life is precisely what I am trying to do, Phoebe,” he insisted, “but you continue to refuse to heed what I am saying! For once, I want you to forget about me. This isn't about me. Put your girlish feelings, all your womanly emotions aside and just listen to what I am saying. Do you understand? Nothing is about me anymore. I cannot be saved and there is simply no changing that. But you...”
Despite her clearly increasing anger, she held her silence and Tristan used the moment to scramble upon his elbows to a more dignified sitting position, his piercing gaze holding her immobile as he drew up one knee, resting the recently refilled glass upon it. “If it had been Lucien foolishly sacrificing himself upon the altar of my salvation, I could understand. Father drummed family loyalty and sacrifice into him from the cradle and
, damn him, he took it seriously.” Disapproval rang in his tone and he shook his head in mock disappointment. “But you aren't Lucien, Phoebe. You aren't Lucien and what you are about to do is wrong. So wrong.”
If the flash of fire in her eyes were any indication, she was no longer thinking about the hearing or trying to find a way around it. No, her thoughts had become fully engaged upon plans to murder him herself. If the situation were not so dire, he might have been tempted to smile at her steadily rising ire.
“First I am selfish and now I am wrong?” she demanded, rising to her feet once again, but he did not give her the opportunity to go on with the stinging set down she obviously had planned.
“Yes! Yes, you are wrong because you insist you are not being selfish, that your choice was selflessly made to save me—and I believe you in that regard—but what of him, Phoebe? How will sacrificing both your futures by marrying Claybourne in your misguided attempt to save me benefit him?”
Tristan downed the entire glass of whiskey, groaning through the burn in his throat while he waited for her to explain though he knew she could not. Satisfied that he had won, that he had succeeded in turning the conversation to a subject of which he felt in full control, he kept his expression one of lackadaisical nonchalance and said, “Tell me how denying your Edward the chance to choose his own way through life is not being selfish. Did you pause, even once, to think about the magnitude of Claybourne's sacrifice in all of this? Have you truly considered—from his perspective—what marrying you will mean for him?”
Her suddenly confused expression answered more clearly than words could have. She had not. Leaning forward, he pointed out, “Mere misters do not marry the daughters of dukes, Phoebe. It simply is not done. If you follow through with this, all of Society will know him for a fortune hunter, and willing or no, by marrying you Claybourne will lose whatever respect he currently has of his peers … and there is another matter.”
He scooted to the edge of the bed, pointing at nothing in particular as he made his next point. “Without a doubt, Lucien knows him for the same. How will that set with your new husband, Phoebe? How deep a trust in Claybourne's ability to see to your future do you think Lucien has? How could he even begin to trust the abilities of a penniless future earl who has to resort to blackmail to secure a bride just to bolster his own coffers?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but again, he forestalled her words. Shaking his head yet again, Tristan said, “You and he will be forced to live beneath our brother's constant shadow and your Edward will come to despise being made to do so. My only hope is that he does not make the mistake of taking out his displeasure on you.”
There was a glimmer of doubt swirling in the confusion now filling her gaze, and Tristan used it to further press his point home. “Mark me well, Phoebe. Lucien will never let the chap out of his sight, nor from beneath his censure.”
Having heard all the nonsense she was prepared to hear, Phoebe straightened her spine and lifted her chin defiantly, fully prepared to decry every one of Tristan's suggestions. “Edward is the grandson and heir of an earl, Tristan, or had you forgotten? Our marriage will have nothing to do with Lucien. Edward wants to marry me. Doing so secures his future. He needs solvency for the earldom—just as any man in his position might. There is no shame in that. As for Lucien—” she started, but Tristan's next point cut off her words.
“I cannot possibly make the truth of my fate any more clear to you. I will be gone soon, no doubt, but your Mister Claybourne—he will be forced to live with the result of your stubborn tenacity forever,” he continued, his tone accusatory until Phoebe covered her ears with her hands, unable to listen any longer. Still, he tossed out cruel, cutting words that stung with the bite of sharp, finely honed blades, each one pressing forward as he pointed out things she had no wish to consider, his words slicing into the private insecurities she had hidden deep, shielded within her heart from her first outing with Edward and he seemed not even to notice.
“Is your precious Edward not deserving of love, Phoebe?” Tristan asked at last, his tone smarting with cynical derision.
Love. Thinking back, she recalled clearly what Edward had told her during their first visit to Vykhurst. I do not love you, he had said, and now, thanks to Tristan, she wondered for the first time if it had mattered—to him. Had he anticipated finding love? Would he regret not being given the chance to do so? Ignoring the doubts suddenly flaring to life inside her, Phoebe opened her mouth to speak but no words came. In fact, she suddenly felt ill beneath the jagged tear of ragged wounds opened with each piercing stab from the words rolling off her brother's tongue, yet he still was not finished.
Rising a bit unsteadily, Tristan paced to the window and back again before he stopped in front of her, taking her by the shoulders to say, “He will be denied the opportunity to follow his dreams, to give in to his desires, to … to find love, Phoebe, and that fault will be on your shoulders. You would deny him this? The chance to experience true love?”
Releasing her, he made his way to the window again, slashing his hand now and again to lend importance to what he was saying.
“Not a passing fondness, mind you, but the kind of profound, abiding love that puts the light of happiness in a man's eyes and the slow, gentle warmth of contentment in his soul. The kind that turns his world upside down just to show him a deeper, more worthwhile meaning to life.”
The back of his right hand smacked against the palm of his left for emphasis and he paused to draw back the heavy drapes, his tone growing low and distant as he said, “The kind that leaves him unsettled and yet determined, that sets his spirit afire and makes life worth living. Do you not think the man deserves a chance to find the kind of love that makes him feel wanted, needed, cherished and loved—for himself, not just as a means to an end?”
With a final plunge, Tristan turned, his gaze piercing, to set the vicious dagger that was the effect of his words deep before giving it a final twist Phoebe knew she could not possibly hope to survive. His gaze burning with a singular intensity she had never before witnessed in his eyes, he asked, “Is your betrothed not worthy of finding for himself a profound and abiding love, Phoebe? The same sort you yourself once dearly hoped to find?”
12
For the remainder of the night, Phoebe found herself unable to sleep. Hour after hour, she restlessly paced the shadowed confines of her bedchamber, alternately fuming over her brother's accusatory analysis of her choices and fighting against nauseous waves of anxiety as the day for Tristan's hearing approached. She felt consumed, both by fear of the possible outcome of Tristan's trial and a new uncertainty in regard to her agreement to marry Edward.
Tristan was right. Saving him had been her only thought these past months and his annoying insistence that she hadn't considered Edward at all was true. The only consideration she had given the matter of their betrothal was that Edward would certainly benefit from the arrangement in some way. She wasn't entirely sure how, but she trusted both Edward's grandfather and Lucien would have ensured the deal was equitable and as fair as possible for both sides.
Now, she was nursing new and equally painful emotional bruises—injuries brought on by fear her brother inspired that by agreeing to marry Edward she was ruining his chances for finding future happiness. He did deserve to find love in his own way, but she had never really thought he might be better off finding it somewhere else or with someone other than her. Was there another he had cared about before his grandfather stepped in? Had he been in love?
The thought did not sit well with her and she was helpless to change anything at this late date. The Earl of Vykhurst had upheld his end of the bargain. She must now keep to hers. Tristan was home with them even now because of it and there was nothing she would do to jeopardize these precious moments with him—moments which might well be his last. Her utter terror at the thought of her brother's possible death sentence was no longer a thing meekly hidden beneath the gentle facade of a carefully cultivated an
d staunchly held polite demeanor. It seemed her entire being had been engulfed by an overwhelmingly futile sense of desperation and dread.
For her part, she needed her brother alive and she would have said or done whatever was necessary to make sure he did not die—unlike Tristan himself. He had changed. He had become a fortress of stubborn silence which only added to her frustration over the fact that he still refused to discuss the details of Lady Chelsea's death with her. Why could he not simply give her the details of his extended absence and leave her to find the answers—the truth—on her own? How dare he assume his private recall of the moments would be enough? He was of the opinion there was naught more to be said, but Phoebe could not stifle her soul-deep belief that he was wrong. Perhaps there were details missing, important bits and pieces of happenstance from the shooting incident that he had neglected to remember due to his own horror over believing he had murdered an innocent woman?
Not that either of their opinions would matter to the magistrate.
Without absolute physical proof that Lady Chelsea Hastings was yet alive and well, Tristan's fate was sealed by his own tongue—and the facts were that the Hastings had been out of town for months.
Someone could go look for her, as Tristan had so mockingly suggested, she realized, but who? And what would they say to the girl, once she was found—if she was found at all? Please forgive our intrusion, my lady, but the Duke of Rothwyn's younger brother believes himself responsible for your murder. Would you mind quite terribly to pop up to London? The family would be much obliged if you could spare a moment to prove your continued existence before he hangs.
Faith, Phoebe, she silently chastened in disgust over her appallingly lack-luster plot. Alaina regularly contrived strategies far better than hers in her sleep, but even Emily could likely come up with a more feasible design for locating Lady Chelsea than...
An Unexpected Passion (Unexpected Series Book 2) Page 10