by P. J. Fox
“If you mean, does the king host orgies, then the answer is yes. Piers is devoted to Celine but what pleases him most of all is to watch her with other men. And she in turn seems willing enough; most likely because her husband has excellent taste in the men that he chooses. I doubt any woman in the kingdom has suffered the attentions of so many gloriously handsome and gloriously well endowed lovers. Further, I imagine most would enjoy the experience, if they only had the courage to admit such a thing to themselves.”
“I imagine you’re right.” She tried to picture such a thing, and couldn’t. But she thought she’d like to meet the queen; Celine must be a fascinating woman indeed. “Have you?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said frankly. “But without the benefit of an audience. I don’t share.”
“Well that’s good to know.” She laughed again.
He favored her with a flat look.
THIRTY-ONE
They rode home as the shadows lengthened, having spent the afternoon together in the glen. Isla had been surprised and relieved that Tristan hadn’t taken advantage of her intoxicated state. Indeed he’d been the perfect gentleman, relaxing and smoking his pipe and studying her with that inscrutable look. His conversation, however, had been the furthest thing from gentlemanly: harems, his sexual exploits, his thoughts on women in general and on relations between the sexes. She’d never heard anyone talk about these things before or even admit to thinking about them, and she found his willingness to talk about them both alluring and alarming.
She’d had fun with him, though, in spite of herself. He was urbane and educated and his stories about life in the East made her feel like she was there. She leaned against him, pleasantly tired but not sleepy. She was looking forward to dinner, and to that priest being gone. Tristan had an excellent seat and his confidence in the saddle—and, indeed, in everything he did—was relaxing. He, at least, was a known quantity; she knew that if he hurt her, it would be because he intended to do so and for no other reason. He’d never let her be hurt through incompetence, or cowardice.
She must have fallen asleep, because she was surprised to open her eyes and find herself in the courtyard. She remembered blinking, and thinking just how little tired she was, and then…this. She straightened up, embarrassed to have been caught napping on Tristan. He, for his part, seemed unperturbed. He swung down and then, reaching up, caught her around the waist as she braced her hands on his forearms and swung her down too.
She couldn’t believe how long they’d been out; their time together had felt like mere minutes instead of hours. But full night was almost upon them. The days were shorter now, and twilight passed quickly. Still, sounds of chatting and laughter already drifted from the great hall. Isla wouldn’t have time to change; dinner had been served!
Tristan’s groom came for Arion, seemingly forming from whole cloth out of the ground mist that gathered at night. Tristan spoke a quiet word to him, and the other man nodded. Isla faltered, wondering what to do. Her father would surely be furious with her, and with that thought the full horror of her morning came rushing back to her.
Tristan must have seen something of that horror on her face, because he took her hand and slipped it into the crook of his arm. His grip was gentle, but extremely firm and she knew his fingers would turn to steel in a moment if she tried to pull back. There was nothing of tenderness in the gesture but an odd sort of affinity; once again, he understood. His skin was cold.
“Shall we?” he asked.
“I haven’t changed,” she said lamely, feeling self-conscious.
A different man would have rushed to assure her that she already looked beautiful and was perfectly attired for dinner; that her morning’s simple shift and kirtle wouldn’t look the least bit out of place in a formal setting. But Tristan only replied, in that calm and emotionless voice of his, that everyone else would look just as bad.
“Nothing you own, little starling, remotely touches my own standards for personal dress. Although you have made a valiant effort, which is to be commended.” He flashed that inscrutable, brief smile again. “And, unlike your brother, at least you do not bed with swine.”
Isla wondered if Tristan meant that last rebuke literally or metaphorically. Hart did tend to share certain odors in common with his favorite pet, Bessie the sow. “Thank you for your concern,” she said dryly, “but I find my present wardrobe quite adequate to my purposes.”
“Nevertheless, I intend to purchase you a new one,” he replied.
“And what if I don’t like it?” she teased.
He stopped. “Then,” he said, turning to gaze down at her in the darkness, “you may adorn my home naked.”
Isla giggled. She wasn’t sure but, after his own fashion, she thought he’d just made a joke—or a half-joke, at least. She had no doubt that, if the mood struck him, he absolutely would denude her of clothing until she learned whatever lesson he intended to teach. But strangely enough, the thought didn’t upset her nearly as much as it would have a few days ago. Or even that morning. Quite in spite of herself, she was coming to find his difficult nature rather charming.
He, of course, looked ideally suited for dinner in the great hall. He had a trick of managing to look ideally suited for whatever environment he found himself in. Whether by magic or simply confidence—and Isla thought the latter—Tristan Mountbatten easily dominated others everywhere he went.
Rudolph met them in the entrance hall. “Hullo!” he cried, all joviality and good cheer. It seemed that he, too, was late to table as he’d pledged to escort Rowena and she was still preparing her toilette.
A lady, Rudolph confided in her, entirely unaware of how rude he was being, needed her time. As though Isla would know nothing of ladies. Which, from Rudolph’s rather limited perspective on what constituted ladies, she supposed she didn’t. “And you?” he said, digging himself in further. “Have you had a chance to…fix yourself up?”
“No,” Tristan replied smoothly. “I’ve kept her occupied.”
“Oh.” Rudolph colored. “Well, I just thought that…”
“She pleases me.” Tristan’s tone did not invite further argument.
Rowena appeared, saving them further embarrassment.
“Oh, Rudolph,” she cried, “how handsome you look in that fine doublet.”
Isla thought personally that the yellow and brown confection, velvet all, looked absolutely bilious—on Rudolph and in general. The colors of vomit. His codpiece was embroidered with more of the same, and his breeches billowed about his legs like flags. She’d heard that stripes were a current fashion; she hadn’t thought to see the proof right in front of her. The whole getup was so ridiculous that no man could be convinced to wear it lest he’d first been convinced that it was fashionable. She’d heard the term slave to fashion before, but never understood its meaning until now.
Rowena was wearing her own favorite confection of rose-colored flax. The color was lovely on her, bringing out the roses in her cheeks where it would have made Isla look wan. “Isla!” she cried, as though just now noticing her sister for the first time. Isla forced herself to smile. “Isla, you look—is that grass in your hair?” she asked, plucking a stalk of green from her bun. No, it’s ferns, Isla wanted to tell her, but didn’t.
Rowena turned to Tristan. “Good eve…Your Grace.” She smiled prettily at him, all demure dimples.
Tristan gazed back, unmoved. The transformation was startling as she turned from one to the other and Isla was tempted to say something. Her sister managed to make the low-voiced, almost whispered greeting a seduction. Rudolph beamed on, fool that he was, as Rowena did her best to charm the duke. “We’ve missed you so, these past few days.”
“I have business, to which I must attend. It has, alas, kept me from your company until this morning. And this afternoon, I spent with Isla.”
“I don’t blame you for leaving,” Rowena said, all empathy. “You must have felt our parting very keenly. I, too, should want to sojourn in the woods
where I could be at peace.”
Isla hadn’t been aware that her sister knew what sojourn meant. And did Rowena honestly not care that Isla was standing right next to this man? Her betrothed? She held her peace, but only with great effort. Saying something, she reminded herself over and over, would solve nothing—and make her look even more ridiculous than she did now. Grass, indeed.
“It’s kind of you to spend time with my sister,” she said, skimming her fingertips lightly over the back of Tristan’s hand. The hand attached to the same arm as the elbow in which Isla’s hand still rested, and had since he’d led her inside.
Deliberately, Tristan removed Rowena’s hand and returned it to her as though he were returning some lost trinket. “Alas, mistress, only one woman has my heart. And I quite think that ferns are the only decoration she needs.” He turned to Isla, dismissing his admirer as effectively as if he’d slapped her.
Rowena, unused to receiving such a cold reception from anyone, especially a man on whom she’d set her sights, recoiled. Beside her, Rudolph smiled pleasantly. Rudolph couldn’t be as stupid as he looked, surely? If he were, he wouldn’t have made it past his twelfth winter.
“Would you care to sit down?” Tristan asked her, ignoring them both.
Isla nodded faintly. What, exactly, had he just said? And what on earth was her sister doing? Rudolph, too, had been standing right there. Earlier, Isla had dismissed Cariad’s concerns about Rowena as the suspicious ramblings of an isolated mind but now she wondered. Her sister certainly seemed more interested in the duke now that both of them were formally affianced to other people.
THIRTY-TWO
Isla was still wondering how best to confront Rowena about what had happened, and even if she should, when she looked up and saw the priest.
Rowena, after all, was much younger—and not simply in years. At sixteen, many women were wives and mothers. Their own mother had been married at fourteen. Isla bore Rowena no ill will, nor precisely was she jealous. Whatever she felt for the duke, it wasn’t what Rowena felt for Rudolph. She didn’t despise him as she once had, and after this morning might even feel comfortable with him, but she was also still afraid of him in some obscure fashion that she couldn’t even begin to define.
Rowena led Rudolph, and indeed every man she knew, around by the nose like a bull. Whereas the idea of behaving in such a manner toward Tristan struck Isla as ridiculous. Whatever silent pact they’d formed, he was assuredly in charge. A situation that Isla found obscurely comforting, having been in charge of everything—in her life and everyone else’s—for so long.
So to say that Isla was mad at Rowena wouldn’t be correct. She wasn’t mad, and her momentary embarrassment had long since faded. Tristan had seen her in a far more unguarded state just that morning and she didn’t care what Rudolph thought of her—the man wore jeweled armor on his crotch. She was worried about her sister, worried that she might be making a mistake in marrying Rudolph and worried, more so, that she might be unhappy. Isla loved Rowena, and had been more mother than sister to her for most of their lives.
She was so caught up in these thoughts that she didn’t see Father Justin until she and Tristan ascended the dais.
With her long skirts and useless little slippers, Isla had to watch her footing carefully on the small, disproportionately flat steps. Reaching the dais itself, she raised her eyes toward her bench. And there he was. She should have seen him across the room; he was visible from the wide, arched door that bisected the back wall of the main hall, as all the occupants of the main table were. He was seated across from her father—and there indeed was her father, all smiles, cup in one hand and piece of meat in the other. Chatting to the priest like they’d known each other all their lives.
Tristan gave no outward response, although she knew he’d seen. As long as she lived—however long that might be—Isla also knew that she’d never forget the sound of Tristan’s voice as he ordered the priest to leave. That Father Justin was still here and had, in fact, once again resumed his former place of honor at table was a flagrant slap in the face to both Tristan and the authority his position represented.
Pretending to just now see them for the first time, Father Justin smiled. Isla had seen that lazy, spreading expression before. On a toad.
“Good evening,” Tristan said, helping Isla to her place on the bench and sitting down next to her. Asher poured them wine, and then stepped back to his place against the wall. It looked to Isla almost like some communication passed between Tristan and his page but she couldn’t be sure—and, quite frankly, didn’t care.
Her heart was racing and her mouth had gone suddenly dry. She felt like she was teetering on the verge of panic and didn’t know what to do. The pressure of Tristan’s arm around her waist as he pretended to engage in pleasantries kept her from bolting, but did nothing to quell her terror. Rather increased it tenfold, because she felt trapped. Was trapped.
Dinner passed in a blur, course after course appearing and disappearing.
Isla ate almost nothing and what she did eat tasted like ashes. Hart was there, glaring at Father Justin as though he were some new species of vermin. He knew, then. She thought he did, based on what she’d seen earlier. And based on her knowledge that of all the people she knew, Hart was perhaps the only one who wouldn’t place his fear of upsetting the wrong person over his concern for her welfare. She felt a sudden, almost sickening rush of love for her brother and wished again that he’d come with her when she left.
She wished she were leaving that night. She’d been dreading the moment of her departure but now she’d have cheerfully spent the night in the worst, coldest and most disease-ridden oubliette in Morven rather than be in the presence of this creature for one more minute.
Every laugh, every passing comment brought back the feel of his hand connecting with her face, of his knee pressing into her stomach. She fought back the urge to vomit. Beside her, Tristan chatted on as though nothing at all were wrong.
Part of her hated him for it. Did he honestly just…not care? Had he meant what he’d said, that he’d staged the whole production in order to gain information? Was she truly nothing more than a prop to him, his earlier words to Rudolph no more sincerely meant than lines from some ballad sung by a bard?
She swallowed. The next course was served. Her father had gone all out tonight, no doubt in an effort to appease Father Justin for the earlier insult of not being allowed to torture his daughter. That her father had some guilty knowledge was evident from his forced good humor at her arrival and, now, his refusal to meet her eyes.
Isla wondered what, exactly, her father did know and when he’d learned it. Father Justin had insinuated that he’d drugged the earl, but…how willingly had the earl let himself be drugged? And, drugged or no, had he indeed awakened in time to hear his daughter’s screams?
Hart, judging by his earlier behavior, seemed to think so. He’d yelled at the earl in the courtyard, in front of everyone, and all but ignored the older man’s existence during dinner. Mostly he traded banter with the duke and some other man Isla didn’t recognize. Some retainer of Rudolph’s. Occasionally he glared, again, at Father Justin.
“You missed my benediction earlier,” Father Justin remarked.
Tristan gestured for more wine. “How painful.”
“Missing my benediction?”
“Receiving it,” Tristan corrected. “Although I have it on good authority that pain is good for the soul. And I’m sure that listening to more of your half-formed and poorly delivered mutterings would be good for mine. If I had one, that is.” He sipped his wine, his eyes glittering as he studied the priest over the rim of his cup. Beside him, Isla said nothing.
Father Justin only sniffed, unwilling to dignify Tristan’s barb with a response.
He did make no sense and his benedictions, much like his homilies, were long-winded and full of half-formed thoughts that barely bore even the most passing resemblance to logic. During his prior visits to the manor, Isl
a had thought the priest ill-educated and a bore. Although the priesthood was meant to be an educated class, it was also a sinecure and some priests were not only unlettered but also plainly illiterate.
Father Justin, too, gestured to his page for more wine. Where Tristan’s gesture had been curt and to the point, Father Justin’s was expansive. “What a lovely repast,” he enthused. “Is it not?” His tone, like his moon-round face, was oily.
No further comment was made on where Tristan had been, or on his assertion that he lacked a soul. Isla drank her wine determinedly, praying for dinner to end. She didn’t know how she’d face the coming night, knowing that that man was asleep mere feet from her door.
The main dish, the chef’s piece de resistance and one that could be smelt clear across the room, was presented to the earl on a gigantic pewter platter: potted bear’s paws in sugared wine syrup. The potted aspect of the dish referred to the dome in which dinner resided. Calves’ hooves had been boiled into gelatin and then formed in a mold. The paws resided within, darkly visible as though viewed through the water at the bottom of a lake.
“Excellent!” Father Justin clapped his hands. “What good fortune that I decided to stay on another night!”
“Yes, indeed,” the earl agreed, smiling at some far point between Isla and Tristan. “Father Justin’s original plan,” he told them, “was to leave this noon. But he had a change of heart and decided to grace us with his presence one more evening. Isn’t that right?” he said, his gaze transferring to Father Justin. He seemed…nervous, was the only word Isla could think of. She realized, in that moment, that her father didn’t care about her. Only dear, delightful Father Justin. And his coffers. She hated him.
“Yes,” Father Justin said expansively. He sipped his wine, and exclaimed when a cut of potted bear’s paw was put in front of him, the brick swimming in sauce the color of dried blood. “I plan,” he said, addressing Tristan directly, “to leave in the morning. At first light.”